As long as humans have access to email, phishing will work
… Last week,
countless Gmail users across the internet received the same phishing email at
the same time, inviting them to click a link to a Google Doc. All of the emails seemed to come from someone
the recipients knew. When they clicked
the link, then clicked again on a dialogue box asking them to allow access to
“Google Docs,” their full contacts list was used to send the same phishing
email to even more people. It’s not yet
clear whether the attack also installed malware once the link was clicked.
… one study shows
that, even when warned about the perils of phishing multiple times, people will
keep clicking those links.
The study was conducted in 2012 at Columbia University.
Researchers sent 2,000 phishing emails to students, faculty, and staff at the
school. Some contained offers for free
Apple iPads, others came with PDF attachments, and some asked the recipients to
provide their login credentials. The
iPad promotion was the most successful, and in the first round of emails, 176
recipients opened the emails and clicked the links within.
Those 176 people were then warned that they’d fallen for a
phishing attack, and told to not let it happen again. A few weeks later, the researchers sent
another round of phishing emails to those same people, and 10 of them let it
happen again. After another warning, and
a third batch of phishing emails was sent out, three people fell for it again. It wasn’t until the fourth round that no one
opened the emails.
Can Facebook close accounts as fast as my computer can add
them?
Gannett seeks FBI probe into fake Facebook followers
Gannett Co., the company that owns USA Today and more than
100 other local media organizations, has asked the FBI to investigate a slew of
fake Facebook accounts that followed the newspaper on the social media site.
The
presence of fake accounts was so large that it accounted for half of USA
Today's Facebook followers, amounting to millions of accounts,
according to the newspaper.
The request is the latest chapter in Facebook's ongoing
battle against phony users, accused of spreading spam and fake news articles.
… While fake
accounts appear all over Facebook, it is not clear why USA Today was the target
of particularly large numbers of phony users. [More gullible
or Trump voters? Bob]
A new term for me, but one that seems easier to
understand.
Credit Karma: Believe the hype for ‘artificial narrow
intelligence’
By giving away free credit scores to more than 60 million
people, Credit Karma upended the paid credit report market. And by offering free tax returns this year —
at the same time H&R Block and IBM Watson were bragging about
AI-powered tax filings — the company stormed the $8.9 billion tax preparation industry. Bold disruptions like this matter, but Credit
Karma’s effort to quietly assemble the massive trove of
information underpinning each of these moves may be even bolder.
Credit Karma works like this: Members supply personal
information (name, address, phone, social security number) to
receive credit scores and, if desired, to be matched with the best
credit card, personal loan, and auto loan offers, and to file their federal
income taxes — all for free. The company
gets paid a commission by the credit card and loan issuers, and it vows
it will never charge consumers.
… According to
Graciano, the company is able to serve consumers up-to-the-minute
recommendations for their financial decisions within 20 milliseconds. And to do this, the service relies not on
general artificial intelligence (AI) but on artificial narrow intelligence
(ANI).
… “AI is
definitely over-hyped. The promise of AI
is generalizable intelligence, the ability to not only learn but to reason, to
pattern match, to interact, and I think what we have today is best described as
artificial narrow intelligence. ANI is
actually amazing and deserving of the hype,” Graciano said, adding that ANI is
“very good at one very specific thing in a probabilistic fashion.” This means things like identifying a cat, but
also instances where there is a big set of data coming in and one specific
output coming out. “ANI is
transformational to do your business if you use it correctly,” Graciano said.
(Related). Clearly,
Dilbert needs better AI.
(Related). The
traditional definition of AI.
Google’s AI Plan Could Make The Co World’s Most Powerful
Entity
London-based brain-tech company DeepMind was founded in 2010
and acquired by Google in 2014 for more than $500 million. Right now, DeepMind has over 400 research
engineers and scientists, more than 250 of them with PhDs, making this pool of
human resources arguably the most formidable collection of scientific brain
power focused on a single subject: artificial intelligence.
The company’s mission involves a two-step process. First, they intend to solve intelligence by
understanding natural intelligence, then recreating it artificially. Second, they intend to use AI to solve
everything else.
Can my students explain how to do this profitably? You can bet I’ll ask them.
Google and Uber are learning money can’t buy them victory in
India’s brutal food-delivery wars
… Many of the
nascent companies that set up shop during food tech’s heyday in 2014 could not
deal with growing pains and started falling like dominoes in 2015
… In 2016, the
bloodbath continued. Food tech
investments plummeted from $500 million in 2015 to $80 million. Consolidation became the flavor of the season
… This year, as
food tech strives to get back on its feet, two Silicon Valley behemoths—Google
and Uber—have chosen to dance in the rain in India: Google launched Aero, a
restaurant delivery and home services platform, in early April. Uber followed suit on May 2, announcing that
its on-demand food-delivery arm UberEATS was going live.
The question is, will they ride the waves or will they go
under?
See students?
Warren Buffett agrees with me.
Warren Buffett Identifies What Went Wrong at Wells Fargo
How does a company that's had a sterling reputation since
the California Gold Rush in the 1850s sully its image after more than a century
and a half of prudent and profitable operations?
The answer in the case of Wells Fargo, says Warren
Buffett, is a combination of hubris and procrastination.
"At Wells Fargo, there were three very significant
mistakes, but there was one that dwarfs all the others," said Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway's
annual shareholder meeting. "At
some point if there's a major problem, the CEO gets wind of it, and the CEO has
to act. They didn't act when they
learned about it."
No political aspirations?
Learning from the failure of others?
Facebook’s Zuckerberg has spoken with Trump numerous times on
the phone: report
… He criticized
the president's executive orders on immigration, saying in January he is
"concerned" about the impact of recent executive orders signed by the
president. The president's travel ban
was unpopular with many firms in Silicon Valley.
“We need to keep this country safe, but we should do that
by focusing on people who actually pose a threat," he said in a post.
No comments:
Post a Comment