Traced Back to Compromised CCTV Cameras
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1. Inside the Internet-connected CCTVs of the world, there are botnets doing their owners' bidding.
"While we haven’t yet had the chance to intercept any refrigerator-mounted malware, over the years we‘ve seen our share of IoT botnets, with CCTV ones being among the most common. We first warned about them in March 2014, when we became aware of a steep 240 percent increase in botnet activity on our network, much of it traced back to compromised CCTV cameras. Not surprising, given that CCTV cameras are among the most common IoT devices. Reports show that in 2014, there were 245 million surveillance cameras operating around the world. And this only accounts for the professionally installed ones. There are likely millions more that were installed by unqualified professionals, with even fewer security precautions."
2. Bijan Stephen on social media and #BlackLivesMatter.
"The movement has also had another profound but less concrete effect: I believe that Black Lives Matter has changed the visceral experience of being black in America. I see this in the way it has become a community reflex to record interactions with police—a habit that is empowering, even as it highlights black vulnerability. I see it in the rise of a new group of black public intellectuals and in the beginnings of a new political language. And I see it in my own experience."
3. Amazon is opening up the types of translated books that get published in the US.
"The Hangman’s Daughter has sold over a million copies (mostly electronically) in English since it was first published in 2010. The editors at AmazonCrossing weren’t out to identify books that were getting rave reviews, or works by writers who are winning international awards. Nor were they necessarily looking for international blockbusters, which are often expensive to acquire. Instead, they were looking for books that readers were connecting with, which they could figure out using Amazon data."
4. It's good to see the fan of possibilities around what artificial intelligence might do expanding.
"We co-evolve with our tools, and thus this suggests that as we grow more technologically powerful we will perpetually revise our conception of what it means to have the necessary and sufficient means to be successful in the modern world. Moreover, ideas of education, competence, and worldly acumen also change. We used to think that every well-educated Western man ought to be familiar with the classics, speak Greek and Roman, and have the effortless capacity of the gentleman amateur in some area of interest (some of which were pretty weird). Today, being able to recite Virgil or Homer, for example, doesn’t matter. No, everyone must Learn to Code (TM)."
5. Self-driving DeLorean. That is all.
"To study how cars perform in extreme situations, Stanford University needed a rear mid-engine, rear-wheel drive research platform, and the obvious best choice was to customize and electrify a DeLorean. They haven't yet taught their car to travel through time, but they have taught it to autonomously drift, with the goal of giving future vehicles the ability to use creative acrobatics to avoid accidents."
On Fusion: A deep dive into the unappreciated invention that underpins of mobile life.
1. incapsula.com | @xeni 2. wired.com 3. newrepublic.com 4. medium.com 5. spectrum.ieee.org
Traced Back to Compromised CCTV Cameras