All posts tagged: Backlog

NotebookLM’s audio overviews turned my research paper backlog into actually useful summaries

NotebookLM’s audio overviews turned my research paper backlog into actually useful summaries

Published by skeptic

When you’re in academia, reading research papers is part of everyday life — at least it is supposed to be. You may be working on a paper or thesis and want to do a thorough literature review. Or you may just want to catch up with your area of interest. These scholarly works are written for specialists, with dense language that makes regular reading a challenge even when the topic is familiar. Yet, there’s a bigger, more common problem. Related I hooked Obsidian to a local LLM and it beats NotebookLM at its own game My notes now talk back and it’s terrifyingly useful. I was saving papers more than I was understanding them My “read later” system was doing all the reading I’m sure most people working in academia have either a messy Google Drive folder with hundreds of papers or a Zotero library that feels vaguely familiar after a few months. Every time you come across something you think you love, you download the paper or add it to Zotero or Mendeley. But …

Mariska Hargitay’s Rape Kit Backlog Campaign Reaches All 50 States

Mariska Hargitay’s Rape Kit Backlog Campaign Reaches All 50 States

Published by Daniella Wilson

Mariska Hargitay‘s Joyful Heart Foundation has achieved a milestone more than a decade in the making. On Friday, it was announced that after 16 years, the End the Backlog campaign has successfully driven rape kit reform legislation in all 50 states, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. Maine became the final state to enact at least one of the campaign’s six pillars of reform, marking a nationwide breakthrough in efforts to eliminate the backlog of untested rape kits and help prevent future backlogs. According to End the Backlog, the six pillars of rape kit reform include mandating the submission and testing of all backlogged kits, requiring the testing of all new kits, creating statewide rape kit tracking systems, conducting statewide inventories, ensuring survivors have access to the status of their kits, and securing dedicated funding to support submission, testing and tracking. Hargitay — best known for playing Captain Olivia Benson on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit — founded the Joyful Heart Foundation in 2004 after her work on the NBC series deepened her awareness of …

Growing backlog in immigration applications, NPR analysis shows : NPR

Growing backlog in immigration applications, NPR analysis shows : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

In June 2025, people line up outside the Los Angeles Federal Building, which houses offices for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Damian Dovarganes/AP hide caption toggle caption Damian Dovarganes/AP Stay up to date with our Politics newsletter, sent weekly. Millions of immigrants are stuck in legal limbo, waiting to change their legal status under the second Trump administration, an NPR analysis shows, leaving more of them vulnerable to deportation. Since the start of last year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has taken longer and longer to process applications, meaning an increasing number of people wait months without confirmation that their application was received — let alone reviewed. An NPR review of data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the DHS agency that processes and approves immigration applications, shows that nearly 12 million applications for immigration services, such as applying for citizenship, a work permit or other permission to live in the U.S., await a decision. The ballooning number of pending requests, which saw a jump in the …

How did the courts backlog get so bad?

How did the courts backlog get so bad?

Published by Sam Flores

Across England and Wales, delays in the Crown Courts have become an endemic feature of the justice system. Criminal trials are scheduled years after alleged offences, with some in London now being listed as far ahead as 2029. The most recent official statistics show that as of autumn 2025, the backlog in the Crown Court, which deals with the most serious criminal cases, had reached nearly 80,000 outstanding cases. That’s more than double the pre-pandemic figure of around 38,000 in 2019 (which itself represented a substantial backlog). The scale of the backlog is what has prompted the government’s contentious proposals to reduce the use of jury trials. The courts and tribunals bill recently passed its second reading in the Commons, with dozens of Labour MPs abstaining. Delays are significantly longer in the Crown Court than in the magistrates’ courts, which deal with lower-level offending. Magistrates deal with high-volume, relatively straightforward offences such as motoring offences, minor assaults or low value thefts, with higher rates of guilty pleas and no juries. Court delays have consequences for …

SAP Shares Plunge Most Since 2020 As Cloud Backlog Miss Amid AI Worries

SAP Shares Plunge Most Since 2020 As Cloud Backlog Miss Amid AI Worries

Published by Jenni Sidey

SAP SE shares in Europe plunged the most since late 2020, as Wall Street analysts told clients the enterprise software company’s 2026 guidance appeared underwhelming relative to elevated expectations. The 25% growth in the current cloud backlog on a constant-currency basis was not enough to spark investor enthusiasm. As a result, shares in Frankfurt plunged 11% to 174.88 – the largest intraday decline since Oct. 26, 2020. Shares are now at their lowest level since mid-2024. Klein told investors during third-quarter earnings in October that 25% growth would be viewed as a “disappointment.” He has shifted SAP away from traditional on-premise software licenses toward cloud-based subscription offerings. The move was initially applauded by investors and helped propel the stock to a record high last year. More recently, however, the rise of AI-powered programming tools has sparked new concerns about what this new competitive space could mean for enterprise software vendors. Here is Goldman analyst Sean Johnstone’s first take on SAP’s earnings and outlook. SAP (not good enough and not sure call will have done enough …