Saturday, January 28, 2017

The Samsung ‘failure du jour?’  By now, this looks like ‘enemy action.’
Katherine Rushton reports:
If you settle down to watch television this evening, you might want to think twice about what you say out loud.
Samsung has warned owners of its internet-connected ‘smart TV’ that anything they discuss while sitting near the device may be overheard.
The popular televisions are voice activated, so users can switch channels or ask for suggestions of what to watch simply by giving a verbal command.
Read more on DailyMail.


Backups are so simple to implement this should never happen.
Ryan Francis reports:
About three months ago, an instructor at Gurnick Academy, a California-based nursing school, had his biggest fear come alive.  When he tried to access his lectures, the files were encrypted.  The teacher was literally locked out of his classroom.
If it wasn’t for a quick acting IT department, the entire school might have been in the same situation.  They noticed the incident at the early stage and managed to prevent the encryption from spreading by disconnecting the Infected device from the corporate network.
Read more on CSO Online.


Can it really be that simple?
Beware new "can you hear me" scam
   Virginia police are now warning about the scheme, which also sparked warnings by Pennsylvania authorities late last year.  The “can you hear me” con is actually a variation on earlier scams aimed at getting the victim to say the word “yes” in a phone conversation.  That affirmative response is recorded by the fraudster and used to authorize unwanted charges on a phone or utility bill or on a purloined credit card.
“You say ‘yes,’ it gets recorded and they say that you have agreed to something,”


Gee, if Harvard says so, it must be true!
Charismatic CEOs enjoy leading and inspiring people, so they don’t like delegating critical business decisions to smart algorithms.  Who wants clever code bossing them around?  But that future’s already arrived.  At some of the world’s most successful enterprises — Google, Netflix, Amazon, Alibaba, Facebook — autonomous algorithms, not talented managers, increasingly get the last word.  Elite MBAs (Management by Algorithm) are the new normal.
   “You need a Chief AI Officer,” Baidu chief scientist Andrew Ng told Fortune at January’s Consumer Electronics Show.  (He explained why he thinks so in a recent HBR article.)


My students annoy me, so I guess I should send this to them.
   Ninja Spinki Challenges is available on Android and on iOS right now. It’s free to play, but you will have to put up with ads.  Rather ingeniously, watching a short video ad after you mess up will allow you to carry on from the point where it all went wrong.

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