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Daily Archives: September 7, 2020

Your Most Pressing Questions About Masks, Answered by CR’s Chief Scientist

Consumer Reports – via Pete Weiss – “With COVID-19 still spreading in the U.S., masks have become a daily part of American life. In a nationally representative survey CR conducted in July, 85 percent of Americans said they wear a mask in indoor public spaces “always” or “most of the time” (up from 75 percent the previous month). But consumers still have a lot of questions about masks, and it’s not always easy to find evidence-based answers. We asked CR’s chief scientific officer to weigh in:

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, September 6, 2020

Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, September 6, 2020 – Privacy and security issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly… Continue Reading

For decades vote-by-mail business was a sleepy industry that stayed out of the spotlight

The California Sunday Magazine – Then came 2020. “…Since the early 1990s,the portion of votes cast by mail has nosed upward in every presidential-election cycle, hitting an all-time high in 2016: 24 percent, or about 33 million ballots. But the national numbers mask a state-by-state variance. As a rule, voting by mail dominates the western states,… Continue Reading

Open is not forever

Open is not forever: a study of vanished open access journals – Mikael Laakso, Lisa Matthias, Najko Jahn – “The preservation of the scholarly record has been a point of concern since the beginning of knowledge production. With print publications, the responsibility rested primarily with librarians, but the shift towards digital publishing and, in particular, the… Continue Reading

Mozilla research: Browsing histories are unique enough to reliably identify users

“A recently published study conducted by three Mozilla employees has looked at the privacy provided by browsing histories.  Their findings show that most users have unique web browsing habits that allow online advertisers to create accurate profiles. These profiles can then be used to track and re-identify users across different sets of user data that… Continue Reading

5 things to do to keep your ballot from rejection

NBC News – “Vote early by mail or in person. Know your state’s deadlines. Don’t mess with your signature. Check your registration status — and polling place. And definitely don’t vote twice. “The presidential election is fast approaching, and a constellation of factors has caused experts to fear unprecedented levels of chaos and uncertainty over… Continue Reading

Making Scholarly Articles More Accessible for Machine Learning

Making Scholarly Articles More Accessible for Machine Learning – “ArXiv, an open-access digital repository of scholarly articles maintained by Cornell University in New York, made available all of its 1.7 million research articles on Kaggle, a public online platform for machine learning training datasets. For each article, the dataset includes information such as the author,… Continue Reading

Google releases data set of search trends for COVID-19 symptoms

“This aggregated, anonymized dataset shows trends in search patterns for symptoms and is intended to help researchers to better understand the impact of COVID-19. Public health experts indicated that trends in search patterns might be helpful in broadly understanding how COVID-19 impacts communities and even in detecting outbreaks earlier. You shouldn’t assume that the data… Continue Reading