Archive for April, 2010

Save Wet Books By Freezing Them

Monday, April 5th, 2010

BooksIt’s possible to fix water-damaged books, photos, and documents by putting them in the freezer while they’re still wet. They’re essentially freeze-dried by the dehydrating effect of the frost-free freezer. Note that even though the Lifehacker article says to place the book in a plastic bag, you should not seal the bag—the sublimated water vapor has to have somewhere to go.

Link #1: http://lifehacker.com/…

Link #2 (PDF): http://ccaha.punkave.net/…
(via Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts)

The Loss of Anonymity in the Information Age

Saturday, April 3rd, 2010

AnonymousEvery so often a business or government entity will attempt to release “anonymized” data only to find that the anonymization process fails miserably (AOL, Netflix). The problem is not so much with the actual data itself, but is in how it can be combined with other data sources to identify specific individuals. A researcher has shown that 87 percent of Americans can be uniquely identified with just their ZIP code, birthdate, and gender.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…