Tangherlini Tapped to Stay On at GSA
Video: Stephen Colbert on the Census Bureau
Lawmaker: Don't Furlough Weather Service Now
Making Government 'Simpler'
OK Senators Leery of Unfunded Tornado Relief
Boldly Go Where No Fed's Gone Before
AUTHOR ARCHIVES
So This Is How It Begins: Guy Refuses to Stop Drone-Spying on Seattle Woman
May 14, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Back in October, Alexis wrote a piece asking what rights do we have with regard to the air above our property. Walk onto someone's lawn and you're trespassing; fly over it in a helicopter and you're in the clear -- "the air is a public highway," the Supreme Court declared ...
Google Sees More Government Requests to Remove Content 'Than Ever Before'
April 26, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
In the latest edition of its Transparency Report, released this morning, Google revealed that the final six months of 2012 saw an increase in government requests to remove content -- often YouTube videos. All told, Google received 2,285 such requests (compared with 1,811 during the first half of 2012) that ...
NASA Released a Magical Timelapse of 3 Years of Solar Beauty
April 24, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
For three years, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory has been orbiting our planet, keeping its watchful eye on our sun, a star in our own backyard. During that time, we've seen amazing things: massive, absolutely massive, solar flares,the planet Venus transiting the solar face, and a mystifyingly beautiful phenomenon known as ...
Now, With No Further Ado, We Present ... the Digital Public Library of America!
April 19, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Two-and-a-half years ago, at a meeting in Cambridge, leaders of 42 of America's top libraries and research institutions decided that the time had come to buildsomething together. But what was that thing? After a half hour, Robert Darnton told The Atlantic last year, the group was able to agree on ...
Google Death: A Tool to Take Care of Your Gmail When You're Gone
April 15, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Perhaps you, like me, have had the pleasure of finding some old family letters or calendars squirreled away in a box somewhere, and sitting there for hours, reading about the daily life of your family before you existed. But for future generations, those quotidian texts won't exist in a physical ...
The First Direct Image of a Two-Sun System
March 29, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Last fall, to much geeky fanfare, NASA announced the discovery of Kepler-16b or, as everybody liked to call it, Tatooine, because, like the Star Wars world, Kepler-16b orbits two suns. Scientists found the planet not by seeing it but by seeing its shadow: NASA's Kepler mission detects tiny variations in ...
We Still Do Not Know If Voyager 1 Has Left the Solar System
March 21, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
For 35 years, a spaceship built here on this planet has been flying away from our planet. And today, on this momentous day of March 20, 2013, the American Geophysical Union put out a press release announcing that *it* had finally happened: Voyager 1 had left the solar system, as ...
Google Street View Goes to Its Most Extreme Destinations Yet: 4 of the Planet's Highest Mountains
March 18, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
Perhaps you've always been curious: What is it like on top of the world? But as for going yourself, well, you'll leave that to the adventurers. Fortunately for you, one of those adventurers is Dan Fredinburg. And he's not just your regular run-of-the-mill adventurer, but a professional one at Google. ...
What Does the Consumer Data Industry Know About You?
March 8, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
ProPublica's Lois Beckett has done yeowoman's work and just published an informative report on the huge variety of personal information the consumer data industry now tracks. Here is a breakdown of her findings: 1. The Basics Demographic data such as name, address, age, race, occupation, education "Life-event triggers." Are you ...
Scientists Identify Drugs' Side Effects by Analyzing Data from Millions of Users
March 8, 2013
FROM NEXTGOV
For doctors or patients who notice side effect to a prescription drug (or a combination of several), there's one place to go: the FDA's Adverse Events Reporting System. This is where, once a drug is already on the market, the government can monitor side effects that for one reason or ...
