Thursday, February 18, 2021

Yes, your security camera could be hacked: Here’s how to stop spying eyes

 BEER IS CIVILIZATION:  Archaeologists uncover ancient beer brewery at Egypt funeral site.


Yes, your security camera could be hacked: Here’s how to stop spying eyes

CNET – “Last year, an ADT customer noticed an unfamiliar email address connected to her home security account — a professionally monitored system that included cameras and other devices inside her home. That simple discovery, and her report of it to the company, began to topple a long line of dominoes leading back to a technician who had spied, over the course of four and a half years, on hundreds of customers, watching them live their private lives…. ADT says it has closed the loopholes that the technician exploited, implementing “new safeguards, training and policies to strengthen… account security and customer privacy.” But invasions of privacy are not unique to ADT and some vulnerabilities are harder to safeguard than others. Whether you’re using professionally monitored security systems like ADT, Comcast Xfinity or Vivint, or you just have a few standalone cameras from off-the-shelf companies like Ring, Nest or Arlo, here are a few practices that can help protect your device security and data privacy…”


DAVID LEWIS SCHAEFER:  Russia 1917, America 2021.



Australian aged care is a crisis waiting to happen

Providers know they are in the box seat and that they can, and do, operate sub-standard homes. Bad homes cannot be closed – imagine the furore if older people were suddenly evicted from a home that does not measure up. Continue reading 


The computers rejecting your job application - BBC – “A professional journalist, I had recently applied for a new job, and for the first part of the recruitment process the publisher made me play a number of simple online games from the comfort of my own home. These included having to quickly count the number of dots in two boxes, inflating a balloon before it burst to win money, and matching emotions to facial expressions. Then an artificial intelligence (AI) software system assessed my personality, and either passed or failed me. No human had a look-in. I wondered: is it fair for a computer alone to accept or reject your job application? Welcome to the fast-growing world of AI recruitment. While recruiters have been using AI for around the past decade, the technology has been greatly refined in recent years. And demand for it has risen strongly since the pandemic, thanks to its convenience and fast results at a time when staff may be off due to Covid-19. The AI recruitment software that put me through the above test was provided by a New York-based firm called Pymetrics. The questions, and your answers to them, are designed to evaluate several aspects of a jobseeker’s personality and intelligence, such as your risk tolerance and how quickly you respond to situations…”