November 7, 2004

The Washington Post reports on the use of monster databases to record customers who return or exchange goods they find unsatisfactory, and to refuse returns automatically to people a computer decides do it too often. This is just another example of a worrying trend – using industrial-strength data mining and surveillance systems for trivial purposes,…

Brad DeLong reports on a Federal Reserve research paper by Matthew Higgins and Thomas Klitgaard on the way world central banks have been building up foreign exchange reserves. Up to this year, the total holdings of foreign currency assets in central banks have almost doubled since 1995. Now, there are a couple of obvious market…

The Daily Kos is on the case again, and this time it’s Florida that is having fun with maths. It appears, with the first sets of actual numbers in, that more people cast votes for Presidential candidates than voted at all. Not just that, but there is a mysterious surge in Republican votes in counties…

Random Reality reports that thieves have stolen a decontamination vehicle from the London Ambulance Service, full of atropine sulphate syringes. As yer man points out, if they shoot that stuff up they could well die.