Day archives: January 30th, 2020

The Earth Archive

“An unprecedented scientific effort to LiDAR scan the entire surface of the Earth before it’s too late. The climate crisis threatens to destroy our entire cultural & ecological patrimony. We’ve already lost 50% of the world’s rainforests.  We’re losing 18 million acres of forest each year. Rising sea levels will make whole cities,  countries, and …

Subjects: Climate Change, Environmental Law, Knowledge Management

Fear and loathing on Facebook?

First Monday – Fear and loathing on Facebook? Tracking the rise of populism and platformization in viral political Facebook posts, Anders Olof Larsso – “Adopting a longitudinal ‘demand’ perspective to the study of online political campaigning, the present study details developments in supporter engagement on party Facebook Pages during three Swedish elections — 2010, 2014 …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Privacy, Social Media

2020 The State of Auto Insurance

The Zebra – Car insurance rates across the U.S. are higher than ever. “The Zebra reveals the latest data, trends impacting rates, and which drivers pay the most, based on an analysis of 73 million rates…Since 2011, rates have skyrocketed 29.6% nationally, though the impacts differ across the U.S. Seven states have seen small rate …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, E-Records, Financial System, Privacy, Transportation

New web service can notify companies when employees get phished

ZDNet – “Starting today, companies across the world have a new free web service at their disposal that will automatically send out email notifications if one of their employees gets phished. The service is named “I Got Phished” and is managed by Abuse.ch, a non-profit organization known for its malware and cyber-crime tracking operations. Just …

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Mail, E-Records, Privacy

Google says its new chatbot Meena is the best in the world

MIT Technology Review – Google has released a neural-network-powered chatbot called Meena that it claims is better than any other chatbot out there. Data slurp: Meena was trained on a whopping 341 gigabytes of public social-media chatter—8.5 times as much data as OpenAI’s GPT-2. Google says Meena can talk about pretty much anything, and can …

Subjects: AI, Internet, Knowledge Management, Search Engines

Apple delivers new redesigned Maps for all users in US

Apple news release – New Apple Maps Designed with Better Road Coverage and Pedestrian Data, More Precise Addresses, and Detailed Land Cover: “Apple today announced that all users in the United States can now experience a redesigned Maps with faster and more accurate navigation and comprehensive views of roads, buildings, parks, airports, malls and more, …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Search Engines, Transportation

You’ve got snail mail

Washington Post: “Targeted online ads are now literally following you home Marketers are using the same technology and data as online advertising companies to decide who gets what flier, postcard or envelope…As people become numb to targeted digital ads that follow them across social media and into their email inboxes, some high-tech marketers are turning …

Subjects: E-Commerce, E-Mail, Privacy, Social Media