Saturday, May 06, 2017

Perhaps my Computer Security students could offer a few suggestions?  It looks like we should expect something similar in all future elections. 
Emmanuel Macron's campaign hacked on eve of French election
The French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron has been targeted by a “massive and coordinated” hacking attack just hours before voters go to the polls, according to his campaign team.
Macron, who opinion polls suggest should win Sunday’s vote by 60% to his rival Marine Le Pen’s 40%, was unable to respond to the alleged attack because of a ban on electioneering in the run up to the opening of polling stations.
Tens of thousands of internal emails and other documents, some said to be false, were released online overnight on Friday as the midnight deadline to halt campaigning passed.
   On Saturday morning, France’s presidential electoral authority, the CNCCEP, asked the media to avoid publishing information from the leaked documents and reminded them of their responsibilities given the seriousness of the election.
“The publishing of false information falls under the law, particularly criminal law,” it wrote.
Neither candidate could comment on the hacking because of the ban on communications and polls before the polling stations open at 8am on Sunday.
   Around nine gigabytes of data was posted by a user called EMLEAKS to the document-sharing site Pastebin that allows anonymous posting.  It was not immediately clear who was responsible.
   The En Marche! statement said the data consisted of “diverse documents, such as emails, accounting documents and contracts” hacked several weeks ago from the personal and professional accounts of some of the movement’s staffers.

(Related). 
Illinois Public Radio reports:
The State Board of Elections says hackers gained access to the information of 80-thousand Illinois voters — including their social security numbers and driver’s licenses.
Elections officials say hackers had access to Illinois’ system for nearly three weeks before they were detected.  They did get access to personal information, but officials say that’s about it. [So, no big deal?  Bob] 
Senator Michael Hastings from Tinley Park says the source of the breach matches an address the FBI has linked to Russian state security.  He says future elections could be in danger.
Read more on WSIU.
[From the article: 
“I don’t know why they selected Illinois.  Perhaps they tried other states and weren’t able to get in, they just happened to find the hole in our dike, so to speak.”  [Perhaps they looked at every state and your site was the easiest to breach?  Bob] 

(Related).
Germany challenges Russia over alleged cyberattacks,
The head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency accused Russian rivals of gathering large amounts of political data in cyber attacks and said it was up to the Kremlin to decide whether it wanted to put it to use ahead of Germany's September elections.
Moscow denies it has in any way been involved in cyber attacks on the German political establishment.


Jobs for my Computer Security students?
Growth in Cyber Fraud Attacks Outpacing Growth of Transactions: Report
The United States is the world's primary target for cyber fraud attacks.  Europe has emerged as the major source of attacks, now accounting for 50% more attacks than the US.  The growth in attacks is outpacing the growth of transactions; and in a 90-day period, 130 million fraud attacks were detected.
These details come from the ThreatMetrix Cybercrime Report Q1 2017 (PDF).


One possible Computer Security future.
Security automation is maturing, but many firms not ready for adoption
The security automation industry is still in its infancy, with most vendors just a year or two old, but there are already some promising technologies that enterprises can put to use -- if they have already laid the required ground work.
   According to a survey the research firm conducted last fall, 91 percent of companies said that the time and effort required for manual processes limits their incident response effectiveness, and the same number are actively trying to increase their staffs.
   "Two years ago, nobody knew about this technology," said Oltsik.  "Last year, I saw it a lot more.  Now we're seeing budget line items for it, and we also see a lot of venture capitalist investment in this space as well."
   "It's definitely not a buy it and plug it in scenario," he said.  "There's definitely ground work that needs to be done.  If you plug bad data into an automated system, all you're going to do is make bad decisions faster."
In addition, many companies don't actually know what their processes are, and may not yet have well-defined playbooks, he said.


Interesting.  Perhaps people do care about ethics?
Office of Government Ethics now handling voluminous info requests from public
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on May 5, 2017
Quartz – “Trump’s administration has been widely criticized for its lack of transparency, and demands for information from the public, press, and Congress have gone through the roof.  The OGE has already received five times the amount of Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests that they usually get in a full fiscal year—with five months left to go…  Trump has claimed that his refusal to comply with ethics norms like releasing his tax returns are issues that only journalists “care about.”  However, an NPR analysis of inquiries to the OGE found that phone calls from the public, not FOIAs from media agencies, increased the most—calls were up more than 5,000% this fiscal year compared to the average since 2009.  On top of that, there have been almost six times the usual number of requests for information from members of Congress, NPR reported.”


Now I believe AI is ubiquitous.
How to get Google’s artificial intelligence on the Raspberry Pi
   Google has teamed up with the Raspberry Pi foundation to create a new hardware add-on for Raspberry Pi called the ‘Voice Kit’.


Voice Kit is a fully open source reference project that includes Voice Hardware Accessory on Top (HAT) which contains electronics components for audio capture and playback, connectors for the dual mic daughter board and speaker, GPIO pins to connect low-voltage components like micro-servos and sensors, and an optional barrel connector for dedicated power supply.
   Those who are more ambitious can also run Android Things on the Voice Kit, turning it into a fully functional prototype to build their own commercial IoT products.
   If you want the kit, Google is giving it away with the latest issues of MagPi magazine.  If you don’t want to subscribe to the magazine, you can sign-up for the waiting list to just get the hardware unit from Google.



Perhaps my Computer Security students could offer a few suggestions?  It looks like we should expect something similar in all future elections. 
Emmanuel Macron's campaign hacked on eve of French election
The French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron has been targeted by a “massive and coordinated” hacking attack just hours before voters go to the polls, according to his campaign team.
Macron, who opinion polls suggest should win Sunday’s vote by 60% to his rival Marine Le Pen’s 40%, was unable to respond to the alleged attack because of a ban on electioneering in the run up to the opening of polling stations.
Tens of thousands of internal emails and other documents, some said to be false, were released online overnight on Friday as the midnight deadline to halt campaigning passed.
   On Saturday morning, France’s presidential electoral authority, the CNCCEP, asked the media to avoid publishing information from the leaked documents and reminded them of their responsibilities given the seriousness of the election.
“The publishing of false information falls under the law, particularly criminal law,” it wrote.
Neither candidate could comment on the hacking because of the ban on communications and polls before the polling stations open at 8am on Sunday.
   Around nine gigabytes of data was posted by a user called EMLEAKS to the document-sharing site Pastebin that allows anonymous posting.  It was not immediately clear who was responsible.
   The En Marche! statement said the data consisted of “diverse documents, such as emails, accounting documents and contracts” hacked several weeks ago from the personal and professional accounts of some of the movement’s staffers.

(Related). 
Illinois Public Radio reports:
The State Board of Elections says hackers gained access to the information of 80-thousand Illinois voters — including their social security numbers and driver’s licenses.
Elections officials say hackers had access to Illinois’ system for nearly three weeks before they were detected.  They did get access to personal information, but officials say that’s about it. [So, no big deal?  Bob] 
Senator Michael Hastings from Tinley Park says the source of the breach matches an address the FBI has linked to Russian state security.  He says future elections could be in danger.
Read more on WSIU.
[From the article: 
“I don’t know why they selected Illinois.  Perhaps they tried other states and weren’t able to get in, they just happened to find the hole in our dike, so to speak.”  [Perhaps they looked at every state and your site was the easiest to breach?  Bob] 

(Related).
Germany challenges Russia over alleged cyberattacks,
The head of Germany's domestic intelligence agency accused Russian rivals of gathering large amounts of political data in cyber attacks and said it was up to the Kremlin to decide whether it wanted to put it to use ahead of Germany's September elections.
Moscow denies it has in any way been involved in cyber attacks on the German political establishment.


Jobs for my Computer Security students?
Growth in Cyber Fraud Attacks Outpacing Growth of Transactions: Report
The United States is the world's primary target for cyber fraud attacks.  Europe has emerged as the major source of attacks, now accounting for 50% more attacks than the US.  The growth in attacks is outpacing the growth of transactions; and in a 90-day period, 130 million fraud attacks were detected.
These details come from the ThreatMetrix Cybercrime Report Q1 2017 (PDF).


One possible Computer Security future.
Security automation is maturing, but many firms not ready for adoption
The security automation industry is still in its infancy, with most vendors just a year or two old, but there are already some promising technologies that enterprises can put to use -- if they have already laid the required ground work.
   According to a survey the research firm conducted last fall, 91 percent of companies said that the time and effort required for manual processes limits their incident response effectiveness, and the same number are actively trying to increase their staffs.
   "Two years ago, nobody knew about this technology," said Oltsik.  "Last year, I saw it a lot more.  Now we're seeing budget line items for it, and we also see a lot of venture capitalist investment in this space as well."
   "It's definitely not a buy it and plug it in scenario," he said.  "There's definitely ground work that needs to be done.  If you plug bad data into an automated system, all you're going to do is make bad decisions faster."
In addition, many companies don't actually know what their processes are, and may not yet have well-defined playbooks, he said.


Interesting.  Perhaps people do care about ethics?
Office of Government Ethics now handling voluminous info requests from public
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on May 5, 2017
Quartz – “Trump’s administration has been widely criticized for its lack of transparency, and demands for information from the public, press, and Congress have gone through the roof.  The OGE has already received five times the amount of Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests that they usually get in a full fiscal year—with five months left to go…  Trump has claimed that his refusal to comply with ethics norms like releasing his tax returns are issues that only journalists “care about.”  However, an NPR analysis of inquiries to the OGE found that phone calls from the public, not FOIAs from media agencies, increased the most—calls were up more than 5,000% this fiscal year compared to the average since 2009.  On top of that, there have been almost six times the usual number of requests for information from members of Congress, NPR reported.”


Now I believe AI is ubiquitous.
How to get Google’s artificial intelligence on the Raspberry Pi
   Google has teamed up with the Raspberry Pi foundation to create a new hardware add-on for Raspberry Pi called the ‘Voice Kit’.


Voice Kit is a fully open source reference project that includes Voice Hardware Accessory on Top (HAT) which contains electronics components for audio capture and playback, connectors for the dual mic daughter board and speaker, GPIO pins to connect low-voltage components like micro-servos and sensors, and an optional barrel connector for dedicated power supply.
   Those who are more ambitious can also run Android Things on the Voice Kit, turning it into a fully functional prototype to build their own commercial IoT products.
   If you want the kit, Google is giving it away with the latest issues of MagPi magazine.  If you don’t want to subscribe to the magazine, you can sign-up for the waiting list to just get the hardware unit from Google.

Friday, May 05, 2017

This is a biggie, so pay attention! 
After years of warnings, mobile network hackers exploit SS7 flaws to drain bank accounts
   O2-Telefonica in Germany has confirmed to Süddeutsche Zeitung that some of its customers have had their bank accounts drained using a two-stage attack that exploits SS7.
In other words, thieves exploited SS7 to intercept two-factor authentication codes sent to online banking customers, allowing them to empty their accounts.  The thefts occurred over the past few months, according to multiple sources.
In 2014, researchers demonstrated that SS7, which was created in the 1980s by telcos to allow cellular and some landline networks to interconnect and exchange data, is fundamentally flawed.  Someone with internal access to a telco – such as a hacker or a corrupt employee – can get access to any other carrier's backend in the world, via SS7, to track a phone's location, read or redirect messages, and even listen to calls.


Future job security for my Computer Security students?
Security company G Data says that a new piece of Android malware is discovered every 10 seconds.  At this rate, the company is predicting that there will be 3,500,000 new malicious Android files by the end of the year.
The company said that the risk was heightened by the fact that only a small minority of users are on the latest version of Android …


Not a surprise.
Eyragon Eidam reports:
Young and old alike, Facebook is where millions of people around the world share details of their lives that might have gone unshared 13 years ago.  And if the recently released Facebook report on government requests for this data is any indication, law enforcement agencies within the United States are very interested in what the public is doing.
The biannual look at the nuts and bolts of these requests, published by the social media company April 27, tells us that authorities are more aware than ever of the value that social media data holds.
Read more on GovTech.


“We can, therefore we must!”
Joe Cadillic writes:
An article in Muckrock reveals that the California Department of Justice (CDOJ) is using facial recognition cameras to spy on everyone.
The CDOJ spent close to one million dollars ($850K) to install NEC’s NeoFace system everywhere.
According to the article, the CDOJ has been spying on everyone since April 26th., 2016.
What’s even worse is the CDOJ is paying NEC $650,000 every year in ‘support fees’.  Which means Calif. taxpayers are paying $650K a year for the privilege of being spied on.
Read more on MassPrivateI.
[From the MassPrivateI article:  
According to page 8 of NEC's, ICJIS document, when the contractors were finished with the installation they had to destroy all evidence (documents) of their collaboration with the CDOJ.


“Friendly” surveillance?  “Useful” surveillance?  “Surveillance by any other name would stink!” (With apologies to Shakespeare)  How would my students do it? 
Wal-Mart Wants to Know When Your Milk Is About to Expire
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is thinking about using sensor technologies to track how much detergent a family has used or when milk is about to expire, according to a patent application made public Thursday, a sign the retailer is exploring new ways to fend off Amazon.com Inc.
The system proposed by the retailer could use sensors in homes and attached to products like toothpaste, milk or razors to trigger automatic delivery of another box or suggest related products to buy, all while collecting consumer behavior data to tailor marketing, says the application on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website.

(Related).  “We don’t need those little recorders auto insurers plug into your dashboard to see how safely you drive.  You face records and displays everything.” 
How your selfie could affect your life insurance
A selfie reveals more than whether it's a good hair day.  Facial lines and contours, droops and dark spots could indicate how well you're aging, and, when paired with other data, could someday help determine whether you qualify for life insurance.
   Several life insurance companies are testing Lapetus technology that uses facial analytics and other data to estimate life expectancy, he says.  (Lapetus would not disclose the names of companies testing its product.)  Insurers use life expectancy estimates to make policy approval and pricing decisions.  Lapetus says its product, Chronos, would enable a customer to buy life insurance online in as little as 10 minutes without taking a life insurance medical exam.


When it comes to finding and removing propaganda, how much effort is appropriate? 
Victims from the 2015 San Bernardino shooting are suing tech companies for neglect
Surviving relatives of three people killed in the 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, are taking Facebook, Twitter, and Google to court, alleging they failed to clamp down on terrorist propaganda on their sites.
According to court documents cited by KABC-TV, the lawsuit alleges that the companies allowed people who sympathized with terror groups to spread propaganda, raise funds, and help recruit others.  
   Facebook defended its policies in a statement to KABC: "There is no place on Facebook for groups that engage in terrorist activity or for content that expresses support for such activity, and we take swift action to remove this content when it's reported to us," a statement read.
Twitter also claims that nearly 380,000 accounts were suspended for terrorist-related violations in the last six months of 2016, KABC reported.


Can my students learn to work with AI?
How artificial intelligence will affect your job
   Consider just a few of the AI-driven options already available:
A company can provide a job description, and AI will collect and crunch data from a variety of sources to find people with the right talents, with experience to match—candidates who might never have thought of applying to the company, and whom the company might never have thought of seeking out.
Another AI service lets companies analyze workers’ email to tell if they’re feeling unhappy about their job, so bosses can give them more attention before their performance takes a nose dive or they start doing things that harm the company.
Meanwhile, if companies are worried about turnover, they can use AI to find employees who may be likely to jump ship based on variables such as the length of time they’ve been in the job, their physical distance from teammates or how many managers they’ve had.
   These systems are fairly new, and we really don’t know yet whether they make decisions that are as good as or better than human managers.  And it would be difficult to devise a foolproof way to test that.
And the biggest caveat: The AI systems’ thirst for data can lead employers to push the boundaries of workers’ privacy.  It is incumbent upon managers to use them wisely.


Because we desperately need another social network? 
   Mastodon, a new open-source social network that is focused on the user.  What you want to see, what you want to ignore, what you want to share — these things are all governed by granular controls, meaning you retain complete control over what is seen.
If you head to mastodon.social to sign up, you’ll find that there’s more than one Mastodon.  While they’re all connected, the various instances of Mastodon (all running on separate servers, administered by volunteers donating spare server resources) offer different experiences.


I’m not sure what this means.  Should I be amused or worried?  Is laptop usage similar? 
Report: Smartphone owners are using 9 apps per day, 30 per month
Smartphone users are spending more time in apps than in years past, and now access over 30 apps on a monthly basis, according to a new report from App Annie out this week.  These 30 apps work out to being roughly one-third to one-half of the apps users have installed on their smartphones.  And using those apps is a daily habit, as people now launch an average of at least 9 apps per day, the report found.


Perspective.  “What’s good for General Bullmoose is good for the U.S.A.”  So, what does Amazon think is good for it? 
Drone home: Amazon to triple R&D staff at Cambridge base
Amazon is to more than triple its research and development team in Cambridge working on tech innovations such as its Alexa digital assistant, delivery drones and Echo smart speaker.
The US online retailer is opening a new building in the city with room for 400 experts in mathematical modelling, speech science, machine learning and “knowledge engineering”.


Perspective.
More Than Half of Americans Have Cut Landline Phone Service
The trend to drop landlines has been growing over the last decade alongside the growth in mobile phone use, according to semi-annual surveys performed by the Centers for Disease Control, which wants to monitor how to contact people for future surveys.  But it wasn't until the end of 2016 that a majority of all households relied solely on mobile phones.
In the CDC survey for the second half of 2016, 50.8% of households had only mobile service, up from 48.3% a year earlier.  Another 39.4% of households had both types of service and 6.5% had landlines only.  The survey, released on Thursday, found 3.2% of homes had no phone connection of any kind.


Perspective.  Or, as my wife said, “Huh.”
Crooks Are After the Grease From Your French Fries
   Stealing old vegetable oil that’s been used to cook chicken nuggets and french fries sounds a little gross.  But a black market for the golden gunk is growing as U.S. refiners process record amounts of grease to comply with government mandates for renewable fuels.  Last year, 1.4 billion pounds (635,000 metric tons) were turned into biodiesel -- or 3.84 million pounds a day.
   All that demand growth has impacted prices.  The benchmark for yellow grease this week was around 25 cents a pound, which is more than triple what it was in April 2000, U.S. Department of Agriculture data show.  The commodity got as high as 47.75 cents in 2011, when crude oil was over $100 a barrel and the pump price of gasoline was almost $4 a gallon.


For my students.  This concept seems to confuse them.  They think any company they’ve heard of must be profitable.


One for the toolkit.  
There are many ways to watch online videos, but this post isn’t about watching YouTube or Vimeo videos in the normal way.  Instead, we’re going to watch them frame-by-frame and in slow motion.  There are two free web services that make this possible.  It’s up to you which one you use.

Thursday, May 04, 2017

Phunney thing about phishing – it works!
A Massive Google Docs Phish Might Have Stolen A Load Of Gmail Accounts
A lot of people are getting some suspicious looking emails in their Gmail today.
The malicious messages are coming from trusted contacts, asking them to open a Google Doc.  As soon as the recipient clicks through, they are asked to give away permissions to an app imitating Google Docs, namely the ability to read, send, delete and manage email, as well as manage contacts.  For the user, once they've clicked through, nothing happens.  But the attacker is effectively given access to people's Gmail.
   It's remarkably sophisticated and spreading like wildfire.  Given how many complaints Google is receiving on Twitter, it's likely a lot of people were affected.  For now, it looks like Google has shut the attack down by revoking the app and killing the phishing pages the attacker set up.
   There is, sadly, one big problem for victims who clicked through: the attacker could have automated their scam (likely, given how they carried out the illicit operation) and hoovered up all their Gmail already.  In this case, there's not much to be done other than hope nothing sensitive was stolen


Some of the money from the Bangladesh SWIFT hack was sent to casinos in the Philippines.  I wonder how they defend against hackers? 
China's High Rollers Are Phoning In Big Bets to Manila Casinos
In a VIP room reserved for high-spending gamblers at City of Dreams Manila casino in the Philippine capital, many of the players are nowhere to be seen.  They’re not even in the country. 
Instead, they’re placing bets by telephone, a practice banned in other gaming centers such as Singapore, Australia and Macau, but legal in the Philippines.  Young men and women sitting at tables at the casino, many from China and dressed in smart black uniforms, chat in Chinese over mobile-phone headsets, placing wagers on behalf of their long-distance clients.  Video cameras on the ceiling broadcast the action on the tables for gamblers who are watching, mostly from China.
Philippine casinos reported as much as 110 percent increases in VIP revenue from high-rollers -- from $27 billion in bets placed last year, and possibly far more if off-books betting were tallied.  Phone betting, also known as betting by proxy, has grown to account for as much as 85 percent of the business at some VIP rooms used by big spenders, according to people familiar with the operations who asked not to be identified as they’re not authorized to speak publicly.
   The casinos’ operations are raising the risks of money laundering, according to a U.S. government report in March.  And Philippines gambling operations are causing concern in China, where authorities have sought to halt billions of dollars worth of outflows that have pushed down the value of the currency and drained capital reserves.


Something all my students need to understand.
eDiscovery - An Enterprise Issue That Can't be Ignored
eDiscovery is a concept born from litigation. It describes the need to find and retain electronic data that might be required in litigation ― whether for the plaintiff, the defendant or a third party.  In recent years, eDiscovery has become considerably more complex.  Business is increasingly litigious; legal obligations such as freedom of information (FoIA) laws and Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) are generating new demands; and the sheer volume and diversity of corporate electronically stored information (ESI) is expanding dramatically.
   There is effectively no source of ESI that is exempt, whether that is in the cloud, on social media, or stored on employees’ personal devices.
“In short,” notes Osterman, “any electronic information that contains a business record, regardless of the tool that was used to create it or the venue in which it is stored, will potentially be subject to eDiscovery.


If all of the data is from public sources, would it be ethical to ignore it? 
Believe your employer doesn’t know about your legal problems? Think again
Companies hire a third party to scour public databases to make sure employees are not getting into legal trouble that would impact their jobs.  But is it ethical?
An employee gets stopped over the weekend for a DUI.  Unbeknownst to him once his name hits the police’s public database, his employer will know about it soon after – whether the conviction has any impact on the employee’s job performance or not.
That is just one scenario in which enterprises are checking up on their employees to make sure their private lives don’t impact the companies bottom lines.  It is not uncommon for companies to do background checks on prospective employees, but some businesses are carrying that through while employees still punch the clock.
Security company Endera explained that employers want to know if an employee is on a criminal watchlist, is booked or arrested, loses a key certificate, is in financial distress or is involved in a lawsuit.
   In Endera’s December survey of 278 business executives, fewer than 25 percent of companies proactively review current employees at risk.


The scary part is if NYPD really did not have this information.
David Lumb reports:
A think tank is suing the NYPD over its failure to reveal details about its secret facial recognition program.  Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology (CPT) alleges that the department hasn’t complied with New York state’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) by forking over information on the system, which the department started using to investigate crimes in 2011.  When groups submitted FOIL requests for training manuals and documentation, the NYPD insisted they didn’t have any, so CPT is taking the department to court.
Read more on engadget.


Interesting because of the author.
The Age of Misinformation
Jonathan Zittrain


Something my students should integrate into their “black drones?” 
Google Street View can now extract street names, numbers, and businesses to keep Maps up-to-date
Google has revealed that it’s combining new deep learning smarts with Street View to make it easier to automate the process of mapping new addresses for Google Maps.
   Google has turned to deep neural networks to automate the process of “reading” the content of images, and it says that its latest algorithm achieves an “84.2 percent accuracy on the challenging French Street Name Signs (FSNS) dataset,” according to a blog post, “significantly outperforming the previous state-of-the-art systems.”  Google has made the model publicly available through Tensorflow, the open-source machine learning software library developed by Google, on GitHub.


India has been good to Facebook, is this the best way to return the favor?
Facebook launches Express Wi-Fi in India, offers affordable, fast internet to millions
   The company says its local entrepreneur partners will sell data vouchers priced at Rs 10 to Rs 20 (15 to 30 cents) for a day-long access (Rs 200 to Rs 300 for a month).  The vouchers will be available to purchase through online and offline stores.
   India is the fastest growing market for Facebook.  As of last month, Facebook's marquee platform had 184 million monthly active users in the country, 50 percent of which return to the site every day.  The company's instant messaging and voice calling app WhatsApp also has over 200 million monthly active users in India.


Much of this growth is being attributed to President Trump’s tirades.  I guess subscribers are trying to avoid ‘fake news.’
New York Times adds 308,000 digital subscription in 1Q
The New York Times added a record number of digital subscribers last quarter, exciting investors who pushed the stock to an 11 percent gain in morning trading.
The Times added 308,000 digital subscribers in the first quarter — its best quarter since it began offering digital-only subscriptions in 2011.
   Sales of the Times’ print edition continued to decline, taking advertisers with it.  Print ad revenue fell about 18 percent from last year’s first quarter.


For all my students. 
   Did you know that there’s a built-in Windows app to teach you about these new features?
It’s called Tips and you can find it by searching it from the Start Menu.  The app collects useful Windows features and tutorials, and even works offline.
Scroll through the Topics tab to see if there’s a guide on something you want to change, or check out What’s New for big new Windows features.  The app also includes videos for some topics, helping visual learners.


Take my students, please.
The Future of Jobs and Jobs Training
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on May 3, 2017
Pew – May 3, 2017: The Future of Jobs and Jobs Training – “As robots, automation and artificial intelligence perform more tasks and there is massive disruption of jobs, experts say a wider array of education and skills-building programs will be created to meet new demands.  There are two uncertainties: Will well-prepared workers be able to keep up in the race with AI tools?  And will market capitalism survive?  Machines are eating humans’ jobs talents.  And it’s not just about jobs that are repetitive and low-skill.  Automation, robotics, algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI) in recent times have shown they can do equal or sometimes even better work than humans who are dermatologists, insurance claims adjusters, lawyers, seismic testers in oil fields, sports journalists and financial reporters, crew members on guided-missile destroyers, hiring managers, psychological testers, retail salespeople, and border patrol agents.  Moreover, there is growing anxiety that technology developments on the near horizon will crush the jobs of the millions who drive cars and trucks, analyze medical tests and data, perform middle management chores, dispense medicine, trade stocks and evaluate markets, fight on battlefields, perform government functions, and even replace those who program software – that is, the creators of algorithms…”


Perhaps Scott Adams has something to say about government surveillance?