The Impact of Oracle v. Rimini on Data Professionals and the Public

To view the full article I wrote about the Impact of Oracle v. Rimini on Data Professionals and the Public, please visit:

http://blogs.ischool.berkeley.edu/w231/2018/01/23/oracle-v-rimini/

Of particular interest to Data Scientists was the question of whether using “bots and scrapers” for automated collection of data was deemed a violation of the law if it violated a Terms of Service.  An important tool in the Data Scientists’ and Data Engineers’ toolbox, automated scraping scripts provide for efficient accumulation of data.  Further, many individuals cite instances of Terms of Service being too broad or vague for interpretation.

Among the applications of these scraped data, it subsequently can be used for academic research or used to develop novel products and services that connect disparate sets of information and reduce information asymmetries across consumer populations (for example, search engines or price tracking).  On the other hand, sometimes malicious bots can become burdensome to a company’s website and impact or impede their operations.

My startup, Jobwell, was fortunate to have been profiled on the I School Medium Page

Please feel free to check us out:  https://medium.com/@BerkeleyISchool/jobwell-aims-to-help-individuals-find-jobs-better-and-faster-b012f4afef59

Master of Information and Data Science student Daniel Kent is currently participating in the LAUNCH — UC Startup Accelerator for Jobwell, a job search organizer that allows jobseekers to take control of their job search. Kent tells us more as the team prepares for LAUNCH Demo Day, where they will present their product to investors and VCs.

 

How to Connect with a Representative from the Covered California Website

In 2018, Covered California has served over 3.4 million consumers since its creation in 2014.  Much of the administration of one’s account is available online; the service has a chat functionality, but it is restricted to queries that are not case specific.

Iin situations when its necessary to speak to a representative, it can be difficult to navigate the phone tree that you reach when you call their 1-800 contact number.

After speaking with Rebecca, a customer care representative, she provided me with the strategy of navigating the tree to speak to a live human.

After dialing the 1800 number cited, she said:

To get through to a representative, select option #1 for English, then select option #2 for help with an online account. At this point, you’ll need to wait until the recording finishes then select option #0 to indicate that none of the information in the recording helped such that you need to talk to a representative.

Hope this is useful!