Tuesday, June 12, 2018

...but they missed Russian meddling, so what are they concentrating on?
Feds arrest dozens in alleged wire transfer scam
… Law enforcement officials arrested 74 people for allegedly carrying out business email compromise (BEC) schemes, or “cyber-enabled financial fraud" as part of Operation Wire Wire, according to a DOJ press release.
Hackers execute BEC scams by impersonating employees or business executives after gaining access to their email accounts. These types of attacks use social engineering tactics to trick unsuspecting employees and business executives into making wire transfers to bank accounts that are controlled by the criminals. The elderly are particularly targeted in BEC schemes.
The Justice Department coordinated with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Treasury Department and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to track the suspected cyber crooks, which ultimately resulted in the arrest of 42 alleged fraudsters in the United States and 29 in Nigeria.




Has management lost the ability to learn from the mistakes of others? Do they even look outside their own narrow focus? Does the US have anything set up to review software? AI software might be more of a concern than emission controlling software.
German ministry says 774,000 Mercedes cars contain unauthorized software
Germany's Transport Ministry on Monday said 774,000 Mercedes-Benz vehicles were found to contain unauthorized software defeat devices in Europe and ordered Daimler to recall 238,000 cars in Germany.
… Daimler confirmed the recall to CNBC and said "open legal questions will be clarified" during discussions with the German Ministry of Transport.
Daimler is not the first German automaker to be investigated for the use of devices meant to defeat diesel emissions tests. Volkswagen was slapped with roughly $30 billion in fines over an emissions cheating scandal that began in 2015, after it was revealed the automaker had outfitted defeat devices on millions of vehicles worldwide.




Since the best stories are always the horror stories, I doubt this will change anything.
Federal Aviation Administration drone rules 'overly strict,' new report says
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is taking an "overly conservative" approach to integrating drones into the national airspace, according to a report requested by Congress and released Monday by the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Math (NASEM).
The agency "tends to overestimate the severity and likelihood" of potential dangers associated with drones, NASEM said and maintains a "near-zero tolerance for risk" despite the life-saving potential of drones.




Since I train disrupters, this is a must read.
Three Signals Your Industry Is About to Be Disrupted
Legacy companies are falling like dominoes to disruptors. Together, emerging technology and new business models have created new ways of serving customers. The same way Airbnb, Uber, and LinkedIn fundamentally changed the lodging, taxi, and recruiting industries, titans such as Amazon, Google, and Facebook are now poised to disrupt every industry as wide-ranging as health insurers to grocers. It’s safe to say that no industry will be left untouched — but is yours next?
A number of industries seem to be “safe” from disruption, but often the markets most at risk do not see it coming. Who would have predicted, for example, that Amazon would follow its acquisition of Whole Foods Market with a jump into health care? We have looked at common patterns among more recent business model innovations and determined three major signals that your industry could be on the precipice of major change.
Sign # 1: Your Industry Has Significant Regulatory Burdens
Sign # 2: Your Customers Have to Work at Managing Their Costs
Sign # 3: Your Customers’ Experience Isn’t Positive — or Even Neutral




Because with the Quarter over, what else do my students have to do?
Here are 454 pages of Facebook’s written follow-up answers to Congress
Facebook finished its homework. In a pair of newly uploaded letters, the two Senate committees that grilled Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in April have published the social media giant’s written answers to their considerable body of questions.


(Related) Expect lots of articles like this as everyone pours over the Responses.
Here Are 18 Things You Might Not Have Realized Facebook Tracks About You
BuzzFeed: “When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified before Congress in April in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, he said he’d have his team follow up on questions he couldn’t answer in full during the hearing. On Monday, Congress released a massive document with written answers to those questions. These responses were a good reminder that Facebook records a ton of information about you, including:
  • mouse movements on your computer
  • information about “nearby Wi-Fi access points, beacons, and cell towers”
  • “purchases [users] make” on off-Facebook websites
  • import their contact information”…”




Perhaps Colorado could sell advertising rights to potholes they repair?
This feels like something from a William Gibson cyberpunk dystopia novel, where the government has become so weak and useless, private corporations have been taking over the basic upkeep of the nation. But it’s not a William Gibson novel, there’s no plucky protagonist with some sort of cybernetic implant, it’s just America in 2018, with crumbling roads that Domino’s has decided to fix. For the sake of the pizzas.
Domino’s is tired of their innocent pizzas, who only wish to serve humankind, being beaten all to hell by poorly-maintained roads. They even have a website that shows, in graphic, pizza-box-cam detail, what brutal hell pizzas are put through when their delivery vehicle impacts a pothole.
… To remedy this, Domino’s has been hiring work crews to repair potholes in a number of cities, including Burbank, CA (five holes fixed), Bartonville, TX (eight holes), an impressive 40 holes fixed in Milford, DE, and an astounding 150 potholes filled in Athens, GA.
It’s not entirely altruistic, of course. Domino’s tags every filled pothole with their logo and the tagline “OH YES WE DID.”




For the next time I teach Math.
Three Good PowerPoint Add-ins for Math Teachers
PowerPoint has many features that students and teachers often overlook. That's bound to happen with any program that has been around as long as PowerPoint has and includes as many features as PowerPoint does. One of those overlooked features is found in the Add-ins available for PowerPoint. Browse through the gallery of Add-ins and you'll find some excellent tools for math teachers and students.
The GeoGebra PowerPoint Add-in lets you access GeoGebra materials directly from your PowerPoint slides. You can also use the Add-in to create graphs, shapes, and spreadsheets within your slides. The GeoGebra PowerPoint Add-in works in the desktop and online versions of PowerPoint.
Khan Academy's math videos and math practice exercises are available in a PowerPoint Add-in. The Khan Academy PowerPoint Add-in lets you find videos and exercises to insert directly into slides. The exercises that you insert into your slides are fully functional which means that you could use them for live demonstrations without having to leave your slides.
PhET provides free interactive math and science simulations covering topics in physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, and mathematics. In the PhET library you'll find simulations appropriate for elementary, middle, high school, and university students. More than 50 of the PhET simulations are available to insert into PowerPoint presentations through the use of PhET's free PowerPoint Add-in. With the Add-in installed you can browse the available simulations and insert them into your slides. The simulations work in your slide just as they do on the PhET website.


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