Anything
that attracts your attention, also attracts the bad guys.
Cybercriminals
Ramp Up Activity Ahead of 2014 World Cup
Similar
to the Sochi 2014 Olympics and all other major sporting events before
it, the FIFA
World Cup 2014 in Brazil is being leveraged by cybercriminals and
scammers as a means to lure victims for their attacks.
…
Cybercriminals
are relying on the FIFA World Cup to trick users into installing
malware
on their computers. Trend Micro discovered
a campaign targeting customers of a Brazilian ticketing website,
where the attackers managed to obtain the personal details of the
site’s users and sent them fake raffle emails containing links to
the BANLOAD banking Trojan.
Trend
Micro’s researchers also stumbled
upon a BLADABINDI backdoor disguised as a FIFA World Cup streaming
application, and a piece of adware (ADW_INSTALLREX) disguised as a
key generator for the FIFA 14 video game.
[etc.,
etc., etc. Bob]
(Related)
More sites should do this!
The
'World Cup Starter Kit' and the Future of Twitter
…
Twitter has created "starter kits" for each of the sides
playing the Mundial. Each one has about 90 Twitter accounts that
help you follow what's happening in real time. If you were a new
user and didn't know how to follow soccer on the service, this would
instantly put you in the real-time networks that talk about the
sport.
And
thus the debate continues...
“In
short, we hold that cell
site location information is within the subscriber’s reasonable
expectation of privacy. The obtaining of that data
without a warrant is a Fourth Amendment violation.”
–
from a Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit decision released
today in U.S.
v. Davis.
I
bet they keep trying...
Another
Fair Use Victory for Book Scanning in HathiTrust
by
Sabrina I.
Pacifici on June 11, 2014
EFF
- “Fair use enjoyed a major victory in court today. In Authors
Guild v. HathiTrust, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals handed
down a decision
that strongly underscores a fair use justification for a
major book scanning program. For those counting along at home,
today’s decision marks another in a serious streak of judicial
findings of fair use for mass book digitization, including Authors
Guild v. Google, Cambridge University Press v. Becker,
and the
district court opinion in the HathiTrust
case itself. Given that
consistent fair use record for book digitization, today’s ruling
might not be totally surprising. Still,
the text of the opinion is encouraging, and reflects a court that
respects the Constitutional purpose of copyright as a tool to promote
the progress of science and the useful arts—not a blunt instrument
for rightsholders to regulate all downstream uses.
HathiTrust
was set up by several research universities to operate a digital
library containing electronic scans of the universities’ books
(Google provided the scans as part of its Google Books project). The
Authors Guild took issue with three practices that HathiTrust engages
in: a full-text database that returns the book name and page number
for matching search results; a service to make text available in
formats accessible to print-disabled people; and a long-term archive
to preserve books that might become unavailable during the term of
their copyright restrictions. With respect to the full-text
database, the court found that although a copy of the entire work is
made, the purpose of a
full-text searchable database is so different from that of the
underlying works that the use must be considered transformative.
In fact, the court wrote, “the creation of a full‐text
searchable database is a quintessentially transformative use”.
[Thanks to Gloria Miccioli]
Here's
a thing that won't be on the Internet of Things and therefore won't
be hackable. (No scenarios like the current “24”)
Unfortunately, it won't be controllable remotely either. The
programming has to work the first time and every time in every
possible situation.
Autonomous
Weapons and Human Responsibilities
by
Sabrina I.
Pacifici on June 11, 2014
Beard,
Jack M., Autonomous Weapons and Human Responsibilities (June 9,
2014). 45 Georgetown Journal of International Law 617 (2014).
Available for download at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2447968
“Although
remote-controlled robots flying over the Middle East and Central Asia
now dominate reports on new military technologies, robots that are
capable of detecting, identifying, and killing enemies on their own
are quietly but steadily
moving from the theoretical to the practical. The
enormous difficulty in assigning responsibilities to humans and
states for the actions of these machines grows with their increasing
autonomy. These developments implicate serious legal, ethical, and
societal concerns. This Article focuses on the accountability of
states and underlying human responsibilities for autonomous weapons
under International Humanitarian Law or the Law of Armed Conflict.
After reviewing the evolution of autonomous weapon systems and
diminishing human involvement in these systems along a continuum of
autonomy, this Article argues that the elusive search for individual
culpability for the actions of autonomous weapons foreshadows
fundamental problems in assigning responsibility to states for the
actions of these machines. It further argues that the central legal
requirement relevant to determining accountability (especially for
violation of the most important international legal obligations
protecting the civilian population in armed conflicts) is human
judgment. Access to effective human judgment already appears to be
emerging as the deciding factor in establishing practical
restrictions and framing legal concerns with respect to the
deployment of the most advanced autonomous weapons.”
(Related)
Thinking about your tools...
The
Eccentric Genius Whose Time May Have Finally Come (Again)
…
Wiener is best known as the inventor of “cybernetics,” a fertile
combination of mathematics and engineering that paved the way for
modern automation and inspired innovation in a host of other fields.
He was also one of the first theorists to identify information as the
lingua franca of organisms as well as machines, a shared language
capable of crossing the boundaries between them.
Wiener
was 69 when he died of a heart attack in 1964. He’s come to mind
recently because a conference dedicated to reclaiming his reputation
is scheduled in Boston later this month. Sponsored by the Institute
of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Norbert
Wiener in the 21st Century will feature a series of
papers and panels demonstrating not only that Wiener was ahead of his
time, but that now his time has finally come. Indeed, engineers
who are well grounded in cybernetic theory will tell you
technology is just catching up with ideas Wiener proposed more than
half a century ago.
…
Yet, much sooner and more thoroughly than could have been expected,
memory of Wiener and of his contributions faded. Several reasons
account for his eclipse. One is that during the height of his
career, Wiener refused, for ethical reasons, to accept research
contracts from the military or from corporations seeking to exploit
his ideas. Since the military and corporations were the main sources
of research support, Wiener’s defiance hindered his progress during
a period of unprecedented technological advance. Besides nuclear
weapons, Wiener was perhaps most worried about the technology he was
most directly responsible for developing: automation. Sooner than
most, he recognized how businesses could use it at the expense of
labor, and how eager they were to do so. "Those who suffer from
a power complex," he wrote in 1950, "find the mechanization
of man a simple way to realize their ambitions."
Strange
things on the Internet of Things, but will this technology prevent
riots? If so, it's priceless.
New
technology aims to rid World Cup of 'ghost goals'
In
1966, British soccer legend Geoff Hurst booted a right-foot shot
against Germany in the World Cup championship game. The ball struck
the top crossbar and rifled down near the goal line before spinning
out.
Confusion
ensued; it was impossible to tell if the ball had crossed the plane.
Eventually,
officials awarded the goal, and England secured its first and only
World Cup victory.
Try
not to remind German fans.
…
According to official estimates, FIFA is paying a small German
start-up nearly $3.5 million to operate its new goal-line technology
in the 2014
World Cup, which kicks off Thursday in Brazil.
The
company, called GoalControl,
would install 14 cameras
in each of the 12 World Cup stadiums that triangulate the motion of
the ball with maximum precision: up
to 500 images per second.
With
that tracking, plus sensors on the goal line, GoalControl can
instantly alert a referee when the ball crosses the line. There's
no need to consult a replay booth or another official; the referee in
charge merely looks at their smartwatch.
Who
is doing this? Note to students. I probably will not answer your
emails in 15 minutes.
–
Reply right away to emails. With relative timestamps in Gmail, you
can see how long an email has been sitting in your inbox. Reply
while the time is still green. Timestamps turn yellow after 15
minutes and red after an hour. Extensions are available for both
Chrome and Firefox.
Could
be a good way to nag my students!
–
will say anything you type in their own voice. Just type a message
to create fun, animated, talking stickers to send to your friends or
post on social networks. Talkz also supports huge groups and has
Voice, Pictures, Doodles, Video, Location, and Music. Talkz supports
user-generated talking stickers, so there’s no end to your
creativity.
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