Standard Business Reporting: Open Data to Cut Compliance
Costs
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“Imagine if U.S. companies’ compliance costs could be
reduced, by billions of dollars. Imagine
if this could happen without sacrificing any transparency to investors and
governments. Open data can make that
possible.
This first-ever research report, co-published by the Data
Foundation and PwC, explains how Standard Business Reporting
(SBR), in which multiple regulatory agencies adopt a common open data structure
for the information they collect, reduces costs for both companies and agencies.
SBR programs are in place in the
Netherlands, Australia, and elsewhere – but the concept is unknown in the United States. [Unknown to government… Bob]
Our report is intended to introduce SBR
to U.S. policymakers and lay the groundwork for future change… Around the world, governments are choosing to
transform their information from disconnected documents into open data.
For our purposes, the term open data refers to
information that is made interoperable using standardized definitions and
digital formats, and digitally published and freely available for use
and reuse by its users… The key, of
course, is interoperability, which allows diverse systems and organizations to
exchange and use one another’s data without having to translate it. For companies as well as agencies, open data
offers significant efficiencies by reducing processing time and costs.
First, if government agencies standardize data fields and
formats for the information they collect, rather than expressing that
information as unstructured documents, reporting companies’ software can automatically
compile and report it, reducing manual labor. Quality improves; human ‘fat fingering’ is
eliminated. Second, if multiple agencies
align their fields and formats with one another by adopting universal standards
for overlapping information, companies can submit the same information once,
rather than multiple times to each agency. Meanwhile, open data promises to cut
regulatory agencies’ costs and reduce their risks by allowing them to get and
use regulatory information more quickly, shortening the processing required for
data analysis. In the United States, for
example, simple data matching could have revealed Bernie Madoff’s fraudulent
activities before his financial firm collapsed, allowed agencies to quickly
gauge the financial industry’s exposure to Lehman Brothers while deciding
whether to initiate a bailout, and indicated that the fuel cell manufacturer
Solyndra was the riskiest recipient of a federal loan guarantee well before its
2011 bankruptcy – if the relevant information had been available in a
consumable format and in a timely manner. But because Madoff’s securities reports,
Lehman’s financial filings, and Solyndra’s energy and securities disclosures
were available only as disconnected documents, not open data, these insights
would have required expensive, time-consuming, and purpose-built analytics
projects.
Clearly, a well written law is inspirational! (If they have your permission they can violate
your privacy?)
Hannah M. Arenstam, Frederic T. Knape, Joshua J. Orewiler,
and Joseph A. Strubbe of
Vedder Price write:
Vedder Price write:
In the past few weeks, five
putative class action lawsuits have been filed under the Illinois Biometric
Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”), 740 ILCS 14/1 et seq., targeting defendants
in the health care, senior living, commercial baking, meat processing and
security industries. These recent suits
join previously filed BIPA class actions against day care operators, tanning
salons, video game manufacturers, hotel groups and supermarkets as well as much
larger entities, including Facebook, Google, Shutterfly, Six Flags and
Snapchat. All of these suits have
similar allegations at their core; that defendants utilized employees’,
customers’, or other persons’ biometric identifiers, such as fingerprints,
voiceprints, retina scans or facial recognition technology, in violation of
BIPA’s disclosure and consent requirements. All seek recovery of BIPA’s statutory
liquidated damages of $1,000 for each negligent violation, or $5,000 for each
intentional or reckless violation, injunctive relief, and recovery of
attorneys’ fees and costs.
Read more on National
Law Review.
Sort of a “Kill them all and let God sort them out” kind
of warrant.
Government
Prevails in Bid for Anti-Trump Website’s Subscriber Data
… A judge in
District of Columbia Superior Court on Thursday ordered DreamHost LLC, the host of the
website disruptj20.org, to comply with a
government warrant seeking information about the site’s subscribers. The government says the site was used to
recruit and organize hundreds of people who rioted in the city on Jan. 20, the
day President Donald Trump was sworn in, causing hundreds of thousands
of dollars in damage over nearly two dozen city blocks.
Chief Judge Robert Morin ruled that DreamHost was
obligated to turn over subscriber data, but that prosecutors would have to tell the judge which data it intended to seize.
[Couldn’t they specify that in the warrant?
Or do they get to look at everyone and everything and then specify? Bob] The judge said he would oversee the use of the
data to make sure the government’s seizure was limited to individuals linked to
the riots and not people who merely posted messages or communicated with others
through the site.
… Morin denied
DreamHost’s request to put his ruling on hold until they could appeal his
decision.
(Related). “We’ll
look through all of this data but only use the stuff we need, pinky promise!”
Verizon reports spike in government requests for cell 'tower
dumps'
Government requests for the mass disclosure of every
caller who connected to a particular cellphone tower have spiked during the
first half of 2017, according to Verizon’s latest transparency report.
Law enforcement seek so-called tower dumps to try to
identify a suspect in a crime, compelling tower operators to provide the phone
numbers of all devices that connected to a specific tower during a given period
of time.
… Verizon has
received approximately 8,870 warrants or court orders for cell tower dumps in
the first half of this year — a huge increase over 2013, when the government
sought only 3,200 dumps across the whole of that year. In 2016, the total figure was 14,630.
Probably. Just like
TV harmed my generation. (Too much talk
for me.)
Radio Atlantic: Are Smartphones Harming Kids?
It's been ten years since the iPhone came out, and now the
first generation to grow up with smartphones is coming of age. Jean Twenge, a psychologist who has studied
generational behaviors, has found troubling signals that these devices seem to
be taking a visible toll on the mental health of post-Millennials. In the September 2017 issue of The
Atlantic, Twenge shares her findings in a story adapted from her new book,
iGen: Why Today’s
Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less
Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood—and What That Means for the Rest
of Us.
Data Center economics. Why would any company build a data center
without massive tax incentives? Governments
are trading tax credits (no cash
outlay) for future tax income. Does the
math work?
Why Iowa is giving Apple $208 million for a project that will
create 50 full-time jobs
In exchange for nearly $208 million in state and local tax
breaks, the technology giant Apple has agreed to build two new data centers on
2,000 acres of Iowa land — a project that would create just 50 permanent
jobs.
… Construction is
expected to start this spring in Waukee, and city officials anticipate the
process will spark hundreds of construction jobs. But the buildings, slated to open by 2020,
will house more computer servers than humans.
… Apple,
meanwhile, will pour $1.3 billion into building the new properties, which will
neighbor corn fields, a cattle farm and chicken pens. The 50 permanent workers at the data centers
will make a minimum of $29.12 per hour, state officials said.
The company will also fork up $100 million to a fund that
bolsters Waukee’s economic development.
… Construction on
a new center employs an average of 1,688 local workers and generates $9.9
million in revenue for cities and states, the study found. After that, a typical operation supports 157
local jobs.
Did they not realize that Amazon would try to win? They had to wait for a specific
announcement? This is what Amazon does,
people!
Amazon to cut Whole Foods prices, escalating grocery turf war
Amazon.com Inc said it will cut prices on a range of
popular goods as it completes its acquisition of Whole Foods Market Inc,
sending shares of rival grocers tumbling on fears that brutal market share
battles will intensify.
… Shares of Kroger
Co, the biggest U.S. supermarket operator, closed down 8 percent, while
Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the biggest U.S. food seller, closed down 2 percent.
Amazon also said it will start selling
Whole Foods brand products on its website, a move that sent down shares of
packaged food sellers including Kellogg Co.
The S&P 500 Food Retail index closed
down almost 5 percent as more than $10 billion was wiped off the market value
of big food sellers.
… “It does not
look like they will go kamikaze on pricing,” said Roger Davidson, president of
consulting firm Oakton Advisory Group and a former retail executive. “They will lower prices on consequential items
to drive traffic and sales but not do a whole store price reduction which could
really damage gross margin and potentially wipe out operating margin.”
… The planned
price cuts would have been a tough sell to Whole Foods’ investors, who had
grown used to fat profits from the upscale chain, but are more in line with Amazon’s broader strategy of sacrificing short-term
profit for long-term market dominance.
We can see where this is heading, so why don’t libraries
take over journal publication?
German library consortium advancing dynamic open access plan
for scholarly journal articles
by on
“…Over the past 2 years, more than 150 German libraries,
universities, and research institutes have formed a united front trying to
force academic publishers into a new way
of doing business. Instead of
buying subscriptions to specific journals, consortium members want to pay
publishers an annual lump sum that covers publication costs of all papers whose
first authors are at German institutions. Those
papers would be freely available around the world; [and easy to access with
tools like Google Translate. Bob]
meanwhile, German institutions would receive access to all the publishers’
online content. Consortia of libraries
and universities in the Netherlands, Finland, Austria, and the United Kingdom
have all pushed for similar agreements, but have had to settle for less than
they wanted. In the Netherlands, for
example, Elsevier—the world’s biggest academic publisher—has agreed to make
only 30% of Dutch-authored papers freely available by 2018, and only after a
significant increase in the annual sum libraries pay…”
Trying to make sense of Social Media.
Fresh data shows millennials' favorite apps — and it's bad
news for Snapchat
Younger millennials may be spending as much as 40
minutes a day on Snapchat, but fresh data shows the scale of the challenge
it faces as it looks to grow its user base amid stiff competition from
Facebook.
Snapchat, despite
being high on the cool quotient, features nowhere on the most essential
apps for 18- to 34-year-olds, according to comScore's 2017 US Mobile App
Report. Amazon ranks number one, while
Facebook (29%) and Instragram (11%) both rank inside the top 10.
A Big task. You
must automate this process to have any chance of keeping up.
Facebook shuts down 1 million accounts per day but can't stop
all 'threat actors,' security chief says
… Still, the sheer
number of interactions among its 2 billion global users means it can't catch
all "threat actors," and it sometimes removes text posts and videos
that it later finds didn't break Facebook rules, says Alex Stamos.
"When you're dealing with millions and millions of
interactions, you can't create these rules and enforce them without (getting
some) false positives," Stamos said during an onstage discussion at an
event in San Francisco on Wednesday evening.
Stamos blames the pure technical challenges in enforcing
the company's rules — rather than the rules themselves — for the threatening
and unsafe behavior that sometimes finds its way on to the site.
(Related). Crackdown
does not mean takedown? “Well just flag
the really nasty stuff so you don’t miss it?”
Google
Begins Biggest Crackdown on Extremist YouTube Videos
Starting on Thursday, Google will police YouTube like it
never has before, adding warnings and disabling advertising on videos that the
company determines crosses its new threshold for offensive content.
YouTube
isn’t removing the selected videos, but is instead setting new
restrictions on viewing, sharing and making money on them.
… YouTube says it
uploads over 400 hours of video a minute.
Videos tagged by its new policy won’t be able to run ads or
have comments posted, and won’t appear in any recommended lists on the video
site. A warning screen will also appear
before the videos, which will not be able to play when embedded on external
websites. YouTube will let video
creators contest the restrictions through an appeals process, a spokeswoman
said.
“The best laid schemes o' mice an' men. Gang aft a-gley.”
The Sinking Of America’s First Combat Sub Was A Mystery For
150 Years — Until Now
My students are having a hard time conceptualizing
self-driving cars. This should freak
them out! (I can’t wait!)
What would happen if we upload our brains to computers?
Meet the "ems" -- machines that emulate human
brains and can think, feel and work just like the brains they're copied from. Futurist and social scientist Robin Hanson
describes a possible future when ems take over the global economy, running on
superfast computers and copying themselves to multitask, leaving humans with
only one choice: to retire, forever. Glimpse a strange future as Hanson describes
what could happen if robots ruled the earth.
I’m encouraging my students to go the other way.
Might be fun to give my students a project to track how concepts
evolve.
Timeline JS Easy-to-make, beautiful timelines
by on
KnightLab:
“TimelineJS is an open-source tool that enables anyone to build visually rich,
interactive timelines. Beginners can
create a timeline using nothing more than a Google spreadsheet, like the one we used for the Timeline
above. Experts can use their JSON
skills to create custom installations, while keeping TimelineJS’s core
functionality.”
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