“News is a misleading way to understand the world.” On a bit of a losing streak lately, I’ve cast my net for some fresh inspiration, which led me to Bill Gates’ wonderful Tweetstorm for grads, which led me to a Q&A with Steven Pinker, who wrote Gates’ favorite book. And [Keep reading]
A feared second spike of attacks from the WannaCry ransomware virus didn’t materialize early Monday, but there’s still plenty to worry about. New variants of the malware have been released, others are most certainly under development, and a Twitter account logging ransom payments shows victims are indeed coughing up roughly $300 [Keep reading]
Brace for a new wave of ransomware attacks Monday morning, global authorities are warning computer users and organizations today. So far, one of the worst cyberattacks in recent memory has hit computers in 150 countries, Europol said, with a virus named WannaCry encrypting files and demanding ransom from victims. The [Keep reading]
For a long time, many health care providers have been worried about the wrong thing — compliance rather than patient safety. Today, we see the most frightening example yet of the devastating consequences. A widespread ransomware attack in the U.K. has hospitals turning away ambulances and canceling appointments, according to [Keep reading]
The student loan crisis is starting to feel a lot like the housing crisis of the last decade, warns Illinois State Attorney General Lisa Madigan — a swelling economic disaster with millions of fragile borrowers unable to get timely help or good advice. If that seems like an overstatement of [Keep reading]
Facebook should release secret research it has done to psychologically analyze teen-age users, U.S. consumer groups demanded on Wednesday, after reports surfaced in Australian media that the social media giant had come with up techniques to predict kids’ emotional states — placing them in buckets like “defeated,” “overwhelmed,” “stressed,” “stupid,” “useless,” and [Keep reading]
Did the new leader of France win because he outsmarted the very hackers who tried to tip the scales in last November’s U.S. election? Security professionals are trying to sort out this very possibility right now, following a storyline that sounds right out of a Michael Crichton novel. It’s going [Keep reading]
I’ve been fighting for consumer rights and writing about credit card fraud for a loooong time, and I’d never heard of this. In fact, lots of people in the banking industry have never heard of this. *Not* knowing this has probably cost us both some money through the years, so [Keep reading]
Many of you know how much I care about independent journalism. Not just the not Republican or not Democratic kind. I mean truly independent, like me. What I sometimes call “sustainable journalism.” Solo or small groups of journalists working to get the news out without the support of a major [Keep reading]
(Here’s my second in an ongoing series about what we’ve learned by browsing Insedia’s Pitchfork database of 4 billion stolen records. You can read Part 1 here. Visit Insedia.com to read part 2.) Bill Gates appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart back when Windows Vista was released, and Stewart [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan