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…”
