23andMe will pay $30 million and provide three years of security monitoring to settle a lawsuit accusing the genetics testing company of failing to protect the privacy of 6.9 million customers whose personal information was exposed in a data breach last year.

The accord also resolves accusations that 23andMe did not tell customers with Chinese and Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry that the hacker appeared to have specifically targeted them, and posted their information for sale on the dark web.

A preliminary settlement of the proposed class action was filed late Thursday night in federal court in San Francisco, and requires a judge’s approval.

It includes cash payments for customers whose data was compromised, and lets customers enroll for three years in a program known as Privacy & Medical Shield + Genetic Monitoring.

In a Friday court filing, 23andMe called the settlement fair, adequate and reasonable.

Citing its “extremely uncertain financial condition,” 23andMe also asked the judge to halt arbitrations by tens of thousands of class members, until the settlement is approved or they decide not to participate.

In a statement, 23andMe said it believes the settlement is in its customers’ best interest. It also expects about $25 million of the cost to be covered by cyber insurance coverage.

The breach began around April 2023 and lasted about five months, affecting nearly half of the 14.1 million customers in 23andMe’s database at the time. It was disclosed by 23andMe in an October 2023 blog post.

According to the company, the hacker accessed 5.5 million DNA Relatives profiles, which let customers share information with each other, and accessed information for another 1.4 million customers who used a feature called Family Tree.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said the settlement addressed their clients’ main claims, and reflected significant risks of further litigation given 23andMe’s “dire” finances.

The South San Francisco-based company lost $69.4 million on revenue of $40.4 million in the quarter ending June 30.

Co-founder and Chief Executive Anne Wojcicki has been trying to take 23andMe private, three years after it went public at $10 per share. Its shares have traded below $1 since mid-December.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers may seek legal fees of up to 25% of the settlement amount.

The case is In re 23andMe Inc Customer Data Security Breach Litigation, US District Court, Northern District of California, No. 24-md-03098.

Comment by Dick Eastman: I am sorry I was unable to attend this presentation by Dr. John Nestor. It sounds interesting.

You see, I spent my military service as a Viet Nam Era Cryptologist. I never considered those four years as being exciting or even interesting. In fact, I always thought it was 4 year's of boredom. I suspect the “good ol' years”  of cryptography during World War II were much more interesting.

A note to Dr. John Nestor (if you ever read this article): If you ever give this talk again in the future, please let me know. I would like to attend, regardless of the amount of travel involved:

From an article in the recordherald web site: "Dr. John Nestor presented the program “Ada Nestor World War II Cryptologist” during the Aug. 19 meeting of the Fayette County Genealogical Society (of Uniontown, Pennsylvania). Ada Nestor was Dr. Nestor’s mother, and during World War II, she became a “Code Girl” deciphering enemy codes.

"Ada lived on a farm with her family in West Viginia in 1942 when she answered a generic advertisement for young women willing to work for the Army in Clarksburg, WV. She thought it was a chance to get off the farm. Little did she know that it would be serious top-secret classified work. After being tested, she made the cut to be a code girl and was shipped to Washington D.C. for training and work that had to be memorized, there were no books or notes allowed.

"The code girls themselves were considered top secret. They were never allowed to reveal what work they really did or talk about their work. They were never allowed to go out alone. They were always to be in a group. Dr. Nestor said that his mother took her service oath seriously and never spoke of her service even after her service days were over. It was only when he was an adult that an article came out in the Readers Digest about Code Girls that had reference to the Purple Code that he really found out about his mother’s service. She was really upset that the Purple Code was in the article. She felt that the Purple Code developed and used by the coders should forever remain classified. The Code Girls were a valuable and an important element in the defense in WWII, breaking down the communications of the enemy forces which was instrumental in leading to an ally victory.

"Dr. Nestor is a local consultant whose resume includes being the executive vice president of Riten Industries, implementing school safety plans, and developing college security systems. Dr. Nestor, who has authored books depicting the subjects of his work, has been recognized for outstanding work, and leadership.

"The next meeting of the society will be held on Monday, Sept. 16 in the downstairs meeting room of the Economic Development Building 101 E. East St., Washington Court House at 7 p.m. The program will be our “Annual Sharing Night.” Members and guests are invited to bring family heirlooms or keepsakes, family pictures, family history or community history stories, or any item or story of interest to share. This is always a fun and interesting meeting."

Vice President Kamala Harris wrote in her memoir that her mother always said to her, "Kamala, you may be the first to do many things. Make sure you're not the last."

Now, as Kamala Harris campaigns for president, her family is back in the spotlight. Here, her family tree—featuring the Harris, Gopalan, and Emhoff families, all the extended family of Vice President Harris:

Go to: https://tinyurl.com/3n6k9s9b

From an article by Zo Ahmed published in the TechSpot web site:

The music industry is grappling with a looming crisis regarding its archive of 90s recordings stored on aging hard drives. According to data storage experts at Iron Mountain, around 20 percent of drives from the era are now unreadable. The company is raising concerns that, due to deteriorating formats, insufficient metadata, and increasing disk failures, a significant portion of these historic recordings could be lost forever if urgent action is not taken. 

A report from music industry publication Mix, citing Robert Koszela, global director of studio growth at Iron Mountain Media and Archive Services, highlights the bubbling issue. Hard drives from the 1990s, even those stored according to best practices and appearing pristine on the outside, are increasingly failing.

Prior to the 2000s, master tapes were used to produce vinyl, cassettes, or CDs, with multitracks archived securely. However, the advent of new formats like 5.1 surround sound, Guitar Hero games, and online streaming led to a renewed need to access and remix older materials. This exposed the extent of degradation in some tapes, rendering them unplayable or even lost. Additionally, many formats from that era have become obsolete.

Compared to tapes, accessing files from old hard drives might seem straightforward, but Iron Mountain's analysis reveals that it's often far from easy. Even if drives power up, users face a range of technical challenges. These may include needing updated software, fixing plug-ins, or locating outdated proprietary cables or power adapters.

The issue has also been discussed on Hacker News with user "abracadaniel" highlighting additional concerns. "Optical media rots, magnetic media rots and loses magnetic charge, bearings seize, flash storage loses charge, etc." They concluded, "Entropy wins, sometimes much faster than you'd expect."

Fortunately, Iron Mountain has invested in specialized equipment capable of reading various storage media as long as the disk platters remain undamaged. However, challenges persist, such as the lack of metadata to identify the content on poorly marked disks. Koszela notes that the only information on the outside of some cases might be an artist's acronym, making it difficult to determine whether the content is a video session, an interview, or something else.

Accessing archived drives often depends on commercial needs, like remixes or immersive releases. If a drive contains outdated transfers, additional budget may be required to re-transfer tapes at modern high resolutions.

University of Galway has launched a new archive recognising the different lived experiences of the Irish Traveller community, including challenges the community faced since the 1960s and the importance of the Traveller voice to educate and increase understanding of the history and culture of the community.

The Mincéirs Archives, which will be digitised and available to the public, was launched today by Irish Traveller human rights activist Dr Mary Warde Moriarty and University of Galway President Professor Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh.

The collection focuses on Irish Travellers from the 1960s when Ireland transformed socially, economically and culturally and how this impacted on the nomadic indigenous community, as well as the dawn of the Traveller rights movement in Ireland and Europe.

The Mincéirs Archives is the first step to embedding Traveller history and culture throughout the teaching, learning and research activities at the University.

            Dr Mary Warde Moriarty said: “It is great to officially launch the Mincéirs Archives as I know it will act as an anchor that supports the promotion and embedding of Traveller history and culture throughout the teaching and learning activities of University of Galway. As a Traveller woman, I am proud to have materials that document some of my early activities advocating for Traveller rights included in the archives. I feel it’s very important that everyone learns about Traveller history and culture as it supports greater understanding between all communities. I hope that the archives will be also play a major role with supporting the promotion of Traveller history and culture in local primary and secondary schools.” 

            University of Galway President, Professor Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh, said: “At University of Galway, we are a university for the public good, with a shared vision, shaped by our values with a proud history of promoting Traveller history and culture. As a learning institution, we learn from all our communities and are the better for it. The Mincéirs Archives goes to the heart of this work in promoting Traveller history and culture that align with our values, particularly the importance which we place on respect and openness. The contents of the archives and most importantly the Traveller voice has guided our efforts as we provide a culture that creates opportunities for all members of our university community to learn more about - and to learn from - Traveller history and culture.”

Material related to Traveller human rights, education, employment, accommodation, music, folklore and photographs of the community form part of the archive. It includes official documentation such as the Report of the Commission on Itinerancy [1963], the work of Sister Colette O’Dwyer in Traveller education and training from the late 1960s onwards, the National Association of Training Centres for Travelling People, the National Federation of Irish Travelling People, the European Centre for Travellers, as well as a range of material relating to community development and activism across the country. There is also a range of correspondence, photographs and other material from Travellers themselves, reflecting their lived experiences. The Archive is augmented with material from existing archival collections. These include photographs and music collected in Ireland in 1952 by the American couple Jean Ritchie and George Pickow, similar material from the Joe Burke collection relating to county Galway, England and the USA, as well as photographs taken in the 1890s by Patrick Lyons of a Traveller camp near Ballyhaunis, County Mayo.

The Mincéirs Archives project began in November 2021 as part of the celebrations which followed on from the 175th anniversary of the foundation of the University in 1845, as Queen’s College.

Led by Owen Ward, the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Programme Manager for Race Equality at the University, and Kieran Hoare, Archivist at University of Galway Library, the research and digitisation of the Mincéirs Archives was one of six projects sponsored by the Office of the President through a special fund to record and share the institutional history of the University.

As part of embedding Traveller history and culture throughout the teaching, learning and research activities at the University, the Office of the Vice-President for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion is leading a project to diversify curricula. The aim is to enhance and embed the perspectives from the global south, nomadism, indigenous and black studies, including resources from the Mincéirs Archives, into wider academia across the University.

            Monica Crump, University of Galway Librarian, said: "The University of Galway Library is delighted to host the Mincéirs Archives, and in particular to enable students and researchers to learn about Traveller history and culture through their own voice and lived experience, greatly enhancing our existing archival collections. Through new strategies of acquisition and outreach, we are committed to diversifying our collections as well as the ways in which people can access them. The Mincéirs Archive will bring a greater understanding of Traveller history and culture to homes and schools across the country.  We are confident that this digital resource will become embedded in teaching and learning activities across campus and are looking forward to a continued partnership with the community and to seeing this collection grow."

            Owen Ward, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Programme Manager for Race Equality at University of Galway, said: “This initiative marks a significant milestone in the history of University of Galway and solidifies its position as a leader for Irish Traveller inclusivity cross higher education and wider society. By making the Mincéirs Archives accessible to everyone, we are taking a big step toward honouring the history and strength of Irish Travellers and building a more just and equitable future. We look forward to working closely with the Irish Traveller community to continue to expand the archives while ensuring that the lived experiences of Irish Travellers are central to this important work.”

University of Galway welcomes public donations of resources related to Irish Travellers to the Mincéirs Archives, including photographs, videos, audio recordings, papers, notes, books, and posters. Material can be donated to the archives temporarily and once digitised can be returned to the owner.

On Tuesday (Sept. 17), the Full Harvest Moon will experience a partial lunar eclipse that will be visible for North and South America (except for Alaska), Europe, most of Africa, western Asia, and parts of Antarctica. This eclipse will take place during a "supermoon," which will make the moon appear slightly larger in the night sky. This occurs when the moon is slightly closer to Earth, which happens because the moon's orbit is slightly elliptical, or oval shaped.

If you can't watch the eclipse in person for any reason, there are luckily a number of livestreams available online for you to take in the Super Harvest Moon lunar eclipse.

Lunar eclipses occur when the sun, Earth and the moon are lined up so that Earth casts its shadow on our natural satellite. This lunar eclipse will be only a slight one, with just the top 8.7% of the moon covered by the darkest part of Earth's shadow. Still, a lunar eclipse is a celestial spectacle worth watching any time it occurs.

For the Eastern time zone of the U.S., the eclipse will begin around 8:40 p.m. EDT on Sept. 17 and will peak around 10:44 p.m. EDT. Europe and Africa, meanwhile, will see the eclipse during the pre-dawn hours on Sept. 18. 

For London, the eclipse will appear greatest around 3:45 a.m. BST on Sept. 18.

Livestreams of the partial lunar eclipse of the Super Harvest Moon are available at: https://www.space.com/super-harvest-moon-lunar-eclipse-how-to-watch.

The following is an announcement written by Findmypast:

There are over 20,000 parish and workhouse records for you to explore this week.

Our collection of English birth, marriage and death (BMD) records grew this Findmypast Friday. We added almost 10,000 BMDs for Leicestershire spanning a century, as well as 395 baptism, marriage and burial records for Rutland in the East Midlands. 

There are also 11,213 new Lincolnshire workhouse records for you to explore - these fascinating transcriptions and images cover 64 years.

From records to newspapers, read on to see everything that we've added this week.

Lincolnshire, Workhouse Guardians' Minutes

This week's biggest update consists of 11,213 workhouse records from the English county of Lincolnshire.

These new additions cover the years 1837 to 1901, so may help to shed light on the lives of your 19th-century ancestors.

Leicestershire baptism, marriage and death records

There are also 9,595 Leicestershire parish records for you to discover. 

These new additions span 100 years of England's history.

Rutland baptism, marriage and burial records

Rounding off this week's trio of updates we have new baptism, marriage and burial records from the ceremonial county of Rutland.

Rutland baptism record from 1924.

There are both images and transcriptions available for these 395 new records.

New pages from the Lancashire coast

A brand new Blackpool title - the West Lancashire Evening Gazette - has joined our newspaper archive this week. 

West Lancashire Evening Gazette, 28 April 1986.

We also updated 20 existing publications, with a total of 289,279 exciting new pages added.

Here's everything we added this Findmypast Friday: 

New titles:

• West Lancashire Evening Gazette, 1983, 1985-1986, 1993-1998, 2001-2003

Updated titles: 

• Belper News, 1912, 1990, 1997-1998, 2000-2003
• Bexhill-on-Sea Observer, 1936-1938, 1970-1971, 1996-1997, 1999
• Bicester Review, 1987, 1993
• Bridlington Free Press, 1997, 2002
• Buxton Advertiser, 1858, 1860, 1894, 1968, 1990, 1997-1998, 2000-2003
• Cycling, 1920
• Eastwood & Kimberley Advertiser, 1897
• Halifax Evening Courier, 1996
• Harrogate Advertiser and Weekly List of the Visitors, 1997
• Hucknall Dispatch, 2001
• Lancing Herald, 1993, 1998
• Leighton Buzzard Observer and Linslade Gazette, 1998
• Littlehampton Gazette, 1998-1999
• Melton Mowbray Times and Vale of Belvoir Gazette, 1897, 1966-1968, 1970
• Morecambe Visitor, 1896, 1899
• Newton and Earlestown Guardian, 1973-1978
• Ripley and Heanor News and Ilkeston Division Free Press, 1889, 1970-1971, 1974, 1992, 1999, 2002-2003
• South Yorkshire Times and Mexborough & Swinton Times, 1981
• Todmorden & District News, 1992-1994, 1996
• Whitby Gazette, 1993, 1997

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. 

I have written often about the advantages of storing some of your backups off-site in "the cloud." Computer experts will tell you that everyone needs to make backups, and at least one copy of each backup needs to be stored "off site" where it is safe from local disasters such as house fires, burst water pipes, and similar in-home disasters. Storing some of your backups on BackBlaze, Carbonite, Dropbox, Amazon S3, SugarSync, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, or other backup services is a great idea. However, most of these services provide only a limited amount of free storage space in their cloud (typically 2 to 5 gigabytes) and then charge you if you need more space. If you have a lot of data to back up, the charges can add up quickly. There is a cheaper method of accomplishing the same thing: you create your own off-site backup servers. Luckily, this is easy to do and, with a few pointers, is rather inexpensive. This article will supply those pointers.

Another advantage of this type of backup is that it lets you access your backed up files from anywhere you have an Internet connection. If you need a file from home, you can connect to the Internet from the office, from a hotel room, or from most any public library and retrieve whatever you need from your own server. You can even retrieve files by using an iPhone or an Android smartphone. Likewise, you can also save newly-created files from your laptop to your server in the cloud so that those files are available in the future from anyplace you can access the Internet. If you own multiple computers, you can back up all of them.

Actually, there are several methods of creating your own server(s) in the cloud. Today, I will focus on one method that is simple to accomplish at low expense by anyone with modest technical skills. If you already have an old computer sitting in a closet and gathering dust, the price for creating your own cloud-based server with nearly infinite storage space can be surprisingly low although probably not free. 

First, let's explore the possibilities of the words, "off site." With the commercial backup services, we think of off-site as being in a data center in some other part of the country, perhaps in a huge room full of servers, attended by a staff of system professionals. Indeed, that is a good scenario for off-site backups, but it is not the only possible method.

"Off site" could mean a computer or server located in your next door neighbor's house, a friend's house, a relative's house, or perhaps your own office across town. To make backups of your computer(s) at the office, maybe all you need is a "server" in your home. Off site can mean "just a short distance away." However, I would generally recommend using a server some distance away as one hurricane or one  fire can destroy everything in a wide path. Ideally, your remote server in the cloud should be well outside the path of any possible disasters that could affect your normal locations. 

Next, what is the definition of a "server?" Most computer professionals will tell you that a server is a computer box designed especially for the task, perhaps rack mounted, with dual power supplies, remote console capabilities so that you can operate it from many miles away, and more. Indeed, the servers in most professional data centers fit this description. 

However, if your primary purpose is to simply store files for later retrieval, you can use a very simple "server." In fact, it doesn't have to be a box designed for that purpose at all. Did you purchase a new computer in the past two or three years? If so, the old PC that was replaced might now be gathering dust and can be repurposed as a "server." If not, another possibility is to buy a used computer at a garage sale for a few dollars. You won't need anything fancy. A six- or eight-year-old computer will work well.

I would never use an old PC as my ONLY backup in any one location. However, if you are making multiple backups and are storing them in multiple locations, an old PC can easily serve as one of the locations. The old PC can be converted into a server for little expense. If that one server later suffers a hardware problem and dies, who cares? You have other copies stored in other locations. You simply restore from one of your other backup copies. Having multiple backups stored in multiple locations keeps you safe from most any possible disaster.

You don't need redundant power supplies, super high speed processors, or any of that fancy stuff. Neither will you need a big, expensive monitor. In fact, the monitor can be left powered off most of the time. You will need some large disk drives, but I'll describe a low-cost, simple solution for that later.

This solution works well for personal use or for business. If your office has five or ten computers, you can back up all of them to this low-cost, off-site server. You can even (optionally) share files with your friends or co-workers. 

Your "server" should run Windows, Windows Server, or Macintosh OS (most any version released in the past 5 or 6 years). You will also need a modest amount of memory. The exact amount of required memory will vary, depending upon which version of Windows or Macintosh you are using. If your re-purposed "server" runs its present operating system at a reasonable speed, it already has enough memory to be a server.

Next, you will need to boot up the old computer and uninstall all the superfluous programs you can find. The exact list isn't critical; just get rid of the junk and any other stuff you won't need. With Windows, this step will also speed up the system somewhat. 

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/13406607 A Plus Edition password is required to access that article.)

If you are not yet a Plus Edition subscriber, you can learn more about such subscriptions and even upgrade to a Plus Edition subscription immediately at https://eogn.com/page-18077. 

When researchers type a query into Bowdoin's library search bar now, they are presented with a trove of information not just from the linked libraries of Bowdoin, Bates, and Colby Colleges, but also from Special Collections, the Museum of Art, and the Arctic Museum.

The College's library has for many years shared a search feature with Bates and Colby, allowing patrons to research sources and borrow books from all three institutions. Extending this network to also include the College's museums has been a long-held dream of Bowdoin's administration.

Kat Stefko recalled that one of her first work meetings, held soon after she started her new job in 2015 as director of the George J. Mitchell Department of Special Collections & Archives, was a discussion about sharing technology across the College's cultural institutions.

At the time, however, Special Collections was in the “embryonic stage” of digitizing its assets and making them available online, she said. “So the idea of searching our collections and these other repositories was very farfetched. But it was a nice aspiration. The desire never went away.”

Part of the problem back then was that the Library technology was not up to the task of connecting different collections with mismatched software.

The exterior of the John and Lile Gibbons Center for Arctic Studies, which houses the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum.

But technology has finally caught up to the College's ambitions. In the summer of 2023, the Library made a major update to its catalog, replacing a system it had used for more than twenty years. One of the benefits of new system, called Compass, is its power to get databases to talk to one another.

The beauty of the new tool is that it greatly increases “discoverability,” the chances of a serendipitous stumble onto a surprising resource while looking for something else.

“With the new system, that initial idea of discoverability through a single system became more viable because the technology has improved so much,” Stefko said. “So what had been a mountainous project back in 2015 actually became a doable technological project in our new environment.”

This summer, Senior Interactive Developer David Francis and Systems Librarian Summer Unsinnworked together to start the information flowing.

"I'm always looking for things that I think would be most interesting for someone outside of the fine arts to come across that they could use for research,” Francis said. “So, for example, someone doing research on painted scrolls doing a search in the Library could discover real examples in the Museum of Art collection that they could reference and study."

Aerial view of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in the Walker Art Building.

And a student trying to find books or articles about Picasso for an art history paper might be delighted to find that “the Museum of Art has sixteen Picassos,” Unsinn said, which they can then make an appointment to see in person.

In the process of getting Compass to work well, Unsinn, too, made her own serendipitous stumbles. “It was a fun project to work on because it opened my eyes to a lot of neat things that the museums have,” she said.

One of her favorite findings was a unique collection of cards circa 1900-1910 for Arctic adventurers. “The one that really cracked me up was a set of collectible cigarette cards for polar explorers. I just found that in the process of troubleshooting.”

Anne Collins Goodyear, codirector of the Museum of Art, said the new integrated search tool opens up an exciting new era, “one in which information about the College’s broad range of cultural resources—from works of scholarship and literature to works of art—can be made even more easily accessible to a broad community of researchers on campus and beyond. 

It helps bring together bodies of knowledge and forms of expression from many different disciplines and historical eras and will undoubtedly help to provide the foundation for many new forms of inquiry and collaboration.”  

TRYING OUT THE NEW SEARCH TOOL

Students and other researchers using the Compass tool can set many filters to narrow their searches. But keeping a search broad may yield more of those “stumble-upon moments,” as Unsinn calls them.

A search for Arctic explorer Robert Peary in the Compass toolbar, for instance, generates 1,323 results (although this number could change if more resources are added to the museums or libraries—the catalogs are updated every day). 

The top item that comes up is Special Collections' Robert Edwin Peary collection. The next is Susan Kaplan and Genevieve LeMoine's 2019 book, Peary's Arctic Quest: Untold Stories from Robert E. Peary's North Pole Expeditions, which is available online or can be checked out of the Bowdoin Library. Following this is a peer-reviewed article, also available online. Then a series of old photos from Peary's northern travels are listed. 

Perhaps you're intrigued by the two items listed under the Museum of Art. Narrow the parameters to view these and you will see information about a bronze bust of a hirsute Peary, made by William Ordway Partridge in 1899, and a 1911 painting of him in a crisp white Navy uniform, by Benjamin West Clinedinst.

The following is an announcement written by the Society of Genealogists (in London:)

What is All About That Place?

A unique free learning event brought to you by the Society of Genealogists, the Society for One Place Studies, British Association for Local History and Genealogy Stories.

Running over 10 days from Friday 27 September to Sunday 6th October, All About That Place is packed with 140 recorded 10-minute talks on genealogy and local history. You'll learn research techniques, social history, tools, websites, archives, record keeping tips, ways of creating and sharing your findings... and much, much more!

Plus, throughout the event, you'll be supported in putting your learning into action by completing challenge activities.

https://www.sog.org.uk/all-about-that-place-2024/