Saturday, June 17, 2017

Those who do not study the history of Privacy failures are doomed to repeat them?  I remind you of the Lower Merion School District debacle.  Look back in my archive to the second article: http://centennial-man.blogspot.com/2010_02_14_archive.html
Cory Doctorow reports:
A majority of the Rhode Island school districts with “1-1” programs where each student is issued a laptop have a blanket policy of spying on the students and everything they do on their laptops, during, before and after school hours, on or off school premises, without any evidence (or even suspicion ) of wrongdoing.
The schools analogize this to school locker searches, in which students are denied any Fourth Amendment protections.  But that (very dubious) principle is being stretched beyond the breaking point, as school lockers are in schools, whereas these laptop searches are being carried out remotely, everywhere, anywhere.
Read more on BoingBoing.


I have got to write a book.  “Why your Security Manger thinks you are stupid!” 
David Bisson writes:
Phishers are targeting PayPal users not only for their login credentials but also for selfies of them holding their ID cards.
This scam campaign starts off like so many others.  A user gets an attack email falsely warning them that PayPal has suspended their account “for security precaution.”
“Hi there,
“Our technical support and customer department has recently suspected activities in your account.
“Therefore we have decided to temporarly suspend your account until investigating your recent activiies.  Such things can happen if you clicked a suspecious link on social media or gave your password to someone else
“We’re always concerned about our customers security so please help us recover your account by following the link below.
The phishing email gives itself away by its spelling errors and strange grammatical usage. But it does get some things right.
Read more on GrahamCluley.


If North Korea ever partnered with a real master criminal, I’d be worried.  Those guys really know how to steal. 
North Korea’s Sloppy, Chaotic Cyberattacks Also Make Perfect Sense
   Analysts at security firms, including Symantec and Kaspersky, have tied the Lazarus group to bank breaches targeting Poland, Vietnam, and more than a dozen other countries.  One attack last year swiped $81 million from Bangladesh's account at the New York Federal Reserve.
The motive makes sense: North Korea needs the money.  As a result of its human rights abuses, nuclear brinksmanship, and sociopathic aggression toward its neighbors, the country faces crippling trade sanctions.  Before its hacking spree, it had already resorted to selling weapons to other rogue nations, and even run its own human trafficking and methamphetamine production operations.  Cybercrime represents just another lucrative income stream for a shameless, impoverished government.


What makes a monopoly?  Being big?  Being better?  Smarter? 
When Does Amazon Become a Monopoly?
The behemoth’s acquisition of Whole Foods is making some wonder whether the firm is just too big.
On Friday morning, Amazon announced it was buying Whole Foods Market for more than $13 billion.  About an hour later, Amazon’s stock had risen by about 3 percent, adding $14 billion to its value.
Amazon basically bought the country’s sixth-largest grocery store for free.
   As the country’s biggest online retailer of cleaning supplies and home goods, Amazon competes with Walmart, Target, and Bed, Bath & Beyond.  As a clothing and shoe retailer, it competes with DSW, Foot Locker, and Gap. As a distributor of music, books, and television, it competes with Apple, Netflix, and HBO.  In the past decade, Amazon has also purchased the web’s biggest independent online shoe store, its biggest independent online diaper store, and its biggest independent online comics store.
And it is successful on nearly all of those fronts.  Last year, Amazon sold six times as much online as Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Nordstrom, Home Depot, Macy’s, Kohl’s, and Costco did combined.  Amazon also generated 30 percent of all U.S. retail sales growth, online or offline.


Perspective.  I know a brand-new PhD in AI, perhaps it’s time for a startup?  
Intel and Microsoft’s latest investment binge shows AI land grab is intensifying
Intel and Microsoft have been on something of an artificial intelligence (AI) investment binge of late, with the chip and software giants announcing a slew of deals this week via their respective VC arms — Intel Capital and Microsoft Ventures.


“Soon, all lawyers will be automated.”  Or at least required to take a few technology classes? 
Justin Kan confirms $10.5 million in funding for his legal tech startup Atrium LTS
   “Why don’t law firms use project management software to track where they are in the process of completing a deal and let customers see that?” Kan asked.  But more important than the way in which law firms interact with customers, Kan sees an opportunity to streamline the work that is done in-house to make it more manageable for lawyers and those who work at law firms.
“If you think about corporate legal work that’s done today, some part of it is art and then some of it is repeatable processes,” Kan told me.  It’s those repeatable processes that the Atrium team believes it can innovate on to make things more efficient.


Extreme price increases lead to new entries in the market – always.
Lower-cost alternative to EpiPen OK’d by FDA
U.S. regulators have approved new competition for EpiPen, the emergency allergy medicine that made Mylan a poster child for pharmaceutical company greed.
   Currently, EpiPens cost about $630 to $700 without insurance, while the new generic version retails for about $225 to $425.


Isn’t this Munchausen by proxy?  Is that sufficient to put her in a mental institution rather than prison?  I’ll be curious to see the sentence.
Michelle Carter text suicide trial verdict: Guilty
A young Massachusetts woman accused of sending her boyfriend dozens of text messages urging him to kill himself when they were teenagers was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter Friday.

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