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Daily Archives: November 17, 2021

Amazon’s Dark Secret: It Has Failed to Protect Your Data

Wired – “Voyeurs. Sabotaged accounts. Backdoor schemes. For years, the retail giant has handled your information less carefully than it handles your packages…According to internal documents reviewed by Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting and WIRED, Amazon’s vast empire of customer data—its metastasizing record of what you search for, what you buy, what shows you watch, what pills you take, what you say to Alexa, and who’s at your front door—had become so sprawling, fragmented, and promiscuously shared within the company that the security division couldn’t even map all of it, much less adequately defend its borders. In the name of speedy customer service, unbridled growth, and rapid-fire “invention on behalf of customers”—in the name of delighting you—Amazon had given broad swathes of its global workforce extraordinary latitude to tap into customer data at will. It was, as former Amazon chief information security officer Gary Gagnon calls it, a “free-for-all” of internal access to customer information. And as information security leaders warned, that free-for-all left the company wide open to “internal threat actors” while simultaneously making it inordinately difficult to track where all of Amazon’s data was flowing…”

COVID-19 Vaccinations in the United States

Only 59% of Americans are fully vaccinated according to the CDC. “Overall US COVID-19 Vaccine Deliveries and Administration; Maps, charts, and data provided by CDC, updates daily by 8 pm ET. Represents all vaccine partners including jurisdictional partner clinics, retail pharmacies, long-term care facilities, dialysis centers, Federal Emergency Management Agency and Health Resources and Services… Continue Reading

Cambridge Dictionary names ‘perseverance’ Word of the Year 2021

University of Cambridge: “Perseverance, a word which captures the undaunted will of people across the world to never give up, despite the many challenges of the last 12 months, is Cambridge Dictionary’s Word of the Year 2021. Perseverance has been looked up more than 243,000 times on the website in 2021, the first time it… Continue Reading

How to Research a Cryptocurrency Before Investing

MakeUseOf: “About to take the plunge into cryptocurrency? Stop! Make sure you research before parting with any of your hard-earned cash…Cryptocurrencies are built on solid software and there are genuine and promising applications for them. Furthermore, people do make money investing in cryptocurrencies, but people also lose a lot of money in cryptocurrency scams. Therefore,… Continue Reading

Beginning 2022 Apple will send you parts and tools to fix your iPhone and Mac at home

TechCrunch: “…The company just announced Self Service Repair, a new program designed to let users perform common repairs on devices at home. Through the program, users with damaged devices will be sent “Apple genuine” tools and components — same as the ones they use at the Genius Bar. The company will also be offering up… Continue Reading

New ABA Legal Fact Check explores conflict over presidential executive privilege

“A new ABA Legal Fact Check released [November 17, 2021] examines whether a former U.S. president can constitutionally assert executive privilege to block the release of presidential documents held by the National Archives and Records Administration and subpoenaed by Congress. The question of whether former President Donald Trump has a legal basis to block a… Continue Reading

Why so many people undercharge for their work

Vox: “How much is this worth?” It seems like a simple enough question. If the question is about a product, it likely comes with a price tag; if it’s a service, chances are it has an accompanying rate. As a customer, you either think it’s worth the price listed or not. When a customer answers… Continue Reading