Acts
of war? Soon, someone is going to say, “Enough!” Will they
respond with bytes or bombs?
Australia
cyber attacks: PM Morrison warns of 'sophisticated' state hack
Australia's
government and institutions are being targeted by ongoing
sophisticated state-based cyber hacks, Prime Minister Scott Morrison
says.
… He
declined to identify a specific state actor and said no major
personal data breaches had been made.
The
attacks have happened over many months and are increasing, he said.
The
prime minister said his announcement on Friday was intended to raise
public awareness and to urge businesses to improve their defences.
But
he stressed that "malicious" activity was also being seen
globally, making it not
unique to Australia.
(Related)
Perhaps attacks on critical/beloved infrastructure (Beer!) will be
the trigger.
Ransomware
Attack Confirmed by Australia-Based Beverage Manufacturer
(Related)
Hidden
Cyber War Between Israel and Iran Spills Into Public View With
Attacks on Physical Infrastructure
For
decades now there has been something of a tacit agreement among
nations that spying and hacking are not enough to constitute acts of
war, and that these battles are to be kept in the shadows for the
most part. The general public is occasionally impacted by this quiet
cyber war in the form of a personal information breach or a
state-sponsored raid on the confidential assets of a private company,
but attackers have generally stopped short of executing virtual
attacks that create real damage in the physical world.
Israel
and Iran have crossed that line in recent months, and may be
redefining the terms of cyber warfare. Attacks by each on the
opposite’s public utilities and ports have caused physical
disruptions that impact the general civilian population, a move that
could force a change in the unspoken rules of cyber defense as
non-government entities are increasingly drawn into the fray.
Worth
reading. I keep thinking about labor related protests and strikes
that seem to have some immunity from such active prosecution. Is
that just me?
The
FBI used a Philly protester’s Etsy profile, LinkedIn, and other
internet history to charge her with setting police cars ablaze
As
demonstrators shouted, fires burned outside City Hall, and
Philadelphia convulsed with outrage over the death of George Floyd,
television news helicopters captured footage of a masked woman with a
peace sign tattoo and wearing a light blue T-shirt setting a police
SUV ablaze.
More
than two weeks after that climactic May 30 moment, federal
authorities say they’ve identified the arsonist as 33-year-old
Philadelphia massage therapist Lore Elisabeth Blumenthal by following
the intricate trail of bread crumbs she left through her social media
history and online shopping patterns over the years.
The
path took agents from Instagram, where amateur photographers also
captured shots of the masked arsonist, to an Etsy shop that sold the
distinctive T-shirt the woman was wearing in the video. It led
investigators to her LinkedIn page, to her profile on the fashion
website Poshmark, and eventually to her doorstep in Germantown.
Their
pursuit, described in court filings this week, sheds light on the
extent to which the FBI and Justice Department have used news
footage, online histories, and social media footprints to track down
and identify demonstrators believed to be responsible for acts of
violence or property destruction.
Clearly
location data is useful in many ways. Will we become dependent on
it? Could it even become mandatory?
AI
model uses smartphone location data to predict power grid usage
In
a paper
published
on the preprint server Arxiv.org, Microsoft and the University of
Washington researchers propose an AI system that uses smartphone
location data to forecast electrical load. They say their
architecture, which takes into account data from geographical regions
both within the U.S. and Europe, can outperform conventional
forecasting methods by more than three times.
The
pandemic shows no sign of abating, and it’s made a
striking impact on the global electrical grid.
Another
set of opinions. Useful until we get AI to take over.
The
Bigot in the Machine: Bias in Algorithmic Systems
“The
New York Technical Services Librarians,
an organization that has been active since 1923 – imagine all that
has happened in tech services since 1923! – invited me to give a
talk about bias in algorithms. They quickly got a
recording up
on their site and I am, more slowly, providing the transcript.
Thanks for the invite and all the tech support, NYTSL.
The
Bigot
in the Machine: Bias in Algorithmic Systems –
Abstract:
We are living in an “age of algorithms.” Vast quantities of
information are collected, sorted, shared, combined, and acted on by
proprietary black boxes. These systems use machine learning to build
models and make predictions from data sets that may be out of date,
incomplete, and biased. We will explore the ways bias creeps into
information systems, take a look at how “big data,” artificial
intelligence and machine learning often amplify bias unwittingly, and
consider how these systems can be deliberately exploited by actors
for whom bias is a feature, not a bug. Finally, we’ll discuss ways
we can work with our communities to create a more fair and just
information environment. I want to talk about what we mean by “the
age of algorithms,” and about how bias creeps into or is
purposefully designed into algorithmic systems using examples in
public health surveillance and in law enforcement. We’ll talk
about how racists exploit the affordances of these systems to pollute
our information environment. Finally, because I want to be hopeful,
we’ll talk about some of the ways people are apply anti-racism to
address the bigot in the machine and what we can do as librarians…”
This
could be a handy tool.
Google’s
new Chrome extension lets you link directly to specific text on a
page
Link
to Text Fragment is
a new Chrome Extension from Google that lets you generate URLs to
specific text on a webpage, regardless of the page’s formatting.
With
the extension installed, simply highlight the text you want to link
to, right click, and select “Copy Link to Selected Text.” This
can then be shared and opened by anyone using a compatible browser.
For example, clicking this
link in
Chrome or Edge will bring you directly to a highlighted section at
the bottom of the article.
Travel
for shut-ins.
Explore
the Royal Academy of Arts in Google's Arts & Culture Apps
… This
morning Google announced
a
new collection with the Arts & Culture site. That collection
features the Royal
Academy of Arts.
The
highlight of the Royal Academy of Arts collection within Google Arts
& Culture is a collection of 31
online exhibits,
The exhibits tell the stories of the artists and art showcased in
the Royal Academy of Arts collections. You can also take a virtual
tour through the
Academy and some of the galleries. Visitors can navigate through the
tour much like navigating in Google Street View imagery.
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