Krebs on Security: “A great many readers this month reported receiving alerts that their Social Security Number, name, address and other personal information were exposed in a breach at a little-known but aptly-named consumer data broker called NationalPublicData.com. This post examines what we know about a breach that has exposed hundreds of millions of consumer… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Financial System
Google, Amazon and Meta are proposing changes to climate laws that would allow them to hide their actual emission numbers
FT.com: “By its own account, Amazon is a green business leader. The world’s most visited online marketplace and leading cloud services provider says it hit its 100 per cent renewable energy goal seven years ahead of a self-imposed target. But by another, Amazon is a heavy polluter, emitting much more climate-warming greenhouse gases through its… Continue Reading
Hackers may have stolen the Social Security numbers of every American. How to protect yourself
LA Times via Yahoo: “…Data breaches have been so common over the years, some security experts say sensitive information about you is almost certainly available in the dark corners of the internet. And there are a lot of people capable of finding it; VPNRanks, a website that rates virtual private network services, estimates that 5… Continue Reading
Thousands of Corporate Secrets Were Left Exposed. This Guy Found Them All
Wired – Security researcher Bill Demirkapi found more than 15,000 hardcoded secrets and 66,000 vulnerable websites—all by searching overlooked data sources [unpaywalled]: “If you know where to look, plenty of secrets can be found online. Since the fall of 2021, independent security researcher Bill Demirkapi has been building ways to tap into huge data sources,… Continue Reading
Mainframes Find New Life in AI Era
WSJ via MSN: “Banks, insurance providers and airlines still find uses, including artificial intelligence, for the large computers that have been around for decades The industrial-strength mainframe computer, invented decades ago for heavy-duty data processing, is proving its staying power even as next-generation artificial intelligence takes center stage. The two are interconnected: Banks, insurance providers… Continue Reading
Pandemic-Era Liquid Wealth Is Running Dry
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco: “Households accumulated more liquid assets beginning in 2020 than would have been expected without the pandemic. These “extra” liquid assets have dissipated, but their evolution has differed significantly by income group. While middle- and lower-income households hold substantially less liquid wealth than implied by pre-pandemic projections, the level for… Continue Reading
Greedflation Report
“U.S. Sen. Bob Casey released his latest “greedflation” report on Wednesday, and this time it takes aim at popular streaming platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and more. This time, Casey is highlighting what he calls “streamflation,” which happens when streaming platforms hike their profits by charging higher prices, despite offering less content and… Continue Reading
Public records data must be off-limits for AI
The Hill – “Companies are looking for innovative ways to collect data to feed their data-hungry artificial intelligence systems and create innovative applications. Fortunately, some do not have to go too far. Then, there are the companies that collect data from public records to share on the internet and run analytics. There are many compelling… Continue Reading
The federal budget: an overview
USAFacts: “The federal budget is a measure of how much the federal government spends and how much revenue it takes in. Typically, annual budgetary data is broken up into fiscal years, which run from October 1 to September 30. In fiscal year 2023, the US spent $6.16 trillion on public programs and generated $4.47 trillion… Continue Reading
The world’s richest countries in 2024
The Economist [unpaywalled]: “Sorting countries into rich and poor can be difficult. Measures such as GDP are affected by population size (more people generally mean more output). But adjusting for population alone is not enough. Dollar income per person does not account for differences in prices between countries (a Big Mac, for example, will set… Continue Reading
My journey into the surreal, infuriating future of homeowners insurance
Business Insider: “I take privacy and surveillance extremely seriously — so seriously that I started one of the leading think tanks on the topic, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. But while I study surveillance threats around the country for a living, I had no idea that my own insurance company was using my premium dollars… Continue Reading
We need to prepare for ‘addictive intelligence’
MIT Technology Review [unpaywalled] The allure of AI companions is hard to resist. Here’s how innovation in regulation can help protect people. “AI concerns overemphasize harms arising from subversion rather than seduction. Worries about AI often imagine doomsday scenarios where systems escape human control or even understanding. Short of those nightmares, there are nearer-term harms… Continue Reading
