Monday, September 29, 2014


An interesting read. Work backward from the potential harms?
Paul Ohm has an article, “Sensitive Information,” to be published in Southern California Law Review, Vol. 88, 2015. Here’s the Abstract:
Almost every information privacy law provides special protection for certain categories of “sensitive information,” such as health, sex, or financial information. Even though this approach is widespread, the concept of sensitive information is woefully undertheorized. What is it about these categories that deserves special protection? This Article offers an extended examination of this question. It surveys dozens of laws and regulations to develop a multi-factor test for sensitivity.
From this survey, the Article concludes that sensitive information is connected to privacy harms affecting individuals. Consistent with this, at least for the case of privacy in large databases, it recommends a new “threat modeling” approach to assessing the risk of harm in privacy law, borrowing from the computer security literature. Applying this approach it concludes that we should create new laws recognizing the sensitivity of currently unprotected forms of information — most importantly geolocation and some forms of metadata — because they present significant risk of privacy harm.
You can download the article from SSRN.



Surveil yourself with your own drone!
Take a selfie on the go! Wearable DRONE films your every move before flying back to sit on your wrist
In what’s been dubbed a cross between a GoPro and a quadcopter, physics researchers have designed the world's first wearable drone.
Called Nixie, the drone folds up and attaches to a wrist strap.
When the wearer wants it to start filming, they press a button and the drone unfolds and flies overhead, tracking their movements using motion sensors.


Could be interesting.
Journal of Electronic Publishing – Metrics for Measuring Publishing Value
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Sep 28, 2014
Journal of Electronic Publishing (JEP) is a forum for research and discussion about contemporary publishing practices, and the impact of those practices upon users
Volume 17, No. 3: Metrics for Measuring Publishing Value: Alternative and Otherwise

Title: Author(s):
Editor’s Note [17.3]: Bonn, Maria:
The Imperative for Open Altmetrics: Konkiel, Stacy; Piwowar, Heather; Priem, Jason:
Peer Review Personas: Belojevic, Nina; Sayers, Jentery; Research Teams, INKE and MVP:
Computational Impact Assessment of Social Justice Documentaries:Diesner, Jana; Kim, Jinseok; Pak, Susie:


For my programmer/geeks.
9 Free Programming Books That Will Make You A Pro


For my students. Oh, the horror!
Repeated Texting Can Thicken the Tendons in Your Thumbs
The tendon that extends to the tip of the thumb showed significant thickening in research subjects who were frequent texters and who repeatedly flexed the interphalangeal joint, which is closest to the thumbnail, while texting, according to a medical study reported by the Wall Street Journal. The greater the number of texts, the thicker the tendon. Frequent texters (an average of 1,209 messages per month) reported greater thumb pain in the dominant texting hand than infrequent texters (50 per month).

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