Free Republic

NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Weihua Li, a data reporter for The Marshall Project, on the FBI's new and incomplete crime report and consequences for the public. MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: Crime is a huge topic in elections this November, and the FBI has now entered the chat. It has just released the Crime in the Nation report for 2021. But the bureau switched the way it collects crime data this year, and many police departments did not get on board. Los Angeles and New York City did not report to the FBI. In fact, only 63% of the...

Being proved right isn't always fun. Just weeks after my warning in the March issue that our modern high-tech cars are tracking us and sharing data with manufacturers, cops, and parties unknown, came a report of soaring auto insurance premiums because of snitching vehicles. The consequences get worse from there. Fortunately, there are ways to keep your snoopy ride from contacting the mothership. Your Driving History May Be Transmitted and Stored "Car companies are collecting information directly from internet-connected vehicles for use by the insurance industry," Kashmir Hill reported this month for The New York Times. "Sometimes this is happening...

G.M. had provided information about braking, acceleration and speed to LexisNexis Risk Solution and Verisk, firms that generated driver risk profiles for insurers... General Motors said Friday that it had stopped sharing details about how people drove its cars with two data brokers that created risk profiles for the insurance industry. The decision followed a New York Times report this month that G.M. had, for years, been sharing data about drivers’ mileage, braking, acceleration and speed with the insurance industry. The drivers were enrolled — some unknowingly, they said — in OnStar Smart Driver, a feature in G.M.’s internet-connected cars...

This past Friday, Senator Charles Schumer of New York, the Democrat Majority Leader, and a Jew in the state with the largest Jewish population in this nation, called for the removal of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Though this is interference in democratic Israeli politics, the most disturbing aspect is the idea that underlies this demand. Earlier, President Joe Biden indicated that it was time for him to have a “come to Jesus” moment with Netanyahu. Though it's quite insulting to use this phrase with the Jewish leader of the Jewish State, again the most troubling aspect is the implication...

I drive an older car--a Lexus LS430 from 2005, so I can rest assured of two things: an amazingly comfortable ride and that the tech in my vehicle is way too old to collect data to be sold online. You, however, may not be so lucky. Some late-model cars are secretly collecting data on your driving habits, and selling the results for profit. Full Story: https://t.co/2vmg92Q3Yw— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) March 13, 2024Not only is this practice super creepy, but it could be costing you money and, if what I suspect is the case, giving the government a window into your...

The latest hot spots in commercial real estate aren’t in Manhattan or Miami. Instead of snazzy hotels or glistening office towers, the new property darlings are power-hungry data centers, often in places like Northern Virginia; Columbus, Ohio; and Salt Lake City. Traditionally box style, these buildings are all about function: A place for racks and racks of computers to be stacked up high, kept cool, and girded for the boundless stream of images, videos, chats, text, internet searches and the digital detritus of our lives. Their goal isn’t merely to contain, host and sort data billowing from computers and smart...

“There are three kinds of lies,” Mark Twain famously observed. “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” You already know that the government's published statistics are not trustworthy. Federal agencies have shifted methodologies over the years, making it hard to compare data sets. In economic modeling, there is a concept called “GIGO” — garbage in, garbage out. And what we have been seeing does seem like a lot of garbage. Then, the number-crunchers perform adjustments, do other kinds of syntheses, and make revisions to that data. A good case could be made that government data has been politicized, too, and some methodologies...

a, Dual-beam configuration for super-resolution writing and reading. b, Spin-coating process for material addition, material diffusion and blank-disk molding. c, The capacity of a single 3D nanoscale disk is approximately equivalent to that of a petabit-level Blu-ray library or an HDD data array. Credit: Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-023-06980-y ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A team of photonic engineers affiliated with several institutions in China has developed a new type of optical DVD that is capable of holding up to a petabyte of data. The group used a new material to coat the DVDs and new laser techniques to write data. The results are published...

Fulton County DA Fani Willis and Special Prosecutor Nathan Wade testified about their romantic relationshipWade and Willis each testified that the romantic relationship began in 2022, after she had brought him onCellphone data reveals Wade made three dozen visits to the Hapeville neighborhood where his lover Willis lived before she hired him Fani Willis and her special prosecutor former lover Nathan Wade appeared to be having late night trysts at her apartment well before they both claim their 'romantic relationship' started, according to bombshell phone records just filed into court.The cellphone data reveals Wade visited the exact area where the...

The Biden White House is scrapping a decades-old rule that bars administration officials from commenting on economic data for one hour after their release, a notice in the Federal Register indicated Wednesday. Faced with polls showing that the public strongly disapproves of President Joe Biden’s management of economic issues, the White House is changing the rules to give them a new advantage when it comes to spinning economic data in a more favorable light. Instead of the one-hour waiting period that has been in place since the Reagan years, administration officials will be able to weigh in on important economic...

Taking steps to manage your privacy settings and data is an important part of emergency preparedness actions we all should take.Why Data Privacy Matters Take Control During Data Privacy Week [It's a matter of personal responsibility]

Your personal information may have been leaked in the 'Mother of all Breaches' (MOAB), cybersecurity researchers have warned. Over 26 billion personal records have been exposed, in what researchers believe to be the biggest-ever data leak. Sensitive information from several sites including Twitter, Dropbox, and Linkedin was discovered on an unsecured page. Worryingly, the researchers who found it claim this breach is extremely dangerous and could prompt a tsunami of cybercrime.

After California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom defended his leadership of the nation's most populous state to the hilt last week in a debate against Florida Republican GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, new data projects a massive budget shortfall. In a report published Thursday, California's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office said, "Largely as a result of a severe revenue decline in 2022‑23, the state faces a serious budget deficit. Specifically, under the state’s current law and policy, we estimate the Legislature will need to solve a budget problem of $68 billion in the upcoming budget process."

Rumors are circulating that former New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern has issued orders to delete all leaked COVID vaccine data. The speculation was shared by former Parliamentary candidate Jim Ferguson on X: "Did Jacinda Ardern just order the Data to be deleted? Amidst a growing storm of controversy, there’s escalating turmoil within the World Economic Forum and New Zealand’s government circles. Panic appears to have set in as they desperately attempt to shut down any public access to the information. This unrest is fueled by a purported leak of sensitive information, allegedly connecting COVID-19 vaccines to a significant upsurge in...

The U.S. government requested and received the metadata for accounts connected to, and in alignment with, President Donald J. Trump.That’s billions of billions of datapoints on millions of American citizens, their locations, their devices, their ip addresses and ultimately their real identities and connected activity as attributed to -and connected with- their connected social media accounts. Essentially, turning Donald J. Trump into the center of a surveillance virus.People then say – how could the Jack Smith special counsel possibly comb through all of those users and all of that connected metadata? The answer is Artificial Intelligence; but the serious concern...

The U.S. Energy Information Administration has been implementing changes to the way it collects its data, and it hasn’t been easy to understand what those changes mean for the traders who use the government agency’s reports to make key decisions. Looking through the changes to the EIA’s data collection process, Tyler Richey, co-editor at Sevens Report Research, said it was “not very clear exactly how the data will be affected.” It appears that previous data collection processes had “‘loopholes’ that allowed certain condensates and ‘other oils’ to not be reported in inventories, but now will be required to be reported...

Scientists are calling for stage 3 clinical trials of an Alzheimer's drug to be scrapped after a report highlighted serious doubts about the legitimacy of research that helped the medicine reach that stage. A long-awaited report by the City University of New York (CUNY) accused one of its faculty members, neuroscientist Hoau-Yan Wang, of egregious misconduct concerning 20 research papers — defined as workplace behavior so outrageous, dangerous, or illegal that an employer cannot reasonably expect to correct it through progressive discipline. According to the 50-page document obtained by Science, Mr Wang could not provide original data to disprove allegations...

Harro everynyan. How are you fine sank you.I found out the hard way, it is critical that each of you have a disaster recovery plan in place, as regards your personal computer and important emails.One of my computers lost function of its graphics card. It boots fine but I cannot see anything on the monitor except for brief moments. The monitor is working fine; its definitely the graphics card. I was in the process of transferring to a new computer and was about halfway finished. I was able to log into my most important email account (the one just about...

COVID-19 certainly didn't take a vacation this summer. Virus levels in the US have been on the rise for weeks, but it's hard to know exactly how widely it's spreading. Federal data suggests that the current increases have stayed far below earlier peaks and notable surges. But judging by word of mouth among family, friends and coworkers, it can seem like everyone knows someone who's sick with COVID-19 right now. "We have several folks down with COVID, unfortunately," one health-focused nonprofit told CNN when seeking comment for this story. Rates of severe disease may be staying at relatively low levels,...

Florida State University criminology professor Eric Stewart was a guru of the claim that “systemic racism” infests America’s police and American society. Now he’s out of a job on account of “extreme negligence” in his research. The academic was fired after almost 20 years of his data — including figures used in an explosive study, which claimed the legacy of lynchings made whites perceive blacks as criminals, and that the problem was worse among conservatives — were found to be in question. College authorities said he was being fired for “incompetence” and “false results.”