A world class hack?
How Russia
Helped Swing the Election for Trump
A meticulous
analysis of online activity during the 2016 campaign makes a powerful
case that targeted cyberattacks by hackers and trolls were decisive.
Donald Trump has adopted many contradictory
positions since taking office, but he has been unwavering on one
point: that Russia played no role in putting him in the Oval Office.
Trump dismisses the idea that Russian interference affected the
outcome of the 2016 election, calling it a “made-up story,”
“ridiculous,” and “a hoax.” He finds the subject so
threatening to his legitimacy that—according to “The
Perfect Weapon,” a recent book on cyber sabotage by David
Sanger, of the Times—aides say he refuses even to discuss
it.
… “Cyberwar:
How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President—What We
Don’t, Can’t, and Do Know,” by Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a
professor of communications at the University of Pennsylvania, dares
to ask—and even attempts to answer—whether Russian meddling had a
decisive impact in 2016. Jamieson offers a forensic analysis of the
available evidence and concludes that Russia very likely delivered
Trump’s victory.
Those who can’t hack, bash!
There are many ways to communicate displeasure.
TheNewspaper.com reports:
Opposition to the lowering of speed limits on departmental roads in France continued to be taken out on the country’s most profitable automated ticketing machines last week. France 3 found the number of tickets issued in the Pyrenees-Atlantiques department has tripled since July, but motorists have fought back by covering cameras with trash bags and posters opposing the new 80 km/h (50 MPH) speed limit on departmental roads.
On Friday, the speed camera on the D619 in Maizieres-la-Grande-Paroisse was destroyed by fire, according to L’Est Eclair. In Peaugres, the speed camera on the RD820 was torched on Sunday, France Bleu reported.
Read more on TheNewspaper.com.
Will it keep some parents from seeking help for
their children?
Children registering for school in Florida this
year were asked to reveal some history about their mental health.
The new requirement is part of a law rushed
through the state legislature after the February shooting
at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
On registration
forms for new students, the state’s school districts now must
ask whether a child has ever been referred for mental health
services.
“If you do say, ‘Yes, my child has seen a
counselor or a therapist or a psychologist,’ what does the school
then do with that?” asked Laura Goodhue, who has a 9-year-old son
on the autism spectrum and a 10-year-old son who has seen a
psychologist. “I think that was my biggest flag. And I actually
shared the story with a couple of mom friends of mine and said, ‘Can
you believe this is actually a thing?’”
Goodhue said she worries that if her children’s
mental health history becomes part of their school records, it could
be held against them.
… Parents express concern that the information
could fall into the wrong hands and may follow children throughout
their education, said Alisa
LaPolt, executive director of the Florida chapter of the National
Alliance on Mental Illness.
“In a perfect world, getting treatment for
mental health challenges would be no different than getting medical
treatment for a skin rash or a bad cold or a broken leg,” LaPolt
said. “But that’s not the world we live in right now. There is
stigma around mental illness and getting treatment for it.”
… School counselors say they understand the
stigma surrounding mental illness. Some say the way the law was
written doesn’t help. The mental health question was grouped with
requirements to report arrests or expulsions.
“What we have here is failure to communicate.”
One Big
Problem With Medicaid Work Requirement: People Are Unaware It Exists
Arkansas is the first state to test it, and
thousands have been kicked off the program.
… In the first month that it was possible for
people to lose coverage for failing to comply, more
than 4,300 people were kicked out of the program for the rest of
the year. Thousands more are on track to lose health benefits in the
coming months. You lose coverage if you fail to report three times,
and the program, in effect for three months, is slowly phasing in
more people.
… State officials said they worked hard to get
the word out — mailing letters, sending emails, placing phone
calls, briefing medical providers, putting posts on social media
sites and distributing fliers where Medicaid patients might find
them.
… But it seems that not everyone opened or
read their mail. Ray Hanley, the president of the Arkansas Foundation
for Medical Care, which ran a call center for the state, told my
colleague Robert Pear that many
people never
answered their phones. The state said the
open rate on emails was between 20 and 30 percent.
Worth a peak?
Ethics &
Algorithms Toolkit
“Government leaders and staff who leverage
algorithms are facing increasing pressure from the public, the media,
and academic institutions to be more transparent and accountable
about their use. Every day, stories come out describing the
unintended or undesirable consequences of algorithms. Governments
have not had the tools they need to understand and manage this new
class of risk. GovEx, the City and County of San Francisco, Harvard
DataSmart, and Data Community DC have collaborated on a practical
toolkit for cities to use to help them understand the implications of
using an algorithm, clearly articulate the potential risks, and
identify ways to mitigate them.
We
developed this because:
-
We saw a gap. There are many calls to arms and lots of policy papers, one of which was a DataSF research paper, but nothing practitioner-facing with a repeatable, manageable process.
-
We wanted an approach which governments are already familiar with: risk management. By identifing and quantifying levels of risk, we can recommend specific mitigations.
Our goals for the toolkit are to:
-
Elicit conversation.
-
Encourage risk evaluation as a team.
-
Catalyze proactive mitigation strategy planning.
For my students, there is no such thing as ‘before
Google.’
Google is
20 years old — here's what it looked like when it first launched
The company's official birthday is September 27,
1998, which is when Google first launched its webpage.
… If you want the full retro experience, you
can see what Google's search results looked like back then by
searching "Google
in 1998."
(Related)
Google
Wants to Answer the Questions You Haven't Even Asked Yet
… The search giant announced
a raft of new features at an event Monday to celebrate its 20th
anniversary. A Facebook-like newsfeed populated with videos and
articles the company thinks an individual user would find interesting
will now show up on the Google home page just below the search bar on
all mobile web browsers.
“It helps you come across the things you haven’t
even started looking for,” Karen Corby, a product manager on
Google’s search team, said in a blog
post.
I have to make my students ready to live in this
environment.
The hot
race for 5G will change the world we know now
… If you somehow missed all the hype, simply
stated, 5G stands for the “fifth generation” of wireless
telecommunications services. In cellular chronology, 1G, or the first
generation of wireless, was all about voice — and boy did we
embrace the mobile phones in our cars and in our hands — however
clunky they were by today’s standards. 3G laid the foundation for
today’s smartphones and 4G built the app economy with even more
speed and data capabilities.
… A senior
Verizon executive claims that 5G will historically “transform
industries across every sector of the economy … redefining work,
elevating living standards, and having a profound and sustained
impact on our global economic growth.”
They say 5G technology will deliver life-changing
technologies through next-generation networks and that Verizon’s
network will allow up to 100 times better throughput, 10 times longer
battery life and 1,000 times larger data volumes, all while being
10times more reliable.
(Related) See why I wanted cities to own the
infrastructure?
Cities Feel
Run Over in 5G Race as FCC Sides With AT&T, Verizon
San Jose found a way to help the disadvantaged as
it struck deals to let AT&T Inc. and Verizon
Communications Inc. put antennas on 4,000 city-owned light poles,
laying groundwork for super-fast 5G signals while feeding the city’s
treasury.
The capital of Silicon Valley gets
$750 annually for each pole, and a total of $24 million of the
revenue has been pledged toward bringing broadband to unserved
neighborhoods.
Too bad other towns won’t be able to do the same
thing. The U.S. Federal
Communications Commission is poised to vote Wednesday to limit
fees localities can charge, tighten deadlines for responding to
industry and discourage deals like San Jose’s that fund broadband
projects.
… “We are shocked,” Samir
Saini, New York City’s commissioner of information technology,
said in an emailed statement. The proposed action is “an
unnecessary and unauthorized gift to the telecommunications industry
and its lobbyists” and an effort “to subsidize a trillion dollar
industry under the guise of helping broadband deployment,” Saini
said.
Under the proposed FCC order, cities couldn’t
charge more than it costs them to process applications and manage
rights-of-way – an amount the FCC estimated at $270.
That’s far short of charges in some cities. New
York City charges as much at $5,100 a year in Manhattan south of 96th
Street, and as little as $148 annually in places where it’s trying
to encourage deployment.
Perspective. Tracking vegetables like bitcoins.
Pinning down the liability?
Walmart
will use blockchain to ensure the safety of leafy greens
Walmart is anxious about the safety of its food
following bacterial outbreaks for lettuce and other food, and it's
hoping technology will set shoppers' minds at ease. It's telling
its leafy green suppliers to use a blockchain
system (designed with IBM's help) to track the shipments of their
produce. The secure, distributed ledger will help trace the
vegetables' path from the farm to the store, revealing the source of
any potential outbreak in seconds instead of days. This isn't just
for Walmart's internal benefit, either. Eventually, you could scan a
bag and use the blockchain to find out where your spinach came from.
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