Surely,
I'm not the only one to notice this. It's one thing to use your
computer to automate trading. Being faster than the other guy is
just a form of arbitrage. (and trading computers are very fast.)
Jumping the gun is at
least conspiracy.
Imaging what it would be if this was a hack by a foreign power.
Futures
spike just before US jobs data raises eyebrows
Call it a Tuesday
morning market mystery – why did so many futures prices seem to
move before the Department of Labor released the jobs report this
morning?
According to Eric
Hunsader of Nanex, a wide range of futures moved before the 8:30 a.m.
release time of the jobs report.
Some of them moved as
much as 500 milliseconds before the news – plenty of time for
high-speed computer traders to rake in profits before the rest of the
market.
(Related)
Traders
may have gotten last week’s Fed news 7 milliseconds early
Reporting from CNBC
and Quartz
points to strong circumstantial evidence that one or more traders
received an early leak of the Federal Reserve's surprise decision
last week not to slow down its bond purchases.
Markets swung rapidly
on the 2 p.m. announcement last Wednesday, with stocks, bonds, and
the price of gold all skyrocketing. Somebody placed massive orders
for gold futures contracts betting on exactly that outcome within a
millisecond or two of 2 p.m. that day -- before the seven
milliseconds had passed that would allow the transmission of the
information from the Fed's "lock-up" of media organizations
who get an early look at the data and the arrival of that information
at Chicago's futures markets (that's the time it takes the data to
travel at the speed of light. A millisecond is a thousandth of a
second). CNBC's Eamon Javers, citing market analysis firm Nanex,
estimates that $600 million in assets could have changed hands in
that fleeting moment.
There would seem to be
three possibilities: 1) Some trader was extraordinarily lucky,
placing a massive bet just before a major announcement that would
make that bet highly profitable. 2) There was a leak, either by a
media organization with early access to the data or even someone at
the Fed. Or 3) The laws of physics have been violated as the
information traveled from Washington to Chicago faster than the speed
of light.
You can see why
Option 2 looks the most plausible.
Took them long
enough...
If you thought the FTC
was done with Aaron’s Rent-to-Own when they approved
a final order settling charges against rent-to-own companies in
April, think again. The FTC just issued this press release
yesterday:
Aaron’s,
Inc., a national, Atlanta-based rent-to-own retailer, has agreed to
settle FTC charges that it knowingly played a direct and vital role
in its franchisees’ installation and use of software on rental
computers that secretly monitored consumers including
by taking webcam pictures of them in their homes.
According
to the FTC’s complaint,
Aaron’s franchisees used the software, which surreptitiously
tracked consumers’ locations, captured images through the
computers’ webcams – including those of adults engaged in
intimate activities – and activated keyloggers that captured users’
login credentials for email accounts and financial and social media
sites.
[…]
The
software was the
subject of related FTC actions earlier this year against the
software manufacturer and several rent-to-own stores, including
Aaron’s franchisees, that used it. It included a feature called
Detective Mode, which, in addition to monitoring keystrokes,
capturing screenshots, and activating the computer’s webcam, also
presented deceptive “software registration” screens designed to
get computer users to provide personal information.
[...]
Additional files on the
complaint and consent order can be found on the FTC’s
web site. And unless I’m missing something, the consent
agreement does not require Aaron’s or its franchisees to actually
notify customers that their personal data was acquired via the webcam
activation.
So how will this
consent order impact a potential class action lawsuit filed by
Crystal and Brian Byrd against Aaron’s in 2011? Previous coverage
of the lawsuit on this blog is linked from here.
The lawsuit is ongoing and Aaron’s has moved for dismissal of the
third amended complaint. Take a look at the docket
for the lawsuit.
Bigger is rarely
gooder.
Healthcare.gov
code allegedly two times larger than Facebook, Windows, and OS X
combined
… The latest
controversy revolves around The New York Times' reporting that
roughly
1 percent of Healthcare.gov -- or 5 million lines of code --
would need to be rewritten, putting the Web site's total size at a
mind-boggling 500 million lines of code -- a scale that suggests
months upon months of work.
Some are naturally
skeptical of that ridiculous-sounding
number -- as well as the credibility of The New York Times'
source, who remains unnamed. Forums
of programmers on sites like Reddit have postulated that, if
true, it would have to involve mounds of bloated legacy code from
past systems -- making it one of the largest Web systems ever built.
One developer, Alex Marchant of Orange, Calif., decided
to draw an interesting comparison to point that out.
(Related) And
she's still employed? I
guess it wouldn't be “FAIR” to fire incompetent managers... Even
Dilbert wouldn't believe a manager would let this happen.
Sebelius:
Obamacare website problems blindsided the President
President Barack Obama
knew there would be "glitches" and said ahead of time there
would be problems in the October 1 rollout of a key part of his
health care initiative, but "there is no question that we did
not anticipate the scale of problems with the website," White
House spokesman Jay Carney said on Wednesday.
… Before
it even launched, red flags went up about the Obamacare website.
Health insurance companies complained about it, and the site crashed
during a test run. But nobody told the President
of any of it, the nation's health chief told CNN.
“Who knows what evil
lurks in Directive 54?”
From the good folks at
EPIC:
A
federal court has issued
an opinion in EPIC
v. NSA, EPIC’s
Freedom of Information Act lawsuit concerning the government’s
policy for the security of American computer networks. As a result
of the lawsuit, EPIC obtained
documents that the National Security Agency had withheld from the
public. The documents
concern NSPD 54, a presidential policy directive outlining the scope
of the NSA’s authority over computer networks in the US. EPIC also
challenged the NSA’s decision to withheld several other records
including the National Security Presidential Directive 54. A federal
district court has now ruled that NSPD 54 is not subject to the FOIA
because it was not under “the control” of the National Security
Agency and the other federal agencies and officials who received the
presidential directive. The Court also ordered to the NSA to
identify and release other documents to EPIC. For more information,
see: EPIC
v. NSA – Cybersecurity Authority.
Of
course they are. It is much more important to avoid any kind of
terrorist incident that to protect your privacy.
… The TSA already
checks travelers against a terrorist watch list, but the
The New York Times
reports that the agency will now begin
profiling travelers based on their past travel itineraries, property
records, car registrations and employment information. The result is
a full background check, directing some towards lighter screenings
and others towards more invasive bag checks and pat-downs.
The TSA's stated goal
is to qualify one in four passengers for lighter screening, which
would forgo the typical shoe removal and lighten the agency's
workload, but privacy advocates worried the result
Does using cash have an
impact on Insurance rates?
Legal, but
intrusive and creepy?
David Lazarus reports:
Think
you can keep a medical condition secret from life insurers by paying
cash for prescription meds? Think again.
A
for-profit service called ScriptCheck exists to rat you out
regardless of how diligent you are in trying to keep a sensitive
matter under wraps.
ScriptCheck,
offered by ExamOne, a subsidiary of Quest Diagnostics, is yet another
example of data mining — using sophisticated programs to scour
databases in search of people’s personal information and then
selling that info to interested parties.
Read more on the Los
Angeles Times.
US
government releases draft cybersecurity framework
The aim of NIST's
framework (PDF)
is to create guidelines that companies can use to beef up their
networks and guard against hackers and cybersecurity threats.
Adopting this framework would be voluntary for companies.
We want it now!
– Do people turn to
piracy when the movies they want to watch are not available legally?
That is the question posed by PiracyData which lists the top 10 most
pirated movies of the week, and then researches into whether those
movies are available for legal rental, purchase, or streaming. Most
movies on the list are currently not available legally which may
explain why people turn to illegal methods.
Attention
Ethical Hackers! Henceforth you shall be called “Fluffy Kitten
Watchers” because apparently you can judge a book by its cover.
Dale Peterson reports
on a disturbing court ruling:
The
US District Court for the State of Idaho ruled that an ICS product
developer’s computer could be seized without him being notified or
even heard from in court primarily because he states on his web site
“we like hacking things and don’t want to stop”.
Read about the case on
Digital
Bond.
For
my researching students... Also useful for Bloggers?
News
Gathering Gets A Fresh Break As Google Launches Google Media Tools
News and media
organizations have been using Google for a long time. Google has
taken things a bit further by giving journalists a rich set of tools
in one centralized hub called Google
Media Tools. Google Media Tools is a collection of all Google
resources that can help journalists enhance their reporting. Common
tools like Google Drive, Google Maps, and Google Search Trends along
with many others find a place in the suite. The idea is not to be
just a diving-board platform for the Google tools journalists need
and use most often. Rather, Google wants this one-stop shop to be a
learning center as well so that journalists of all hues and skill
levels can create compelling stories with all the tools Google has to
offer.
Google Media Tools is
designed to cover everything from research to
developing to publishing,
I'm
always looking for real world applications...
Mathematician
works out formula for perfect pizza
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