What’s
the alternative?
Alfred
Ng reports:
Multiple government agencies are relying on a security measure that can be easily bypassed thanks to massive breaches like the Equifax hack, the US Government Accountability Office has found. In a report released Friday, the government watchdog group found that the US Postal Service, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Social Security Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have still been using “Knowledge-Based Verification” to make sure people who apply for benefits online are authentic.
This verification method asked applicants questions like their date of birth, Social Security numbers and addresses, assuming that only the applicant would have that information. But in Equifax’s breach in 2017, that information had been stolen from 145.5 million Americans, rounding out to more than half the US population.
Read
more on CNET.
Paranoia:
when we don’t know how or why.
Crippling
blackout hits tens of millions in South America
A
massive blackout left tens of millions of people without electricity
in Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay on Sunday. The Argentine
president called it an "unprecedented" failure in the
countries' interconnected power grid.
… Earlier
Sunday, Argentine voters were forced to cast ballots by the light of
cellphones in gubernatorial elections. Public transportation was
halted, shops closed and patients dependent on home medical equipment
were urged to go to hospitals with generators.
… Lopetegui
said the blackout occurred around 7 a.m. local time when a key
Argentine interconnection system collapsed.
… "The
problem is known and technology and studies (exist) to avoid it."
The
Argentine energy company Edesur said on Twitter that the failure
originated at an electricity transmission point
… "The
cause is still under investigation," the energy secretary's
office said.
We
live in a ‘gray’ world.
The
ethics of deepfakes aren’t always black and white
Chances
are if you’ve seen a deepfake, such as this now infamous video
of Obama ‘speaking’ Comedian Jordan Peele’s words,
it has left an uncomfortable feeling. Since deepfakes emerged in
December 2017, most media coverage has focused on their potentially
catastrophic applications. These range from deepfake
pornography, ransomfakes,
smear
campaigns against politicians,
and a
new age of fake news that
could worsen the global ‘post-truth’ crisis.
While
these malicious uses of deepfakes and synthetic media are rightly a
cause for concern, there are also positive uses of the same
generative AI technologies.
… Here
I want to draw attention to three
examples of greyfakes that are already developing rapidly,
and why they require much more attention.
Convoluted
but interesting.
Porn
trolling mastermind Paul Hansmeier gets 14 years in prison
A
federal judge in Minneapolis has sentenced
Paul
Hansmeier to 14 years in prison for an elaborate fraud scheme that
involved uploading pornographic videos to file-sharing networks and
then threatening to sue people who downloaded them.
“It
is almost incalculable how much your abuse of trust has harmed the
administration of justice,” said Judge Joan Ericksen at a Friday
sentencing hearing.
… Over
time, judges became increasingly skeptical of Prenda's tactics. In
one case, a judge threw out one Prenda-related lawsuit after it
became clear that no one in the courtroom could explain exactly who
the supposed plaintiff—an entity called Sunlust pictures—actually
was. She described
the lawsuit as
an "attempted fraud on the Court."
(Related)
Justice moves slowly.
Angry
judge calls porn troll’s bluff, orders entire firm to court
Alternatives.
The
Beginner’s Guide to Google Docs
How-to-Geek:
“If you’re just getting started with Google Docs, its extensive
features and add-ons can be a little overwhelming. Here
are some tips to help you get started with this powerful alternative
to Microsoft Word.
What is Google Docs? If you’ve heard of Google Docs before, feel
free to skip ahead. If you’ve never heard of it before, here’s a
crash course on what you need to know. We’ll go over the basics
and get you brushed up with what Google Docs is and how you can get
started right away. Google Docs is a free,
web-based word processor offered by Google as part of its complete
office suite—Google Drive—to compete with Microsoft Office. The
other main services included in the cloud-based suite are Sheets
(Excel) and Slides (Powerpoint)…”
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