Author archives

Infographic – Felony Disenfranchisement State by State

Via Good: “Today, the Sentencing Project reports that about 5.8 million Americans have lost their right to vote due to a felony conviction. And 2.2 million of them are black. According to the project’s findings, it’s a discrepancy that’s likely to grow given our rates of incarceration: “People of color make up 37 percent of the U.S. population but 67 percent of the prison …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Legal Research

Paper – Human identification using WiFi signal

Full text only available to subscribers, but the abstract alone will illuminate the extensive power of Wi-Fi sensing technology: “WiFi devices are now pervasive in our environment. Recent research has demonstrated that it is possible to sense the perturbations created by human motion in the WiFi spectrum to identify basic activities, gestures and even keystrokes. …

Subjects: Internet, Privacy, Wireless Web

Kaiser – Baltimore Draws 10-Year Blueprint To Cut Racial Health Disparities

Kaiser Health News: “Baltimore officials presented a 10-year plan Tuesday that sharply highlights the poor health status of African-Americans and aims to bring black rates of lead poisoning, heart disease, obesity, smoking and overdoses more in line with those of whites…Violence last year following the death of Freddie Gray, a black man who died after …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Government Documents, Health Care

Google tests search live coverage carousel

Via Google – “As a publisher, you can participate in the Search live coverage carousel pilot to notify Google when your breaking content is available. Google can then surface content more quickly than is currently possible with a standard crawl on your website. With the Search live coverage carousel, users can find content about live …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Marketing, Search Engines

The NIST Cybersecurity Framework and the FTC

Via Andrea Arias at the FTC: “…The Framework provides organizations with a risk-based compilation of guidelines that can help them identify, implement, and improve cybersecurity practices.  The Framework does not introduce new standards or concepts; rather, it leverages and integrates cybersecurity practices that have been developed by organizations like NIST and the International Standardization Organization …

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, E-Government, Government Documents, Internet

Extra Perk – Free stories delivered to NYC subway riders on lines with Free Transit WirelessWiFi

NYT- Subway Reads: Free E-Books, Timed for Your Commute  – Sponsored by Penguin Random House – “On Sunday, Subway Reads started delivering novellas, short stories or excerpts from full-length books to passengers’ cellphones or tablets. The idea is for riders to download a short story or a chapter and read it on the train. Subway …

Subjects: Internet, Knowledge Management, Transportation

LC – Chronicling America through historic newspapers

“Chronicling America is a website providing access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages, and is produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). NDNP, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of …

Subjects: Government Documents, Internet, Knowledge Management, Libraries

CRS – How Can the Results of a Presidential Election Be Contested?

CRS Reports & Analysis Legal Sidebar – How Can the Results of a Presidential Election Be Contested?, August 26, 2016. “In the midst of the presidential campaign season, the possibility of election fraud has been raised. This discussion briefly examines how the results of a presidential election may be contested. Although it has national impact, …

Subjects: Congress, Government Documents, Legal Research

Pew – U.S. Public Wary of Biomedical Technologies to ‘Enhance’ Human Abilities

“Cutting-edge biomedical technologies that could push the boundaries of human abilities may soon be available, making people’s minds sharper and their bodies stronger and healthier than ever before. But a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults shows that majorities greet the possibility of these breakthroughs with more wariness and worry than enthusiasm and …

Subjects: Health Care, Medicine

Bike Index helps to fight bicycle theft

Help us fight bicycle theft—register your bike: “The Bike Index makes stolen bikes harder to sell and easier to recover by making sure important information about your bike is there when you need it the most. The process is simple, secure, and free. Learn more or register your bike now. So far we’ve registered 89,737 …

Subjects: Transportation

Performance.gov: Long-Term Strategy Needed to Improve Website Usability

Performance.gov: Long-Term Strategy Needed to Improve Website Usability, GAO-16-693: Published: Aug 30, 2016. Publicly Released: Aug 30, 2016:  “The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), General Services Administration (GSA), and the Performance Improvement Council (PIC) took several steps to improve the usefulness of Performance.gov, a website intended to serve as the public window to the …

Subjects: E-Government, Government Documents, Search Engines, Web Site Accessibility and Usability