Tag: Privacy

Educational CyberPlayGround, Inc. NetHappenings and K12Newsletters 6.2.19

Educational CyberPlayGround, Inc. NetHappenings and K12Newsletters 6.2.19

SCIENCE  – STEM

  • Find a School – Discover the right school for your child.

  • The history of sign language

  • The contemporary Icelandic belief in elves explained

  • Anatomy of a Perfect Album: On Joni Mitchell’s Blue

  • Joel Bernstein lifetime achievement award for photography

  • Virality Is Dead

  • David Epstein on the Genius of the Self-Taught Musician

  • Personas of a Rock ‘N’ Roll Icon

  • 737 MAX Disaster fatal consequences

  • US Customs Facial Recognition Photos Data Breach

  • Why airport face scans are a privacy trap

  • GPS Degraded Across Much of US

  • Online Spreadsheet Discloses Museum Workers’ Salaries

Find a School – Discover the right school for your child.
Find and compare K12 Schools and School Districts in the USA and Territories.  https://k12playground.com/

ARTS – STEAM

The history of sign language
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/archaeology-and-history/magazine/2019/05-06/creation-of-sign-language/

Anatomy of a Perfect Album: On Joni Mitchell’s Blue
“ONLY A PHASE, THESE DARK CAFÉ DAYS.”
https://lithub.com/anatomy-of-a-perfect-album-on-joni-mitchells-blue/
Mitchell starts the record right off with wanderlust, her first words: I am on a lonely road and I am traveling, traveling, traveling, traveling, amplifying the feeling later: I am on a lonely road and I am traveling / Looking for the key to set me free. By boat, plane, foot, and ice skate, her whims and fancies take her to a Greek island, Paris (she doesn’t like it there), Spain, Las Vegas, maybe Amsterdam and Rome, and return home to her Ithaca, which is California. You hear Mitchell’s original Canadian-ness when she lands on the word “sorrow” as “soe-row” on “Little Green,” a poignant 1967 song, revived for this recording, from the perspective of a young single mother, also in the reverent way she intones the Canadian national anthem, “O Canada,” in the middle of “A Case of You.”

Friend  JOEL BERNSTEIN Musician / Photographer / Writer / Archivist  Compilation of Photographs – all the album covers you know
2018 IPHF FEATURES PROFILE ON JOEL FOR HIS LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD [ friend during junior high / high school times ]
https://www.edu-cyberpg.com/Ringleaders/joel.html

Images of rock legends from Laurel Canyon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6OXzsUQWpg

“Virality Is Dead
I’m an independent concert promoter going on 40 years now. My clients are now only a few, and I work them nationwide. Without question, Facebook “boosted posts” are quietly putting radio and print out of business in terms of how to get the word out on a cost-effective basis. And you don’t really need virality anymore in order to promote an artist or event.
I’m not talking Facebook “ads,” but “boosted posts.” Users see these posts from the artist’s page in their newsfeeds and can share them organically, unlike “ads,” which cannot be shared. I used to spend thousands of dollars breaking a show with print ads and radio. I won’t mention the act or the market, but recently I spent $1000 on a print ad in a major metropolitan market and… in a literal example of the old saying… “Did 10 tickets.” That’s right. I sold exactly 10 tickets, not even covering the cost of the ad. I spent a fraction of that amount on boosted Facebook posts and did 500 tickets. And you wonder how the Russians spent only $100k on Facebook and turned an entire election in 2016? ~ Brian Martin”
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Investors-say-promoter-owes-them-2-million-3242597.php

David Epstein on the Genius of the Self-Taught Musician
https://lithub.com/david-epstein-on-the-genius-of-the-self-taught-musician/

What David Bowie Borrowed From William Burroughs On the Shifting Personas of a Rock ‘N’ Roll Icon
https://lithub.com/what-david-bowie-borrowed-from-william-burroughs/

Online Spreadsheet Discloses Museum Workers’ Salaries
http://www.artnews.com/2019/05/31/google-spreadsheet-museum-workers-disclose-salaries/
In another sign of increasing demand for transparency at art institutions across the world, museum workers have begun making public their salary rates via a Google Spreadsheet document that began circulating on Friday morning. Titled Art/Museum Salary Transparency 2019, the document allows users to add information about the terms of their employment and their rates of pay at some of the biggest museums in the world.

Folklore: The contemporary Icelandic belief in elves explained
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20181217-the-elusive-hidden-people-of-iceland

Overview of the ArtPlace/DAISA initiative (download a copy of the report) here: https://www.artplaceamerica.org/agriculture-food
The report argues that “integrating artistic and cultural practices with food and agriculture enables a creative and inclusive process and ensures community members see their identities, histories, and interests reflected in the work.” ~ Clifford Murphy – Folk & Traditional Arts Director | Multidisciplinary Arts National Endowment for the Arts

SCIENCE  – STEM

Don’t smile for surveillance: Why airport face scans are a privacy trap
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/06/10/your-face-is-now-your-boarding-pass-thats-problem/

How Boeing’s Bean-Counters Courted the 737 MAX Disaster Just when the smallest jet should have been replaced with a new model, the company fell into tight-fisted hands—with fatal consequences. https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-boeing-bean-counters-courted-the-737-max-disaster

US Customs And Border Protection’s Database Of Traveler Facial Recognition Photos Was Stolen In A Data Breach
“CBP learned that a subcontractor … transferred copies of license plate images and traveler images collected by CBP to the subcontractor’s company network. The subcontractor’s network was subsequently compromised by a malicious cyber-attack.” https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/daveyalba/the-us-governments-database-of-traveler-photos-has-been

GPS Degraded Across Much of US
Blog Editor’s Note: Even as a Presidential Advisory Board was discussing GPS as “the Gold Standard” for satellite-based navigation last week, the system may have been operating in a degraded mode.
On Sunday the Federal Aviation Administration held a teleconference to discuss the issue that seems to have persisted for several days.  While not “failing,” GPS signal quality seems to have degraded and this is impacting some equipment and services. Specifically, the aviation safety Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast system has been impacted across much of the United States. FAA has posted the following map depicting the areas impacted:
These problems have delayed and cancelled flights, possibly by the thousands. The FAA seems to have addressed some of this problem by issuing waivers for some aircraft to fly without operable ADS-B safety systems, as long as they stay on pre-planned routes and below 28,000 ft altitude.
Speculation on some on-line forums point to specific manufactures’ equipment and aircraft that are primarily effected. Previous degradation in GPS signal quality, such as the SVN-23 caused problem in January 2016, have shown that equipment from different vendors react differently to the problem. Some are unaffected, some go offline, and some just perform poorly.
The January 2016 SVN-23 degradation caused much of the nation’s ADS-B system to be unavailable for much of the day. Other receivers and systems were impacted also. Cellular networks, first responder systems, digital broadcast, and numerous other systems were impacted.
Watchstanders at the US Coast Guard Navigation Center seemed unaware of the problem early Monday morning, but promised to investigate and respond.
https://rntfnd.org/2019/06/10/gps-degraded-across-much-of-us-ads-b-impacted/

 

Facebook Responds to Global Coalition’s Demand That Users Get a Say in Content Removal Decisions

This Business Insider article was originally published May 13, 2010

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his company are suddenly facing a big new round of scrutiny and criticism about their cavalier attitude toward user privacy. An early instant messenger exchange Mark had with a college friend won’t help put these concerns to rest.

According to SAI sources, the following exchange is between a 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg and a friend shortly after Mark launched The Facebook in his dorm room:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask.
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend’s Name]: What? How’d you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don’t know why.

Zuck: They “trust me”
Zuck: Dumb fucks.

#deletefacebook

#DeleteFacebook your info is breached again and again and again and again and again

https://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5

Mercer, Zuckerberg, Sandberg, Page, Brinn, Dorsey Handmaidens to Authoritarism

Esteemed Reporter Carole Cadwalla takes down piece of shit Mark Zuckerberg at TedTalk

Years of Mark Zuckerberg’s old Facebook posts have vanished. The company says it ‘mistakenly deleted’ them.

Zuckerberg reportedly has a secret escape chute beneath his conference room

#Zuckerberg is a liar and the Congress is paid to Ignore this

A withering verdict: MPs report on Zuckerberg, Russia and Cambridge Analytica

 

EFF and more than 100 civil society organizations across the globe wrote directly to Mark Zuckerberg recently demanding greater transparency and accountability for Facebook content moderation practices. A key step, we told Facebook, is implementation of a robust appeals process giving all users the power to challenge and reverse the platform’s content removal decisions.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/12/facebook-responds-global-coalitions-demand-users-get-say-content-removal-decisions

 

A proposed “sovereign internet” law currently working its way through Russia’s government.

Russia wants to cut itself off from the global internet. Here’s what that really means.

The plan is going to be tricky to pull off, both technically and politically, but the Kremlin has set its sights on self-sufficiency.
By Charlotte Jee
Mar 21 2019
<https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613138/russia-wants-to-cut-itself-off-from-the-global-internet-heres-what-that-really-means/>

In the next two weeks, Russia is planning to attempt something no other country has tried before. It’s going to test whether it can disconnect from the rest of the world electronically while keeping the internet running for its citizens. This means it will have to reroute all its data internally, rather than relying on servers abroad.

The test is key to a proposed “sovereign internet” law currently working its way through Russia’s government. It looks likely to be eventually voted through and signed into law by President Vladimir Putin, though it has stalled in parliament for now.

Pulling an iron curtain down over the internet is a simple idea, but don’t be fooled: it’s a fiendishly difficult technical challenge to get right. It is also going to be very expensive. The project’s initial cost has been set at $38 million by Russia’s financial watchdog, but it’s likely to require far more funding than that. One of the authors of the plan has said it’ll be more like $304 million, Bloomberg reports, but even that figure, industry experts say, won’t be enough to get the system up and running, let alone maintain it.

Not only that, but it has already proved deeply unpopular with the general public. An estimated 15,000 people took to the streets in Moscow earlier this month to protest the law, one of the biggest demonstrations in years.

Operation disconnect

So how will Russia actually disconnect itself from the global internet? “It is unclear what the ‘disconnect test’ might entail,” says Andrew Sullivan, president and CEO of the Internet Society. All we know is that if it passes, the new law will require the nation’s internet service providers (ISPs) to use only exchange points inside the country that are approved by Russia’s telecoms regulator, Roskomnadzor.

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+7 (495) 987-68-00

These exchange points are where internet service providers connect with each other. It’s where their cabling meets at physical locations to exchange traffic. These locations are overseen by organizations known as internet exchange providers (IXPs). Russia’s largest IXP is in Moscow, connecting cities in Russia’s east but also Riga in neighboring Latvia.

MSK-IX, as this exchange point is known, is one of the world’s largest. It connects over 500 different ISPs and handles over 140 gigabits of throughput during peak hours on weekdays. There are six other internet exchange points in Russia, spanning most of its 11 time zones. Many ISPs also use exchanges that are physically located in neighboring countries or that are owned by foreign companies. These would now be off limits. Once this stage is completed, it would provide Russia with a literal, physical “on/off switch” to decide whether its internet is shielded from the outside world or kept open.

What’s in a name?

As well as rerouting its ISPs, Russia will also have to unplug from the global domain name system (DNS) so traffic cannot be rerouted through any exchange points that are not inside Russia.

The DNS is basically a phone book for the internet: when you type, for example, “google.com” into your browser, your computer uses the DNS to translate this domain name into an IP address, which identifies the correct server on the internet to send the request. If one server won’t respond to a request, another will step in. Traffic behaves rather like water—it will seek any gap it can to flow through.

“The creators of the DNS wanted to create a system able to work even when bits of it stopped working, regardless of whether the decision to break parts of it was deliberate or accidental,” says Brad Karp, a computer scientist at University College London. This in-built resilience in the underlying structure of the internet will make Russia’s plan even harder to carry out.

The actual mechanics of the DNS are operated by a wide variety of organizations, but a majority of the “root servers,” which are its foundational layer, are run by groups in the US. Russia sees this as a strategic weakness and wants to create its own alternative, setting up an entire new network of its own root servers.

“An alternate DNS can be used to create an alternate reality for the majority of Russian internet users,” says Ameet Naik, an expert on internet monitoring for the software company ThousandEyes. “Whoever controls this directory controls the internet.” Thus, if Russia can create its own DNS, it will have at least a semblance of control over the internet within its borders.

This won’t be easy, says Sullivan. It will involve configuring tens of thousands of systems, and it will be difficult, if not impossible, to identify all the different access points citizens use to get online (their laptops, smartphones, iPads, and so on). Some of them will be using servers abroad, such as Google’s Public DNS, which Russia simply won’t be able to replicate—so the connection will fail when a Russian user tries to access them.

[snip]

Could someone really destroy the whole Internet?  YES

The Internet is more than just a technology. It is a domain similar to the domains of land, air, sea and space, but with its own distinct challenges.

WHO CONTROLS THE INTERNET?

The whole internet is controlled by seven actual, physical keys. – The key issue with internet governance is always trust, which is ridiculous.

WHO MANAGES THE INTERNET’S ADDRESS BOOK?
BY VINT CERF Vint Cerf summarizes the transition of ICANN.

THE NET IS A WORLD OF ENDS. The Internet is a “network of networks” of computers. It was born on Oct. 29, 1969, when a UCLA student programmer sent a message from his computer to one at Stanford.