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BuzzFeedNews: “Facebook will not make any changes to its policies around political advertising, including ones that allow politicians to lie in ads and micro-target specific audiences, the company announced on Thursday. Facebook’s announcement follows intense pressure from lawmakers in the last few months over the company’s decisions to allow politicians to lie in Facebook ads. …
The Center for Public Integrity – “Do you know if a bill introduced in your statehouse — it might govern who can fix your shattered iPhone screen or whether you can still sue a pedophile priest years later — was actually written by your elected lawmakers? Use this new tool to find out. Spoiler alert …
Remembering the lawmakers, policy wonks, intellectuals and back-stage Washington players who died this year—and why they mattered via Politico – This is a history lesson – well worth reading and sharing.
WSJ.com [article is paywalled but the 5 minute accompanying video is not, and well worth listening for the specificity of the explanation] “In a rare bipartisan achievement, Congress has moved to combat the scourge of robocalls inundating Americans. Just don’t stop the calls to stop coming any time soon..”
The New York Times: “A new interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in 2017 means that as of now, companies are no longer subject to prosecution or fines even after a disaster like the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 that destroyed or injured about one million birds and for which BP paid $100 …
The New York Times – Twelve Million Phones, One Dataset, Zero Privacy – By Stuart A. Thompson and Charlie Warzel, December 19, 2019. “Every minute of every day, everywhere on the planet, dozens of companies — largely unregulated, little scrutinized — are logging the movements of tens of millions of people with mobile phones and …
National Geographic – This year, a gecko, a songbird, and a minnow joined the short list of recovered American endangered species. “…The list of 27 (plus specific recovered populations of an additional five animal species) is modest when put into context. Since the Endangered Species Act took effect in 1973, 719 animal species native to …
Fast Company – “To save Neverland, Peter Pan fought the pirates. To save their childhood, youth today need us, their parents, to fight against our “sharenting” habits. Our kids need us to protect their privacy and, along with it, their protected space to play so that they can make mischief, make mistakes, and grow up …
Center for Data Innovation: “Researchers from FiscalNote Research, a technology firm based in Washington, DC, have released a dataset of U.S. Congressional and California state bills to advance the development of systems that can summarize legislation. The dataset contains more than 22,000 U.S. Congressional bills and summaries from 1993 through 2018 and more than 1,200 …
Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues December 7, 2019 – Privacy and security issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the …
Internet Archive Blogs – “Imagine if your favorite song or nostalgic recording from childhood was lost forever. This could be the fate of hundreds of thousands of audio files stored on vinyl, except that the Internet Archive is now expanding its digitization project to include LPs. Earlier this year, the Internet Archive began working with …
Opinion – By Sherrod Brown, Ohio’s senior US senator and Liz Schuler, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO: “The Workers’ Right to Training Act allows employees to evolve as their employers adopt new tech. When the global economy shifted in the late 19th century, working people were the first to adapt. They moved to cities like Cincinnati, …
