Observations on articles I read to keep current about technology. My interests are: Privacy, security, business, the computer industry, and geeky stuff that catches my eye.
I don't think I have an agenda beyond my own amusement.
Note that I lump all my comments into a single post. This is not a typical BLOG technique, It's just an indication that I'm lazy.
Monday, November 14, 2016
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Sunday, November 13, 2016
If Admin accounts are compromised, repair can be
difficult. (How’s that for
understatement?)
Earlier today a hacker using the
handle @CyberZeist announced
a breach on the Washington state government website.
Today’s breach was announced on
twitter and posted to pastebin [link removed by DataBreaches.net], and it
contained 59 administrator accounts with user email addresses, encrypted
passwords and salts.
At least two Dutch hospitals have
stopped using a pre-natal test for Down’s and other syndromes after it emerged
the Belgian firm carrying out the testing is using the women’s private
information for commercial purposes.
Broadcaster BNR reported
that the Gendia laboratory is approaching women who said on their health
records there is cancer in their families about cancer screening. This, BNR says, is against both Dutch and EU
privacy regulations. Amsterdam’s OLVG
hospital group and the Westfries Gasthuis in Hoorn have both stopped working
with the Belgian firm. ‘We do not want
to be associated with this practice in any way whatsoever,’ the OLVG group said
in a statement.
So…. is Gendia the only lab that conducts such testing? Will the hospitals that have stopped working
with them still be able to provide testing to women?
As to
Gendia’s point that it has a duty to let women know, that’s an
interesting approach/defense – that they have an obligation to ignore or
de-prioritize privacy in service of health.But it doesn’t fly with me. Shouldn’t the women’s primary care physicians
or existing health providers be informing them of such testing if they think
their patient should have it?
I respect what the hospitals are doing and the Dutch and
EU privacy regulations. This is one of
those situations where consent or opt-in is important to protect privacy. That said, how often do our primary care
physicians fail to refer us for necessary tests or treatment evaluations? Might you actually be grateful at some point
that a lab or commercial entity contacted you about their services, even if
they shouldn’t have?
Just something else to think about….
What preventive measures do insurers require before they
insure? Notice that they knew how to upgrade
their security after the attack.Why not
before?
There’s an update to a ransomware attack on Lansing
Board of Water & Light that had been reported back in May. The Lansing
State Journal reported this week:
The Lansing Board of Water &
Light paid a $25,000 ransom to unlock its internal communications systems after
they were disabled by a cyberattack last spring, officials said Tuesday.
BWL General Manager Dick Peffley
pegged the cost of responding to the emergency, including the ransom and technology upgrades to prevent future attacks,
at $2.4 million. All but $500,000 of
those costs are covered by insurance, he said.
” … Paying the ransom was
distasteful and disgusting, but sadly necessary,” Peffley said during a meeting
of the BWL Board of Commissioners’ Committee of the Whole on Tuesday night. Paying the
ransom was “the only action we could take to unlock our system and free it from
the ransomware.”
Wells Fargo Found Potential Issues With Its Ethics Line
Wells Fargo & Co. Chief Executive Timothy Sloan said
during a town-hall meeting Thursday that the bank found “some instances” where
reports by employees of bad behavior to its ethics line weren’t handled
appropriately, according to remarks reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. This follows allegations that some employees
faced retaliation for reporting issues that later came to light as part of its sales-practices
scandal.
…Mr. Sloan also
said in the town hall that the bank launched its first ethics and integrity
survey last month, with responses from more than 7,000 employees who identified
“areas for improvement.”
Interesting.Rust
is not a big problem here in Colorado, but in New Jersey “Rust Happens!”
Toyota to settle U.S. truck rust lawsuit for up to $3.4
billion
Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T)
has agreed to a settlement of up to $3.4 billion for a federal class action
brought by U.S. owners of pickup trucks and SUVs whose frames could rust
through, plaintiffs lawyers have said in court papers.
The proposed settlement
covers about 1.5 million Tacoma compact pickups, Tundra full-size pickups and
Sequoia SUVs alleged to have received inadequate rust protection that could
lead to corrosion serious enough to jeopardize their structural integrity,
according to court papers.
HP fight about $11 billion takeover sees former Autonomy
executive indicted on felony charges
Hewlett Packard complained bitterly that it had been
deceived in its disastrous $11 billion acquisition of enterprise software firm
Autonomy in 2011. This week, federal
prosecutors echoed that claim, indicting Autonomy’s former chief financial
officer on felony fraud charges.
…After buying the
British company, HP was immediately criticized by analysts for paying too much.
A year later, HP announced it had
written down $8.8 billion of value in Autonomy, more than $5 billion of that
because of alleged accounting improprieties and misrepresentation of finances
by Autonomy.Last year, HP reached
a $100 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit by shareholders claiming
investors were harmed by HP’s pre-purchase hype of the acquisition.
Banks Lure $30 Billion Deposits as Indians Struggle to Find
Cash
Indian government’s surprise move to ban high-denomination
banknotes on Nov. 8 has seen lenders lure 2 trillion rupees ($29.8 billion), as
customers across the nation queue for hours to deposit the old bills.
The decision has also put tremendous pressure on the
banking system to replenish the funds, as the banned bills
accounted for 86 percent of money in circulation.
…Lenders have
been caught out by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s unexpected and widely-praised
announcement of the withdrawal of 500-rupee and 1,000-rupee notes, part of a
crackdown on tax evasion and the underground economy.
We’ll probably take a couple of Quarters to turn this into
a course.
…Laura Bennett, Development Manager
for Watson Application Starter Kits, demonstrated the new Developers
Starter Kits, a collection of REST APIs, SDKs, and samples that use
cognitive computing to solve complex problems.The SDKs have been expanded and users can now code in variety of
languages, including SQL, Python, R, Java, and Scala, Node.js, i/OS or Android.
In addition, more than 20 ecosystem
partner APIs are available to extend the platform services including Twilio,
Box, IoT, Insights for Twitter, Weather Insights, Cloudant DB, and Facebook
Messenger.
Starter kits are robust, including not only the expected
documentation and samples, but models pre-trained for common use cases,
notebooks, utilities, bundled APIs, and code templates available on GitHub.
For example, the News Intelligence Kit uses
AlchemyLanguage, a collection of APIs that analyze text through natural
language processing, AlchemyDataNews, a query that scours the world’s news
sources and blogs like a database, and Tone Analyer, a tool that gauges the
reaction of commenters. This Kit allows
users to process Web and social media to not only understand important topics
but how people feel about those topics. You
can launch the app or check out the code on GitHub here.
Anything to help my students! (If number 20 worked, I’d be the learningest
guy in the world!)
At least three major airlines report computer outages
…Most customers
complained on social media that they couldn't access the airline’s app or
website to book a reservation or check into their flights around the
country.
Just before 1 p.m. Friday, the major airline advised
customers that the issue was resolved and was the result of a glitch with
Sabre, the technology company that provides booking services to airlines.
"Earlier today, Sabre had a brief technical issue
that impacted multiple carriers, including American. This technical issue has been resolved.
…Alaska Airlines
and JetBlue Airways also reported computer problems on Friday.
Good thing I don’t have a Facebook account!I wonder what triggers this “feature?”
Check your Facebook account right now, you might be dead
…I can see slip
ups happening like a weird news link or maybe some fake news from a content
farm (that’s a problem, too), but social networking might need to do some
better quality checks. I can’t think of
anything worse than telling everyone I know I’m dead.
When does a sting escalate into “aiding and abetting?”
FBI operated 23 Tor-hidden child porn sites, deployed malware
from them
…according to
newly unsealed documents recently obtained by the American Civil Liberties
Union, the FBI not only temporarily took over one Tor-hidden child pornography
website in order to investigate it, the organization was in fact authorized to
run a
total of 23 other such websites.
According to an FBI affidavit
among the unsealed documents:
In the normal course of the
operation of a web site, a user sends "request data" to the web site
in order to access that site. While Websites 1-23 operate at a government facility,
such request data associated with a user's actions on Websites 1-23 will be
collected. That data collection is not a
function of the NIT. Such request data can be paired with data collected by the
NIT, however, in order to attempt to identify a particular user and to
determine that particular user's actions on Websites 1-23.
…Security
researcher Sarah Jamie Lewis told
Ars that “it’s a pretty reasonable assumption” that at one point the FBI was running roughly half of the known child porn
sites hosted on Tor-hidden servers.
The best feature of AT&T’s new $35 TV subscription might
be illegal
Starting sometime
this month, AT&T will offer an internet-only subscription TV package,
with upwards of 100 channels for $35 per month. If the channel selection and pricing are as
good as the company promises, it will be a hit.
But AT&T was banking on one other thing to really sell
DirecTV Now: integration with AT&T’s cell network, which would let you
stream TV channels on your smartphone without using up your data plan. It’s the kind of deal that only AT&T could
pull off, as the owner of a national cell and cable network. But according to a letter from the Federal
Communications Commission, doing so could be illegal.
In the letter, the FCC says it “believes that the terms and
conditions under which Sponsored Data is offered to content providers
unaffihiated with AT&T, combined with s current practice of zero-rating
DIRECTV video applications for AT&T Mobility subscribers, may obstruct
competition and harm consumers by constraining their ability to access existing
and future mobile video services not affiliated with AT&T.”
Reinforcing prejudice with legislation?Only in California do they attack a symptom
rather than the cause.
Revealing an actor’s age is illegal? IMDb website
sues California
Many actors think there ought to be a law against posting
their ages online, and California has obliged critics of ageism in Hollywood
with legislation targeting a leading online source for information on movie and
television figures.
The law, passed earlier this year, has been challenged in
a lawsuit by the company IMDb, which is owned by
Amazon and operates a repository of information on the film and
television industry.
…The lawsuit said
the law, known as AB 1687, was unfair because it was carefully tailored to
apply only to the Delaware-based IMDb.com Inc, and not other sources of
information such as media websites.
Doors close fast when a big giant like Pinterest gobbles
up a smaller Instapaper.
But sometimes a ray of light shines
through which promises more. The
bookmark-and-read-it-later service was bought out by Pinterest in August. Instead of shuttering it, Pinterest has
decided to open it up for everyone.
As someone with a second-degree black belt in Okinawan
Goju Ryu Karate, I’ve made martial-art training a big part of my life for the
past 20 years. I’m equally committed to
learning how to do things online. But
I’ve always wondered: Is studying karate online a viable option for those who
can’t get to a real school?
Friday, November 11, 2016
What went wrong with your analysis?A near perfect spear phishing question.
Less than six hours after Donald Trump became the
presumptive president-elect of the United States, a Russian hacker gang perhaps
best known for breaking into computer networks at the Democratic National
Committee launched a volley of targeted phishing campaigns
against American political think-tanks and non-government organizations (NGOs).
…“Two of the
attacks purported to be messages forwarded on from the Clinton Foundation
giving insight and perhaps a postmortem analysis into the elections,” Adair
wrote.”Two of the other attacks
purported to be eFax links or documents pertaining to the election’s outcome
being revised or rigged. The last attack
claimed to be a link to a PDF download on “Why American Elections Are
Flawed.”
Was the insurance company on the hook for other costs if
they didn’t pay the ransom?
Well, this is interesting: a media report says that a
county’s insurer advised them to pay a
ransomware demand. Ken de la
Bastide reports:
On the advice of their insurance
company Madison County officials are moving forward to pay the ransom demands
by a unknown group that attacked the county’s computer system.
Madison County was hit by a
ransomware attack over the weekend that prevented access to county records.
The malware attack has not
affected the election where the voting registration records are maintained on a
separate computer server.
[…]
The amount of the ransom is not
being provided by the commissioners, but Travelers Insurance, the county’s
insurance carrier, will reimburse a portion of the cost, less the county’s
deductible.
Lisa Cannon, director of the county’s IT department, said the county will
make sure the system is secure before new data is placed in the system. “We’re in the process of adding a backup system,”she said.
…Lyons said her
employees were taking either vacation or personal time off.
“Without
the computer system there could be no work done,” Lyons said. “We have to access all our information on the
computers.”
Crazy crazy or crazy cool?Social engineering on a national scale?
Mark Zuckerberg Says Fake News on Facebook Affecting the
Election Is a 'Crazy Idea'
A lot of questions are emerging about Facebook’s role in
this year’s election cycle, especially given the proliferation of sensationalistic
and even outright fake news stories, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has responded.
“I think the idea that fake news on Facebook—of which it’s
a very small amount of the content—influenced the election in any way is a
pretty crazy idea,” he said on Thursday at the Techonomy conference in Half
Moon Bay, Calif.
Inside Donald Trump’s Data Analytics Team on Election Night
At a little past 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, the head of a little-known
data analytics team working for Donald Trump in San Antonio sent a flurry of
messages to the campaign’s New York war room: Florida had tipped and the models
were predicting a more than 50% chance he would win the presidency.
Until then, the number-crunching and analytics for Mr.
Trump felt more like a “data experiment,” said Matthew Oczkowski, head of
product at Cambridge Analytica, who led the team for nearly six months.
…It is too early
to assess the full impact Cambridge Analytica had on the Trump campaign. While its advice aided the campaign in
targeting ads, some of its polling predictions, like those from most survey
firms, were off.
On Monday, Cambridge Analytica gave Mr. Trump less than a
30% chance of winning. “So many states
were close to the margin of error that it could swing either way,” Mr.
Oczkowski explained.
But the unexpected win is likely to bring new attention to
the company’s psychological approach, in
which it used reams of information about voters harvested from databases, the
internet and field operatives.
“We thought we knew what we were doing, but now we think
we don’t.”
Concern about data security derails plan to expand PreCheck
The agency for a year had been working through a
solicitation to bring on additional private companies to beef up the PreCheck
application network as it works toward the Department of Homeland Security's
goal of enrolling 25 million people in trusted-traveler programs (PreCheck and
Global Entry) by 2019. At present,
PreCheck enrollment is close to 4 million, TSA says.
In late October, however, the TSA withdrew the
solicitation, citing "the increased and evolving cybersecurity risks over
the past year.
…Increasing
enrollment in PreCheck is a goal of both the TSA and travel industry advocates,
who cite the efficiency and safety
enhancements [Like what?Bob]
that trusted-traveler programs bring to airport security checkpoints. PreCheck members move more quickly through
screening lines than other travelers because they don't have to remove shoes,
jackets or belts, or take laptops out of carry-on bags.
Anti-outsourcing?“Keep
our citizens in our jurisdiction.”
After LinkedIn Ban, Russia Warns Facebook And Twitter
Russia has for the first time invoked its ban on websites
storing personal data outside the country. It’s picked a high-profile target, LinkedIn –
and says even bigger companies could be next on the list.
According to local media, a court has upheld a complaint
by regulator Roskomnadzor, which says that LinkedIn has failed to satisfy its
concerns. Indeed, according to local
news agency TASS, the company hasn’t even been in touch since the ruling was
announced yesterday.
…Since the law
came into effect in September last year, Russia has audited more than 1,500
companies to make sure they comply, gaining agreement from Google, eBay,
Booking.com and other Western firms.
More on outsourcing.(Interesting that California is the starting point.)
A CIO rejects, for now, university’s IT offshoring plan
There are reservations within the University of California
system about a plan to move IT work offshore and lay off employees.
After Computerworld wrote
in September about the
layoff plan at the university's San Francisco campus, Larry Conrad, the
associate vice chancellor for IT and CIO at the Berkeley campus, wrote a memo
to IT staff about it.
He noted that some on his IT staff had seen the story and
he wanted to respond.
"The UCSF effort is indeed an ambitious
undertaking," wrote Conrad in a memo obtained by Computerworld. "Candidly, I am not aware of any major
university in the country which has successfully implemented such a substantive
IT outsourcing initiative."
The San
Francisco campus, which includes a medical center, has hired India-based HCL
under a five-year contract valued at $50 million. As part the move, the university is laying off
49 permanent IT employees and cutting about 30 contractors. Some of the IT workers say they expect to be
training H-1B-visa-holding foreign replacements.
Facebook CTO explains social network’s 10-year mission:
Global connectivity, AI, VR
…The company is
focused on three areas, which it has discussed publicly in recent years. The first is bringing connectivity to 4.1
billion people who are still not online.
…He also
cautioned patience on artificial intelligence. As much progress as has been made, he said the
ability of machines to match human intelligence is still years away.
By contrast, he said virtual reality is here, after
decades of waiting. He said components
and pricing have finally caught up so that truly immersive experiences can be
delivered in a meaningful way.
PayPal for iOS now lets you send and request money through Siri
Publicly traded online payment company PayPal today is
announcing that its app for devices running iOS 10 now lets users tell the
built-in Siri virtual assistant to send or ask other people for money through
PayPal.
“Simply say, ‘Hey Siri, send Bill $50 using PayPal.’ Voila!” Meron Colbeci, senior director of core
consumer products at PayPal, wrote in a blog
post.
Tesco Bank has released more
details regarding the cyber attack that took control of its online accounts and
led the bank to freeze all of its users online transactions.
Over the weekend the bank was hit by an attack that it
initially thought affected 20,000 customers. However, Tesco Bank has now revealed that only
9,000 accounts were compromised by the security breach. Though the amount of customers affected is
lower than first reported, some of those whose accounts were accessed during
the attack lost as much as £2,000.
On Tuesday, Tesco Bank announced
that it had refunded £2.5 million to all of those affected by the breach and
guaranteed that no personal data was obtained during the attack.
Should I change all of my online banking and personal
details that you hold?
Tesco Bank has not been subject to a security compromise and
it is not necessary for customers to change their login or password details. To stay safe online we do recommend that
customers regularly change their passwords.
…Tesco did not
use the "H" word in its statement and in interviews its chief
executive and other people speaking on behalf of the company have been careful
in their choice of language.
It has said
that the attack was "sophisticated" and that
an initial investigation had revealed exactly what had happened.
So far, it has not shared that information but Tesco's
actions in the wake of the weekend's events do help to narrow down the possibilities.
By letting customers withdraw cash from ATMs, use cards in
shops and pay bills, it suggests that whatever went wrong does not involve the
core computer systems underpinning Tesco bank. These systems used to be run by RBS but since
2008 Tesco has operated independently.
Security expert James Maude, from software company Avecto,
said Tesco's decision to suspend online
transactions combined with the information that so many people were hit at once
clearly suggests problems with its website.
All too often, he said, maintenance or website updates can
introduce errors and bugs that were not present before. Cyber-thieves are constantly scanning valuable
websites to spot changes and will swoop if one emerges.
It might also be the case that a third party connected to
Tesco had a security issue and attackers got in via that route, which has
happened in some of the biggest attacks in recent memory.
More than 2,100 Colorado veterans
may have had their personal information compromised, the VA Eastern Colorado
Health Care System (ECHCS) said Wednesday.
At risk are the veterans’ names,
the last four digits of their Social Security number and their diagnoses. According to the ECHCS, the information may
have been compromised when a VA employee emailed unencrypted documents to their
personal email account.
Yahoo Looking to Determine If Hacker Has Access to User
Accounts
Yahoo Inc. is
evaluating whether an unidentified hacker has access to its user account data,
following a 2014 hack that resulted in the theft of more than 500
million user account records.
In a regulatory filing Wednesday, Yahoo said
law-enforcement authorities on Monday “began sharing certain data that they
indicated was provided by a hacker who claimed the information was Yahoo user
account data.” Yahoo said it would
“analyze and investigate the hacker’s claim.”
…The data could
shed some light on what may be the largest theft of consumer data ever. Yahoo has said previously that it believes its
networks were compromised in late 2014
by “state-sponsored” hackers who stole names, email addresses, telephone
numbers and dates of birth of more than 500 million users. But information-security firm InfoArmor Inc.
later said the data had been stolen by criminals, rather than a state-sponsored
group.
…The company is
facing 23 class-action lawsuits following the hack, the filing said.
Next week I lecture on outsourcing to my IT Governance
class, but I may post this for my Software Architecture students as well.
Machine intelligence makes human
morals more important
Machine intelligence is here, and we're already using it
to make subjective decisions. But the
complex way AI grows and improves makes it hard to understand and even harder
to control. In this cautionary talk,
techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci explains how intelligent machines can fail in
ways that don't fit human error patterns — and in ways we won't expect or be
prepared for.
Try.Long before
age 13, some kids will be able to bypass any restrictions – and I think that’s
fine!
The Department of
Justice has launched a consultation on the statutory “age of
digital consent” to be applied in Ireland as part of the EU
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Article 8 of the GDPR provides
that, in the case of information society services offered directly to a child,
parental consent is required where personal information of a child under 16 is
collected and shared with other service providers. Service providers are required to make
reasonable efforts to verify that parental consent is given in each case.
However, member states are
allowed to adopt a lower age threshold, which cannot be lower than 13.
In July 2016, the mega-hit “Gangnam Style” by South
Korean singer PSY surpassed 2.6 billion views on YouTube. Big Bang, a Korean pop (K-Pop) boy band,
earned $44 million in 2015, making it among the highest paid in the industry. Is K-Pop just a passing fad — a matter of a
few songs going viral? The answer is no.
The global
success of K-Pop did not happen by accident, nor is it simply an
interesting cultural phenomenon.
A Glitch Caused Donald Trump's Site to Say Whatever The Internet
Wanted It to Say
Until recently, Republican presidential candidate Donald
Trump’s official campaign
website featured an amusing glitch that allowed Internet users to modify
its headline text however they so pleased.
The campaign website’s home page auto-generated a default
message that encouraged visitors to vote for the Trump ticket. But by editing the text in the page’s
URL—replacing words between its “%20” notation dividers, typical URL encoding
that denotes spacing—anyone could replace those words with their own message.
Hackers tried to take down pro-Clinton phone banks the day
before the election, but inadvertently hit Republican calls too
Hackers tried to knock out political call centers on
Monday in an effort to "harm Clinton's chances of winning," but they
may have done equal damage to Republican phone lines, according to the company
that was targeted.
Elections Usher In New Crop of Political-Tech Startups
…Hustle, a
venture-backed startup that was founded in 2014, caught on early with Bernie
Sanders’s grass roots organizers.
…Starting in
mid-2015 Sanders field personnel started using the app, which allows users to
aim texts at a long list of recipients, sending each one individually in
rapid-fire, then giving the user a platform to manage their text conversations
with voters. This approach allows the campaigns to get around regulations
that prevent robo-dialing mobile phone numbers.
If you bought a car in the last
few years, there’s a good chance your personal information may have found its
way to the open internet.
Names, addresses, phone numbers
and social security numbers for both customers and employees for over a hundred
car dealerships have leaked online, all thanks to a centralized records system
coupled with shoddy security.
The system, built and operated by
DealerBuilt, an Iowa-based database software company, sells
management systems for car dealerships across the US, offering a central system
for sales, customer relations, and employee payroll needs.
Last week, MacKeeper security researchers found 128 dealership systems,
known as LightYear machines, were backing up to DealerBuilt’s central systems
without any encryption or security, allowing anyone to see what was being
backed up.
At least 1,000 schools across the
UK are using forms of ‘surveillance’ technology to monitor the activity of
pupils, a new report has claimed.
Privacy advocates Big Brother
Watch has published
research claiming 72 per cent of secondary schools use ‘Classroom
Management Software’ to keep an eye on pupils. The system, which can check use of computers,
including internet history, is installed on 819,970 school-owned devices and
1,416 private devices, the group says.
…Where the new
Assistant is concerned, Google is soon to offer up keys to the city, so to
speak, starting next month with the launch of developer tools to make it even
easier for people to add their own functionality to the wider platform.
Starting in December, Google will open up the Assistant in
three distinct ways, one of which will be allowing users to embed the Assistant
itself inside of third-party hardware, a la Amazon’s Alexa. Direct Actions will
allow services and products to offer simple, recognizable commands for the
Assistant to connect other devices and services together and finally,
Conversation Actions, will allow developers to add in more sophisticated features,
like offering access to a bank account, going back-and-forth with the user to
complete the task at hand.
With Kodi being a free, open source media center, it’s no
surprise there are plenty of options to customize your experience when using
it. These range from changing the
overall appearance of Kodi, to setting up profiles for different family
members.
Perhaps if my neighbors do this I won’t need to pay the
Internet!
In high school, I worked summers at a summer stock theater
that hosted music on Mondays.I got to
see both Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald (not together).Since I played trumpet (poorly) in those
days, Armstrong was already a hero.Ella
is still the best jazz voice I have ever heard.Follow this link and listen for yourself.
Two of America’s greatest musicians- listen and fall in
love with music that will stay with you a lifetime: A century-defining album’s improbable genesis
“…The first of three successful collaborations between Ella Fitzgerald and
Louis Armstrong, “Ella and Louis” is nearly perfect. It is one of those works of art — and they
don’t come along often — that seems to have always existed. It features two of the greatest artists the
century produced: Armstrong, the innovator and ambassador of jazz, and
Fitzgerald, its most gifted singer. The
album was produced by a man almost solely responsible for bringing jazz into
the realm of respectability and desegregating its audience, who founded the
label which released it, and assembled the all-star team of musicians who made
it so marvelous. “Ella and Louis” helped
rekindle interest in what would become known as The Great American Songbook. Though it is something only American culture
could produce, “Ella and Louis” was also something a large part of American
society worked hard to prevent…”
Facebook threatens LinkedIn with job opening features
…A Facebook
spokesperson tells me, “Based on behavior we’ve seen on Facebook, where many
small businesses post about their job openings on their Page, we’re running a
test for Page admins to create job postings and receive applications from
candidates.”
The new features could compete with LinkedIn, as well as
developers like Work4, Workable and Jobscore that build “Jobs” tab applications
that businesses can embed in their Facebook Pages. Perhaps Facebook was prepping for these new
features when it tested Profile Tags last year that mimic LinkedIn’s endorsements
feature.
Tuesday, November 08, 2016
Something that will spread globally or will Facebook find
a way to get user consent?
Facebook has agreed to stop using WhatsApp data to target
users with advertising in the U.K. and has been warned could face legal action
if it resumes the practice.
The agreement is an initial victory for Information
Commissioner Elizabeth Denham, who launched an inquiry into the data sharing
earlier this year after expressing concern that user data was not being
properly protected.
"I don’t think users have
been given enough information about what Facebook plans to do with their
information, and I don’t think WhatsApp has got valid consent from users to
share the information," she
said in a statement on Monday.
I live in Centennial Colorado. (I'm not actually 100 years old., but I hope to be some day.) I'm an independant computer consultant, specializing in solving problems that traditional IT personnel tend to have difficulty with... That includes everything from inventorying hardware & software, to converting systems & data, to training end-users. I particularly enjoy taking on projects that IT has attempted several times before with no success. I also teach at two local Universities: everything from Introduction to Microcomputers through Business Continuity and Security Management. My background includes IT Audit, Computer Security, and a variety of unique IT projects.
