Though more than 3,500 people worldwide died of tuberculosis (TB) today, you won't see it reported in headlines of any major American newspaper. Neither will you see that March 24 is World TB Day simply because for many Americans it is a disease that doesn't hit home, but this could quickly change. Read More »

State codes are wretched. Seriously, look at a few from: California, New York, Illinois, and Texas. They are all good examples of how stunningly difficult it is to understand state laws. They don’t have APIs. Virtually none have bulk downloads. You’re stuck with their crude offerings. Read More »

So, we were just discussing the insanity of the FISA court (FISC) basically acting as a shadow Supreme Court, making broad rulings in total secrecy that have created a secret body of law that the public is not allowed to know about. Read More »

We’ve all heard the latest buzz words: big data, data visualization, data integrity. The prevalence of these terms in Health IT circles are evidence that Healthcare organizations are faced with immense amounts of data, and their “buzz” status is more than enough warning that facing data challenges is an imminent prospect. [...] Read More »

The 11 FISA judges, chosen from throughout the federal bench for seven-year terms, are all appointed by the chief justice. In fact, every FISA judge currently serving was appointed by Roberts, who will continue making such appointments until he retires or dies. FISA judges don’t need confirmation — by Congress or anyone else... Read More »

As part of the Guardian's second Project Activate initiative we open up our doors and our minds to the crisis crowdsourcing platform Ushahidi for a week of creative and technological collaboration Read More »

In a plan published earlier this week, the government stopped short of establishing a new agency to investigate patient deaths related to health information technology, as recommended by the Institute of Medicine. [...] Read More »

Some weeks ago a TV team recorded a short TV spot at our research group (we reported about that earlier). It was subjected to the OpenStreetMap project and some of its possible applications. [...] Read More »

There’s been an amazing response to the OpenStreetMap infrastructure funding drive launched last month. Given the incredible enthusiasm for strengthening OpenStreetMap’s core infrastructure, we’ve decided to extend the funding drive [...]. Read More »

One drone-maker in Silicon Valley has a vision: iPhones with wings populating the sky, collecting data about everything. And to get there, he's enlisting tens of thousands of his fellow drone enthusiasts. His civilian drone company is open source — a business model that's completely contrary to the military's model of proprietary secrets. Read More »