As Old Betting Laws Fall, New Technology May Prevail
Bottom of the eighth, bases
are loaded, scores tied with two outs. The batter steps to the plate as the pitcher and catcher sign quickly to each other. The crowd, already on edge, stares intently at their phones. Panicked tapping ensues as bets are placed. Two to one strike. Five to one bunt. Three to one foul ball. As the batter winds up for the pitch, screens freeze; betting is now locked. “THWAP” The ball goes flying through the air as do millions of microtransactions. Fractions of a Bitcoin, known as a satoshi, are won and lost in the time it takes to swing a bat. As the debits complete, fans peck at their phones, eager to log their bets before the next batter reaches the plate.
As America continues its free-wheeling descent into the hell that is a Police state, efforts ramp up to protect the common man.
Department of Homeland Security officials have requested bids for a Media Monitoring Service that would have the ability to scan more than 290.000 news sources in and outside the US, and store journalists, editors, correspondents, social media influencers, and bloggers in a database that must be searchable for “content” and “sentiment”.
After years of abusive privacy invasions by the social media giant, the recent leak regarding Cambridge Analytica is causing a hemorrhage of users and advertiser dollars.
Earlier this month, Facebook acknoweldged that data from over 50,000,000 users had been illicitly obtained by data mining and political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica. The data, while legally obtained by the social media site, Facebook, had been taken from friends of friends who did not consent to the collection by Cambridge Analytica. After the breach of trust was disclosed to Facebook, the company failed to notify affected users, instead opting to allow Cambridge Analytica to promise to delete the illicitly obtained information.
I am at a loss for words. As the reality of the Intel bug settles in, the tech community has been shaken. For years we have falsely assumed the security of virtualization technologies. The convenience and ease of ‘spinning up’ and ‘blowing away’ vms (virtual machines) in server farms has become standard practice across the globe. Even McAfee Media Solutions utilizes virtualization to manage our web and vpn servers; helping us reduce costs and insure greater up times.
As bloody protests continue in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iranian officials have blocked internet access to Facebook, Instagram, and other social media websites. Amid the protests, the US Undersecretary of State Steven Goldstein has voiced concern over the behavior of Iranian officials and encouraged Iran to stop limiting external access to the countries users.
Ripple NPM supply chain attack hunts for private keys • The Register - Threat actors were able to publish 5 new versions of the official Ripple NPM package, all with malicious code to steal keys. Ripple holders should consider rotating keys if they’ve made use of any of the packages.
Effected are NPM hosted packages for 4.2.1-4 and 2.14.2.
