Wednesday, July 29, 2020


If you can’t manage technology perhaps you shouldn’t be using it? (You see why outsourcing is popular?)
Avon Cosmetics Leaks 7GB of Personal and Technical Information from Unsecured Server
Last month, SafetyDetectives researchers discovered an unsecured database belonging to the popular Avon beauty company. The server, which lacked basic security measures, was easily accessible by investigators, who found a trove of 19 million records, including personal information of employees and website technical data.
While the news might not strike a chord at first, the data breach disclosure follows a June 9 regulatory filing by the company, which confirmed a security incident that “interrupted some systems and partially affected operations.”




Protesters act as a smoke screen for drug theft?
More pharmacy chains report HIPAA breaches linked to looting during protests
First it was Walmart disclosing that their pharmacies in stores in California and Chicago had suffered damage and theft by looters of medications ready for pickup with patient information on labels.
Then it was CVS, who notified HHS that more than 21,000 patients’ information may have been compromised by looters who stole or accessed prescriptions ready for pickup.
Now it’s Walgreens who is notifying an as-yet-undisclosed number of patients at multiple stores across multiple states.




I’m shocked. Shocked I tell you!
Over Half of Americans Do Not Trust Companies to Ethically Collect, Use or Sell Personal Data
A new study from professional services firm KPMG finds that over half of Americans are no longer comfortable with their personal data being in the hands of private companies.
97% feel that data privacy is important to them, and 87% take it a step further in believing that it should be considered a human right, but 54% feel that companies cannot be trusted to use their personal data in an ethical way. On the specific subject of the sale of personal data, 68% believe that companies will not do so in a responsible way.
The KPMG study (“New Imperative for Corporate Data Responsibility) surveyed 1,000 US citizens from a broad mix of age, race, gender and regional backgrounds.




How do I regulate thee
Let me count the ways
New Zealand establishes algorithm charter for government agencies
A standards guide on how to use algorithms across government.
Dubbed as the "first in the world", the Algorithm Charter for Aotearoa New Zealand, according to Minister for Statistics James Shaw, will improve data transparency and accountability, especially when algorithms are being used to process and interpret large amounts of data.
"Using algorithms to analyse data and inform decisions does not come without its risks," he said. "It is important, therefore, that people have confidence that these algorithms are being used in a fair, ethical, and transparent way. And that's what this Charter is all about."




Tools & Techniques. (Image or video)
This AI turns your home videos into cute cartoons
If you’ve ever wondered what you’d look like in animated form, you can now find out. Developers Tejas Mahajan and Niraj Pandkar have created an AI tool that can turn your photos and videos into cartoons.
Cartoonizer is based on a research paper by University of Tokyo researchers Xinrui Wang and Jinze Yu. The tool leverages their open-source implementation to create a publicly-available demo of the method, using GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) servers for the video inference and CPUs (central processing units) for the images.
Mahajan and Pandkar plan to open source the code and write an article on the architecture within the next few days. In the meantime, you can try the tool out yourself at the Cartoonizer website.




For my students…
Phidgets - A Fun, Free, Hands-on Way to Learn Python, Java, and More
As the new school year approaches Phidgets is one new thing that I’m excited to use with my students. Phidgets provide a fun, hands-on way for students to learn to program in Python, Java, C#, and Swift. If you’re not a computer science teacher, don’t skip over this post thinking that Phidgets is just a product for computer science classes. There’s no cost to try it out because Phidgets will send you a free kit to get started. And Phidgets has super easy-to-follow instructions that make perfect sense even if you have never written a single line of code in your life.
What are Phidgets?
Phidgets are sensors, microcontrollers that you can program in your choice of four programming languages. You can program Phidgets to do things like turn things like LED lights on and off, to record data, and to automate processes. Come all three of those things together and you’ll start to build some really interesting things like lights that turn on based on a light sensor or build a simple alert system with motion and proximity sensors. Probably the quickest way to see what’s possible with Phidgets is to watch this 90 second video.
The Phidgets starter kit for schools comes in a 6”x3”x4” box that serves as the storage container for the kit’s contents and also serves to hold the LEDs and switches included in the kit. The kit also includes a humidity sensor, a hub (where wired connections are made), and all necessary wires and cables.



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