What you can and can’t say.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/04/bloomberg-spy-chip-murky-world-national-security-reporting/

Bloomberg’s spy chip story reveals the murky world of national security reporting

Today’s bombshell Bloomberg story has the internet split: either the story is right, and reporters have uncovered one of the largest and jarring breaches of the U.S. tech industry by a foreign adversary… or it’s not, and a lot of people screwed up.

To recap, Chinese spies reportedly infiltrated the supply chain and installed tiny chips the size of a pencil tip on the motherboards built by Supermicro, which are used in data center servers across the U.S. tech industry — from Apple to Amazon. That chip can compromise data on the server, allowing China to spy on some of the world’s most wealthy and powerful companies.

Apple, Amazon and Supermicro — and the Chinese government — strenuously denied the allegations. Apple also released its own standalone statement later in the day, as did Supermicro. You don’t see that very often unless they think they have nothing to hide. You can — and should — read the statements for yourself.

Welcome to the murky world of national security reporting.

For my Security students. Gotta protect them cows!

https://www.securityweek.com/dhs-warns-threats-precision-agriculture

DHS Warns of Threats to Precision Agriculture

Relying on various embedded and connected technologies to improve agricultural and livestock management, precise agriculture is exposed to vulnerabilities and cyber-threats, a new report from the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warns.

… Technologies used in precision agriculture “rely on remote sensing, global positioning systems, and communication systems to generate big data, data analytics, and machine learning,” the DHS report (PDF) says.

… Cyber threats facing precision agriculture’s embedded and digital tools, however, are consistent with those other connected industries are exposed to as well.

For my Architecture students. (Podcast)

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-digital-tools-support-hyper-personalized-customer-experiences/

How Digital Tools Support Hyper-personalized Customer Experiences

Digital technologies are transforming every aspect of our lives – at home and at work – and how we interact with others. As customers, we are now empowered as never before. These technologies have put enormous power in our hands, and our expectations from companies are skyrocketing. What does this mean for businesses? Simply this: They need to keep the customer at the center of everything that they do and offer a superior experience. Customers will choose companies that offer them hyper-personalized and differentiated experiences, says Seeta Hariharan, general manager and group head at the digital software and solutions group at Tata Consultancy Services. In a conversation with Knowledge@Wharton, Hariharan explains why it is imperative that companies understand their customers’ needs and offer them the right products and services at the right time and in the right context.

(Related)

https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/05/facebook-messenger-voice-control/

Facebook Messenger internally tests voice commands for chat, calls

Facebook Messenger could soon let you use your voice to dictate and send messages, initiate voice calls and create reminders.

Perspective. Not being a toddler, I missed this. Their audience is global.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/raised-by-youtube/570838/

Raised by YouTube

… Five years on, ChuChu TV is a fast-growing threat to traditional competitors, from Sesame Street to Disney to Nickelodeon. With all its decades of episodes, well-known characters, and worldwide brand recognition, Sesame Street has more than 5 billion views on YouTube. That’s impressive, but ChuChu has more than 19 billion. Sesame Street’s main feed has 4 million subscribers; the original ChuChu TV channel has 19 million—placing it among the top 25 most watched YouTube channels in the world, according to the social-media-tracking site Social Blade—and its subsidiary channels (primarily ChuChu TV Surprise Eggs Toys and ChuChu TV Español) have another 10 million.

According to ChuChu, its two largest markets are the United States and India, which together generate about one-third of its views.

… That kind of growth suggests that something unpredictable and wild is happening: America’s grip on children’s entertainment is coming to an end. ChuChu is but the largest of a new constellation of children’s-media brands on YouTube that is spread out across the world: Little Baby Bum in London, Animaccord Studios in Moscow, Videogyan in Bangalore, Billion Surprise Toys in Dubai, TuTiTu TV in Tel Aviv, and LooLoo Kids in Iași, a Romanian town near the country’s border with Moldova. The new children’s media look nothing like what we adults would have expected. They are exuberant, cheap, weird, and multicultural.

For my toolkit.

https://www.freetech4teachers.com/2018/10/ytcropper-share-section-of-youtube-video.html

ytCropper - Share a Section of a YouTube Video

This week I answered an email from someone who had read my article 10 Tools for Teaching With YouTube Videos and wanted to know if there was a tool for sharing just a portion of a YouTube video. I used to recommend TubeChop but while that tool is still online it doesn't consistently work as it should. Now I recommend trying ytCropper.

ytCropper lets you share just a portion of a YouTube video by specifying the start time and end time of the video that you want others to see. To do this simply go to the ytCropper site then paste in the URL of the YouTube video that you want to share. Once you have done that you can specify the start and end time of the portion of the video that you want people to watch. ytCropper will generate a link to the cropped version of the video. Share that link to have people watch your specified portion of the video.