New York City has created a position primarily to ensure that there are no biases in AI and other algorithms. Engadget reports: Mayor Bill de Blasio has issued an executive order creating a position for an Algorithms Management and Policy Officer. Whoever holds the position will work within the Mayor's Office of Operations and serve as both an architect for algorithm guidelines and a go-to resource for algorithm policy. This person will make sure that city algorithms live up to principle of "equity, fairness and accountability," the Mayor's office said.
The officer will have the help of ad[...]
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: An Ohio man was sentenced last month to six years in prison for a series of DDoS attacks against websites for the city of Akron, Ohio, and the Akron police department. The man, 33-year-old James Robinson, was arrested in May 2019 and pleaded guilty to all accusations, most of which were easy to prove, as Robinson had publicly documented all the attacks on the @AkronPhoenix420 Twitter profile while they happened.
The account contains a litany of tweets about DDoS attacks Robinson allegedly carried out. Targets included websites for the Departm[...]
A group of major broadcasters and telco giants, including Rogers and Bell, have obtained the first Canadian pirate site blocking order. TorrentFreak reports: Last year, a coalition of copyright holders and major players in the telco industry asked the Canadian Government to institute a national pirate site blocking scheme. The Fairplay coalition argued that such measures would be required to effectively curb online piracy. Canada's telco regulator CRTC reviewed the request but eventually denied the application, noting that it lacks jurisdiction. The driving forces behind the request, Bell, Rog[...]
OnePlus has sent out an email informing recent OnePlus customers of a security issue. "This 'Security Notification' from OnePlus informs customers that an 'unauthorized party' was able to access order information from the company's online store," reports 9to5Google. "OnePlus says that payment information as well as account details were not accessed, but names, addresses, emails, and phone numbers 'may' have been exposed. The company says it will continue to investigate the matter, but obviously this is no small issue." From the report: Speaking to Droid-Life, OnePlus says that they took "immed[...]
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Department of Defense has weighed in against a proposal before the Federal Communications Commission to open the 1 to 2 Gigahertz frequency range -- the L band -- for use in 5G cellular networks. The reason: segments of that range of radio spectrum are already used by Global Positioning System signals and other military systems. In a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper pressed for the rejection of the proposal by Ligado Networks (formerly known as Lightspeed), saying, "There are too many unknowns and the ri[...]
For an actor who made a career by playing silly characters, actor Sacha Baron Cohen gave yesterday one of the most eloquent and convincing speeches in a long time in support of cracking down on large social media networks to prevent the spread of lies and hate speech that these platforms allow. From a report: While accepting his award, Cohen touched on the role companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter have played in spreading lies and hate speech online, calling the sites "the greatest propaganda machine in history." Below is a short summary of his main talking points. Cohen called Faceboo[...]
Facebook once built an internal app that let employees identify people using facial recognition and their phone cameras, Business Insider reported Friday. From the report: The app, which was developed between 2015 and 2016, utilised Facebook's vast collection of user identities to automatically recognise the person at whom the phone's camera was pointed. The app was not released publicly, and Facebook tells Business Insider that it only worked on company employees and any of their friends who opted in to the social network's facial recognition system. "As a way to learn about new technologies,[...]
JustAnotherOldGuy writes: For well over a decade, identity thieves, phishers, and other online scammers have created a black market of stolen and aggregated consumer data that they used to break into people's accounts, steal their money, or impersonate them. In October, dark web researcher Vinny Troia found one such trove sitting exposed and easily accessible on an unsecured server, comprising 4 terabytes of personal information -- about 1.2 billion records in all. While the collection is impressive for its sheer volume, the data doesn't include sensitive information like passwords, credit car[...]
The US Federal Communications Commission on Friday voted to bar use of its $8.5 billion a year Universal Service Fund to purchase equipment and services from Huawei and ZTE. The government fund is used by multiple programs to subsidize US broadband deployment and services. From a report: In a unanimous vote during its November open meeting, the FCC approved an order that blocks the use of USF funds to purchase equipment and services from companies that pose a national security threat. The order also establishes a process for barring more companies in the future. So far, just Huawei and ZTE are[...]
In the search for life in our solar system, Mars tends to steal the spotlight. But in recent years Jupiter's fourth largest moon, Europa, has emerged as a promising extraterrestrial nursery. Planetary scientists have long suspected Europa may harbor a vast liquid water ocean beneath its thick, icy crust. If Europa's ocean also has a source of energy -- think hydrothermal vents -- and a few choice chemical elements, there's a decent chance it could support basic lifeforms. From a report: This theory makes a lot of assumptions, but on Monday it received one of its biggest boosts yet. An internat[...]