Wednesday, August 17, 2016

The ever increasing dangers of an ever more connected world.
Special Report: Not so SWIFT - Bank messaging system slow to address weak points
More than a dozen current and former board directors and senior managers of SWIFT, the bank messaging system that helps transmit billions of dollars around the world every day, have told Reuters the organization for years suspected there were weaknesses in the way smaller banks used its messaging terminals – but did not address such vulnerabilities.
The sources said that until February, when hackers tried to steal nearly $1 billion dollars by breaking into the messaging system at Bangladesh's central bank, SWIFT had not regarded the security of customer terminals as a priority.  Top executives either did not receive information from member banks about specific attempts to hack the messaging network, or failed to spot those attempts themselves, the managers said.

(Related) Want our help getting your money back?  Drop the lawsuit.
BB no longer plans to sue Fed for heist
Bangladesh's central bank said it has reversed its plans to sue the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the SWIFT money transfer network, and instead intends to seek their help recovering $81 million stolen by cyber thieves in February.


Which ‘society’ do we take our ‘norms’ from?
Joe Cadillic writes:
Unfortunately, student assessments have been going on since 1990, students across the country at grades 4, 8 and 12 are being given reading, mathematics, writing, science, U.S. history, geography assessments.
Indoctrinating students and assessing their mindset was a hallmark of Nazi Germany.  Our kids are being assessed from grade school through college.  This should scare the crap out of everyone, why is the mass media silent as our gov’t assesses kids?
Read more on MassPrivateI.
Joe and I have had a fascinating debate about the rest of his post.  We agree in principle that mindset assessments are just wrong for so many reasons, but we wound up in some gentle disagreement over the legality under federal laws.  I think that districts may be able to get away with these if they obtain prior parental consent.  I hope that if asked, parents do NOT consent, but that’s another story.
As I wrote to Joe in one of our exchanges today, I am actually all for academic assessments that can tell us whether children are ready for the next stage of curriculum or if they need additional rehearsal or remediation for.  I don’t want children being pushed through the system, and such assessments can be used by parents to argue for more help and services for their child.  But:
I draw the line at social-emotional assessments, which I think schools should ONLY be doing if: (1) they have empirically validated tools (which they generally don’t have) and (2) parental consent in advance, and (3) adequate data security and privacy protections (which they generally don’t have).
Go read Joe’s post and then reply either there or here to let us know what you think of this issue.


For my Architecture students.
Future Workforce Study 2016
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Aug 16, 2016
“Dell and Intel have teamed up to create their newest Future Workforce Study 2016 which reveals how people around the world feel about how technology is shaping the workplace.  Collaborating with Penn Schoen Berland (PSB), a series of online interviews were conducted across seven target industries, with adults who work more than 35 hours a week.  With advancements in smart workplace technologies, the time is now to discover how your workforce is truly evolving and how to be future-ready.  Explore the key takeaways and download the full global study findings…”


Bot architecture?  Push content to interested “fans?”
Sports Illustrated Olympics bots now on Facebook, Slack
Sports Illustrated launched bots on Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and Slack today to share its coverage from the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics.
An additional bot will launch on Skype later this week.  A complete list can be found on the GameOn website.
“Every hour on the hour you are going to be pushed the top trending Sports Illustrated (SI) Olympics article, [based on] whatever SI is able to glean from their user data, but if there’s breaking news, immediate coverage on that will come in between the hours,” said Alex Beckman, CEO of sports chat company GameOn.  GameOn partnered with Sports Illustrated to create the bot.


Introducing my students to programming without teaching them programming languages?
Build A Mobile App With No Programming Knowledge With Codeless Apps
Plenty of people want to create their own smartphone apps, but don’t necessarily want to learn how to code.  These two positions are not necessarily contradictory, and it’s totally possible to build a basic mobile app by using a number of drag-and-drop tools.
   When researching this post, I was surprised at the sheer number of companies offering codeless app development platforms.  Just to rattle some names off the top of my head, there’s AppGyver’s Composer, Ionic Creator (which was formerly known as Codiqa), EachScape, and Shoutem.  Each of these products have one thing in common: they are aimed primarily at business users.


So how do we turn this into a business plan?
7 Interesting Stats on Modern Online Shopping Habits


How can you ignore a headline like this?
Video Job Interviews: Hiring for the Selfie Age
For job seekers looking to make a good first impression, a working webcam and a tidy room might be the new firm handshake.
First-round job interviews are the latest part of the hiring process to undergo digitization as companies use video interviews to cut recruiting costs and times. Cigna Corp. , Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and International Business Machines Corp. are among the employers now asking some applicants to log on to a website and submit video responses to interview questions in lieu of talking with a human.  The method has grown in recent years as nearly everyone has access to a laptop or smartphone with a front-facing camera, and companies say it is an efficient, fair and inexpensive way to process hundreds of applicants.


“In five years” has always been translated as “assuming a miracle.”
Ford to offer self-driving cars without steering wheels by 2021


This might be a good way to identify books you want to actually read!
These Videos Will Give You the Summary of Big Business Books in Just 4 Minutes
That Elon Musk biography and Peter Thiel's book on startups have been on your reading list for a while. Will you ever get to them?
For all you procrastinators, or for those who need a refresher, New York-based Board Studios has created a series of videos that summarize business books in four minutes.  In them, an artist's hands are seen taking notes while a narrator offers the gist of books such as Thiel's Zero to One, Elon Musk and Holacracy.

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