China is a bigger player than we thought?
Report:
Chinese government is behind a decade of hacks on software companies
… Researchers from various security
organizations have used a variety of names to assign responsibility
for the hacks, including LEAD, BARIUM, Wicked Panda, GREF, PassCV,
Axiom, and Winnti. In many cases, the researchers assumed the groups
were distinct and unaffiliated. According to a 49-page
report published Thursday, all of the attacks are the work of
Chinese government's intelligence apparatus, which the report's
authors dub the Winnti Umbrella. Researchers from 401TRG, the threat
research and analysis team at security company ProtectWise, based the
attribution on common network infrastructure, tactics, techniques,
and procedures used in the attacks as well as operational security
mistakes that revealed the possible location of individual members.
(Related)
Pentagon's
Cyber Command gets upgraded status, new leader
… Cyber Command was elevated on Friday to an
independent “unified command,” a bureaucratic change that for the
first time puts it on a par with nine other U.S. warfighting
commands.
The change is “an acknowledgement that this new
warfighting domain has come of age,” Deputy Defense Secretary
Patrick Shanahan said.
Unfortunately, some of my Computer Security
students think this is how the world operates.
Suspicions confirmed?
You Can’t
Opt Out Of Sharing Your Data, Even If You Didn’t Opt In
FiveThirtyEight:
“…Yonatan Zunger, a former Google privacy engineer, noted we’ve
known for a long time that one
person’s personal information is never just their own to share.
It’s the idea behind the old proverb, “Three may keep a secret
if two of them are dead.” And as far back as the 1960s, said
Jennifer Lynch, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, phone companies could help law enforcement collect a list
of all the numbers one phone line called and how long the calls
lasted. The phone records may help convict a guilty party, but they
also likely call police attention to the phone numbers, identities
and habits of people who may not have anything to do with the crime
being investigated. But the digital economy has changed things,
making the privacy of the commons easier to exploit and creating
stronger incentives to do so… Even if you do your searches from a
specialized browser, tape over all your webcams and monitor your
privacy settings without fail, your personal data has probably still
been collected, stored and used in ways you didn’t intend — and
don’t even know about. Companies
can even build a profile of a person from birth based entirely on
data-sharing choices made by others, said Salome Viljoen,
a lawyer and fellow with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and
Society at Harvard. Imagine new parents signing up for a loyalty
card at their local pharmacy and then filling all of their child’s
prescriptions there. The information collected every time they scan
that loyalty card adds up to something like a medical history, which
could later be sold to data brokers or combined with data bought from
brokers to paint a fuller picture of a person who never consented to
any of this… In fact, the privacy of the commons means that, in
some cases, your data is collected in ways you cannot reasonably
prevent, no matter how carefully you or anyone you know behaves.
Julie Cohen, a technology and law professor at Georgetown University. “There’s a lot of burden being put on individuals to have an understanding and mastery of something that’s so complex that it would be impossible for them to do what they need to do,” she said.
How to influence voters. Is this enough to
“steal” an election?
Cambridge
Analytica: how did it turn clicks into votes?
Whistleblower
Christopher Wylie explains the science behind Cambridge Analytica’s
mission to transform surveys and Facebook data into a political
messaging weapon
Oh joy. More government mandates.
California
to become first U.S. state mandating solar on new homes
… The California Energy Commission is
scheduled to vote Wednesday, May 9, on new energy standards mandating
most new homes have solar panels starting in 2020.
… The new energy standards add about $25,000
to $30,000 to the construction costs compared with homes built to the
2006 code, said C.R. Herro, Meritage’s vice president of
environmental affairs. Solar accounts for about $14,000 to $16,000
of that cost, with increased insulation and more efficient windows,
appliances, lighting and heating accounting for another $10,000 to
$15,000.
But that $25,000 to $30,000 will result in $50,000
to $60,000 in the owner’s reduced operating costs over the 25-year
life of the home’s solar system, Herro said.
Another very strange state…
New Jersey
Governor Vows to Restore Garden State’s Production Tax Credit
… In 2005 a New Jersey production incentive
was created to boost film and TV production throughout the state.
The program gave a 20% tax credit, but in 2010 Christie suspended the
incentive due to his dislike of the MTV reality show “Jersey
Shore.”
While the New Jersey Economic Development
Authority approved a $420,000 tax break for filming “Jersey Shore”
in the state in 2009 — the series’ inaugural season — Christie
reneged on the credit in 2011, arguing that the show about Snooki and
the gang tarnished the state’s reputation.
While “Jersey Shore” didn’t necessarily
place the state in the best light, Tax Credits Intl.’s Christine
Peluso said in 2014 that the series provided an undeniable economic
boost: Parking meter fee collection in the show’s Seaside Heights
setting jumped from $807,000 in 2007 to $1.3 million in 2010. In
addition, Peluso noted the reality show’s crew and fans helped the
local economy with the purchase of hotel rooms, car rentals,
catering, hardware, dry cleaning, rental fees and permit fees, among
other expenses.
Believe it or not, I’m a two spacer.
Remember
when we always put two spaces between sentences – there was a good
reason
Washington Post: One
space between each sentence, they said. Science just proved them
wrong.: “A paper published in the journal Attention,
Perception, & Psychophysics aims to settle the hotly debated
typographical question citing new research that made use of
eye-tracking equipment.” Please read this article directly as it
is written using fonts and spaces than span typewriters to early
computers up to the present use of fonts, and spaces. If nothing
else, it will take make you concentrate on an interesting matter that
has nothing whatsoever to do with current events – this alone is
worth the time. And, then you may decide whether you will continue
to use one or two spaces at the end of each sentence, but be sure to
read through to the end of the article, for the surprise!
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