A Data Visualization Newsletter

We know that our smartphone apps can track our movements. But just how often do they do so, and what are they doing with that information? The New York Time’s got a hold of user location data that was captured by an app, and found that it was much more extensive than one might expect. On average, the user’s location was being stored every 21 minutes, creating an extremely precise log of their day-to-day activities. That data was then sold to at least 75 companies to help them better understand their customers.

SpaceX successfully launched the Falcon Heavy rocket back in February, a major triumph for Elon Musk’s space company. But a lesser reported storyline surrounding the launch was the headache that it caused the airline industry. The FAA shut down the airspace around Cape Canaveral for several hours, causing hundreds of diversions and delays. As companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Rocket Lab expand their ambitions, balancing the interests of the airline and space industries will be a growing concern.

It’s no secret that life in 2018 is pretty different than it was in the 1980s, when Rubik’s cubes and Walkmans were all the rage. But just how different is life for those in your age group? The Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC) takes a stab at answering that question, showing that people in Australia are living longer, marrying older, and leading healthier lives.

As 2018 winds down, it’s time to reflect back on the biggest news stories of the year. In this interactive, Morning Consult pours back through data from its weekly surveys of roughly 100,000 registered voters to find the stories that resonated most. Spoiler: the Parkland shooting and George H.W. Bush’s death were among the headlines that reached the largest share of Americans.

Refugees may play an outsized role in America’s partisan politics, but the U.S. doesn’t really shoulder much of the responsibility for sheltering the world’s most vulnerable. It’s developing nations like Turkey, Pakistan, and Uganda who now take in the lion’s share of refugees globally according to data from the UN Refugee Agency. Axios breaks down where refugees migrated to in 2017.