Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002

Daily Archives: August 5, 2021

Using Archive.org for OSINT Investigations

Ritu Gill: “The Internet Archive, commonly known as the Wayback Machine allows users to visit archived versions of websites. The Internet Archive has been archiving sites since 1996 and has 514 billion archived web pages!  If you are wondering how you can use the Internet Archive in your OSINT research, you’ve come to the right place. There are many methods to extract important information from the Wayback Machine to further your OSINT investigations. If you are looking to see historical versions of a website due to the site being deleted or replaced with new content, the Wayback Machine can help. You may need to verify that a target previously worked at a company but the current state of the site does not have the target’s information there. Sometimes a target may intentionally hide information from their present website, looking at older dates of the site may reveal new information. Sometimes you can gather relevant data like names, phone numbers, email addresses, and even metadata from older versions of a website. Let’s explore search methods…” [h/t Lea Wade]

The Returns to Public Library Investment

Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago – The Returns to Public Library Investment. Gregory Gilpi, Ezra Karger, Peter Nencka, April, 2021. – “Local governments spend over 12 billion dollars annually funding the operation of 15,000 public libraries in the United States. This funding supports widespread library use: more than50% of Americans visit public libraries each year. But… Continue Reading

Major Atlantic ocean current system might be approaching critical threshold

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research – “The major Atlantic ocean current, to which also the Gulf stream belongs, may have been losing stability in the course of the last century. This is shown in a new study published in Nature Climate Change. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, transports warm water masses from… Continue Reading

Mapping CDC’s new guidelines: High transmission areas where you need to wear a mask indoors

USA Today:  “In a renewed effort to limit the spread of COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending that fully vaccinated Americans wear masks indoors if they’re in an area of substantial or high coronavirus transmission. The CDC is also recommending universal indoor masking for all teachers, staff, students and visitors inside schools from… Continue Reading

New STOA study on deepfakes and European policy

European Parliamentary Research Service: “…Cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) techniques have enabled the production of highly realistic videos that manipulate how people look, and the things that they appear to say or do. These fabrications are commonly referred to as ‘deepfakes’. The Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA) commissioned a study to examine… Continue Reading

Why we should build for wildlife as well as people

BBC Future – “From green roofs to bee bricks and hedgehog drawers, there are plenty of ways to make sterile buildings more accommodating to nature….Part of the problem is that human civilisation, so dependent on built infrastructure, has colonised swathes of land once home to wildlife. While just 1% of the planet’s habitable land is… Continue Reading

Not a single federal agency received an ‘A’ in a new Senate cybersecurity report card

Popular Science: “On Tuesday, members from the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released a bipartisan report [PDF] that states that seven out of the eight federal agencies they reviewed still have not met the basic cybersecurity standards needed to protect the sensitive data they stored and maintained.  The report was led by… Continue Reading