Author archives

Deep RL at Scale: Sorting Waste in Office Buildings with a Fleet of Mobile Manipulators

arXiv preprint paper; YouTube video; Blogpost: Thursday, April 13, 2023. Posted by Sergey Levine, Research Scientist, and Alexander Herzog, Staff Research Software Engineer, Google Research, Brain Team. “Reinforcement learning (RL) can enable robots to learn complex behaviors through trial-and-error interaction, getting better and better over time. Several of our prior works explored how RL can …

Subjects: Knowledge Management

How AI is helping historians better understand our past

MIT Technology Review: “The historians of tomorrow are using computer science to analyze how people lived centuries ago…Five hundred years later, the production of information is a different beast entirely: terabytes of images, video, and text in torrents of digital data that circulate almost instantly and have to be analyzed nearly as quickly, allowing—and requiring—the …

Subjects: AI, Education, Internet, Knowledge Management

Libraries are under attack and so are library workers

Fast Company: “Libraries are increasingly being targeted by local and state legislators and protestors trying to ban books and block LGBTQ content. How is that affecting the people who work in them? Scratch nearly any kind of story—political, social, economic, cultural, and so on—and you’ll find a labor story. No matter what’s happening, whether it’s …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Education, Free Speech, Health Care, Libraries

How Long to Keep Every Important Financial Document

Lifehacker – Avoid identity theft and legal nightmares through proper document retention and destruction. Properly storing, saving, and disposing of financial documents isn’t just a good way to cut down on clutter and save yourself from potentially nightmarish paper-chases when The Man calls. It also makes it harder for anyone to steal your identity. How …

Subjects: E-Records, Government Documents, ID Theft

Billionaire Harlan Crow Bought Property From Clarence Thomas. The Justice Didn’t Disclose the Deal.

ProPublica – “The transaction is the first known instance of money flowing from Crow to the Supreme Court justice. The sale netted the GOP megadonor two vacant lots and the house where Thomas’ mother was living. The purchase put Crow in an unusual position: He now owned the house where the justice’s elderly mother was …

Subjects: Courts, Financial System, Legal Research

Primer – Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law

The Alan Turing Institute and the Council of Europe: Primer – Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law: “…It is a remarkable fact that rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and data-driven technologies over the last two decades have placed contemporary society at a pivot-point in deciding what shape the future of …

Subjects: AI, Civil Liberties, Climate Change, Environmental Law, EU Data Protection, Food and Nutrition, Government Documents, Health Care, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Medicine, Transportation

U.S. appeals court preserves limited access to abortion pill

Reuters: “The abortion pill mifepristone will remain available in the United States for now but with significant restrictions, including a requirement for in-person doctor visits to obtain the drug, a federal appeals court ruled late on Wednesday. The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put on hold part of last Friday’s order by …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Government Documents, Health Care, Legal Research, Medicine

Firefox rolls out Total Cookie Protection by default to more users worldwide

Mozilla Blog: “Take back your privacy – Firefox is rolling out Total Cookie Protection by default to more Firefox users worldwide, making Firefox the most private and secure major browser available across Windows, Mac, Linux and Android. Total Cookie Protection is Firefox’s strongest privacy protection to date, confining cookies to the site where they were …

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Commerce, E-Records, Internet, Knowledge Management, Privacy, Search Engines

Groundwater Gold Rush

Bloomberg [no paywall]: “Banks, pension funds and insurers have been turning California’s scarce water into enormous profits, leaving people with less to drink…Some of the world’s largest investment banks, pension funds and insurers, including Manulife Financial Corp.’s John Hancock unit, TIAA and UBS, have been depleting California’s groundwater to grow high-value nuts, leaving less drinking …

Subjects: Climate Change, Economy, Energy, Environmental Law, Financial System, Food and Nutrition

LinkedIn Will Finally Offer Ways to Verify Your Job

Wired: “In the never-ending battle against online impersonation scams, the professional social media platform LinkedIn announced today a set of new verification features that enable users to authenticate aspects of their identities and job histories. Crucially, users will now have a few different options to verify their identity and current jobs on LinkedIn. That way, …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Microsoft, Privacy, Social Media

2022 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government® Rankings

“The Partnership for Public Service and Boston Consulting Group present the 2022 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government® rankings. The full rankings include 17 large, 27 midsize and 30 small agencies as well as 432 subcomponents. Data is also included on employee views relating to 12 workplace issues that affect employee engagement and …

Subjects: Economy, Government Documents, Legal Research