FastCompany: “As fire seasons in the U.S. gets hotter and drier, a new Twitterbot will show you if a wildfire is burning near your house, where the fire is headed, and if a plume of smoke is traveling in your direction by posting an updated time-lapse video and infrared images every six hours. The tool,… Continue Reading
The Daily Swig: “Hundreds of thousands of potentially sensitive files are publically available through open Amazon buckets, a new online tool can reveal. The free tool, created by software engineer GrayhatWarfare, is a searchable database where a current list of 48,623 open S3 buckets can be found. Amazon’s S3 cloud storage, or Simple Storage Service,… Continue Reading
EFF – Win for Public Right to Know: Court Vacates Injunction Against Publishing the Law – Industry Groups Want to Control Access to Legal Rules and Regulation: “San Francisco – A federal appeals court today ruled that industry groups cannot control publication of binding laws and standards. This decision protects the work of Public.Resource.org (PRO),… Continue Reading
“July 19, 2018 – Two of the world’s most comprehensive international law libraries, the Law Library of Congress and the Peace Palace Library based in The Hague, Netherlands, have agreed to form an information-sharing relationship to exchange information and better serve library users. A memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed today in a ceremony at… Continue Reading
FCW.com: “The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee advanced a bill that would make it easier to fire federal employees. The Modern Employment Reform, Improvement and Transformation Act, introduced by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), would allow the head of an agency to remove a federal employee “if the head determines the performance or misconduct of… Continue Reading
EveryCRSReport.com – Private Activity Bonds: An Introduction June 9, 2006 – July 13, 2018 “The federal tax code classifies state and local bonds as either governmental bonds or private activity bonds. Governmental bonds are intended for governmental projects, and private activity bonds are for projects that primarily benefit private entities. Typically, the interest earned by… Continue Reading
American Democracy in Crisis: The Challenges of Voter Knowledge, Participation, and Polarization – PPRI – Alex Vandermaas-Peeler, Daniel Cox, PhD, Molly Fisch-Friedman, Rob Griffin, PhD, Robert P. Jones, PhD, 07.17.2018 State of the Country – The Direction of the Country – “Despite a strong economy, Americans remain relatively pessimistic in their outlook on the direction… Continue Reading
IMF: “Amid rising tensions over international trade, the broad global expansion that began roughly two years ago has plateaued and become less balanced. In our latest World Economic Outlook Update, we continue to project global growth rates of just about 3.9 percent for both this year and next, but judge that the risk of worse… Continue Reading
Via GOVDOC-L: “On Friday, the Department of Justice announced indictments against 12 officers of the Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravlenie (GRU), the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff. While unfamiliar to most Americans, the GRU has a long history of operating within and against the United States, dating back to the 1920s. In… Continue Reading
Outside – This article certainly has helped my mood – I am a long time follower of BirdsRightsActivist “Barely English, but understandable because it’s written by a bird who fights anti-bird sentiment, and is running for president.” I am adding several more of these recommendations to ensure that I always can check-in while the collies… Continue Reading
GAO WatchBlog: “Today we issued a new revision of the Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards, also known as the “Yellow Book,” which supersedes the 2011 revision of the standards. What kind of training and experience make a competent auditor? How is audit quality control to be maintained? How can an auditor tell if he or… Continue Reading
Artificial Lawyer: “AI will create more jobs than it displaces by boosting economic growth, and in particular more legal jobs will be created than lost in the long run, says a major report by Big Four firm, PwC. The study was focused on the UK, which is a useful standard model to compare to other large,… Continue Reading