Friday, December 30, 2016

For my Computer Security students.
Site documents biggest data breaches in history
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Dec 29, 2016
Biggest data breaches in history – Dave Albaugh – Data breaches, 2004-2016 – “With a history of more than 5,000 data breaches over the last 12 years, it’s a safe bet that any electronic information relating to you is either at risk or has already been compromised at least once.  As James Comey, the director of the FBI puts it, “there are two kinds of companies.  Those that have been hacked and those that don’t know yet that they’ve been hacked.  Data breaches that leaked over 10 million records between 2004 and 2006.  Note that “records” is a loose term and does not necessarily refer to individual user accounts….”


Also: Computer Security related.  Do we ever learn?  
Woodrow Hartzog and Danielle Citron write about what we can learn from the recent settlement with Ashley Madison by the FTC and state attorneys general.
They discuss:
  • Privacy is for everyone
  • Harm from a data breach is about much more than identity theft
  • Privacy law and policy must confront the design of technologies
  • The FTC’s cooperation with state attorneys general and the Canadian government is a good thing for privacy enforcement
  • This is the first FTC complaint involving lying bots. There will be more.
Read their discussion of these points on Ars Technica.


For my Data Management students.
Tesla's autonomous-car efforts use big data no other carmaker has
In the automotive industry, Tesla is a leader in many respects—but it's hardly head-and-shoulders above the rest when it comes to self-driving cars.
The Silicon Valley automaker is developing fully autonomous cars, but it's part of a crowded field that includes many other automakers and a handful of rich tech companies as well.
Still, Tesla's technical approach may give it an advantage over its numerous competitors.
   Autopilot does not provide fully autonomous driving at present, but since Tesla began installing the system in its electric cars in late 2015, the system has delivered data on 1.3 billion miles of driving, according to Bloomberg.
This data is valuable because it allows Tesla's engineers to fine-tune the algorithms that control its cars' active-safety systems, which will underpin future full autonomy.
   Since the launch of Autopilot, Tesla has discussed "fleet learning" as a way to improve the system, and has set up a vast data funnel to enable that.
Even cars that are not equipped to use Autopilot transmit travel data back to Tesla, once the owner gives permission.
The 1.3-billion-mile figure quoted by Bloomberg includes miles driven in cars equipped with Autopilot even if it's switched off, because those cars transmit data on driver behavior just the same.
   Because its development efforts are linked to production cars in the hands of customers driving hundreds of thousands of miles a day, Tesla has access to substantially more data than competitors whose only data is from limited test programs in a few dozen prototype vehicles.
Since 2009, the Google self-driving cars have covered 2 million real-world miles with human overseers onboard, according to Morgan Stanley.


Interesting.  No hacking back?  Keep our abilities hidden until we need them? 
Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking
President Obama struck back at Russia on Thursday for its efforts to influence the 2016 election, ejecting 35 suspected Russian intelligence operatives from the United States and imposing sanctions on Russia’s two leading intelligence services.
The administration also penalized four top officers of one of those services, the powerful military intelligence unit known as the G.R.U.

(Related). 
Vladimir Putin Won’t Expel U.S. Diplomats as Russian Foreign Minister Urged
In a head-spinning turn of events on Friday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia announced that he would not retaliate against the United States’ expulsion of Russian diplomats and new sanctions — hours after his foreign minister recommended doing just that.
Mr. Putin, apparently betting on improved relations with the next American president, said he would not eject 35 diplomats or close any diplomatic facilities, a proposed tit-for-tat response to actions taken by the Obama administration a day earlier.

(Related).  The Joint Analysis Report

(Related).  Even more…


Being the biggest does not mean you are the careful-est.  
Run-D.M.C. Sues Amazon, Walmart for More Than $50 Million Over Trademark Infringement
Run-D.M.C. has filed a lawsuit against Walmart, Amazon, Jet and a number of others for more than $50 million over alleged trademark infringement on products using the iconic hip-hop group's name and logo without permission. 
The suit was filed Thursday (Dec. 29) in New York and also names a number of the companies selling the products through those online marketplaces, as well as 20 John Does, saying they "trade on the goodwill of RUN-DMC."  It explains that some of the allegedly infringing products claim to be "RUN-DMC styled products" such as fedora hats and square-frame sunglasses that use the group's name in their title or description but not the logo.  Meanwhile, others more blatantly use the group's famous logo on shirts, purses, patches and other products.
   Last month, Amazon filed its first ever lawsuits against merchants selling counterfeit items on its marketplace. 


New term: “tweeter-in-chief”
WSJ – How to Tweet if You’re in Government and Not Donald Trump
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Dec 29, 2016
How to Tweet if You’re in Government and Not Donald Trump: Write, Review, Edit, Seek Approval, Wait, Edit, (Maybe) Send (sub. re’d)by Aruna Viswanatha and Natalie Andrews: “In 2010, a top Justice Department official told the agency’s divisions they could set up Twitter accounts and he convened a ‘working group’ to provide guidance on what, when and how the agency could tweet.  They’re still working on it. President-elect Donald Trump is poised to become the first tweeter-in-chief, an executive comfortable making pronouncements on policy or companies with 140 characters.  He will assume control of a federal bureaucracy that tries very hard to do the exact opposite, one that muffles its social-media presence under pages of rules to avoid making waves…”


Perspective.  Podcast.
How Technology Shocked the Entertainment Industry
   We have online platforms like Netflix, which not only have become very powerful when it comes to content distribution, but they’re also now getting into content production.  They have deep financial pockets and the ability to know their consumers because they have consumer-specific data.  They know what people are watching, at what time, what they like, what they don’t like.  They’re using that information in both creating the content and distributing the content.
   How the labels and artists are making money is so different than 15 years ago.  Fifteen years ago, CDs made the money and concerts were the way you advertise the CDs.  Today, concerts make the money and CDs are a way to advertise concerts.  It’s literally a 360-degree change.

(Related). 
Old-Line Companies Like Wal-Mart and GM Acquire Taste for Tech Startups
In late 2015, a commuter-shuttle startup caught the attention of Ford Motor Co.executive John Casesa, who runs global strategy for the auto maker.  The startup, called Chariot, was growing fast and had an interesting crowdsourced reservation model, a staffer told him, suggesting a meeting.
One year and a $65 million deal later, the San Francisco van service is owned by the Detroit giant—part of an acquisition-fueled push into new areas as an uncertain and perhaps driverless future looms.
“We are in an era in our industry where M&A will be a frequently used instrument,” Mr. Casesa said.


Stuff for our programing students?  (Not for our Math students)
Great Ideas for Using Scratch in Elementary Math - Best of 2016
Last month I received an email from Jeffery Gordon in which he shared with me an online binary calculator that he created for his students.  When I asked him for more information about the calculator and what he was teaching in general, he shared another cool resource with me.  That resource is ScratchMath.
ScratchMath, written by Jeffery Gordon, is a free ebook filled with examples of using Scratch in elementary school math classes. The examples are Scratch models through which students can learn concepts dealing with place values, multiplication, and division. Each example includes the steps that need to be completed in Scratch to create models like a multiplication array, a divisibility checker, and factoring game.
For folks who are not familiar with Scratch, it is a free programming tool designed for students between the ages of eight and sixteen although it has been successfully used by younger and older students.  Scratch uses a visual interface that helps students see how the parts of a program fit together to create a final product.  Students create programs by dragging and dropping commands into a sequence.  Programs that students create can vary from simple animations to complex multiplayer games.  Visit the Scratch Educators page to learn more about how to use it in your classroom.


Keeping up.
OED New words list December 2016
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Dec 29, 2016
Oxford English Dictionary – New words list December 2016 – List of new word entries [note – YouTuber is a new word that was added to the OED, joining Brexit and hackathon, among many others.
In addition to revised versions of Second Edition entries, these ranges contain the following new entries:


Another toy for my geeks?
Blynk is an Internet of Things (IoT) service designed to make remote control and reading sensor data from your devices as quick and easy as possible.  In this article we will cover exactly what Blynk is, how it works, and provide two short example projects on different uses of the service with NodeMCU and Raspberry Pi development boards.


A research tool for all my students.
New on LLRX – What is RSS and How to Use it Effectively
by Sabrina I. Pacifici on Dec 29, 2016
Via LLRXWhat is RSS and How to Use it Effectively – This guide by Pete Weiss – expert listserv manager, communication device integrator, and newswire publisher/editor – provides researchers with an overview of why you should use RSS, along with step by step examples of how to implement this application which should be part of your knowledge gathering and current awareness toolkit.

No comments: