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Daily Archives: April 29, 2024

Yes, People Do Buy Books

From the you have never been to my house departmentDespite viral claims, Americans buy over a billion books a year [you bet we do…used books…from bookstores…and we read them too…so there]: “…How many books are sold in the United States? The only tracker we have is BookScan, which logs point of sale—i.e., customer purchases at stores, websites, etc.—for most of the market. BookScan counted 767 million print sales in 2023. BookScan claims to cover 85% of print sales, although many in publishing think it’s much less. It does not capture all store sales, any library sales, most festival and reading sales, etc. (Almost every author will tell you their royalty reports show significantly more sales than BookScan captures. Sometimes by orders of magnitude.) Still, I’ll be very conservative and assume 85% is correct. This means around 900 million print books are sold to customers each year. Add in ebooks and the quickly growing audiobook market, and the total number of books sold is over 1 billion. Again, this is the conservative estimate…”

Russia Clones Wikipedia, Censors It, Bans Original

404 Media: “Russia has replaced Wikipedia with a state-sponsored encyclopedia that is a clone of the original Russian Wikipedia but which conveniently has been edited to omit things that could cast the Russian government in poor light. Real Russian Wikipedia editors used to refer to the real Wikipedia as Ruwiki; the new one is called… Continue Reading

Understanding Border Control

Center for Data Innovation – “Political scientists from various U.S. universities have compiled a dataset called “border crossings of the world” to help researchers understand how different countries use physical infrastructure to enforce control of their territories. The researchers used satellite imagery to identify and geolocate border infrastructure—gates, border walls, checkpoints, etc.—that countries have built… Continue Reading

Americans’ Views of Technology Companies

“Most think social media companies have too much influence in politics and censor political viewpoints they object to – both sentiments are growing among Democrats. Most Americans are wary of social media’s role in politics and its overall impact on the country, and these concerns are ticking up among Democrats, according to a new Pew… Continue Reading

How reliable is this research? Tool flags papers discussed on PubPeer

Nature – Browser plug-in alerts users when studies — or their references — have been posted on a site known for raising integrity concerns. “A free online tool released earlier this month alerts researchers when a paper cites studies that are mentioned on the website PubPeer, a forum scientists often use to raise integrity concerns… Continue Reading

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, April 27, 2024

Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, April 27, 2024 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, 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

Poll: Biden and Trump supporters sharply divided by the media they consume

NBC News: “Supporters of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are sharply divided across all sorts of lines, including the sources they rely on to get their news, new data from the NBC News poll shows. Biden is the clear choice of voters who consume newspapers and national network news, while Trump does… Continue Reading

NIST Evaluating Generative AI Technologies

“NIST GenAI is a new evaluation program administered by the NIST Information Technology Laboratory to assess generative AI technologies developed by the research community from around the world. NIST GenAI is an umbrella program that supports various evaluations for research in Generative AI by providing a platform for Test and Evaluation. These evaluations will inform… Continue Reading