There’s
an App for that!
More
Than 100 High-End Cars Were Stolen Using An App In A Possible Chicago
Crime Spree
The
Chicago Police Department said in a statement Wednesday that the car
sharing company, car2go or SHARE NOW, alerted authorities that its
vehicles may have been taken through "deceptive" practices
through the company's app.
…
CBS
Chicago reported
that
many of the vehicles were allegedly used to commit other crimes.
Police did not provide any details about how the vehicles were used
but said the investigation is ongoing.
[From
the Car2go website:
Cars are available on the street and in designated
lots around the city. A live map is available on our app.
One measure of success?
Game of
Thrones’ season 8 premiere was pirated almost 55 million times in
the first 24 hours
Over protecting?
GDPR
is very protective of children, and like FERPA, can be confusing at
times to parents who want to understand what is allowed and what is
not. Adrian Weckler reports:
Irish school principals who tell parents
they cannot take photos at communions or sports days “because of
GDPR” are wrong, says Ireland’s data privacy authority.
The Data Protection Commissioner has
issued new guidance
because of confusion among parents, teachers and children’s
organisations over the matter.
“This
type of activity falls under the so-called household exemption under
the GDPR,” says the DPC’s newly-published guidance.
“This
provides that the GDPR does not apply when a person processes
personal data, for example, a photograph of someone, in the course of
a purely personal or household activity.”
The privacy authority also says that GDPR
doesn’t strictly prohibit posting photos taken at school events on
social media, either.
One Privacy future.
Microsoft
denied police facial recognition tech over human rights concerns
Microsoft
has said it turned down a request from law enforcement in California
to use its facial recognition technology in police body cameras and
cars, reports Reuters.
… “Anytime
they pulled anyone over, they wanted to run a face scan,”
said Smith of the unnamed law enforcement agency. “We said this
technology is not your answer.”
Preparing my students to deal with Big Data, as
processors of the data and as (involuntary) providers.
Your car is
watching you. Who owns the data?
Roll
Call – Computers
on wheels raise thorny questions about data privacy:
“If you’re driving a late model car or truck, chances are that
the vehicle is mostly computers on wheels, collecting and wirelessly
transmitting vast quantities of data to the car manufacturer not just
on vehicle performance but personal information, too, such as your
weight, the restaurants you visit, your music tastes and places you
go. A
car can generate about 25 gigabytes of data every hour and as much as
4,000 gigabytes a day,
according to some estimates. The data trove in the hands of car
makers could be worth as much as $750 billion by 2030, the consulting
firm McKinsey has estimated. But consumer groups, aftermarket repair
shops and privacy advocates say the data belongs to the car’s
owners and the information should be subject to data privacy laws…”
My students
will need to interface with several Apps. This is just one.
Google
Maps Is Ready to Transform the World of Superapps: A Skift Deep Dive
… Like
Tencent-owned WeChat and, to a lesser extent Meituan in China, as
well as Grab in Southeast Asia, many are pointing to Google Maps,
with its more than 1 billion users, as the next ubiquitous,
all-encompassing superapp. In other words, a superapp can do it all,
or nearly everything, relatively speaking, and obviates the need to
call up specialty apps to perform specific tasks.
Need
your Chicago Transit, Uber, or Yelp apps to see if your train is
delayed, book a rideshare, or reserve a table for a Saturday night
repast? Not really. The Google Maps app has you basically covered
on all these fronts — and many more.
Our
reporting finds that Alphabet is already generating
several billion dollars annually from Google Maps, an
amount that isn’t yet material to the company’s financial results
Another
industry not ready for the CCPA?
Joseph
Lazzarotti of JacksonLewis writes:
Following
recent examinations of SEC-registered investment advisers and
broker-dealers, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC)
Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE) published a
privacy
risk alert on
April 16, 2019. OCIE is hoping to remind advisers and broker-dealers
about providing compliant privacy and opt-out notices, and adopting
and implementing effective policies and procedures for safeguarding
customer records and information, under Regulation
S-P.
Privacy
Notices.
During the examinations, OCIE observed advisors and broker-dealers
were not providing initial privacy notices, annual privacy notices
and opt-out notices to their customers. When these notices were
provided, many did not accurately reflect firms’ policies and
procedures and/or notify customers of their right to opt out of
having their nonpublic personal information shared with nonaffiliated
third parties.
When you
absolutely, positively have to waste a few hours...
Barnes
& Noble is offering free download of the Mueller report
It looks like
ransom.
A company in San Diego co-founded by a former
Marine has been scooping up the abandoned scooters that litter city
streets owned by the startups Bird and Lime for months, giving some
of them back to Bird in November in exchange for more than $40,000.
Bird and Lime have since called the company’s activities “ransom,”
and a legal battle has begun.
… The
civil complaints—both filed in California Superior Court in San
Diego, Lime’s on March 19 and Bird’s a day later—make
for good reading,
and describe a pattern of scooter confiscations that the companies
say started last summer.
The
dispute highlights a larger tension in tech, in that it lays bare
some pretty fundamental questions about Silicon Valley, i.e. are
so-called mobility companies actually helping us solve some of our
larger transportation issues? Or is really what we have at the end
of the day just a bunch of new trash?
… Bird
and Lime also say that a lot of scooters are taken from public
property, and against normal procedures tow trucks might use when
impounding a vehicle.
A
court might ultimately decide that, but Scooter Removal, for its
part, says
on its website that
the removals are a noble cause, a reaction to scooters’ increasing
presence—some say littering—across the city.
Perspective.
..and a trip to the library. (Podcast)
Don’t
Panic: The Digital Revolution Isn’t as Unusual as You Think
… Knowledge@Wharton:
When new technology is introduced to the masses, is the initial
reaction of shock pretty much the same from one century to the next?
Wheeler:
Yes, it really is amazing that the original reaction of people when
they hear about things is to push back. “Oh my God, this is
changing what I’ve been comfortable with.” My favorite example
is that when Samuel F. B. Morse went to the Congress to get funding
for his first telegraph line, when that bill got to the floor of the
House of Representatives, everybody was laughing at it. The idea
that you could send messages by sparks was just too much to believe.
It literally was a circus on the floor. When the House finally
voted, they voted 89 for, 83 against, and 70 abstentions because
these members of Congress were afraid to go back and explain to their
constituents how they were spending their tax dollars on this crazy
idea of messages by sparks.
AI hasn’t arrived at my University, yet.
'It's an
educational revolution': how AI is transforming university life
Beacon is unlike any other member of staff at
Staffordshire University. It is available 24/7 to answer students’
questions, and deals with a number of queries every day – mostly
the same ones over and over again – but always stays incredibly
patient.
That patience is perhaps what gives it away:
Beacon is an artificial intelligence (AI) education tool, and the
first digital assistant of its kind to be operating at a UK
university.
… Students can chat with Beacon via text or
voice conversation, and as use increases, it becomes smarter.
Eventually, it will be able to remind students about classes and
deadlines.
For the toolkit.
Dilbert illustrates a problem MY students could
solve.
