promises

8Nov

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

ENVIRONMENT

Congress Infrastructure Bill Promises Billions For Bridge Repair

Guangqing Chi, Penn State; Davin Holen, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Heather Randell, Penn State; Megan Mucioki, Penn State, and Rebecca Napolitano, Penn State America’s bridges are in rough shape. Of the nearly 620,000 bridges over roads, rivers and other waterways across the U.S., more than 43,500 of them, about 7%, are considered “structurally deficient.” In Alaska, bridges face a unique and growing set of problems as the planet warms. Permafrost, the frozen ground beneath large parts of the state, is thawing with the changing climate, and that’s shifting the soil and everything on it. Bridges are also increasingly crucial for rural residents who can no longer trust the stability of the rivers’ ice in spring and fall. The infrastructure bill passed by Congress on Nov. 5 and heade...

If The Company Keeps Its Promises – Apple Can Scan Your Photos For Child Abuse And Still Protect Your Privacy

Mayank Varia, Boston University The proliferation of child sexual abuse material on the internet is harrowing and sobering. Technology companies send tens of millions of reports per year of these images to the nonprofit National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The way companies that provide cloud storage for your images usually detect child abuse material leaves you vulnerable to privacy violations by the companies – and hackers who break into their computers. On Aug. 5, 2021, Apple announced a new way to detect this material that promises to better protect your privacy. As a computer scientist who studies cryptography, I can explain how Apple’s system works, why it’s an improvement, and why Apple needs to do more. Who holds the key? Digital files can be protected in a sort o...

Supreme Court upholds American Indian treaty promises, orders Oklahoma to follow federal law

Land in eastern Oklahoma that the United States promised to the Creek Nation in an 1833 treaty is still a reservation under tribal sovereignty, at least when it comes to criminal law, the Supreme Court ruled on July 9. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority, “Because Congress has not said otherwise, we hold the government to its word.” The eastern part of Oklahoma, about half of the state’s total land, was granted by Congress to Native American tribes in the 19th century, and is still under tribal sovereignty, the Supreme Court has ruled. Kmusser, based on 1890s data/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA To most Americans, it may seem obvious that a government should live up to its word. But the United States has regularly reneged on the promises that it made to American Indian nations in the ...