Thursday, June 20, 2019


Why backups are important.
Florida City Pays $600,000 Ransom to Save Computer Records
The Riviera Beach City Council voted unanimously this week to pay the hackers’ demands, believing the Palm Beach suburb had no choice if it wanted to retrieve its records, which the hackers encrypted. The council already voted to spend almost $1 million on new computers and hardware after hackers captured the city’s system three weeks ago.
The hackers apparently got into the city’s system when an employee clicked on an email link that allowed them to upload malware. Along with the encrypted records, the city had numerous problems including a disabled email system, employees and vendors being paid by check rather than direct deposit and 911 dispatchers being unable to enter calls into the computer.
She conceded there are no guarantees that once the hackers received the money they will release the records. The payment is being covered by insurance.




You might think that government agencies would understand the laws and regulations they operate under. I stopped thinking that years ago.
Government error delays online pornography age-check scheme
An age-check scheme designed to stop under-18s viewing pornographic websites has been delayed a second time.
The changes - which mean UK internet users may have to prove their age - were due to start on 15 July after already being delayed from April 2018.
The culture secretary confirmed the postponement saying the government had failed to tell European regulators about the plan.
Completing the notification process could take up to six months. [So this is not a trivial process. Bob]




Some interesting statements.
Law Libraries Embracing AI
Craigle, Valeri, Law Libraries Embracing AI (2019). Law Librarianship in the Age of AI, (Ellyssa Valenti, Ed.), 2019, Forthcoming; University of Utah College of Law Research Paper. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3381798 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3381798
The utilization of AI provides insights for legal clients, future-proofs careers for attorneys and law librarians, and elevates the status of the information suite. AI training in law schools makes students more practice-ready in an increasingly tech-centric legal environment; Access to Justice initiatives are embracing AI’s capabilities to provide guidance to educational resources and legal services for the under-represented. AI’s presence in the legal community is becoming so common that it can no longer been seen as an anomaly, or even cutting edge. Some even argue that its absence in law firms will eventually be akin to malpractice. This chapter explores some practical uses of AI in legal education and law firms, with a focus on professionals who have gone beyond the role of AI consumers to that of AI developers, data curators and system designers…”




A field I should encourage my students to consider? It seems to attract a lot of money…
Stephen Schwarzman gives $188 million to Oxford to research AI ethics
Stephen Schwarzman, the billionaire founder of investment firm Blackstone, has given the University of Oxford its largest single donation in hundreds of years to help fund research into the ethics of artificial intelligence.
The £150 million ($188 million) contribution will fund an academic institute bearing the investor's name, the British university announced Wednesday.
The Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities will bring together all of Oxford's humanities programs under one roof — including English, history, linguistics, philosophy and theology and religion. It will also house a new Institute for Ethics in AI, which will focus on studying the ethical implications of artificial intelligence and other new technology. The institute is expected to open by 2024.
He made a $350 million gift to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology last year to set up the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, which aims to "address the opportunities and challenges presented by the rise of artificial intelligence" including its ethical and policy implications.



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