Wednesday, March 07, 2018

Early in the computer age, there were incidents where individuals crashed cars, shot, and fire-bombed mainframe computers. They were Luddites. What is going on here?
Self-driving cars are here. But shouting Californians are attacking them, DMV says
… So far in 2018, there have been only six reported traffic incidents involving self-driving vehicles in California, according to the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles. But of those six incidents, two involved angry, violent Californians going up to the futuristic cars on San Francisco streets and attacking.
The first incident started on Jan. 2 around 9:30 p.m., when a pedestrian saw a self-driving Chevrolet Bolt at 16th and Valencia Streets in the city’s Mission District. The vehicle was stopped at a green light as it waited for other pedestrians to cross the street.
But then the onlooker “ran across Valencia Street, against the ‘do not walk’ symbol, shouting, and struck the left side of the ... rear bumper and hatch with his entire body,” according to a California DMV incident report.
The vehicle was slightly damaged, but no one was injured, according to the incident report. Police weren’t called. The vehicle was being operated by GMC Cruise, the self-driving vehicle arm of the giant automaker.
About a month later, on Jan. 28, came the second attack. This time, just before 11 p.m., a taxi driver near Duboce Avenue and Guerrero Street got out of his car when he spotted an autonomous GMC Cruise. The taxi driver went up to the vehicle and “slapped the front passenger window, causing a scratch,” according to the incident report.
No one was injured. And from the sound of it, the self-driving car took the high road — choosing not to call police after the attack, according to the incident report.


(Related) How fast will this spread? Faster than my students seem to believe.
Uber’s self-driving trucks are now delivering freight in Arizona


(Related) I think my students will be shocked to see how many companies are investing in self-driving technology.
Self Driving Car Stock Directory added to Investor Ideas; Self-Driving Car Market expected to reach $20 billion by 2024




Probably not the last word on this breach.
Judy Greenwald reports:
An $80 million settlement has been proposed in a securities class litigation filed in connection with Yahoo Inc. data breaches in 2013 and 2014.
The proposed settlement in In re Yahoo Inc. securities litigation, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco on Friday, was publicized Monday.
In December 2016, Yahoo announced a 2013 breach affecting 1 billion accounts. And in March 2017, the United States charged two Russian intelligence agents and two hackers with masterminding a separate 2014 theft of 500 million Yahoo accounts.
Read more on Business Insurance.




For my Computer Security and Data Management students: How would you detect bogus reservations?
An OpenTable Employee Was Fired After Making Hundreds Of Fake Restaurant Reservations To Hurt A Rival Company
… The OpenTable employee used Reserve to make around 300 fake reservations at 45 restaurants that led to hundreds of no-shows for those restaurants over a three-month period, Reserve's CEO Greg Hong and COO Michael Wesner told BuzzFeed News on Monday.
The no-shows were equivalent to 1,200 to 1,300 diners.
… According to Eater Chicago, which first reported the story, the employee intended to use the no-shows in their sales pitches to show OpenTable was a better product than Reserve.
... Reserve said it began an investigation after the company noticed anomalies in their data and after getting feedback from restaurant partners about several no-shows, Hong said.
During the investigation, Reserve discovered that an OpenTable employee was using different email addresses from a few different locations to make hundreds of fake reservations through Reserve. Many of these were bookings for large parties, Hong said.
The number of fake reservations peaked on Valentine's Day, hurting restaurants with no-shows on one of the busiest days of the year.




Did the EU do something smart? Or are companies running scared?
GDPR prompts companies worldwide to plan for stronger security, study shows
… The Versasec study found Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is beginning to seriously affect companies’ approach to cybersecurity, although many still rely on inadequate defenses.
More than half of respondents say the GDPR, which takes effect in May, weighs heavily on their current security strategy decisions. 60% plan to spend up to 24% of their technology budgets on security this year; while 18% will spend 49%; and almost 25% will spend more than half of their budget on cyber defenses. Last year, only 15% of respondents said they planned to invest this much in cyber resilience.




Sound increasingly like Facebook has not built in the Control Monitors that management is now finding that it needs. It may not even have the Controls!
Facebook's Political Nightmare Is Getting Worse Ahead Of The 2018 Midterms
If the 2016 election was proof-of-concept [Someone reads my blog! Bob] for platform-enabled election meddling, the 2018 midterms, just months away, are shaping up to be more of a large-scale clinical trial — and an absolute nightmare for Facebook.
… Despite Facebook's repeated reassurances, some on Capitol Hill fear the company — and country — may be sucker punched again come November. And a dysfunctional federal government waffling on plans to thwart future attacks on elections isn’t helping matters.




Is this good business?
New documents reveal FBI paid Geek Squad repair staff as informants
… Records posted Tuesday by the Electronic Frontier Foundation following a freedom of information lawsuit filed last year reveal that federal agents would pay Geek Squad managers who pass on information about illegal materials on devices sent in by customers for repairs.
The relationship goes back at least ten years, according to documents released as a result of the lawsuit.
… According to the EFF's analysis of the documents, FBI agents would "show up, review the images or video and determine whether they believe they are illegal content" and seize the device so an additional analysis could be carried out at a local FBI field office.
That's when, in some cases, agents would try to obtain a search warrant to justify the access.
… But that relationship and data handover could violate Americans' constitutional rights to protections from unwarranted searches and seizures, the privacy group charges.
Because the FBI uses Geek Squad as informants, the EFF says that any search should be seen as a warrantless search carried out by proxy, "and thus any evidence obtained as a result of the illegal searches should be thrown out of court."




Is Alphabet opting out of this market? No work for the military?
Eric Schmidt Keynote Address at the Center for a New American Security Artificial Intelligence and Global Security Summit


(Related) Maybe not openly…
Google has partnered with the United States Department of Defense to help the agency develop artificial intelligence for analyzing drone footage, a move that set off a firestorm among employees of the technology giant when they learned of Google’s involvement.
Google’s pilot project with the Defense Department’s Project Maven, an effort to identify objects in drone footage, has not been previously reported, but it was discussed widely within the company last week when information about the project was shared on an internal mailing list, according to sources who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the project.




Perspective.
11% of Americans don’t use the internet. Who are they?
“For many Americans, going online is an important way to connect with friends and family, shop, get news and search for information. Yet today, 11% of U.S. adults do not use the internet, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of survey data. The size of this group has changed little over the past three years, despite ongoing government and social service programs to encourage internet adoption in underserved areas. But that 11% figure is substantially lower than in 2000, when the Center first began to study the social impact of technology. That year, nearly half (48%) of American adults did not use the internet . A 2013 Pew Research Center survey found some key reasons that some people do not use the internet. A third of non-internet users (34%) did not go online because they had no interest in doing so or did not think the internet was relevant to their lives. Another 32% of non-users said the internet was too difficult to use, including 8% of this group who said they were “too old to learn.” Cost was also a barrier for some adults who were offline – 19% cited the expense of internet service or owning a computer. The Center’s latest analysis also shows that internet non-adoption is correlated to a number of demographic variables, including age, educational attainment, household income and community type…”




On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.
Use Digital Platforms to Cultivate Diversity
When one thinks of a successful digital transformation, employee diversity doesn’t immediately come to mind as an essential component. Yet, to compete in an increasingly digital environment, a diverse employee base can not only help provide new ideas but can also help reveal key decision-making errors that may otherwise go unnoticed.
Diversity is particularly important for collaboration, a critical factor associated with digital business maturity. Our research shows that while only about 30% of employees from companies at an early stage of digital development say that their company is collaborative, more than 70% of employees from digitally mature companies do. Nevertheless, collaboration simply for the sake of collaboration is not necessarily valuable.




Ah, the power of social media!
Blogger held after luring 3,000 men to her hotel room with offer of free sex
A 19-YEAR-OLD blogger was arrested by police after she lured around 3,000 men to her hotel room with a promise of free sex. The woman, identified only as Ye, has been arrested by Hainan police in Sunya on suspicion of advertising about prostitution.


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