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SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2009
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NEWS ABOUT: data

data stories: 12 news summaries

 Today's Sexy Job: Statistician 

With so much data to crunch, firms need them—and will pay up

Aug 6, 09 10:12 AM CDT
(Newser) - Forget the nerdy image: In today’s digital world, statisticians are hot, the New York Times reports. Big firms like Google need number-crunchers to parse piles of data, and they’re willing to pay for it—a statistician with a PhD can rake in $125,000 in his or her... More »

MORE ABOUT:
Google • Internet • employment • data • statistics • job • statistician

(Newser) - The Internet keeps functioning thanks to the efforts of an army of unsung heroes, a Harvard cyberlaw expert told a tech conference yesterday. The professor used as an example Pakistan's attempt last year to take YouTube offline—the site went down across the world, but volunteers from a tech forum... More »

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Internet • YouTube • Pakistan • Harvard Law School • data • Harvard • Vint Cerf • Internet censorship • Jonathan Zittrain • TED Conference

(Newser) - Watch out Nielsen, here comes TiVo. The company that allows you to skip ads and store shows on its digital video recorder plans to sell your viewing habits to stations and advertisers, USA Today reports. Unlike Nielsen, TiVo can sell second-by-second breakdowns of the shows and ads people... More »

MORE ABOUT:
DVR • data • TiVo • viewing habits • market research • television advertising • Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems • fast forward

More Kids Take Grown-up Drugs in Obesity Fight

Critics say it's a poor substitute for good diet and exercise

Jul 26, 08 12:33 PM CDT
(Newser) - Doctors are prescribing drugs to more and more children to treat conditions related to obesity, the New York Times reports. Data released by pharmacy plans show that medication for Type 2 diabetes has seen the biggest increase—151% from 2001 to last year. And this month, a pediatricians group... More »

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health • childhood obesity • blood pressure • statins • data • prescription • cholesterol lowering drug • type 2 diabetes • medication • high blood pressure

Pirate Bay Treasure: Total Web Encryption for Privacy

Project could protect all data exchanged between computers from prying eyes

Jul 10, 08 2:46 AM CDT
(Newser) - The founders of hugely popular torrent site Pirate Bay have announced ambitious plans to develop technology to encrypt all web traffic to ensure users absolute privacy, reports NewTeeVee. "Transparent end-to-end encryption for the internet"—or IPETEE—would protect all information sent from or received by a PC, including... More »

MORE ABOUT:
Internet • file sharing • BitTorrent • data • The Pirate Bay • encryption • Internet privacy

Justice Breyer's Records Leaked in File-Sharing Snafu

Investment firm staffer leaked data with music

Jul 9, 08 10:08 AM CDT
(Newser) - An employee at an investment firm made much more than music available when he used a company computer to access the file-sharing site Limewire, reports the Washington Post. He also made it possible for users to access records of 2,000 of the firm's clients—including Supreme Court Justice Stephen... More »

MORE ABOUT:
Stephen Breyer • identity theft • file sharing • data • data theft • Limewire • peer-to-peer

OPINION

Google's Data Avalanche Trumps Scientific Method

No need for theories to connect the data—data all anyone really needs

Jun 24, 08 6:38 PM CDT
(Newser) - The data avalanche Google made possible has buried the scientific method, Chris Anderson argues in Wired, begging the question, “What can science learn from Google?” We’re in the “Petabyte Age,” he argues, when massive amounts of data obviate need for models and theories—the imperfect, if... More »

MORE ABOUT:
Google • data • scientific research • scientific method

Feds Forge National Crime Dragnet

Link data of local
police agencies for instantaneous search

Mar 6, 08 11:23 AM CST
(Newser) - Law enforcement agencies all over the country are building a new information "dragnet" that will dramatically boost data-sharing,  the Washington Post reports. This month the Justice Department will begin hooking up local and county police forces to the new federal National Data Exchange, creating a "one-stop-shop" that... More »

MORE ABOUT:
Department of Justice • police • privacy • domestic intelligence • Department of Homeland Security • data mining • data • national database • National Data Exchange

GE Money Loses Data on 650,000 Credit Card Holders

Missing customer info raises data breach fears

Jan 18, 08 4:29 AM CST
(Newser) - GE Money has lost a computer tape with the personal information of up to 650,000 customers of JC Penney and other retailers, reports the AP. The tape went missing in the warehouse of a data storage company. There's "no indication of theft" and none of the data has... More »

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JCPenney • General Electric • credit card • data • data storage • personal privacy

New Web Trend Sparks David vs. Goliath 2.0

Web giants mobilize to stop developers from 'scraping' their content

Dec 31, 07 4:14 PM CST
(Newser) - Some call it “scraping,” others call it “importing.” Either way, it’s a controversial process pitting independent software developers against the titans of the cyber world: Techies compile, or scrape, loads of data from search engines and social networking sites and pool the data on their... More »

MORE ABOUT:
Google • Microsoft • eBay • Facebook • Craigslist • data • scraping • application protocol interfaces • software robots • spiders • Amazon.com

25M Britons' Private Info
Lost in Mail

Parliament told addresses, bank data may be in wrong hands

Nov 20, 07 4:32 PM CST
(Newser) - Two computer discs containing the personal details of 25 million British citizens are missing, the chancellor of the exchequer told Parliament today. There’s no reason to believe the names, addresses, and bank info were stolen by criminals, but citizens were told to beware of “unusual activity.” Several... More »

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resignation • data • Britain • Alistair Darling • national ID

Google Wants You To Map Businesses

Search giant will hire everyone to collect data at $10 a pop

Aug 17, 07 3:56 PM CDT
(Newser) - Google is hiring—and you don't even need to know html. The search giant wants locals to visit pizza joints, ice cream parlors, drugstores, and other businesses as part of a Herculean effort to build a commerce database. An army of freelancers will collect the data, snap a digital photo,... More »

MORE ABOUT:
Google • employment • workers • data • database • freelance

12 Stories


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