Just a quick reminder: The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration will release the 1950 U.S. census records tomorrow (Friday) for the first time in 72 years. However, what is being released now is the raw (unedited and unindexed) data, not the nice and neat indexed data we have enjoyed in previous censuses (censi?). That comes later.

The 1950 US Census Community Project is a national collaborative effort that uses the Internet, artificial intelligence, and a massive volunteer workforce to make these census records searchable online. However, that will be built by the volunteers in the following weeks and will not be available tomorrow. In fact, YOU can help build these indexes.

The outcome of this amazing initiative benefits everyone. Not only will every page of the 1950 US census be digitally preserved forever (starting now), but the general public will soon have convenient access to volumes of rich historical information that could provide the missing links to their own family histories.

You can learn more about this voluntary indexing at:

https://blog.myheritage.com/2022/01/1950-census-release-is-coming-up-soon/

https://www.ancestry.com/corporate/blog/ancestry-apply-handwriting-recognition-artificial-intelligence-create-searchable-index-1950-us

https://www.familysearch.org/1950census/

https://www.archives.gov/research/census/1950

https://eogn.com/page-18080/12683626

and probably another dozen or more web sites. Use your favorite search engine to find them.

If you have not been paying attention to the news of the Russian-Ukrainian war, it probably is because you felt you were not affected. Unfortunately, that is not true for millions of computer users in countries all over the world. If you use Kaspersky antivirus software in your computer, please be aware that you should replace it... NOW!

Kaspersky antivirus software is produced by a Russian company. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission has warned that many Russian-written software products have recently been modified to collect personal information about the user (name, address, email address, installed software, and more) and to possibly create damage to the computer(s) being used.

There is no evidence that Kaspersky has done this. However, if the Russian government should order such spying capabilities be added in the future, Kaspersky will have no choice but to comply with that order. 

Kaspersky's products have already been banned from U.S.-government owned computers for several years.

WHAT IS A BACKUP?

A backup is a copy of all your important files — for example, your family genealogy, photos of your ancestors and your grandchildren, home videos, documents and emails. Instead of storing it all in one place (like your computer or smartphone), you keep a copy of everything somewhere safe.

Losing your files is way more common than you’d think.

• One small accident or failure could destroy all the important stuff you care about. For instance:
• 21 % of people have never made a backup
• 29% of data loss cases are caused by accident
• 113 phones are lost or stolen every minute of every day
• 30% of all computers are already infected with malware

Source of this information: https://worldbackupday.com/en

It’s time to actually take action. Get started today to better protect your data!

I normally post a message on the first day of each month, advising everyone to back up their files that day (or even more often). Because World Backup Day is today, I am publishing my monthly reminder one day early this month:

It is (almost) the First Day of the Month: Back Up Your Genealogy Files

Today (Actually, it is tomorrow) is the first day of the month, an excellent time to back up your genealogy files. Then test your backups!

Your backups aren't worth much unless you make a quick test by restoring a small file or two after the backup is completed.

Actually, you can make backups at any time. However, it is easier and safer if you have a specific schedule. The first day of the month is easy to remember, so I would suggest you back up your genealogy files at least on the first day of every month, if not more often. (My computers automatically make off-site backups of all new files every few minutes.)

Given the events of the past few months during the pandemic with genealogy websites laying off employees and cutting back on services, you now need backup copies of everything more than ever. What happens if the company that holds your online data either goes off line or simply deletes the service where your data is held? If you have copies of everything stored either in your own computer, what happens if you have a hard drive crash or other disaster? If you have one or more recent backup copies, such a loss would be inconvenient but not a disaster.

Of course, you might want to back up more than your genealogy files. Family photographs, your checkbook register, all sorts of word processing documents, email messages, and much more need to be backed up regularly. Why not do that on the first day of each month? or even more often?

If you are planning to attend the (live and in-person) conference of the NGS, to be held in Sacramento, California, you might want to register today (Thursday).

The following announcement was written by the (U.S.) National Genealogical Society:

Register Now for Early Bird Pricing Take advantage of the Early-Bird discount for the In-Person NGS 2022 Family History Conference in Sacramento, California. The discount ends at 11:59 p.m. ET tonight. You now have only a few hours left to save $50 on your registration. We look forward to seeing you for four days of: networking face-to-face at the first national conference in two years; enjoying local area tours, luncheons, receptions, and dinners thoughtfully planned by the California Genealogical Society; sharing ideas and discussing research; attending fascinating, educational lectures; discovering new goods and services for genealogists in the Expo Hall; and relaxing on the conference center’s outdoor terrace or at the city’s many outdoor courtyards. Best of all you don’t have to worry if you need to cancel your registration prior to 18 April. We will give you a complete refund, no questions asked, minus a $50 service fee. Once you register, make sure to book your hotel room. Have you already booked your hotel reservation? We recommend contacting the hotel to confirm that your reservation dates are correct. If you are holding multiple reservations or reservations at multiple hotels, we encourage you to solidify plans and release any dates or rooms that you will not be using. Room blocks are filling up fast and we want to make sure everyone is able to book at our discounted rates. For up-to-date information about conference hotels and COVID-19 policies and other rules, visit the conference website. Be sure to sign up for the NGS conference blog to receive conference news and announcements. Registration closes 18 April 2022. Register Now for Early Bird Pricing Founded in 1903, the National Genealogical Society inspires, connects, and leads the family history community by fostering collaboration and best practices in advocacy, education, preservation, and research. We enable people, cultures, and organizations to discover the past and create a lasting legacy. The Falls Church, Virginia, based nonprofit is the premier national society for everyone, from the beginner to the most advanced family historian.

The following announcement was written by the American Society of Genealogists (ASG):

Ian Watson of Burtenbach, Germany, has been awarded the first ASG Continuing Research Project Grant of $2500 for his work to bring transcriptions of Ipswich Deeds to public researchers.

Ipswich Deeds are the five volumes of land records kept at the northern Essex County registry from roughly 1640 to 1710. In their early years these volumes also contain registered wills, inventories, and court records. They are an important source on the early settlers of Ipswich, Newbury, Rowley, and nearby towns. The originals are at the Southern Essex Registry of Deeds in Salem, along with manuscript copies of volumes 1-3 which were made in the 1800s. FamilySearch has digitized microfilm of the manuscript copies of volumes 1-3 and the originals of volumes 4-5 (https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/74273). Building on the work of ASG Fellows George Freeman Sanborn Jr. and Jane Fletcher Fiske, who transcribed and initially indexed the first two volumes of Ipswich Deeds, Watson is updating the archaic media on which the transcriptions have been stored, converting from an obsolete text program to modern LaTeX files, and formatting and re-indexing the results for publication.

Ian Watson is author of the forthcoming Volume I of Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1636-1638, covering surnames beginning with A through Be. He is co-author with Kyle Hurst of Selected Ancestors of Nelson McMahon and Louise Rathbun published by Newbury Street Press in 2020, and he is a paid proofreader for the Association of Professional Genealogists Quarterly and the APG eNews. He preserved and reposted the Pruzhany Uyezd Research Society’s website at www.pruzh.org, which preserves material about the Pruzhany district Jewish diaspora. Watson’s most recent genealogical article is “The Dating of the Providence Civil Compact,” published in The American Genealogist, 91(2019-2020):165-189, 261-283.

For more information about the Grant Program and application forms, e-mail acwcrane@aol.com or write to Alicia Crane Williams, FASG, Chair, ASG Grant Committee, 4 White Trellis, Plymouth MA 02360

  

The following is a press release written by Sano Genetics (although I added bold text):

Sano Genetics, a healthtech start-up co-founded by three University of Cambridge genomics postgraduates, has raised USD11 million in a Series A funding round led by MMC Ventures, with further funding from Episode 1, Seedcamp and several angel investors.

These include Paul Forster, a co-founder and former CEO of Indeed, Paul Wicks, former VP of innovation at PatientsLikeMe, and Margo Georgiadis, the former CEO of Ancestry.com.

The startup has developed a software platform that connects patients living with rare and chronic conditions, such as Long Covid, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, directly with biotech and pharma companies leading personalised medicine research – a market worth USD52.4 billion in 2020 and predicted to reach USD112.8 billion by 2027.

It also offers its biotech and pharma clients the ability to power branded portals for participant recruitment and engagement, on a national or global scale.

Sano Genetics raised GBP500k in pre-seed funding in 2018, and GBP2.5 million in seed funding in 2020, which helped get the platform into the hands of more customers, including precision medicine developers BenevolentAI, ESCAPE Bio, and population-scale biobanks such as the NIHR BioResource.

This is a follow-up to yesterday's article, Russian Troops' Tendency to Talk on Unsecured Lines Is Proving Costly:

A new, free interactive course, Introduction to Cryptography, is now available. It will help students around the world get a grasp on the variety of topics this vast field offers. The Wolfram Language allows the course to deliver unique hands-on material and address questions such as “How can I secretly transmit information between two people?” and “How do cryptocurrencies operate without a central authority?”

You can start exploring the interactive course at https://www.wolfram.com/wolfram-u/introduction-to-cryptography/.

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is asking you to help submit name updates to the index using a transcription tool available on the 1950 census website, which will help improve the accuracy of the name index. More information will be made available upon release.

The American Heritage Center (AHC) has partnered with the Wyoming State Archives and the Wyoming State Historical Records Advisory Board (SHRAB) in order to secure the grant funding necessary for the project.

The funding, from the National Historic Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), will allow the AHC to hire a project archivist to coordinate the project. The project archivist will work alongside Wyoming records stewards to create an information network to connect institutions dedicated to preserving the state’s history.

You can learn more in an article by Brock Munoz published in the Branding Iron web site at: https://bit.ly/3Nz7W8C.

The bound and gagged body of Marise Ann Chiverella was still warm to the touch when police arrived at the refuse-strewn stripping hole in Hazle Township on the afternoon of March 18, 1964.

Yet decades would pass before the DNA technology needed to unmask the brutal murderer was finally invented. Last month, Pennsylvania State Police identified him as James Paul Forte, a bartender who died suddenly at work at the age of 38 on May 16, 1980.

The reveal was too late to bring Forte to justice, but it made headlines across the country and created a local wave of excitement about clearing cold cases. Within days, troopers began a crowdfunding effort to work another cold case, the Luzerne Foundation launched a cold-case fund and some lawmakers began calling for additional state funding to help clear unsolved murders.

"It's a great time to be an investigator right now — as long as they have the resources to use it," Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce said. "I could very easily see law enforcement agencies — at least the bigger ones — in the near future employing genealogists ... (to) narrow down the universe of population from everybody on earth or in the country or in the state to, now, maybe only 200 people."

But while law enforcement has seized on the technique, the practice remains controversial and has raised privacy concerns along with calls for increased regulation.

Police investigating crimes like murder or rape generally enter genetic profiles obtained from crime scenes to the FBI-maintained Combined DNA Index System — which contains more than 19 million profiles of convicted criminals and arrestees as well as forensic profiles — in an effort to identify offenders.

But if the trail goes cold via that route, forensic genealogy can give investigators another avenue to pursue.

By entering a genetic profile to commercial websites like GEDmatch or FamilyTreeDNA, investigators can seek out imperfect matches and identify an offender's relatives who have voluntarily submitted their genetic material for genealogical purposes.

The police can then zero in on the offender by studying the family tree and requesting exclusionary DNA samples from willing members.

Troopers used the same procedure and the same service — GEDmatch — to identify Forte as Chiverella's killer earlier this year.

The controversy comes into play because there are few laws regulating privacy on the commercial databases and many of the genetic testing sites have varying policies about data sharing.

"There are very legitimate privacy concerns here," Kreider said. "I think the vast majority of people who submit their data to these consumer databases are not thinking about it. They're not reading the fine print. They're just looking for some private information about their family."

You can read more in an article by James Halpin published in the Government Technology web site at: https://bit.ly/37ZzLX6.