For my Computer Security students. Unchecked
checks and unbalanced balances? This case came from a whistle blower
who did a better analysis of the data than the regulators did? How
does one small trader have this kind of impact? If it takes five
years to figure out he was responsible, will they be able to convince
a jury?
Mystery
Trader Armed With Algorithms Rewrites Flash Crash
… Navinder Singh Sarao was as anonymous as
they come -- little more than a day trader by the standards of the
Street.
But on that spring day five years ago, U.S.
authorities now say, Sarao helped send the Dow Jones Industrial
Average on the wild, 1,000-point ride that the world came to know as
the flash crash. By regulators’ account, he was responsible for a
stunning one out of five sell orders during the frenzy. On Tuesday,
he was arrested by Scotland Yard and charged in the U.S. with 22
criminal counts, including fraud and market manipulation.
… That picture, according to U.S. authorities,
belies a years-long history of lightning-quick computer trading that
netted Sarao $40 million in illicit profits.
… Regulators initially concluded that a mutual
fund company -- said to be Waddell & Reed Financial Inc. of
Overland Park, Kansas -- played a leading role. Many in the industry
countered that a confluence of several forces, including
high-frequency trading, was probably behind the crash.
By all accounts, the flash crash was more than a
mere technical glitch. It raised fundamental questions about how
vulnerable today’s complex financial markets are to the high-speed,
computer-driven trading that has come to dominate the marketplace.
Little is known about Sarao and his trades, beyond
what is contained in a complaint
filed by the U.S. Department of Justice. A related civil suit filed
by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission provides a few
additional glimpses into his supposed activities. The case stemmed
from a whistle-blower who brought “powerful, original analysis”
to the CFTC’s attention, said Shayne Stevenson, a Seattle lawyer
representing the whistle-blower.
Think Computer Security is “by the numbers” in
the military? Think again. This can happen to anyone.
Patty Ryan reports:
The internal theft of five laptop computers from U.S. Central Command at MacDill Air Force Base went undetected until a supplier noticed four of them advertised on eBay, according to federal court records.
A CentCom official ordered an inventory, putting it in the hands of a Riverview man who now admits to being the thief.
Read more on Tampa
Bay Times.
For my Computer Security students. Add this to
your toolkit, then charge to tweek your friend's account. (Then send
me 10%)
Twitter Now
Allows Total Strangers To DM You: How Can You Stop It?
As users continue to whine about Twitter's newest
software tweak that lets anyone in the Twitterverse directly message
anyone else, more than a few others are asking just one simple thing.
How can a user opt out of this new messaging free-for-all that
Twitter created with supposedly good intentions?
Thankfully, the answer is pretty simple.
I can point you to a few students who flunked the
Cryptology class, perhaps they can make you a really crappy
encryption tool. But who are you going to get to use it? They are
asking for a system that uses: a Public key, a Private key and a
Government key.
Joseph Menn reports:
The Obama administration hopes Silicon Valley technologists can think of a system with strong encryption that could be pierced legally by one party without opening the door to others, a White House official said on Tuesday.
White House cybersecurity policy coordinator Michael Daniel said at the annual RSA Conference on security that he is trying to set starting principles for a broad public discussion on the issue, which has been a major source of tension with technology companies and other cyber experts.
Yeah, you’ll sometimes encounter unexpected
pushback when you keep asking for the impossible. Ask for a unicorn
instead, maybe?
Read more on Reuters.
Not as popular as the Oscars. (Fewer celebrities
on the red carpet.
NextGov reports:
Organized by advocacy nonprofit Digitalcourage, the 15th annual BBAs were announced Friday night in Bielefeld, Germany, a northwestern city of about 330,000. The tech prize was awarded to Hello Barbie, a “smart” version of the toymaker Mattel’s iconic doll, that records everything its owner says and allows parents to review the sound clips.
… three Big Brother Awards awards went to the German federal government:
to the Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service) for its collaboration with the NSA and its monitoring of German citizens’ online activities
to the current and former Interior Ministers for “systematic and fundamental sabotage” of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, which includes the right to be forgotten
and to the Ministry of Health, for the eHealth program, which BBA said puts doctor-patient confidentiality at risk.
Read more of the award “winners” on NextGov.
Convergence. Internet companies are becoming
phone companies. I guess it's easier that phone companies taking
over the Internet. Time to sell my phone stocks?
Google may
launch US wireless service powered by T-Mobile and Sprint as early as
this week
ZDNet's Liam Tung posted the news that Google
was planning to get into the mobile data business back in
January. According to a Wall
Street Journal report Google's wireless service may launch as
early as this week in the US.
The service will reportedly be powered by T-Mobile
and Sprint, the third and fourth largest US wireless carriers.
Unlike traditional carrier
plans, it's likely that Google will only bill customers for the data
they actually use each month.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the service
will initially only work on Google's Nexus 6 smartphone. The phone
will reportedly switch between the two networks to find the optimal
signal. WiFi will also be used for phone calls to help keep your
bill low.
… There are plenty of other options for
consumers, such as Republic
Wireless, that give consumers full control over their monthly
wireless service with no contract obligation.
We are seeing more and more consumers making the
move to such providers so the timing of this Google service may be
perfect.
(Related) Another Internet/phone thingie...
Facebook’s
WhatsApp Will Be How the World Makes Phone Calls
WhatsApp is the world’s most popular smartphone
messaging app, letting more
than 800 million people send and receive texts on the cheap. But
it’s evolving into
something more.
On Tuesday, the company, which is owned by
Facebook, released a new version of the app that allows people with
iPhones to not only text people, but actually
talk to them. This built on a similar move the company made at
the end of March, when it quietly released an Android
update that did the same thing.
… the company is intent
on keeping it free (or nearly free). Though it has little
traction here in the US, WhatsApp is enormously
popular in parts of Europe and the developing world—areas where
there’s a hunger for cheap communication. The result is an app
that could bring inexpensive Internet calls to an audience of
unprecedented size.
… After rolling out voice calling, he says, it
may venture into video calling. The app already lets you
send files, including videos, and other messaging apps, such as
SnapChat, already have ventured into video calls.
None of
these tools—video calls, voice calls, file sharing—are new
technologies. But not everyone has them. WhatsApp has
the leverage to change that.
God knows some of my students could use a bit of
help.
7 Apps to
Help Anyone Improve Their English Grammar
In a world of spellcheck
and texting abbreviations, few people want to take the time to learn
about subjects, objects, and dangling modifiers. Besides, computers
can fix our sentences for us.
However, as anyone who’s suffered an autocorrect
embarrassment knows, computers don’t always get it right.
Language is a human tool and requires the insight
of human minds. Plus, employers
still care about this stuff. From emails to
reports, business involves plenty of written communication.
Businesses want to hire employees with strong writing skills who will
represent their company well to clients.
So what’s the best way to improve your grammar
skills?
Perspective. I suspect that formats have not
changed to take full advantage of new viewing habits.
Accenture –
The World’s Love Affair with the TV May Be Coming to an End
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Apr 21, 2015
News
release: “The television’s popularity as the go-to
entertainment device may be ending, according to “Digital
Video and the Connected Consumer,” a new research report
from Accenture. The television was the only product category to see
uniform, double-digit usage declines across different types of media
worldwide among viewers of nearly all ages. It
is rapidly being replaced as consumers turn to a combination of
laptops, desktops, tablets and smartphones to view video content.
The report, developed for communications, media and technology
companies, found that video consumption – anytime, anywhere – has
become mainstream, accelerating the decline of traditional TV
viewing. Viewership for long form video content, such as movies and
television on a TV screen, has declined by 13 percent globally over
the past year and by 11 percent in the United States. Similarly, the
report found sports viewership on TV screens declined by 10 percent
globally and nine percent in the United States. Nearly all age
brackets reported double-digit declines in TV viewing globally, with
14- to 17-year-olds abandoning the TV screen at the rate of 33
percent for movies and television shows and 26 percent for sporting
events. This decline continues for 18- to 34-year-olds at 14 percent
for movies and television shows and 12 percent for sporting events,
and for 35- to 54-year-olds, at 11 and nine percent, respectively.
It does, however, flatten among the 55 and older crowd, at six
percent and one percent respectively.”
I used to marvel that individuals in England could
become fanatical experts on very narrow areas (teapots made between
1506 and 1515) Today you would think the information is much more
readily available. Apparently not.
When Talking
Points Memo, The
Wall Street Journal and The
Washington Post needed data on how often police officers are
charged with on-duty killings, they all turned to the same guy:
Bowling Green State University criminologist Philip
M. Stinson.
Stinson, 50, has become an indispensable source
for researchers and reporters looking into alleged crimes and acts of
violence by police officers because he has built a database tracking
thousands of incidents in which officers were arrested since 2005.
… The whole data-collecting operation is
powered by 48 Google Alerts that Stinson set up in 2005, along with
individual Google Alerts for each of nearly 6,000 arrests of
officers. He has set up 10 Gmail addresses to collect all the alert
emails, which feed articles into a database that also contains court
records and videos.
… I was taking an ethics class. Somebody in
the class — it was a bunch of cops in class, mid-career —
somebody made a comment that cops don’t get in trouble much. I
said, “That’s just absurd.” I started looking into it and
realized there are no
government statistics, and no government agency tracking it well.
… I had two and a half years, three years of
data in my dissertation, covering 2005 to 2007, with 109 quantitative
variables.
And then over time at Bowling Green, we now track
270 or so quantitative variables. Everything is automated now.
Because data collection is
real-time — you can’t use Lexis
Nexis, NewsBank,
all these other archival news databases, because lots of stuff has
disappeared from the Internet — so because of that it’s very slow
and time-consuming. It takes forever to do.
This could be fun for my Excel students. Convert
all this paper to a more modern tool.
Are You
Looking to Buy a Home?
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Apr 21, 2015
“Buying a home is one of the
most exciting yet one of the most difficult financial decisions you
will make. Understanding the costs of real estate settlement
services, defining what affordable means to you, and finding the best
mortgage are among the many aspects you’ll need to consider. This
new
toolkit (PDF) from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
(CFPB), offers a step-by-step guide that includes checklists,
conversation starters for discussions between buyers and lenders, and
research tips to find more information.”
I like tidbits like this, even if you do have to
really search for them. I try to tell my statistics students that
improbable things do happen.
Khmerican
Food
… The connection between Cambodia and American
pastry entrepreneurship is most pronounced in California, where, by
one recent count, 90
percent of all independent doughnut shops are owned by Cambodians.
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