Jalal Mansur Nuriddin, one of the Last Poets and earliest rappers, dies at 74
Washington Post Obituary for Jalal Mansur Nuriddin
Politics
We’re doomed
The Guardian – April 26, 2018 Interview – ‘We’re doomed’: Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will dare mention By Patrick Barkham The 86-year-old social scientist says accepting the impending end of most life on Earth might be the very thing needed to help us prolong it The Guardian – Interivew – … [Read more…]
Cyberattack Shows Vulnerability of Gas Pipeline Network
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS APRIL 4, 2018 A natural-gas plant in North Dakota operated by Oneok, one of the companies affected by a cyberattack on a data network connecting gas-pipeline operators and their customers. The companies said the attack did not lead to any service interruptions. HOUSTON — A cyberattack on a shared data network forced … [Read more…]
RISK FACTOR
Here is a listing of the RISK FACTOR blogs by Robert N. Charette in the IEEE Spectrum. Others will be added as discovered. Great to have Mr. Charette back online in the Specturm. Michigan’s MiDAS Unemployment System: Algorithm Alchemy Created Lead, Not Gold Will U.S. Corporations Ever Take Cybersecurity Seriously? 2018’s IT Failures Already Have … [Read more…]
MiDAS Failure
Another massive, expensive, and painful IT failure was reported in the IEEE Spectrum of 24-JAN-2018, this time, it was the MIDAS Unemployment system in Michigan. Not only did this system fail to deliver, its managers refused to admit that it failed. The system was to replace the legacy software used by the State of Michigan … [Read more…]
Trump’s Debt to Ron Paul’s Paranoid Style
A post in the New York Review of Books by James Kirchick sums up Trump’s penchant for the weird (conspiracy theories) and his far-right beliefs. We can read it here.
NSA – ‘sincerely regrets its failure.’
I love stories about IT screw-ups and this is another that boggles the mind. Imagine a group that has access to every email, phone call, and text message sent today, “accidentally” deleting data. Credibility? Trust? Expertise? None in my eyes, read about it here in Politico. “It’s really disappointing,” said David Greene, an attorney with … [Read more…]
Dangerous
In the December 1st New York Times, this opinion piece on Trump’s mental health: To the Editor: I am the editor of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.” We represent a much larger number of concerned mental health professionals who have come forward to warn against … [Read more…]
Disruption games
An analysis from the Guardian (11/19/17) on “Why are libertarians lining up with autocrats to undermine democracy?” is found here. However, the long-term corrosive effect of Russia’s use of disinformation to break down trust in western institutions is hard to measure and may be unmeasurable. What is clear is that it is continuing with the … [Read more…]