Tag: @cyberplayground

BIPARTISAN INFRASTRUCTURE BILL, K12 COVID, The Big Read

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BIPARTISAN INFRASTRUCTURE BILL

On November 5, Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a once-in-a-generation investment in the nation’s physical infrastructure and competitiveness.  This bipartisan legislation will rebuild roads, bridges, ports, and rail; expand access to clean drinking water; help ensure every American has access to high-speed internet; address the climate crisis and advance environmental justice; and support communities that too often have been left behind.  Combined with President Biden’s Build Back Better framework, it will also add, on average, 1.5 million jobs per year for the next 10 years (fact sheets 1 and 2).

Among the highlights for education:

  • Clean water.  Currently, up to 10 million households and 400,000 schools and child care centers lack safe drinking water.  The legislation invests $55 billion to expand access to clean drinking water, eliminate the nation’s lead service lines, and help clean up the toxic chemical PFAS.
  • Broadband access and affordability.  Reliable, high-speed internet is necessary for Americans to do their jobs, participate equally in school learning, and stay connected.  Yet, more than 30 million Americans live in areas where there is no broadband infrastructure that provides minimally acceptable speeds.  The legislation invests $65 billion to help ensure that every American has access to reliable, high-speed internet through an investment in broadband infrastructure deployment.  It will also help lower prices for service and help close the digital divide.
  • Clean school buses.  The legislation will deliver thousands of electric school buses, replacing the yellow school bus fleet.  Investments in zero- and low-emission public transit will drive demand for American-made batteries and vehicles, creating jobs and supporting domestic manufacturing.  It will also help the more than 25 million children and thousands of bus drivers who breathe polluted air on bus rides.  Air pollution is linked to asthma and other health issues that cause students to miss school.

PROMOTE DEMOCRACY AND PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION

Destroying Democracy Is Central to the Privatization of Public Goods

COVID

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) officially recommends children ages 5- to 11-years-old be vaccinated against COVID-19 with the Pfizer-BioNtech pediatric vaccine.  This recommendation comes after months of rigorous review and the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to authorize emergency use of the vaccine for children.  The COVID-19 vaccine is the best way to keep students safe and protect them against COVID-19, including the delta variant.

Starting this week, the pediatric vaccination program is fully up and running, and there are approximately 20,000 convenient locations where families can go to get their children vaccinated, with more sites coming online in the weeks ahead.  The Departments of Education and Health and Human Services are supporting schools and communities with setting up vaccine solutions that work best for families, including hosting thousands of school-located vaccine clinics; matching school districts with local pharmacy providers; and supporting collaboration between schools, families, and local pediatricians and children’s hospitals.  A joint letter from the agencies delineates three requests of school communities and shares information and resources to help fulfill them.  (Note: First Lady Dr. Jill Biden recently visited a COVID-19 vaccination clinic at Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia — which was the first school to administer the polio vaccine in 1954.)

The Department of Education and CDC are also providing resources to states and schools for testing and other mitigation efforts.  A partnership among the agencies and the Rockefeller Foundation specifically aims to accelerate school-based screening testing for students and staff.  It is making staff available to state health departments to coordinate, execute, and expand school-based testing, contact tracing/case investigation, and related public health activities; holding weekly “office hours” to help schools set up and sustain testing programs; and releasing guidance for districts on using American Rescue Plan (ARP) funding to provide incentives to families to participate in testing programs.

Meanwhile, the Department, in collaboration with CDC, launched a COVID-19 data dashboard to help the public track the impact of COVID-19 on K-12 schools.  The dashboard aggregates — in one location — data on pediatric cases, youth vaccination rates, and schools operating in-person, remotely, or a hybrid of those two.  Data will be updated each week, and, where possible, the information is presented geographically, so that educators and families can understand the impact within their communities.

  1. Coronavirus and the Heart | Harvard Medical School
  2. Like Venom Coursing Through the Body: Mechanism Driving COVID-19 Mortality Identified
  3. Creating dangerous viruses in the lab is a bad way to guard against future pandemics
  4. Study of 6.2 Million Patients Reveals No Serious Health Effects Linked to mRNA COVID-19 Vaccines
  5. FDA approves pill with sensor that digitally tracks if patients have ingested their medication

Biden administration orders federal agencies to fix hundreds of cyber flaws
The federal government has been told to go on a security patching spree. Thanks to a new CISA directive out this week, agencies have six months to fix hundreds of bugs across their networks — and just two weeks to fix bugs from 2021. Each agency patches their own stuff, so some agencies may have fewer bugs to fix than others. The full catalog of vulnerabilities are here (which might also be useful for folks in the private sector).

COVID-19 conspiracy theories thrive on social media platforms, EXCEPT Twitter

#DELETEFACEBOOK
500 doctors demand Facebook disclose data about COVID misinformation

Facebook spent $23.4 million in 2019 on Zuckerberg’s security, private air travel Facebook released its latest regulatory filing that shows executive compensation for 2019.#DeleteFacebook

MILITARY  – NO SHOT NO PROMOTION 

WON’T ALLOW YOU TO REUP CAUSE YOU’LL BE OUT.

Navy prepares to begin discharging sailors who refuse COVID-19 vaccine

Oklahoma Guard goes rogue, rejects COVID vaccine mandate after sudden change of command

U.S. Cyber Command, the NSA sister agency that carries out offensive cyber operations, hijacked the servers of the REvil ransomware group earlier this year. But the compromise wasn’t detected until Cybercom blocked its website traffic a month ago. The operation wasn’t a hack or a takedown but crucially “deprived the criminals of the platform they used to extort their victims.” Well that’s one way to make sure they don’t get paid. One of the group’s leaders confirmed domains were “hijacked from REvil,” and that the authorities were looking for them. “Good luck everyone, I’m off,” the hacker wrote. REvil was behind the ransomware attacks on JBS, Travelex, and Kaseya. The AP has a detailed interview with deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco, who said following the U.S.-Russia tensions over cyberattacks that the U.S. has “not seen a material change in the landscape.”
https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/18/revil-ransomware-group-goes-dark-after-its-tor-sites-were-hijacked/

AMERICAN RESCUE PLAN

Last week, the Department announced approval of two more American Rescue Plan (ARP) Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund state plans — California and Colorado — and distributed remaining ARP ESSER funding to those jurisdictions.  The plans detail how states are using and intend to use ARP ESSER funds to safely reopen and sustain the operations of schools and classrooms and address the essential needs of students, including by equitably expanding educational opportunities for students disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.  Earlier this year, the agency distributed two-thirds of ARP ESSER funding, or $81 billion, to all 50 states and the District of Columbia.  The remaining funding is being made available to states once plans are approved.  To date, 46 plans have been approved (see state-by-state press releases and highlights online).

THE BIG READ

The National Endowment for the Arts’ (NEA) The Big Read, established in 2016, supports Americans reading and discussing a single book in their communities.  Local governments, libraries, school districts, colleges and universities, and non-profit organizations are encouraged to apply for one of an estimated 75 grants to be awarded for programming occurring between September 2022 and June 2023.  Besides the grant, communities will receive resources, including reader’s guides, teacher’s guides, and audio guides featuring commentary from artists, educators, and public figures, and publicity materials.

For this cycle, communities will choose from 15 titles:

  • The Bear(novel) by Andrew Krivak
  • The Best We Could Do(graphic memoir) by Thi Bui
  • Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?(graphic memoir) by Roz Chast
  • Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude(poetry) by Ross Gay
  • Circe(novel) by Madeline Miller
  • The Cold Millions(novel) by Jess Walter
  • Deaf Republic(poetry) by Ilya Kaminsky
  • Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth(memoir) by Sarah Smarsh
  • Homegoing(novel) by Yaa Gyasi
  • Infinite Country(novel) by Patricia Engel
  • Interior Chinatown(novel) by Charles Yu
  • Nothing to See Here(novel) by Kevin Wilson
  • Postcolonial Love Poem(poetry) by Natalie Diaz
  • Sitting Pretty: The View from my Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body(memoir-in-essays) by Rebekah Taussig
  • There, There(novel) by Tommy Orange

The application deadline is January 26, 2022.

JOB FREE EDUCATION

IBM will offer free COBOL training to address overloaded unemployment systems

Jazz Study Looks for the Source of Creativity in the Brain | Technology Networks

Educational CyberPlayGround, Inc. NetHappenings 12-23-2020

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Educational CyberPlayGround, Inc. K12 Education 12-23-2020

HEALTH SECURITY

PENNSYLVANIA misses deadline to spend $108M in rent, mortgage relief from CARES Act 

OF COURSE THE REPUBLICANS WOULD STEAL THE MONEY MEANT FOR THE PEOPLE AND DIVERT IS TO THEIR FRIENDS WHO RUN PRIVATE JAILS FOR THEIR OWN POCKETS. With the government paying private prison operators about $23,000 per year per inmate (keep in mind, the minimum wage is $15,000 per year), it’s a lucrative business.

Private Prisons in the United States
Corrections Corporation of America, a $1.8 billion private prison corporation now known as CoreCivic, Terrell Don Hutto ran a cotton plantation the size of Manhattan.
2015 Who Owns Private Prison Stock?
Pennsylvania Correctional Industries (PCI) is a Bureau of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) that employs inmates to produce a variety of items that are available for sale to non-profit organizations and government entities located throughout Pennsylvania.

Department of Justice Files Nationwide Lawsuit Against Walmart Inc. for Controlled Substances Act Violations

FACT: $2,000 is much better than $600.
FACT: Neither are remotely adequate.
In a fair and just country, people would get $3,000/month, retroactive to March, and debts cancelled.
Also, all net worth above $10 million would be taxed at 100%. We beat fascism by being ANTI-FASCIST.

Spending bill: Anger over $2B for Space Force, racehorse tax break

1 RCM Inc. [NASDAQ:RCM], one of the nation’s largest medical debt collection companies, has been hit in a ransomware attack. Formerly known as Accretive Health Inc., Chicago-based R1 RCM brought in revenues of $1.18 billion in 2019. The company has more than 19,000 employees and contracts with at least 750 healthcare organizations nationwide. According to Trend Micro, Defray usually is spread via booby-trapped Microsoft Office documents sent via email.
#Accretive Health, #Defray ransomware, 3proofpoint, #R1 #RCM ransomware,
Phishing Emails Used to Deploy KONNI Malware
https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ncas/alerts/aa20-227a
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has observed cyber actors using emails containing a Microsoft Word document with a malicious Visual Basic Application (VBA) macro code to deploy KONNI malware. KONNI is a remote administration tool (RAT) used by malicious cyber actors to steal files, capture keystrokes, take screenshots, and execute arbitrary code on infected hosts.

Pfizer VaccineNO ONE IS BETTER AT MANUFACTURING MEDICINE THAN PFIZER

 

400M doses = 200M full vaccinations. 2 dose regime for Pfizer and Moderna.
It’s official: Pfizer-BioNTech reach deal to supply 100M doses of #covid19 vaccine to the US for $1.95B, delivery by July 31.

US has now secured:
200M doses Moderna
200M Pfizer
100M J&J*
300M AstraZeneca*
100M Novavax*
100M Sanofi/GSK*
(*US ph3 pending)
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201223005185/en/

Wearable electrical stimulator to zap Alzheimer’s disease

COPYRIGHT

“NEW: Draft legislation from @SenThomTillis reforming the DMCA is out today. And it includes a “notice-and-staydown” provision, which the tech industry is already gearing up to oppose once the fight over online copyright starts in earnest next year.
‘Notice-and-stay-down’ set to be sticking point in new online-piracy fight Sen. Thom Tillis unveiled a sweeping plan to reform the Digital Millennium Copyright Act—and one provision in particular will be a bitter pill for the tech industry to swallow. bill text

SEDITION TREASON

Laurence Tribe @Tribelaw
What would the Framers say about an American president who lets a hostile power put bounties on the heads of our soldiers, looks the other way while that power wages war on our government agencies, and spends his time attempting a coup rather than fighting a pandemic?

Treason 18 U.S. Code 2381 “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies giving them aid and comdfort withting the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall ve imprisoned not less than five years and fined… and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”

DebUNCing Attribution: How Mandiant Tracks Uncategorized Threat Actors

Alleged Pan Am Flight 103 Bomber Charged, 32 Years After Lockerbie Disaster. Some 32 years to the day after Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, the Justice Department has filed charges against the man alleged to have built the bomb.

Sources: Secret Service Has No Plan if Trump Refuses to Go
But they do have procedures for handling trespassers. Trump wants a kleptocracy, and most of the GOP is on board with that. And that works for Russia.

Leonardo hack targeted military plane details, arrest warrant shows

CBS NEWS headline DOES NOT SAY HIS NAME ERIK PRINCE – Trump pardons Blackwater  global mercenary force led by Erik F’ing Prince involved in Baghdad massacre

ROBERT REICH
Millennials own less than 5% of all US wealth. In 1989, when baby boomers were the same age, they owned 21% of all US wealth. Young people aren’t going broke because they’re buying avocado toast. They’re going broke because the economy is rigged against them.

CRYPTO PRIVACY

71 pages
SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION against -::RIPPLE LABS, INC.,BRADLEY GARLINGHOUSE,:and CHRISTIAN A. LARSEN, 20 Civ. 10832ECF Case Complaint Jury Trial Demanded
XRP determined to be a security and will be delisted.

On Dec 18th, FinCEN announced a proposed rule that will require collection of personal information for transactions of >$3,000 sent to self-hosted wallets. https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2020-28437.pdf
You either keep the bitcoin info on your own Wallet
Or you allow someone else to keep the info instead
You should always keep your own info cause then you own it.
► ► A “wallet” is either an address or a collection of addresses mathematically derived from a equation everyone uses but with different variables.
► ► It’s a string of numbers.
► ►You either possess the variables or you do not.

Trump’s Longtime Banker at Deutsche Bank Resigns
Rosemary Vrablic, who oversaw hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to President Trump’s company, will leave the bank next week.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/22/business/trump-deutsche-bank-rosemary-vrablic.html

Trump is contractually prohibited from living at Mar a Lago. Therefore, he cannot be a Florida resident with Mar a Lago as his primary address. Er go, Trump committed voter fraud.

Buried in pandemic aid: $200 billion in tax cuts, largely for the richest. How about instead of pumping trillions into an endless war machine, we provide our people with actual security: food, shelter, and health care?

Solar Flare They got the Nukes: Just a reminder that John Bolton eliminated the position of White House cybersecurity coordinator in 2018.
fact check https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/15/technology/white-house-cybersecurity.html
and https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-eliminates-job-national-cybersecurity-coordinator-n874511
and https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2020/12/20/it-happened-on-my-watch-chris-krebs-says-russia-exploited-outdated-systems-for-cyberattack/

Hacked networks will need to be burned ‘down to the ground’ https://wtop.com/national/2020/12/hacked-networks-will-need-to-be-burned-down-to-the-ground/
It’s going to take months to kick elite hackers widely believed to be Russian out of the U.S. government networks they have been quietly rifling through since as far back as March

#ZOOM DO NOT USE #ZOOM

China-Based Executive at U.S. Telecommunications Company @ZOOM Charged with Disrupting Video Meetings Commemorating Tiananmen Square Massacre
Defendant Coordinated with the People’s Republic of China to Target Dissidents and Disrupt Meetings
#natsec #counterintelligence #insider #insiderthreat

Former Zoom Employee Wanted by the FBI for Support to Chinese Government He was a 16 yr veteran of Zoom who was the liaison between the company and China’s security and intelligence services “Not surprisingly, social media monitoring was used to identify individuals who were hosting the #Zoom calls.” China’s #MSS asked Jin to keep meetings open. This ensured the MSS would be able to “obtain additional details on meeting participants.”

A Chinese Communist Party think tank staffer offered to pay for sources

ANTI TRUST

Law enforcement take down three bulletproof VPN providers

Google, Facebook agreed to team up against potential antitrust action

THEY WILL BACK EACH OTHER TO SUPPORT FACEBOOK BECAUSE NONE OF THEM WANT TO HAVE ANTI TRUST LAW BREAK THEM UP – THEY ALL NEED TO GET BROKEN UP.

THE ETHICS OF BROGRAMMERS

Like the guards at concentration camps who thought they weren’t in charge, the brogrammers whose code is used to do atrocious things against the world for profit will also go to jail.

Unlike governments which are bound by international laws and diplomatic norms, private companies like the Israeli firm are only motivated by profit.

THEY WILL ALL GO TO JAIL

NSO Group’s actions should not be granted legal immunity

The social network took the Israeli firm to court after alleging that the latter exploited a vulnerability in WhatsApp which helped its clients spy on over 1400 users globally. It’s believed that the bug or similar ones may also have been used to help Saudi Arabian officials spy on murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi and his former boss, Jeff Bezos. NSO Group has argued that its tools are only ever used for legitimate law enforcement purposes, and that, as it sells exclusively to governments, it should benefit from the “sovereign immunity” that means nation states can’t be taken to court.

SCIENCE

Seals are making ‘Star Wars’ noises at each other underwater, and we have no idea why

MOVIES

2002 GRAMMY WINNER STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN – WHO ARE THE FUNK BROTHERS

 

THE BEATLES NEW MOVIE OUT IN 2021 THE GET BACK

NetHappenings ©1989 – 2020 started by Internet Pioneer Gleason Sackmann

www.edu-cyberpg.comNetHappenings ©1989  The oldest K12 Education Mailing List in the United States.

NetHappenings ©1989 started by Internet Pioneer Gleason Sackmann.

Rated #10 on Newsweek’s prestigious List of “50 People Who Matter Most on the Internet.” ~ Newsweek Dec 25, 1995 / Jan. 1, 1996
This mailing list included announcements of the first K12 school websites built in the United States, who were first citizens in the K12 world to do this.

GLEASON SACKMANN FIRST TO WIRE NORTH DAKOTA’S K-16 SCHOOLS TO THE INTERNET

When Gleason retired
the Net-happenings Mailing list
was given to

Karen Ellis CEO and Founder of the Educational CyberPlayGround Inc. ® 1993.

Karen Ellis has been collecting online K12 Information since 1991 before there was a World Wide Web and continues to publish NetHappenings.

BECOME PART OF HISTORY – GET NETHAPPENINGS

Get the Nethappenings posts delivered into your mail box
Sign up here– Put your email address into the box located in the upper right corner of this website and you’ll get the posts delivered into your email daily.

NetHappenings continues to announce K12 school websites and school attributes  in the United States where you find links to students’ #STEAM video projects.

Students evidence their skills and show “proof of work” to the public.
 Search using #hashtags.

k12playground.comThe data base of K12 School Websites is a curated public folklore project, with  over 100,000 K12 school websites found on the  K12Playground.com

July 9, 1998 Educational CyberPlayground migrated and launched Gleason’s “Hot List” of the first school websites ever built on planet earth. This data became the first public database of school websites ever built by teachers and their students. We allowed the public to enter school information. Every submission was vetted by Karen Ellis. This has always been a curated public folklore project found by the earliest search engines circa 1996.

k12playground.comThe K12PlayGround.com™

https://K12PlayGround.comYOU CAN BECOME A PART OF K12 HISTORY: 

~ Find Your School
~ Submit / edit your school website info
~ link to your #STEAM video project
~ Use #hashtags to help everyone find your work
~ evidence your skills – show public proof of work

#EDUCATIONAL CYBERPLAYGROUND #ECP #K12PLAYGROUND #CYBERPLAYGROUND #NET-HAPPENINGS #NETHAPPENINGS #KarenEllis #GleasonSackmann #ScoutProject

Bob Dylan I Contain Multitudes

www.edu-cyberpg.comI Contain Multitudes ~ Bob Dylan

Today and tomorrow, and yesterday, too
The flowers are dyin’ like all things do
Follow me close, I’m going to Balian Bali
I’ll lose my mind if you don’t come with me
I fuss with my hair, and I fight blood feuds
I contain multitudes
Got a tell-tale heart, like Mr. Poe
Got skeletons in the walls of people you know
I’ll drink to the truth and the things we said
I’ll drink to the man that shares your bed
I paint landscapes, and I paint nudes
I contain multitudes
Red Cadillac and a black moustache
Rings on my fingers that sparkle and flash
Tell me, what’s next? What shall we do?
Half my soul, baby, belongs to you
I relic and I frolic with all the young dudes 
I contain multitudes
I’m just like Anne Frank, like Indiana Jones
And them British bad boys, The Rolling Stones
I go right to the edge, I go right to the end
I go right where all things lost are made good again
I sing the songs of experience like William Blake
I have no apologies to make
Everything’s flowing all at the same time
I live on the boulevard of crime
I drive fast cars, and I eat fast foods
I contain multitudes
Pink petal-pushers, red blue jeans
All the pretty maids, and all the old queens
All the old queens from all my past lives
I carry four pistols and two large knives
I’m a man of contradictions, I’m a man of many moods
I contain multitudes
You greedy old wolf, I’ll show you my heart
But not all of it, only the hateful part
I’ll sell you down the river, I’ll put a price on your head
What more can I tell you? I sleep with life and death in the same bed
Get lost, madame, get up off my knee
Keep your mouth away from me
I’ll keep the path open, the path in my mind
I’ll see to it that there’s no love left behind
I’ll play Beethoven’s sonatas, and Chopin’s preludes
I contain multitudes
Way Back Machine:– MSNBC Web Picks 11/1999 : The Educational CyberPlayground, Inc.®:
A helpful resource to teachers, parents, librarians, home schoolers and even those with little or no on-line experience, to use the Internet effectively to aid teaching.- USA Today BEST BETS AWARD FOR EDUCATORS 01-09-1999
The Educational CyberPlayground, Inc.® provides teachers, parents, librarians, home schoolers and regular folks a “webliography” of links to educational resources in a wide range of subjects. With a cool choice of site maps to browse from.

– USA TODAY gives the The Educational CyberPlayground, Inc.® their HOT SITE AWARD January 10, 2000

– The Educational CyberPlayground, Inc.® New York Times Site Of The Day 5/2000

– The Educational CyberPlayground, Inc.® Macworld High-Quality Education on the Web 50 of the Best Sites and A IS FOR ART 2000

Educational CyberPlayGround, Inc ® Hot Site Awards Educational CyberPlayGround, Inc.® K-12 School reference directory of Resource Hot Site Award USA Today | Educational CyberPlayGround®, Inc. K-12 School reference directory of Resources Hot Site Award MSNBC | Educational CyberPlayGround, Inc.® K-12 School reference directory of Resources NYT Hot Site Award
Reference directory of Resources Music, Teachers, Internet, Technology, Literacy, Arts and Linguistics for students, teachers, parents, and policy makers.

k12PlayGround.com
YOU COLLECT AND PRESERVE OUR CULTURE