Amidst a global heatwave, some good news from the National Surveys on Energy and the Environment: a record-setting 73% of Americans believe that climate change is real and 60% believe humans are "at least partially responsible" for this fact. It's the peak indifference moment, when the fight shifts from convincing people that there is a problem to convincing them that it's not too late to do something about it.
Read the rest “Record numbers of Americans believe climate change is real, and a majority understand that humans are to blame”
Muso is a London-based anti-piracy contractor, helping big entertainment companies conduct surveillance and legal threats against online infringers; in a new CitizenMe study they commissioned, 1,000 British internet users were surveyed; the headline finding: 83% of infringing downloads are triggered by an unsuccessful search for a commercially available version of the same work.
Read the rest “Anti-piracy group's study reveals that pirates are mostly people who couldn't afford, find, or use a commercial version”
A Pew survey found that the majority of millennials have visited a public library this year, making them the most prolific library-using generation. An ALA spokesperson attributed this to the libraries' commitment to providing free, fast broadband and the ability to borrow devices such as tablets -- but the survey found that very few patrons use the libraries' apps. Read the rest “Millennials, women and college grads are most prolific library users”
Comparitech commissioned a survey of 2,000 people in the US and UK to ask whether they thought "it is legal to install a program on a partner's phone to snoop on their activity?" and whether they would "ever consider adding a program to your child's phone that allows you to listen to their conversations and spy on their messages?" Read the rest “Survey: nearly half think it may be legal to install spyware on a family member's devices”
75% surveyed by Ipsos/Reuters said, "they would not let investigators tap into their Internet activity to help the U.S. combat domestic terrorism"(up from 67% in 2013). Read the rest “Vast majority of Americans reject mass surveillance to thwart terrorist attacks”
Deji from Access Now writes, "You remember that spooky story about the U.S. screening everyone’s social media 'presence' at the border? Well, now there’s a way to tell the government exactly what you think about it." Read the rest “SURVEY: Your views on US Customs' plan to search your social media at the border”
The Pew Research Center is soliciting answers for a "Future of the Internet" survey that asks a bunch of thought-provoking questions about the security of the Internet of Things; social cohesion in a social media-dominated public sphere; education and innovation; automation and robots taking our jobs; machine learning and justice; and the tone of the online public sphere in the next 10 years. Read the rest “Take the Pew Future of the Internet Survey”
David Proctor writes, "I'm a Master's candidate at Minot State University doing research for a thesis on the Maker Community. Specifically I am trying to understand what motivates people to make and how the community defines itself. To that end I have created a short 7 question questionnaire that I need your help with. The questionnaire is here. Read the rest “Makers: take this survey and help with a master's thesis on making”
Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are studying how the seemingly innocuous things we do in our homes and offices can have big impacts on our health. One of those things is cooking, because the way we cook can affect the air we breathe. Scientists are trying to figure out how to make houses safer, but to do that, they need to understand how people use houses — what we cook in them and how we cook it. You can help by taking this quick, anonymous survey. Read the rest “Take a survey to help scientists improve indoor air quality”
A Yale survey found that 3/4 of Americans believe anthropogenic climate change is really happening. Of course, this comes after an exceptionally hot and drought-y summer and we already know that opinions on climate change oscillate with the weather. To really get a good picture of whether acceptance of climate change is on the rise, we'd have to look at a variety of polls, conducted in different ways by different organizations. And we'd have to look for changes in the trend line over long periods of time, so we know we're looking at an actual, long-term shift. Which all sounds oddly familiar, now that I think about it. Read the rest “Is acceptance of climate change on the rise?”
According to a survey of 200,000 Americans, Miller High Life is the most bi-partisan of beers. Republicans favor Samuel Adams and, apparently, there are a lot of Democrats drinking Heineken. (Although one might argue that these results are heavily skewed, as the survey did not include either microbrews or microparties. God only knows what the Libertarians are drinking.) There's a chart. Yay, charts! (Via Kevin Zelnio) Read the rest “The champagne of national unity”
In a recent survey of 5000 Bicycling magazine readers, 50% of men and 58% of women said that—if pressed to choose between sex or bikes—they'd pick the bikes.(Via Maria Popova) Read the rest “Cyclists would rather ride a bike than have sex”
