Hack Like Everyone is Watching

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” Albert Einstein, interviewed by George Sylvester Viereck (Saturday Evening Post, ... read more

I never said I wanted a 'happy' life but an interesting one. From separation and loss, I have learned a lot. I have become strong and resilient, as is the case of almost every human being exposed to life and to the world. We don't even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward.

Budget 2017: Crackdown on multinational tax 'black economy'

James Comey fired: calls for special prosecutor after Trump sacks FBI...

New cyber ‘guerrilla’ attacks evade detection

WWIII and cyber landscapes

“Russian website shows unsecured video streams from across Canada.”

Macau Introduces ATM Facial Recognition to Deter Chinese Money Laundering

 "A new commodity spawns a lucrative, fast-growing industry, prompting antitrust regulators to step in to restrain those who control its flow. A century ago, the resource in question was oil. Now similar concerns are being raised by the giants that deal in data, the oil of the digital era." (The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data. The Economist)

   
We’ve ranked 11 companies that run the world’s most popular messaging apps – including Skype, Snapchat and Facebook Messenger – on how well they’re using encryption to protect your online privacy

News from the Profession. Cyber Espionage Is a Thing You Should Start Worrying About (Megan Lewczyk, Going Concern)

Google phishing attack was foretold by researchers—and it may have used their code

 The FBI reckons scammers netted more than $5bn in four years by emailing fake invoices and similar bogus claims to beancounters, tricking them into handing over company cash.
This so-called business email compromise crime (aka BEC, or sometimes "whaling") involves thieves sending convincing-looking invoices to staff while posing as contractors or business partners. Fake invoice scammers slurp $5bn+ from corp beancounters – FBI

We knew the U.S. and Russia were hacking powers, but Ethiopia and Pakistan?

   

Regulating the internet giants: The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data Economist 

5 things you need to know in Australian tech today

FBI says email scammers stung businesses for $5bn over 4 years The Register (Dan K). I get fake invoices regularly, and they are at the level of sophistication the many variations of the Nigerian e-mail scam (the ones that amuse me the most are the ones that say Janet Yellen or Steve Mnuchin wants to send me money). I can’t believe anyone falls for this stuff but obviously they do. Perhaps a tiny subset is more credible (as in they find actual approved vendors of Big Cos). And to put this in perspective, one of Richard Smith’s bigger international scams was 3 billion pounds back in the day when that would be more like $4.5 billion…

Washington Post – “Former acting attorney general Sally Yates and James R. Clapper Jr., the former director of national intelligence, are testifying at a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. This is the transcript of the hearing.”

Washington Post – Yates says she warned White House that Flynn could be blackmailed

Washington Post – 5 things we learned from Yates’s testimony about Michael Flynn

Washington Post – Obama personally advised Trump against hiring Flynn, official says

New York Times – Twice Warned, Trump Stuck by Flynn Despite Ties to Russia

Mother Jones – Why the Sally Yates Hearing Was Very Bad News for the Trump White House

This tool, made by college students, will save you all that time you spend transcribing

 
Shu-Yi Oei, We Hear What We Want to Hear (Surly Subgroup). “A quick Google search yielded me this citypages top 10 country tunes for tax day list, which includes Johnny Paycheck’s ‘Me and the IRS‘ (1978), Willie Nelson’s ‘Who’ll Buy My Memories?’ from his album, The IRS tapes, and Sleepy LaBeef’s ‘There Ain’t Much After Taxes‘ (1996).”

Facebook: Entering middle age like a durable baseball player Pando Daily

The Google Phishing Attack, Explained LinkedIn. “There is zero excuse for Google to let an app called ‘Google Docs’ that isn’t from them ask for permission to connect to your account.”

A flaw in the design and The long life of a quick ‘fix’WaPo. The first two parts of a very good multipart high-level history of the Internet’s development.

Digital Economy Act: UK Police could soon disable phones, even if users don’t commit a crime The Independent

After years of warnings, mobile network hackers exploit SS7 flaws to drain bank accounts The Register

New Tools Allow Voice Patterns To Be Cloned To Produce Realistic But Fake Sounds Of Anyone Saying Anything TechDirt

How many of the greatest philosophers had philosophy degrees


Madonna says a new screenplay about her life is "all lies," so the BBC did some fact-checking. ... This podcast fact-checks Hollywood legends and tales "by researching them from all angles."

It’s who you know that really counts when it comes to networking

Eating gluten is better for your heart, study finds

Loving winning and hating losing are two fairly distinct motivations.  For instance, a fairly joyless person may nonetheless be motivated by the humiliation of a loss, or a non-envious, non-spiteful type could receive great pleasure from being number one, while not minding if someone later climbs higher yet.

If you both love winning and hate losing that is especially useful in one-on-one, zero-sum competitions, such as chess and tennis, and also in most team sports and perhaps securities trading as well.  Such people are more motivated, and motivated from more sides of their being, and if one of the emotions flags a bit the other is there to step in and maintain the pace and focus.

In venture capital, I suspect that hatred of losing may be a disadvantage.  No matter how successful you may be, most of your individual investments will lose money and hatred of losing may make you too risk-averse.  It might be better to have the ability to simply forget your losses and put them behind you.

For academics, it is more important to love gains than to hate losses.  Provided they don’t embarrass you, your forgotten articles just aren’t that big a deal and everybody has them, including Nobel Laureates.  A single key piece can make your career, however.

Is hatred of loss also unnecessary for book authors and music stars?  Ideally, you would think they should take lots of chances, but the exact tracking of sales makes them more risk-averse and thus boosts the relative status of the loss haters.  If they release a clinker book or album, the intermediaries are less keen to promote them next time around.  To the extent intermediaries become more important, that boosts the loss-hating performers, because intermediaries themselves are somewhat loss-hating.

What is the correct mix of gain-loving and loss-hating for a Navy Seal?  For a journalist?  A lawyer, programmer, or engineer?

In a job interview, what question should you ask to discern if someone is a gain lover or a loss hater or both?  Or neither!