On Saturday, Kevin Scheid, a Department of Defense
veteran, was placed in charge of NATO’s cyber operations. The appointment wouldn’t be big news if it
weren’t for the fact that he’s joining the organization at a hair-raising point
in history. The vicious malware
triggered NATO to announce on Friday that the attack is believed to be the
work of a state actor and is a potential act of war.
(Related). How many
drones would it take to shut down an airport completely for 24 hours? How could we defend against such an
attack?
Drone causes Gatwick Airport disruption
A drone flying close to Gatwick Airport led to the closure
of the runway and forced five flights to be diverted.
An airport spokesman said the runway had been closed for
two periods of nine minutes and five minutes on Sunday evening after the drone
was sighted.
Russia, China, now the US.
Over the last couple of weeks, there’s been a disturbing
trend of governments demanding that private tech companies share their source
code if they want to do business. Now,
the US government is giving the same ultimatum and it’s getting what it wants.
On Sunday, the CEO of security firm Kaspersky Labs, Eugene
Kaspersky, told the Associated Press that he’s willing to show the US
government his company’s source code. “Anything
I can do to prove that we don’t behave maliciously I will do it,” Kaspersky
said while insisting that he’s open to testifying before Congress as well.
Organizations seem to view all data as just bits and
bytes. Remembering which system impact
people is hard to train into them. (Why
didn’t Google raise concerns?)
From the Information Commissioner’s Office:
The ICO has ruled
the Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust failed to comply with the Data Protection
Act when it provided patient details to
Google DeepMind.
The Trust provided personal data
of around 1.6 million patients as part of a trial to test an alert, diagnosis
and detection system for acute kidney injury.
But an ICO investigation found
several shortcomings in how the data was handled, including that patients were
not adequately informed that their data would be used as part of the test.
The Trust has been asked to commit to changes
ensuring it is acting in line with the law by signing an undertaking.
Read more on the ICO’s
site.
(Related). Another
country and a different type of organizations, but the same disregard for personal
information.
Janene Pieters reports:
An investigation into the Tax
Authorities‘ practices in handling confidential information revealed
ten cases of “unauthorized data exchange”, State Secretary Eric Wiebes of
Finances informed parliament in a letter. In one case, the State Secretary pressed
charges with the Public Prosecutor, he wrote.
The investigation in the Data
& Analytics department is still ongoing, but Wiebes thought it best to
inform the Tweede Kamer of the preliminary findings. All ten cases were reported to the Personal
Data Authority, and the persons affected, as specified in the Personal Data
Protection Act.
Read more on NL
Times.
Interesting. Also,
a but on how education will change.
IMF – Millennials and the Future of Work
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Jul 2, 2017
IMF Finance and Development Report, June 2017 (64 pages,
PDF): Includes – The Future of Work, Arun
Sundararajan – The digital economy will sharply erode
the traditional employer-employee relationship
Bad algorithm? How
about pogo sticks? Leaping
skateboarders?
Autonomous Cars Can Handle Reckless Drivers, But Not Hopping
Kangaroos
… In a statement
earlier this week, Volvo admitted that its own self-driving technology has a
problem; its “Large Animal Detection system” is bamboozled by kangaroos. Volvo’s Technical Manager for Australia, David
Pickett, told the ABC that its car can deal with deer and other similar
animals crossing the road, but is confused by the hopping kangaroos. “When it’s in the air, it actually looks like
it’s further away, then it lands and it looks closer,” he said.”
This is actually because Volvo’s system [AKA: algorithm Bob]
measures how far away objects are by their distance from the ground, which
confuses the sensors when a kangaroo is in the air.
I admit, this snuck under my radar.
With Panasonic’s help, Denver is building a smart city within
a city
… While the
receptive government was helpful, it wasn’t the only factor that brought
Panasonic to Denver. Near the airport,
at the second-to-last stop off the commuter rail line is Peña Station. Look at it now on Google Maps, and it’s just a big patch of dirt, about 10
miles from the Denver International Airport. The 400 acres that Panasonic and its partners
plan to develop aren’t subject to the typical processes that come with being
part of a municipality. “Ultimately
because of the partnership and the fact that we’re land investors, we
essentially have the ability to pull the trigger on new and emerging
technology.” Without having to wait for
request for proposals, in 18 months, Panasonic has set up Colorado’s first
microgrid, smart street lamps, and signed a partnership with the Colorado
Department of Transportation (CDOT) to test self-driving vehicles on a stretch
of Interstate 70.
The city has also found ways to automate some services and
reduce wait times at the DMV. If you go
to the city of Denver’s website,
you’ll see a list of things you can do online, from paying parking tickets, to
adopting a pet, to checking recreational center hours. “Denver has also launched a mobile app,
Pocketgov, as a one-stop-shop to city services,” said Jenna Espinoza,
spokeswoman for the office of Mayor Michael B. Hancock. “With Pocketgov, residents can report
problems, ask questions, and get information about vital city services like
snow plowing, street sweeping, waste services, and more.”
Might be useful for our international students. Note that English is missing, but Klingon is
there.
Language Links Database – Home of All The Free Language
Resources
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Jul 2, 2017
Welcome to the Language Links Database – “The purpose of this
website is to list all the best free language links and language resources. Knowledge should be easily accessible. Day by day new language links are added. If you don’t see language links for some of
the languages you’d like to learn, please be patient.”
Definitely a keeper.
Just in time for summer – 1,704 free high-resolution national
park maps
by Sabrina
I. Pacifici on Jul 2, 2017
Via Matt Holly: “The National Park
Service publishes tons of great free maps; I’ve collected them all for you. Here on NPMaps you’ll find hundreds of
PDF and image files of any U.S. national park map; you can view all parks alphabetically and sort by state. Or use the menu above to navigate to the park
of your choice.
If you’re looking for a single national parks map
that shows all U.S. national parks, click the image to the left (2.7 mb)
or download the PDF (21.2 mb). The PDF map will take a while to load; please
be patient! Or, order a large
poster of this national parks map from the NPMaps Store (links open in new window).
I created this site because I love visiting national parks
and planning trips by poring* over a classic national park map.
However, I’ve always found it
time-consuming to visit each park’s web page and use an embedded map viewer or
muddle through the website to find a nice printable map.
So I’ve done the hard work for you and collected maps of
each park and hosted them here. I’ll be
continually updating this site over time, adding more parks and including as
many free downloadable maps as I can find. I’ll post new pages in the Latest Updates section as I add more.
Besides hosting the main national park brochure maps, I’ve
also endlessly paged through park newspapers, management documents, and other
non-user-friendly PDFs in order to extract the maps and provide them
here for you. Enjoy the fruits
of my labor! I cut out all the extra info to give you just the maps, straight
up.”
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