Saturday, August 03, 2019


Perhaps they should structure these so the victims get most of the money?
Equifax on the hot seat for running out of data breach settlement funds
Even when making restitution to victims of its massive 2017 data breach, Equifax still can’t seem to avoid a mess. The credit reporting agency is now attracting a ton of scrutiny after the Federal Trade Commission revealed in an urgent announcement to the public that the pool of Equifax settlement funds used to pay cash claims to victims is quickly running dry. And that victims who step up to file a claim going forward should probably just go ahead and pick a non-cash alternative.
For its part, the FTC is stressing that it thinks [Not likely! Bob] the free credit monitoring offered as part of the settlement is worth more than the cash anyway. That’s because victims will be able to get free monitoring of their credit report at all three national credit reporting agencies — and the offer even includes up to $1 million in identity theft insurance and identity restoration services.
However, even that is drawing criticism. Another commenter on that FTC post noted that “my data has been compromised numerous times and I’ve received numerous free credit monitoring compensations.[My students agree. Bob]
All that said, Electronic Privacy Information Center president and executive director Marc Rotenberg told The Washington Post “there’s something a little askew” over consumers thinking $125 was a possible offer at first, while officials “now have to race around saying, ‘Look at the fine print.'”




Old military technology, but who knew these states were where narcotics came into the US?
Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US
The US military is conducting wide-area surveillance tests across six midwest states using experimental high-altitude balloons, documents filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reveal.
Up to 25 unmanned solar-powered balloons are being launched from rural South Dakota and drifting 250 miles through an area spanning portions of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Missouri, before concluding in central Illinois.
… “What this new technology proposes is to watch everything at once. Sometimes it’s referred to as ‘combat TiVo’ because when an event happens somewhere in the surveilled area, you can potentially rewind the tape to see exactly what occurred, and rewind even further to see who was involved and where they came from.”


(Related)
Aerial Surveillance Is Astonishingly Legal
In the eyes of the law, there’s no difference between a smartphone photo taken through an airplane window and one taken by an ultra-powerful camera in a helicopter hovering over your backyard.




Apple and Google have already done something. (See yesterday’s blog)
Amazon Gives Option to Disable Human Review of Alexa Recordings
A new policy took effect Friday that allows customers, through an option in the settings menu of the Alexa smartphone app, to remove their recordings from a pool that could be analyzed by Amazon employees and contract workers, a spokeswoman for the Seattle company said. It follows similar moves by Apple Inc. and Google.




But will AI love me back?
Forget AI ethics—treat technology like a new relationship instead
Not a week passes without an ethical misstep by Big Tech. From Facebook’s personal data overreaches to thousands of e-commerce sites that trick people into superfluous purchases to cities implementing facial-recognition systems without consent, the tech industry continues to stress-test trust.
In response, ethical guidelines have flourished. Whether a short checklist, visual principles, or lengthy treatise, most agree on core principles of privacy, safety and security, transparency, fairness, and autonomy. But despite the efforts of think tanks, tech companies, and government agencies, the principles haven’t been so easy to put into practice.
What if we took a different approach? Rather than focusing solely on generalizable standards or a prescriptive ethical code, we could instead emphasize an ethics of care. And what requires more care than our own romantic relationships?
The phases below map to Mark Knapp’s relational development model. The University of Texas professor outlined 10 steps in relationships, from hello to goodbye.
Let’s focus on the steps for coming together, and how they might apply to our tech relationships.




Automating teachers?
China has started a grand experiment in AI education. It could reshape how the world learns.
Experts agree AI will be important in 21st-century education—but how? While academics have puzzled over best practices, China hasn’t waited around. In the last few years, the country’s investment in AI-enabled teaching and learning has exploded. Tech giants, startups, and education incumbents have all jumped in. Tens of millions of students now use some form of AI to learn—whether through extracurricular tutoring programs like Squirrel’s, through digital learning platforms like 17ZuoYe, or even in their main classrooms. It’s the world’s biggest experiment on AI in education, and no one can predict the outcome.




Compute smarter!
Included are cheat sheets that cover:
  • Microsoft Office keyboard shortcuts for Windows & Mac
  • PowerPoint keyboard shortcuts
  • Word keyboard shortcuts
  • Outlook keyboard shortcuts
  • Excel keyboard shortcuts
  • Excel Formulas
  • Gmail keyboard shortcuts
  • Google Drive keyboard shortcuts
  • Google Search operators and commands
  • Markdown elements



No comments: