Sunday, April 09, 2017

For my Ethical Hacking students. 
Shadow Brokers re-emerge, drop large catalog of stolen NSA exploits
The Shadow Brokers, the mysterious group linked to exploits stolen from the National Security Agency, released a large catalog of files Saturday that give further insight into the elite spy agency’s hacking methods.
In a lengthy blog post on Medium, the group reveals a password that unlocks an encrypted folder full of files the group previously tried to sell in an online auction.  The group says the motive for unlocking the files is disappointment with the actions of President Donald Trump since he assumed office, including missile strikes on a Syrian air base earlier this week.
   Security researchers have started poring over the files, with many saying on Twitter that some date back as far as the 1990s.  The catalog’s exploits look to primarily focus on Linux.


Google will only check your facts if you “ask” them to.  President Trump probably never will.
Google's Fact Check Labeling System Goes Global
Google on Friday announced the extension of the Fact Check feature it introduced last fall in partnership with Jigsaw.  Publishers now can display a Fact Check tag in news stories everywhere that Google News is available.
   Not all stories will be fact checked, and not all publishers will be eligible to use the Fact Check label.  Those who want to have the option must use the Schema.org ClaimReview markup on the specific pages where they fact check public statements.
Or, they can use the Share the Facts widget developed by the Duke University Reporters' Lab and Jigsaw.
Only publishers algorithmically determined to be an authoritative source of information will qualify for inclusion.  The content must adhere to the following:
At its discretion, Google may ignore a site's markup if it fails to adhere to these policies.


For my entrepreneurial students.
A Small-Business Guide to Facebook Advertising (Infographic)
As a small business, you don’t need to spend loads of money on advertising.  There are plenty of free or low-cost tools that you can use to effectively market your company.
One of the biggest opportunities is through social media, specifically Facebook.  Ninety-five percent of social media marketers say that Facebook gave them the best return of investment out of all the social platforms.  
   Check out Headway Capital’s infographic below for a step-by-step manual to effectively market your small business on Facebook.


Work for the non-robots I’m training.
This is how many U.S. jobs robots will create over the next 10 years
Close to 15 million new jobs will be created in the U.S. over the next decade as a direct result of automation and artificial intelligence, equivalent to 10% of the workforce, according to estimates in a new report from Forrester Research, a market research company.  Those gains, however, will not come close to offsetting the 25 million jobs that technology will eliminate by 2027, Forrester predicts.
   Blue collar workers, including ones that feature routine manual labor or assembly-line production, were expected to be hardest hit alongside people without a college education, the economists found.  Furthermore, automation was estimated to result in no meaningful positive employment gains for any occupation, that study concluded.


For my fellow Math instructors.
Mathematical Miscellany #11
   Chancing upon this tweet I saw that indeed we have an exciting possibility here as Desmos does Geometry!  Early days right now and this is still in early beta.


The bane of my existence is them little red underlines.
3 horrible ways typos (and bad spelling) could alter the course of your life
While 8 in 10 American adults consider themselves typo-free, 7 in 10 say they often find mistakes in written correspondence from others, according to a recent survey of the grammar gripes of more than 2,000 adults by Dictionary.com. 
Firstly, it’s bad for business.  Customers are less likely to trust (and spend money) with online retailers that misspell words, which can translate into millions of dollars for sites with bad grammar, one U.K.-based study found.  Michele Forzley, senior scholar at the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University Law Center, says that bad spelling on the packaging of goods being sold online could also be the sign that an antique or designer product is actually a fake.
Secondly, it can cost you a job.  Nearly 50% of hiring managers will dismiss a job application with words misspelled on a resume or cover letter, according to jobs listing site CareerBuilder.com
And finally, spelling mistakes on social media or on dating sites can damage your reputation and cost singletons the prospect of meeting someone who would — bad spelling aside — otherwise be a good match. … Some 43% of online daters said bad spelling is a “major turnoff,” according to a 2013 survey of 1,700 adults by Kibin, a proofreading and editing service.  In fact, one-third actually found good grammar sexy. [Let’s not get carried away.  Bob]

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