Opt-in Polls: Bad Data, Bad Science, and Bad Actors
I was perusing the usual collage of semi-news, trivia, and fluff on CollingwoodToday recently and noticed a poll at the bottom asking “How old are you?” It piqued my interest…
data
Canada to Update Digital Privacy Laws, Hold Companies Accountable for Breaches
Last year Canadians witnessed too many data breaches of their data and the federal government is reacting. Large Canadian corporations didn’t do enough to protect their databases against attackers and…
How to Resist Surveillance Capitalism
Surveillance capitalism is a truly 21st century innovation which is having a major impact on society. Policies around data protection and privacy aren’t strong enough yet and trade deals don’t…
This Artist Wants You to Buy All His Personal Data on eBay
Oli Frost got inspired by companies earning profit from his data and decided to sell it directly to anybody who wants it. He’s downloaded all his data from Facebook (and…
Iceland Wants to Help Journalists Expose Real Threats
Iceland continues on it’s quest to be the ‘Switzerland of data‘ and is extending its program to do so for journalists. Part of the country’s plan to become a haven…
Will Iceland be the “Switzerland of Data”?
Iceland is the de facto home of Wikileaks and is also a country concerned with privacy issues. The country is now considering leveraging their experience and reputation of being digital-data…
LHC Data Freely Accessible from CERN
The Large Hadron Collider run by CERN is making huge insights into the fundamental workings of the universe. Already it has found evidence the Higgs-Boson and other groovy particles in…
Surfing Oceanic Data
The ocean is massive and it’s experiencing massive change thanks to climate change and humans depleting its resources. We know this, but we don’t know the extent of the harm…
US Journalistic Sensationalism in Aftermath of #OttawaShooting
CNN, in their attempt to fill air time after the apparent terror attack in Ottawa (#OttawaShooting), began asking American pundits whether their Northern border with Canada was safe. Erin Burnnett…
Canada’s Luxury Index is through the roof
Numbers season is over but good inequality data is still missing. January sees us regularly bombarded with a whole range of economic statistics about the previous year. GDP growth: likely…
Security gaps found in destruction of top-secret military data
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/security-gaps-found-in-destruction-of-top-secret-military-data-1.2490752
The Past, Present and Future of Sensor Journalism
This weekend I had the pleasure of being invited to the Tow Centre for Digital Journalism at the Columbia Journalism School for a workshop on sensor journalism. The workshop (hashtag…
écoHackMTL: An excellent launch
We had an excellent turnout for the écoHackMTL launch. A big thank-you to everyone who helped me put it together! If you missed the action you can see a few…
écoHackMTL: An excellent launch
We had an excellent turnout for the écoHackMTL launch. A big thank-you to everyone who helped me put it together! If you missed the action you can see a few…
écoHackMTL: An excellent launch
We had an excellent turnout for the écoHackMTL launch. A big had for everyone who helped me put it together! If you missed the action you can see a few…
Idle No More Might Be Popular No More: Polls
A few online polls suggest Idle No More is not supported by a majority of Canadians. Though there appears to be no major polling done as of yet, three recent…
OCDSB survey
You might remember that I wrote about this last year. Now the Ottawa public school board has some results to talk about. And they are for sure talking about it.…
Huffington Post: Netflix exec says "Canadians have almost third-world access to the Internet"
Big telecom companies across Canada are continuing to employ ‘usage-based billing’, an punitive billing practice that restricts data allowances. Though many of you fought back against UBB via the Stop…
Lying with Maps: How Enbridge is Misleading the Public in its Ads
The Ottawa Citizen has a great story today about an advert by Enbridge (the company proposing to build a oil pipeline across British Columbia) that includes a “broadly representational” map…