Thursday, December 27, 2018

An article I missed. Could this be a shot at Hillary?
FEC: Lawmakers and staff may use campaign funds for personal cybersecurity
… FEC Commissioner Caroline Hunter wrote on behalf of the commission that spending on cyber hygiene and protective services would not constitute, "impermissible conversion of campaign funds to personal use."
… The unanimous vote Thursday will allow members of Congress and staff to use campaign funds to purchase a range of hardware and software products to bolster their own security, including cell phones and computers, home routers, personal software and applications, firewalls, antivirus software, security keys, secure cloud services, password management tools, consulting, incident response services and others.
"With growing threats posed by foreign governments, it's crucial that elected officials get smarter about their cybersecurity," said Wyden on Twitter.
… While members of Congress can draw from cybersecurity resources at the House and Senate Sergeant-At-Arms to protect their official devices and accounts, they were unable to do so for personal ones or those of their families.


(Related) Apparently, this is an approved use of campaign funds. “I didn’t know what they did but I gave them $750,000.”
https://www.businessinsider.com/reid-hoffman-misinformation-alabama-senate-race-2018-12
Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman apologizes after $750,000 campaign donation linked to misinformation in Alabama senate race
Linkedin co-founder and Greylock Partner's investor Reid Hoffman apologized Wednesday for funding a group linked to a misinformation campaign during Alabama's 2017 special election for the US Senate.
… Hoffman donated $750,000 to AET, according to the Washington Post, who first reported Hoffman's statement Wednesday.
Hoffman, a vocal democratic donor, said in the statement that he was not aware of the group's work with New Knowledge before it was reported last week.




Another article I missed. Fake news is even dangerous to robots (algorithms).
Market volatility: Fake news spooks trading algorithms
Fake news and inaccurate headlines may have contributed to recent stock market volatility, as trading algorithms try to interpret market-related news.
Hugh Son, at CNBC reported that in a note written to clients by J.P. Morgan Chase's top quant, Marko Kolanovic, blamed a media landscape that's a mix of real and fake news, which makes it easy for others to amplify negative news. The effects can be seen that, in spite of a booming economy and positive signals, the markets are reacting strongly to this mix of negative news.


(Related)
How Much of the Internet Is Fake? Turns Out, a Lot of It, Actually.
… For a period of time in 2013, the Times reported this year, a full half of YouTube traffic was “bots masquerading as people,” a portion so high that employees feared an inflection point after which YouTube’s systems for detecting fraudulent traffic would begin to regard bot traffic as real and human traffic as fake. They called this hypothetical event “the Inversion.”




I guess they never heard of Fake News. (Sounds like a business opportunity, but keep your plans off social media.)
IRS wants to use social media to catch tax cheats
Quartz: “The Internal Revenue Service is looking for ways to scour social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter in its ongoing quest to catch tax cheats. That’s according to a request for information issued December 18 by the IRS’s National Office of Procurement. The mining of social media data by the agency has been suspected in the past, but the IRS has never before confirmed the practice.
“Businesses and individuals increasingly use social media to advertise, promote, and sell products and services,” the IRS solicitation reads. “For example, taxpayers can create ‘online stores’ on social networking sites free of cost. Much of this information is unrestricted, allowing the public, businesses and various governmental agencies to discover taxpayers’ locations and income sources. But the IRS currently has no formal tool to access this public information, compile social media feeds, or search multiple social media sites.”…




An interesting approach. (So, Flipkart can’t sell anything from Walmart?)
India tightens e-commerce rules, likely to hit Amazon, Flipkart
India will ban e-commerce companies such as Amazon.com and Walmart-owned Flipkart Group from selling products from companies in which they have an equity interest.
… The All India Online Vendors Association (AIOVA) in October filed a petition with the anti-trust body Competition Commission of India (CCI) alleging that Amazon favours merchants that it partly owns, such as Cloudtail and Appario. The lobby group filed a similar petition against Flipkart in May, alleging violation of competition rules through preferential treatment for select sellers.




Perspective. We practiced hiding from nuclear weapons. I guess every generation needs to learn what their parents fear.
More than 4.1M students were in a school lockdown last year
Washington Post: “School shootings remain rare, even after 2018, a year of historic carnage on K-12 campuses. What’s not rare are lockdowns, which have become a hallmark of American education and a byproduct of this country’s inability to curb its gun violence epidemic. Lockdowns save lives during real attacks, but even when there is no gunman stalking the hallways, the procedures can inflict immense psychological damage on children convinced that they’re in danger. And the number of kids who have experienced these ordeals is extraordinary. More than 4.1 million students endured at least one lockdown in the 2017-2018 school year alone, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by The Washington Post that included a review of 20,000 news stories and data from school districts in 31 of the country’s largest cities…”


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