Tuesday, June 20, 2017

An interesting case for my Computer Security students.  Why were unencrypted medical records attached to emails? 
City News Service reports:
Torrance Memorial Medical Center began notifying some patients Monday that email accounts containing “work-related reports” and personal data were breached at the hospital.  The so-called phishing attack occurred on April 18 and 19, according to medical center spokesman Ed Finn, who said facility personnel, working with third-party forensic investigators, launched an investigation “to determine the nature and scope of the incident.”  “The investigation determined that personal information for certain individuals was present in some impacted emails, but it remains unclear whether emails or attachments containing the information were accessed by an unauthorized person or persons,” Finn said.
Read more on Daily Breeze.


Toward a global ID card?  Will this become a default ID for everyone? 
Microsoft and Accenture Unveil Global ID System for Refugees
Americans can show all sorts of documents, such as Social Security cards and diplomas, to show who they are.  But for those from countries torn apart by war or political chaos, it's much harder to prove their identities.
That's why a new software tool, unveiled on Monday at the United Nations, is a big deal.  It will let millions of refugees and other without documents whip out a phone to quickly show who they are and where they came from.
The tool, developed in part by Microsoft and Accenture, combines biometric data (like a fingerprint or an iris scan) and a new form of record-keeping technology, known as the blockchain, to create a permanent identity.
In practice, this means someone arriving at a border crossing could prove he or she had come from a refugee camp and qualify for aid.  Or a displaced person in a new country could use the ID system to call up his or her school records.  The tool doesn't have a name yet since it's at the prototype stage but will get one soon.


A simple introduction for my students.
Facial recognition has been an important part of science fiction for the past 50 years.  In most of those works it is painted as a means of oppression — part of a surveillance state and a form of control.
A combination of circumstances — the low cost of computing, improvements in machine learning, proliferation of internet connected devices — has once again turned science fiction into reality.  With facial recognition starting to be used in the mainstream for security and safety purposes, will it eventually turn into the dystopian future many imagined?


Will this impact Facebook’s promise to remove “terrorist” posts?
Supreme Court strikes down state law barring sex offenders from Facebook
The Supreme Court struck down a North Carolina law Monday that bans registered sex offenders from accessing Facebook and other social media.
The court ruled 8-0 that the law impermissibly restricts lawful speech in violation of the First Amendment.
In delivering the opinion of the court, Justice Anthony Kennedy said a fundamental principle of the First Amendment is that all persons have access to places where they can speak and listen, and then, after reflection, respond.
“While in the past there may have been difficulty in identifying the most important places (in a spatial sense) for the exchange of views, today the answer is clear,” he said.  “It is cyberspace — the ‘vast democratic forums of the Internet’ in general and social media in particular.”

(Related).  Is Google also impacted?  Or, is this the social media equivalent of shouting “Fire” in a crowded theater? 
Google Steps Up Efforts to Block Extremism, Following Facebook
Google is stepping up its efforts to block "extremist and terrorism-related videos" over its platforms, using a combination of technology and human monitors.
The measures announced Sunday come on the heels of similar efforts unveiled by Facebook last week, and follow a call by the Group of Seven leaders last month for the online giants to do more to curb online extremist content.


Undue reliance?
Tesla found 'not guilty' in fatal May 2016 crash, says NTSB
Tesla was found not at fault in the May 2016 fatal crash in which former Navy SEAL Joshua Brown collided with a truck while driving the Model S in autopilot mode, according to a 538-page National Transportation Safety Board report issued Monday.  The cause of the crash hasn't been determined.  The luxury electric-car maker has advised drivers to "maintain control and responsibility" for their vehicles even when the autopilot feature is enabled.  The NTSB report found that Brown had kept his hands off the wheel "for the vast majority of the trip," despite repeated automated warnings in the vehicle to maintain control.


Where else could this technique be applied?
Goldman Set Out to Automate IPOs and It Has Come Far, Really Fast
A few years ago, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s leaders took a hard look at how the bank carries out initial public offerings.  They mapped 127 steps in every deal, then set out to see how many could be done by computers instead of people.
The answer so far: about half.
Just 21 months after the firm disclosed its plan to re-engineer one of Wall Street’s most lucrative businesses, the project has found ways to eliminate thousands of hours of work long performed by humans.


Or, we could go to “self-flying” planes.
CAE Says Pilot Training Must Grow To Meet Demand
The world’s airlines will need 255,000 new airline pilots over the next 10 years, according to Canadian company CAE, which bills itself as the industry’s leading training organization for commercial aviation with a market share of about 25%.
“Rapid fleet expansion and high pilot retirement rates create a further need to develop 180,000 first officers into new airline captains, more than in any previous decade,” it says in its first Airline Pilot Training Demand Outlook, released today.
These numbers mean that over 50% of the pilots who will fly the world’s commercial aircraft in 10 years have not yet started to train.


Too late for this Quarters class, but I’ll save it for the next one.


And for my Geeks.


Since all my students have smartpjones…


For my students.  (I hope they will hire thousands!)  Also, knowing how listings are structured should make job searches more effective. 
Google’s job listings search is now open to all job search sites & developers
It’s now official: Job listings are coming to Google’s search results in a much more prominent way.  And the company is now offering a formal path for outsiders to add job listings to the new feature in Google search.
Google announced this morning that they are now opening up job listings within Google search to all developers and site owners.  The new jobs display within Google search doesn’t have a formal name.  However, it’s part of the overall Google for Jobs initiative that Google previewed last month at the Google I/O conference.


For my students who had better be researching!
An academic search engine is a must for every student or researcher, and now there’s an alternative to Google Scholar: Semantic Scholar, a new academic search engine that caters to researchers.
While Google Scholar is best for deep web research, Semantic Scholar runs on a sophisticated technology that will only improve with every year it runs: artificial intelligence.


It’s how I stay current.  Perhaps my students could use it too.  (That’s a hint, people.)
The trick is to use RSS (no, the technology isn’t dead).  If you combine RSS outputs with a couple of third-party tools, you can create a single customized news feed which only contains legitimate stories you care about.
In this article, I’m going to briefly explain how RSS works, show you how to use Zapier to create a custom RSS feed, and finally introduce you to a few alternatives.

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