Money and Computing

The for-profit hospice industry has grown, allowing more Americans to die at home. But few family members realize that "hospice care" still means they'll do most of the physical and emotional work. When it comes to where we die, the US has reached a tipping point. Home is now the most common place of death, according to new research, and a majority of Medicare patients are turning to hospice services to help make that possible. Fewer Americans these days are dying in a hospital, under the close supervision of doctors and nurses. more »

The code will require digital services to automatically provide children with a built-in baseline of data protection whenever they download a new app, game or visit a website. That means privacy settings should be set to high by default and nudge techniques should not be used to encourage children to weaken their settings. Location settings that allow the world to see where a child is, should also be switched off by default. Data collection and sharing should be minimised and profiling that can allow children to be served up targeted content should be switched off by default too. more »

"Before I conclude, I'd like to address two challenges currently facing the housing sector. The first relates to the difficulties that some employers face, including homebuilders, in finding and retaining qualified and skilled workers. To provide some context, the national data show that the unemployment rate in the private construction industry is now well below the rate we observed in the early 2000s, a time when the housing market was booming. In addition, the ratio of job vacancies to unemployment in the construction industry — a measure of labor market strength — shot up to historic highs at the end of 2018, and it has remained near those levels." more »

Bills Introduced: A bill to amend the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act to provide for better protections for children raised in kinship families outside of the foster care system; A bill to amend the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998; A bill to improve the effectiveness of tribal child support enforcement agencies; A bill to require the Federal Communications Commission to incorporate data on maternal health outcomes into its broadband health maps; A bill to direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to conduct a study to assess the unintended impacts on the health and safety of people engaged in transactional sex; A bill to direct the secretary of Veterans Affairs to provide abortion counseling to a veteran who has an unwanted pregnanc; A bill to amend the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998   more »