The following announcement was written by the organizers of the 2022 Really Useful Family History Show:

The 2022 Really Useful Family History Show

The online Really Useful Family History Show is live online this weekend:

Friday 11^th November: 6pm until 10pm GMT

Saturday 12^th November: 10am until 6pm GMT

We are delighted to announce

Free Friday!

Watch keynote speaker Diahan Southard's DNA talk

Visit the Exhibition Hall

Everyone is feeling the pinch these days, so we have launched the Free Friday ticket which provides access to the keynote talk and exhibition hall on Friday 11th November between 6pm and 10pm GMT. Simply register by clicking on the website’s FREE FRIDAY roundel.

The keynote talk Connecting Your DNA Matches is scheduled for 7pm. There are some sixty booths in the Exhibition Hall where visitors can seek help, advice and information plus many have free downloads available.

We are sure visitors will wish to have access to the full range of talks, workshops and expert panels. Simply click the BUY TICKET roundel to purchase a ticket (£12) which provides full access to the live show and extended access to all presentations (until 11.59pm on Saturday 19^th November).

Those who have already purchased a ticket do not need to purchase a

Free Friday ticket as the full show ticket is all-inclusive.

Full details and all tickets: www.fhf-reallyuseful.com/

The following announcement was written by the organizers of the 2022 Really Useful Family History Show:

The online Really Useful Family History Show is live online this weekend:

Friday 11th November: 6pm until 10pm GMT
Saturday 12th November: 10am until 6pm GMT

There are two Keynote presentations, four drop-in Expert Connect sessions, twelve specialist talks, thirty practical workshops and some sixty exhibitors.

The keynote presentations are Connecting your DNA matches and British Army Detective – piecing together the jigsaw.

The Expert Connect sessions provide drop-in opportunity for visitors to seek help and advice from the Family History Federation, AGRA, FamilySearch and RGQ.  Times are on the website.

The twelve specialist talks cover a wide range of topics from workhouses to railways, from migration to the industrious revolution and more. These are available to ticket holders until 11.59pm on 19th November.

The thirty interactive practical workshops on Saturday explore everything from handwriting to manorial documents, heirlooms to oral history and many topics that occur in family history research. Booking is required – these are included in the show ticket so no extra payment is required.

The sixty exhibitors have booths in the Exhibition Hall where visitors can find expert local or specialist advice along with free downloads or special offers.  Many family history societies are present with their particular experience of research in their locality. All exhibitors will be happy to help visitors with information about their services. The Exhibition Hall is open while the show is live online.

For last minute tickets, to book remaining places to participate in live workshops and to learn more about the presenters, topics and exhibitors, please visit the show website:

www.fhf-reallyuseful.com/

If you had ancestors living in Ouachita Parish, you will be interested in a new service of the Ouachita Parish Public Library. A new service launched on October 14, 2022, on the Ouachita Parish Public Library’s website. The “Master Index of Obituaries from Monroe Newspapers” is a project that has been in the works for over 25 years.

Lora Peppers, library associate for the genealogy department said, “It’s been a lot of fun, and we have helped so many people that way that were looking for ancestors. It’s an index of the obituaries that are in Monroe area papers from the Ouachita Gazette in 1825. We’re currently working on The Newstar in 1992 at the moment.”

The database allows people to search obituaries from the years 1825-1991 to trace family history and contains information such as the name, notes about the death, and the cemetery location.

“I believe over 230,000 names are in this index at the current moment and we are adding to them daily,” said Peppers. The computer technician for the library, Michael Hargrave, was in charge of building the database. He said this is a good starting point for those looking for their family history.

You can read more in an article and video in the KNOE web site at: https://tinyurl.com/58ya7re3.

A new way of spreading your loved ones' ashes has been introduced who say they are the first firm to offer a drone service that allows you to scatter ashes over land and sea.

Co-op Funeralcare, a company that operates over 1,000 funeral homes and is the largest funeral director in the United Kingdom, is offering a new experience for families to celebrate their dearly departed by scattering people's ashes over land and sea by using a drone.

The company say that they are the first firm to offer the new drone service with the machinery possessing four-propeller machines that carries a large black box to drop the ashes where the family wish.

The company say that the service will enable families to drop their loved ones' ashes in places that are difficult to access, such as rivers and beauty spots.

Gill Stewart, MD of Co-op Funeralcare said: "Cremation has continued to grow at pace as a choice for funerals.

You can read more at: https://tinyurl.com/2z54hwmt.

This article is not about any of the "normal" topics of this newsletter: genealogy, history, current affairs, DNA, and related topics. However, it kis a follow-up to a previous article I published: "Is Satellite Internet the Answer to a Presently Unreliable Internet Connection?" that I published on 3 November 2022 at: https://eogn.com/page-18080/12976963.

While I was thinking of switching my internet service provider to Starlink (the satellite provider invented by Elon Musk), I have now changed my mind after reading the following:

Starlink"Residential customers will now start each monthly billing cycle with an allocation of "Priority Access" data that tracks what you're using from 7AM in the morning until 11PM at night. If you surpass that 1TB cap, which Starlink says less than 10 percent of users currently do, you'll be moved to "Basic Access" data, or deprioritized data during heavy network congestion, for the rest of your billing cycle. If you want to buy more Priority Access data, you can, at the cost of 25 cents per GB, and any data used between 11PM and 7AM doesn't count towards your Priority Access tally.

"This announcement comes off the back of a recent article by ArsTechnica, showing that Starlink's median download speed has dropped to 62Mbps in Q2 of 2022 as the network struggles under the load of increased subscriber numbers."

If the service presently only provides 62 megabits of speed today and now the company is introducing data caps to slow it even further from 7AM until 11PM, I am no longer interested.

The MyHeritage Blog tells a story that fascinates me:

Angelina B., a 53-year-old MyHeritage user from Augsburg, Germany, grew up believing that her birth father was Spanish and had died fighting in the Vietnam War. Her son gave her a DNA test as a gift, and not only did she discover the truth about her heritage — she found her father… alive and well.

You can read the full story and view photos at: https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/11/i-was-told-my-dad-died-at-war-i-found-him-through-myheritage-dna-and-hes-alive/

This article is not about any of the "normal" topics of this newsletter: genealogy, history, current affairs, DNA, and related topics. However, it is a important article that I believe all computer-owning citizens should be aware of.

The following announcement was written by the Better Business Bureau:

BBB Scam Tracker online tool saved consumers $31.4 million in 2021 alone, according to BBB Institute estimates.

The BBB Institute for Marketplace Trust (BBB Institute) is partnering with Amazon and Capital One to help people learn about scams, report them, and avoid losing money and/or personal information by enhancing the capabilities of the BBB Scam Tracker online reporting tool.

The new features make it easier for consumers to identify scams and report them while arming partners with more robust data on scammers to better protect consumers.

“BBB Scam Tracker was launched in 2015 and its impact has been significant,” said Melissa Lanning Trumpower, executive director of BBB Institute, the Better Business Bureau’s educational foundation. “By our estimates, BBB Scam Tracker saved consumers $31.4 million in 2021 alone. Partnering with Amazon and Capital One enables us to expand the impact of this platform.”

“Our partnership with the Better Business Bureau and support of the enhanced Scam Tracker tool highlights our focus on helping consumers and earning their trust,” said Sarah Strauss, Head of Customer Service and Strategy at Capital One. “Educating consumers on how to better protect themselves from scams and what to do if they think they’ve been a scam victim is crucial in the fight against bad actors.”

“Amazon is committed to protecting our customers from scams and helping them protect themselves,” said Kathy Sheehan, vice president and associate general counsel at Amazon. “We’re grateful to support the work of consumer advocates like the Better Business Bureau. Better data on attempted scams—whether consumers report them directly to us or through tools like Scam Tracker—will help identify the bad actors behind these fraudulent schemes and bring them to justice.”

The new BBB Scam Tracker provides an improved customer experience and enhanced data capabilities for partners to collaborate on fighting scams.

The BBB Scam Tracker makes it easier for consumers to report scams via mobile or desktop. It includes a new guided questionnaire that makes it quick and easy to report a scam. Consumers can now review and edit their reports before submission, and then share the report with friends and family via social media or email. They also have the option to receive updates about the constantly evolving tactics that scammers use.

In addition, an upgraded search function enables consumers to search scams in the tool by URL, email address, phone number and more. BBB Scam Tracker reports are also accessible via broader online searches, expanding the reach of the platform and helpful information to others who may be searching for help.

Additional features include an API and system-generated report functionality that enables scam data sharing with fraud-fighting partners. Updated back-end technology improves the speed of the tool and allows for future enhancements to be made.

BBB Institute will continue to make upgrades to Scam Tracker to meet the growing needs of consumers that lose money to scams, particularly the older demographic groups who are more susceptible to fraud.

Amazon and Capital One are both BBB Accredited Businesses. Amazon has been BBB Accredited since 1996. Capital One has been BBB Accredited since 1995. With their support of this project, Amazon and Capital One become members of the BBB Corporate Trust Council, a coalition of select companies that join with BBB Institute to build a trustworthy marketplace by providing their expertise, resources, and funding support.

Questions about the project or how to get involved should be directed to the BBB Institute at Institute@IABBB.org.

Here is a list of all of this week's articles, all of them available here at https://eogn.com:

(+) Who Will Inherit Your Bitcoins or Other Digital Currency?

Announcing a DNA Test Promotion from MyHeritage!

Using DNA to Solve Cold Cases Just Got a Lot Easier, Thanks to Math

Nearly 50 Years After Murder, the ‘Lady of the Dunes’ Is Identified Thanks to DNA and Genetic Genealogy

Romano Lecture Explores the Myths and Realities of Immigration

Collaborative Project Identifies Nearly 1,000 Slave Transactions in Macon, Georgia From 1823-65

New WorldCat.org Connects Genealogy Enthusiasts, Educators, and Historians to the World’s Libraries

New Hampshire Set To Pilot Voting Machines That Use Open-Source Software

Woman Given Up for Adoption in Australia is Reunited 60 Years Later With British Family She Never Knew She Had

It’s Not Too Late to Submit Your Ideas for the 2030 Census!

HouseNovel Looks to Crowdsource Home History

Canadian Photo Archive Based in Mississauga at Risk of Closing Without Help From the Public

Shambellie House Museum of Costume

Step Into Your Scottish Roots With New Findmypast Records

New Fairfield, Iowa Genealogy Group to Meet at Library

Amazon Drive is Ending December 31, 2023

Is Satellite Internet the Answer to a Presently Unreliable Internet Connection?

Amazon Drive is Ending December 31, 2023

Scientists say using math to sort through DNA could help investigators put stubborn cold cases to rest. The approach combines the relatively new field of forensic genetic genealogy – solving crime by charting out DNA-based family trees – with increasing computational power to speed up and simplify this complex form of investigation

In a new paper recently published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, researchers from Stanford University, California-based Identifinders, and the DNA Doe Project explain how they developed a new mathematical model to help investigators greatly narrow down their giant pools of genetic candidates: 

”We formulate a program that – given the list of matches and their genetic distances to the unknown target – chooses the best decision at each point in time: which match to investigate, which set of potential most recent common ancestors to descend from, or whether to terminate the investigation.” 

By using a decision tree to optimize the candidate search, the researchers say their new process improves the existing process for forensic genetic genealogy by a factor of 10. They can also use this protocol to pull relevant matches even from large pools with a low likelihood of success. 

In fact, the new algorithm is so effective that researchers say it “can solve a case with a 7,500-person family tree around 94% of the time,” compared to only 4% of the time with the current method, according to a Stanford University press release. Basically, it’s a great way to speed up and enrich the research investigators are already doing – like turning your regular bicycle into an e-bike. 

You can read a lot more of the details in an article published in the 4StateNews web site at: https://tinyurl.com/3mnfwzbh.

I am sure you know by now that this newsletter is sponsored by MyHeritage. I was surprised (and delighted) this morning to learn that the company is now offering DNA tests at a very low price: $39 U.S. plus shipping. (The normal price is $89 plus shipping.)

Please note how simple the test is:

During those 4 weeks, MyHeritage will:

...search for people whose DNA matches yours: your relatives. Our DNA Matching technology reveals the percentage of DNA you share with your matches, showing you how closely related you are. You can connect with your newly found relatives to learn more about your family and discover shared ancestors.

Click on the above icon to see all the details of this special offer.