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The Washington Post [unpaywalled]: “The World Wide Web might sound metaphorical, but it’s actually grounded in a physical web of translucent glass filaments crisscrossing the globe. These fiber-optic cables transmit internet data through tiny beams of light, making it possible for us to be online. They run under oceans and across deserts. It is the …
“Today, President Biden and Vice President Harris are launching “Time Is Money,” a new governmentwide effort to crack down on all the ways that corporations—through excessive paperwork, hold times, and general aggravation—add unnecessary headaches and hassles to people’s days and degrade their quality of life. Americans are tired of being played for suckers, and President …
Harvard Undergraduate Survey on Generative AI – Shikoh Hirabayashi, Rishab Jain, Nikola Jurković, Gabriel Wu. “How has generative AI impacted the experiences of college students? We study the influence of AI on the study habits, class choices, and career prospects of Harvard undergraduates (n=326), finding that almost 90% of students use generative AI. For roughly …
Wired – Security researcher Bill Demirkapi found more than 15,000 hardcoded secrets and 66,000 vulnerable websites—all by searching overlooked data sources [unpaywalled]: “If you know where to look, plenty of secrets can be found online. Since the fall of 2021, independent security researcher Bill Demirkapi has been building ways to tap into huge data sources, …
WSJ via MSN: “Banks, insurance providers and airlines still find uses, including artificial intelligence, for the large computers that have been around for decades The industrial-strength mainframe computer, invented decades ago for heavy-duty data processing, is proving its staying power even as next-generation artificial intelligence takes center stage. The two are interconnected: Banks, insurance providers …
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco: “Households accumulated more liquid assets beginning in 2020 than would have been expected without the pandemic. These “extra” liquid assets have dissipated, but their evolution has differed significantly by income group. While middle- and lower-income households hold substantially less liquid wealth than implied by pre-pandemic projections, the level for …
The New York Times – article and visualizations [unpaywalled]: “Earth’s warming could trigger sweeping changes in the natural world that would be hard, if not impossible, to reverse. Right now, every moment of every day, we humans are reconfiguring Earth’s climate bit by bit. Hotter summers and wetter storms. Higher seas and fiercer wildfires. The …
“U.S. Sen. Bob Casey released his latest “greedflation” report on Wednesday, and this time it takes aim at popular streaming platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and more. This time, Casey is highlighting what he calls “streamflation,” which happens when streaming platforms hike their profits by charging higher prices, despite offering less content and …
The Hill – “Companies are looking for innovative ways to collect data to feed their data-hungry artificial intelligence systems and create innovative applications. Fortunately, some do not have to go too far. Then, there are the companies that collect data from public records to share on the internet and run analytics. There are many compelling …
Axios – The biggest weekend of the year for tax-free shopping has arrived with 10 states holding sales tax holidays in early August. Why it matters: It’s a rare tax break for families preparing for a new school year with many grappling with higher-priced school supplies and clothing. Dates and the items exempt from tax …
USAFacts: “The federal budget is a measure of how much the federal government spends and how much revenue it takes in. Typically, annual budgetary data is broken up into fiscal years, which run from October 1 to September 30. In fiscal year 2023, the US spent $6.16 trillion on public programs and generated $4.47 trillion …
The Economist [unpaywalled]: “Sorting countries into rich and poor can be difficult. Measures such as GDP are affected by population size (more people generally mean more output). But adjusting for population alone is not enough. Dollar income per person does not account for differences in prices between countries (a Big Mac, for example, will set …
