Monthly archives: July, 2021

SCOTUS Interpretation of CFAA A Win for Collecting Data With Web Scraping

Center for Data Innovation: “Web scraping—the use of automated tools to extract data from websites—helps businesses, researchers, and others quickly and efficiently gather publicly available information from the Internet, such as consumer product reviews or social media posts, that would otherwise require significant labor to collect. Unfortunately, uncertainty about the legality of scraping under the …

Subjects: Courts, Internet, Legal Research, Legislation

Identity Theft 101: Tips to Protect Yourself Against Identity Theft

Law Technology Today: “What identity theft comes down to is that your personal and confidential information ends up in the wrong hands and gets used without your permission for purchases and all kinds of fraudulent activities. The scary part is that most of us willingly make our personal information available online, and it is easy …

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, ID Theft, Knowledge Management

Don’t be that employee: How to avoid ransomware attacks at work

Washington Post -“…Ransomware, which locks down a target’s computers and data, can infect a network a few different ways, including through employee accounts. Click the wrong link, open the wrong attachment or log into the wrong website, and you could put your company in a perilous position. Depending on their roles, some employees find their …

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Mail, PC Security, Privacy

Beyond Goodreads: Four tools that help readers track their books

Washington Post – “Serious readers, much like sports fans, often relish keeping track of stats. Many turn to Goodreads, a large social cataloguing website that allows users to log, discuss, review and rate the books they read. (Goodreads is owned by Amazon, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post.) But increasingly, there are websites …

Subjects: Knowledge Management, Libraries

The state of American friendship: Change, challenges, and loss

Survey Center on American Life: “Coming out of a once-in-a-generation global pandemic, Americans appear more attuned than ever to the importance of friendship. However, despite renewed interest in the topic of friendship in popular culture and the news media, signs suggest that the role of friends in American social life is experiencing a pronounced decline. …

Subjects: Knowledge Management

Word learning dogs provide an animal model for studying exceptional performance

Fugazza, C., Dror, S., Sommese, A. et al. Word learning dogs (Canis familiaris) provide an animal model for studying exceptional performance. Sci Rep 11, 14070 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-93581-2 “Exceptional performance is present in various human activities but its origins are debated and challenging to study. We report evidence of exceptional performance and qualitative variation in learning …

Subjects: Knowledge Management

A Glowing Shrine to the Printed Word

The New York Times – “A mighty wall of books impresses in the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, a transformed branch that bursts with new services and technology… That’s why the Stavros Niarchos now delights book obsessives but also offers lines of computers atop long tables and a dizzying array of technology training, career exploration, life-skills …

Subjects: Education, Knowledge Management, Libraries

US COVID-19 Vaccination Tracking

“This tracker compiles spatial and demographic data on COVID-19 vaccination coverage in the United States. To characterize US county-level COVID-19 vaccination patterns accurately we integrated data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with data provided by state health departments. We collate these disparate data sources to produce a single estimate of cumulative vaccination …

Subjects: Education, Government Documents, Health Care, Internet, Knowledge Management

ALA Committee on Diversity Scorecard for Library and Information Organizations

ALA Committee on Diversity: “The DEI Scorecard for Library and Information Organizations, developed by theALA Committee on Diversity, is an evaluative tool that centers accountability and transparency in determining organizational effectiveness in diversity, equity, and inclusion in the recruitment, hiring, retention, and promotion of people of color. Additionally, the Scorecard includes areas that impact these …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Education, Legal Research, Libraries

New York City’s new biometrics privacy law takes effect

Mondaq – “Following the municipal ban on the use of facial recognition technology in Portland, Oregon, New York City’s more expansive “biometric identifier information” law, set to go into effect July 9, 2021, will ban the sale of biometric data but permit the use of biometric identifying technologies with posted notice to customers in “simple language” …

Subjects: AI, Government Documents, Legal Research, Privacy

More cell phone data use is negatively affecting Wi-Fi performance, study finds

Citation: “Hidden-nodes in coexisting LAA & Wi-FI: a measurement study of real deployments.” – UChicago researchers find competition between networks decreases performance – “If service becomes slow when you’re trying to send a quick email on your smartphone, you might scroll through your network options and discover how many Wi-Fi networks there are. In fact, …

Subjects: Education, Internet, Wireless Web