Site documents biggest data breaches in history
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Dec 29, 2016
Biggest data breaches in history – Dave Albaugh – Data
breaches, 2004-2016 – “With a history of more than 5,000 data breaches over the
last 12 years, it’s a safe bet that any electronic information relating to you
is either at risk or has already been compromised at least once. As James Comey, the director of the FBI
puts it, “there are two kinds of companies. Those that have been hacked and those that
don’t know yet that they’ve been hacked. Data breaches that leaked over 10 million
records between 2004 and 2006. Note that
“records” is a loose term and does not necessarily refer to individual user
accounts….”
Also: Computer Security related. Do we ever learn?
Woodrow Hartzog and Danielle Citron write about what we
can learn from the recent settlement with Ashley Madison by the FTC and state
attorneys general.
They discuss:
- Privacy is for everyone
- Harm from a data breach is about much more than identity theft
- Privacy law and policy must confront the design of technologies
- The FTC’s cooperation with state attorneys general and the Canadian government is a good thing for privacy enforcement
- This is the first FTC complaint involving lying bots. There will be more.
Read their discussion of these points on Ars
Technica.
For my Data Management students.
Tesla's autonomous-car efforts use big data no other carmaker
has
In the automotive industry, Tesla is a leader in many
respects—but it's hardly head-and-shoulders above the rest when it comes to
self-driving cars.
The Silicon Valley automaker is developing fully
autonomous cars, but it's part of a crowded field that includes many other
automakers and a handful of rich tech companies as well.
Still, Tesla's technical approach may give it an advantage
over its numerous competitors.
… Autopilot does
not provide fully autonomous driving at present, but since Tesla began
installing the system in its electric cars in late 2015, the system has
delivered data on
1.3 billion miles of driving, according to Bloomberg.
This data is valuable because it allows Tesla's engineers
to fine-tune the algorithms that control its cars' active-safety systems, which
will underpin future full autonomy.
… Since the launch
of Autopilot, Tesla has discussed "fleet learning" as a way to
improve the system, and has set up a vast data funnel to enable that.
Even cars that are not equipped to use Autopilot transmit
travel data back to Tesla, once the owner gives permission.
The 1.3-billion-mile figure quoted by Bloomberg includes
miles driven in cars equipped with Autopilot even if it's switched off, because
those cars transmit data on driver behavior just the same.
… Because its
development efforts are linked to production cars in the hands of customers
driving hundreds of thousands of miles a day, Tesla has access to substantially more data than competitors
whose only data is from limited test programs in a few dozen prototype
vehicles.
Since 2009, the Google self-driving cars have covered 2
million real-world miles with human overseers onboard, according to Morgan
Stanley.
Interesting. No
hacking back? Keep our abilities hidden
until we need them?
Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking
President Obama struck back at Russia
on Thursday for its efforts to influence the 2016 election, ejecting 35
suspected Russian intelligence operatives from the United States and imposing
sanctions on Russia’s two leading intelligence services.
The
administration also penalized four top officers of one of those services, the
powerful military intelligence unit known as the G.R.U.
(Related).
Vladimir Putin Won’t Expel U.S. Diplomats as Russian Foreign
Minister Urged
In a head-spinning turn of events on Friday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia
announced that he would not retaliate against the United States’ expulsion of
Russian diplomats and new sanctions — hours after his foreign minister
recommended doing just that.
Mr. Putin,
apparently betting on improved relations with the next American president, said
he would not eject 35 diplomats or close any diplomatic facilities, a proposed
tit-for-tat response to actions taken by the Obama administration a day
earlier.
(Related). The
Joint Analysis Report
(Related). Even
more…
Being the biggest does not mean you are the careful-est.
Run-D.M.C. Sues Amazon, Walmart for More Than $50 Million
Over Trademark Infringement
Run-D.M.C. has
filed a lawsuit against Walmart, Amazon, Jet and a number of others for more
than $50 million over alleged trademark infringement on products using the
iconic hip-hop group's name and logo without permission.
The suit was filed Thursday (Dec. 29) in New York and also
names a number of the companies selling the products through those online
marketplaces, as well as 20 John Does, saying they "trade on the goodwill
of RUN-DMC." It explains
that some of the allegedly infringing products claim to be "RUN-DMC
styled products" such as fedora hats and square-frame sunglasses that use
the group's name in their title or description but not the logo. Meanwhile, others more blatantly use the
group's famous logo on shirts, purses, patches and other products.
… Last month,
Amazon filed its first ever
lawsuits against merchants selling counterfeit items on its marketplace.
New term: “tweeter-in-chief”
WSJ – How to Tweet if You’re in Government and Not Donald
Trump
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Dec 29, 2016
How to
Tweet if You’re in Government and Not Donald Trump: Write, Review, Edit, Seek
Approval, Wait, Edit, (Maybe) Send (sub. re’d) – by Aruna
Viswanatha and Natalie Andrews: “In 2010, a top Justice Department official
told the agency’s divisions they could set up Twitter accounts and he convened
a ‘working group’ to provide guidance on what, when and how the agency could
tweet. They’re still working on it.
President-elect Donald Trump is poised to become the first tweeter-in-chief, an
executive comfortable making pronouncements on policy or companies with 140
characters. He will assume control of a
federal bureaucracy that tries very hard to do the exact opposite, one that
muffles its social-media presence under pages of rules to avoid making waves…”
Perspective. Podcast.
How Technology Shocked the Entertainment Industry
… We have online
platforms like Netflix, which not only have become very powerful when it comes
to content distribution, but they’re also now getting into content production. They have deep financial pockets and the
ability to know their consumers because they have consumer-specific data. They know what people are watching, at what
time, what they like, what they don’t like. They’re using that information in both
creating the content and distributing the content.
… How the labels
and artists are making money is so different than 15 years ago. Fifteen years ago, CDs made the money and
concerts were the way you advertise the CDs. Today, concerts make the money and CDs are a
way to advertise concerts. It’s
literally a 360-degree change.
(Related).
Old-Line Companies Like Wal-Mart and GM Acquire Taste for
Tech Startups
In late 2015, a commuter-shuttle startup caught the
attention of Ford Motor Co.executive John
Casesa, who runs global strategy for the auto maker. The startup, called Chariot, was growing fast
and had an interesting crowdsourced reservation model, a staffer told him,
suggesting a meeting.
One year and a $65 million deal later, the San Francisco
van service is owned by the Detroit giant—part of an acquisition-fueled push
into new areas as an uncertain and perhaps driverless future looms.
“We are in
an era in our industry where M&A will be a frequently used instrument,”
Mr. Casesa said.
Stuff for our programing students? (Not for our Math students)
Great Ideas for Using Scratch in Elementary Math - Best of
2016
Last month I received an email from Jeffery Gordon in
which he shared with me an online
binary calculator that he created for his students. When I asked him for more information about
the calculator and what he was teaching in general, he shared another cool
resource with me. That resource is ScratchMath.
ScratchMath, written by Jeffery Gordon, is a free ebook filled with examples of using
Scratch in elementary school math classes. The examples are Scratch models
through which students can learn concepts dealing with place values,
multiplication, and division. Each example includes the steps that need to be
completed in Scratch to create models like a multiplication array, a
divisibility checker, and factoring game.
For folks who are not familiar with Scratch, it is a free programming tool designed for
students between the ages of eight and sixteen although it has been
successfully used by younger and older students. Scratch uses a visual interface that helps
students see how the parts of a program fit together to create a final product.
Students create programs by dragging and
dropping commands into a sequence. Programs that students create can vary from
simple animations to complex multiplayer games. Visit the Scratch Educators
page to learn more about how to use it in your classroom.
Keeping up.
OED New words list December 2016
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Dec 29, 2016
Oxford English Dictionary – New words list December 2016 –
List of new word entries [note – YouTuber is a new word that was added to the OED,
joining Brexit and hackathon, among many others.
In addition to revised versions of Second Edition entries,
these ranges contain the following new entries:
Another toy for my geeks?
Blynk is an Internet of
Things (IoT) service designed to make remote control and reading sensor data
from your devices as quick and easy as possible. In this article we will cover exactly what
Blynk is, how it works, and provide two short example projects on different
uses of the service with NodeMCU and Raspberry Pi
development boards.
A research tool for all my students.
New on LLRX – What is RSS and How to Use it Effectively
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Dec 29, 2016
Via LLRX – What
is RSS and How to Use it Effectively – This guide by Pete Weiss – expert
listserv manager, communication device integrator, and newswire
publisher/editor – provides researchers with an overview of why you should use
RSS, along with step by step examples of how
to implement this application which should be part of your knowledge
gathering and current awareness toolkit.
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