Saturday, September 17, 2016

What makes Johnny stupid? 
Jon Marino reports:
A big Wall Street technology firm is being sued after allegedly falling for a run-of-the-mill email scam and wiring client funds to hackers.
SS&C Technologies, a $6 billion market capitalization company that bills itself as “the most comprehensive powerhouse of software technology in the financial services industry,” was duped by China-based hackers who sent sloppy emails to company staffers in order to trick them into releasing client money, according to a complaint.
Read more on CNBC.
[From the article:
The complaint from Tillage, a commodities investor, alleges SS&C Technologies, its fund administrator, ignored its own protocol, resulting in the lost funds.


Is there is a huge penalty for screwing up disclosure?  No.  But there should be.
Discussing an incident disclosed by Troy Hunt this week, Jeremy Kirk reports:
The handling of a recent data breach – the details of which are still unfolding – by Oakland, Calif.-based web services company Regpack provides a look into how the discovery and disclosure of a breach can turn into a real train wreck.
Read Jeremy’s article on BankInfoSecurity.


Ask them when they actually cracked the phone.  I’m guessing it was much earlier than they admit. 
FBI faces lawsuit for silence on iPhone 5c hack
The FBI’s refusal to reveal how it accessed an iPhone 5c from a San Bernardino mass shooter will face scrutiny in court.  USA Today’s parent company and two other news groups have filed a lawsuit against the agency, demanding it turn over the details.

In March, the FBI unlocked the passcode-protected iPhone through an unknown third party, for a reportedly large sum that the agency hasn’t officially disclosed.
The lack of details prompted USA Today to submit a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI, regarding the costs paid to the third-party contractor.  But in June, the FBI denied the request, claiming that the disclosure could interfere with law enforcement.
The agency denied similar FOIA requests from the Associated Press and Vice Media.  However, on Friday, the three news organizations filed a lawsuit, arguing the FBI had “no lawful basis” to reject the FOIA requests.
The news companies claim the public is entitled to know how much was spent to unlock the iPhone, and who the third-party contractor is.
   Friday’s lawsuit claims that the FBI effectively sanctioned a party to retain potentially dangerous technology.


When Michael Porter talks, people should be listening. 
Study – Political Dysfunction Makes America Less Competitive
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Sep 16, 2016
Dina Gerdeman – “The American economy is a mess, and our broken political system is largely to blame, according to a Harvard Business School US Competitiveness Project report released today.  Harvard’s Michael E. Porter, Jan W. Rivkin, and Mihir A. Desai say American economic performance peaked in the late 1990s and since then has experienced a lingering period of weakness, with slower than usual productivity growth, job growth, and investment growth.  The report, Problems Unsolved and a Nation Divided: The State of US Competitiveness in 2016, which contains an in-depth analysis of the American economy and the results of surveys of global business leaders and the general public, says the US is “failing the test of competitiveness.”  


Naturally this comes out right as my Data Management class ends.  Oh well, there are always more students to torture.
Accurately measuring enterprise value (EV) has never been more important or challenging. Even more so because firms are confronted by growing volumes of data, and the stakes implied in misinterpreting the value of that data have risen to new heights.
   For example, at the end of its 2015 fiscal year, Apple’s balance sheet stated tangible assets of $290 billion as a contribution to its annual revenues, with approximately $141 billion worth of intangible assets — a combination of intellectual capital, brand equity, and (investor and consumer) goodwill.  Using the same formula, Apple’s intangible assets in 2014 were $280 billion — or almost twice the value of its 2015 calculation.  By its own estimation, Apple had lost 50% of its intangible value over the previous 12 months, revealing the limits of using a simple intangible value calculation.


Perspective. I did not see this coming.
Microsoft just edged out Facebook and proved that it's changed in an important way
Since Satya Nadella took the CEO job at Microsoft in 2014, the company's views towards open source have evolved.  Microsoft has embraced open source, and even supports the open source Linux operating system on its Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform. 
And if you didn't believe the love is real, GitHub — the so-called "Facebook for programmers," and the hub of the open source world — released new stats today about which companies have the most people contributing code to their open source projects.
And Microsoft weighs in at #1, with 16,419 contributors, edging out Facebook with 15,682. 


Death by Pokémon – a whole new statistical category? 
Pokémon GO—A New Distraction for Drivers and Pedestrians
Pokémon GO, an augmented reality game, has swept the nation.  As players move, their avatar moves within the game, and players are then rewarded for collecting Pokémon placed in real-world locations.  By rewarding movement, the game incentivizes physical activity.  However, if players use their cars to search for Pokémon they negate any health benefit and incur serious risk.


Gee, they could have raised Trillions!
A Two-Mile Beer Pipeline Carries Belgium’s Lifeblood to Be Bottled
   The turn of a tap on Friday propelled the Belgian city into the future — and sent its citizens to the bar — as dignitaries and drinkers celebrated a momentous innovation: the world’s first beer pipeline.
   The project cost about 4 million euros, or $4.5 million.  But the brewery discovered an innovative way to raise the funds: promise donors free beer for life.


Perspective.  My students have already cut the cable.  Is this the new ‘favorite’ source for all forms of entertainment?
More than two million people watched Twitter’s NFL stream on Thursday night
   That was smaller than the digital audience Yahoo saw when it streamed an NFL game, also for free, last October (though Yahoo autoplayed that game on its homepage and most of its properties, including mail and Tumblr, so the comparison isn't clean at all).  It’s also well below the 48.1 million who tuned in to watch the game on TV, according to Nielsen.
Here are more relevant numbers, if you really want to compare Twitter’s reach vs. traditional TV: An average of 243,000 people were watching the game on Twitter at any given time, while CBS and the NFL network, which simulcast the game, reached an average of 15.4 million.


Something for my international students?
English forums
Learn English on the world's largest community of English teachers and students.


Something for those of us with skills?  Worth reading the article.
   Steemit is a new blockchain-based social media initiative that is challenging everything about the way we communicate ideas on social media.
   Steemit wants to change the dialogue around how content is created and shared online by paying the content creators (people like you and me) for posts on the platform.  Their theory is that decentralizing the platform by paying content creators and curators rewards good content — encouraging discussion and quality while keeping the focus and direction of the platform within the control of the users.


Why I love Saturday.
Hack Education Weekly News
   Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has reiterated his promise for free community college tuition for eligible high school graduates.
   Via Education Week’s Market Brief: “Closely Watched Lawsuit Has Implications for Open Ed. Resources Market.”  Great Minds is suing FedEx, contending that FedEx stores are in violation of the Creative Commons non-commercial licensing of its materials when they charge for photocopies of Great Minds’ curriculum.
   Via The New York Times: “As Amazon Arrives, the Campus Bookstore Is a Books Store No More.”
   Inside Higher Ed’s Carl Straumsheim looks at Indiana University’s eText initiative, which he says is “rapidly becoming the go-to way for students there to buy textbooks and other course materials.”
   UC San Francisco says it plans to outsource its IT operations to India.  But oh yes, kids, “everyone should learn to code” for job security.

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