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Daily Archives: September 27, 2021

Why Managers Fear a Remote-Work Future

The Atlantic – Like it or not, the way we work has already evolved. By Ed Zitron: “…Some of the people loudly calling for a return to the office are not the same people who will actually be returning to the office regularly. The old guard’s members feel heightened anxiety over the white-collar empires they’ve built, including the square footage of real estate they’ve leased and the number of people they’ve hired. Earlier this year, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, rolled out an uneven return-to-office plan for its more than 130,000 employees—the majority of workers must soon come back to the office three days a week, while others are permitted to keep working exclusively from home. One senior executive at the company has even been allowed to work remotely from New Zealand. Remote work lays bare many brutal inefficiencies and problems that executives don’t want to deal with because they reflect poorly on leaders and those they’ve hired. Remote work empowers those who produce and disempowers those who have succeeded by being excellent diplomats and poor workers, along with those who have succeeded by always finding someone to blame for their failures. It removes the ability to seem productive (by sitting at your desk looking stressed or always being on the phone), and also, crucially, may reveal how many bosses and managers simply don’t contribute to the bottom line…”

How Can We Help To Free Legal Research From Algorithmic Bias?

RIPS Law Librarian, Stephanie Farne: “…While the bias in an AI powered search in any context is deeply troubling, looking at algorithmic bias in the context of legal research is even more disturbing. In ALR class, students work with hypothetical research problems. I paused to think – What about potential AI bias in real world legal… Continue Reading

Can You Delete Yourself From the Internet? Yes – Here’s How

Make Use Of: “One of the major tradeoffs for access to the digital world is privacy. Unfortunately, you can never completely delete yourself from the internet, simply because you’d have to find every photo, video, tweet, mention, comment, shopping order, to name a few, and delete them. However, there are ways to minimize your online… Continue Reading

OMG! My Boss Just Friended Me: How Evaluations of Colleagues’ Disclosure, Gender, and Rank Shape Personal/Professional Boundary Blurring Online

Rothbard, Nancy, Lakshmi Ramarajan, Ariane Ollier-Malaterre, and Serenity Lee. “OMG! My Boss Just Friended Me: How Evaluations of Colleagues’ Disclosure, Gender, and Rank Shape Personal/Professional Boundary Blurring Online.” Academy of Management Journal (forthcoming). (Pre-published online, December 30, 2020.) “We propose and test a relational boundary blurring framework, examining how employees’ evaluations of colleagues’ characteristics drive… Continue Reading

The boss may be watching long after the pandemic ends

Keystroke tracking, screenshots, and facial recognition: “What workers should know about corporate surveillance software as companies consider permanent remote work policies…Workers have little power to control how and when they’re being monitored, especially if they are using work-issued devices. Experts advise workers to assume they are being monitored if they’re in the office or using… Continue Reading

How to make your laptop last longer so you don’t have to buy a new one now

CNET – “Whether you need to delay a new laptop purchase because of uncertain finances (to put it mildly), want to reduce your contribution to the e-waste problem or simply have more important things to think about, there’s a lot you can do to stretch the lifespan of your existing system. The longevity horizon of… Continue Reading

New study shows that drought could shut down the biggest US Hydro Plants in the next few years

“According to newly-released projections from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamations, there’s a significant chance that both Lake Powell and Lake Mead — the largest hydroelectric power sources in the country — will stop working in the next few years.”  “Five-year projections of future conditions, currently through 2026, in the Colorado River system are typically updated… Continue Reading

Publishers hope fact-checking can become a revenue stream. Right now, it’s mostly Big Tech who is buying.

Washington Post: “…The fact-checking operations at the German Press Agency (dpa) and Agence France-Presse (AFP) count some of the world’s biggest tech companies as clients — er, partners — but said that for their departments to become contributing revenue streams for their news agencies, they’d have to find more people and organizations willing to compensate them for… Continue Reading