business

A better alternative to text CAPTCHAs

business, science, security, technology / /

From Rich Gossweiler, Maryam Kamvar, & Shumeet Baluja’s “What’s Up CAPTCHA?: A CAPTCHA Based On Image Orientation” (Google: 20-24 April 2009):

There are several classes of images which can be successfully oriented by computers. Some objects, such as faces, cars, pedestrians, sky, grass etc.

…

Many images, however, are difficult for computers to orient. For example, indoor scenes have variations in lighting sources, and abstract and close-up images provide the greatest challenge to both computers and people, often because no clear anchor points or lighting sources exist.

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The average performance on outdoor photographs, architecture photographs and typical tourist type photographs was significantly higher than the performance on abstract photographs, close-ups and backgrounds. When an analysis of the features used to make the discriminations was done, it was found that the edge features play a significant role.

…

It is important not to simply select random images for this task. There are many cues which can quickly reveal the upright orientation of an image to automated systems; these images must be filtered out. For example, if typical vacation or snapshot photos are used, automated rotation accuracies can be in the 90% range. The existence of any of the cues in the presented images will severely limit the effectiveness of the approach. Three common cues are listed below:

1. Text: Usually the predominant orientation of text in an image reveals the upright orientation of an image.

2. Faces and People: Most photographs are taken with the face(s) / people upright in the image.

3. Blue skies, green grass, and beige sand: These are all revealing clues, and are present in many travel/tourist photographs found on the web. Extending this beyond color, in general, the sky often has few texture/edges in comparison to the ground. Additional cues found important in human tests include "grass", "trees", "cars", "water" and "clouds".

…

Second, due to sometimes warped objects, lack of shading and lighting cues, and often unrealistic colors, cartoons also make ideal candidates. … Finally, although we did not alter the content of the image, it may be possible to simply alter the color- mapping, overall lighting curves, and hue/saturation levels to reveal images that appear unnatural but remain recognizable to people.

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To normalize the shape and size of the images, we scaled each image to a 180×180 pixel square and we then applied a circular mask to remove the image corners.

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We have created a system that has sufficiently high human- success rates and sufficiently low computer-success rates. When using three images, the rotational CAPTCHA system results in an 84% human success metric, and a .009% bot-success metric (assuming random guessing). These metrics are based on two variables: the number of images we require a user to rotate and the size of the acceptable error window (the degrees from upright which we still consider to be upright). Predictably, as the number of images shown becomes greater, the probability of correctly solving them decreases. However, as the error window increases, the probability of correctly solving them increases. The system which results in an 84% human success rate and .009% bot success rate asks the user to rotate three images, each within 16° of upright (8-degrees on either side of upright).

…

A CAPTCHA system which displayed ≥ 3 images with a ≤ 16-degree error window would achieve a guess success rate of less than 1 in 10,000, a standard acceptable computer success rates for CAPTCHAs.

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In our experiments, users moved a slider to rotate the image to its upright position. On small display devices such as a mobile phone, they could directly manipulate the image using a touch screen, as seen in Figure 12, or can rotate it via button presses.

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A story of failed biometrics at a gym

business, security, tech in changing society / /

Fingerprints
Creative Commons License photo credit: kevindooley

From Jake Vinson’s “Cracking your Fingers” (The Daily WTF: 28 April 2009):

A few days later, Ross stood proudly in the reception area, hands on his hips. A high-tech fingerprint scanner sat at the reception area near the turnstile and register, as the same scanner would be used for each, though the register system wasn’t quite ready for rollout yet. Another scanner sat on the opposite side of the turnstile, for gym members to sign out. … The receptionist looked almost as pleased as Ross that morning as well, excited that this meant they were working toward a system that necessitated less manual member ID lookups.

…

After signing a few people up, the new system was going swimmingly. Some users declined to use the new system, instead walking to the far side of the counter to use the old touchscreen system. Then Johnny tried to leave after his workout.

… He scanned his finger on his way out, but the turnstile wouldn’t budge.

“Uh, just a second,” the receptionist furiously typed and clicked, while Johnny removed one of his earbuds out and stared. “I’ll just have to manually override it…” but it was useless. There was no manual override option. Somehow, it was never considered that the scanner would malfunction. After several seconds of searching and having Johnny try to scan his finger again, the receptionist instructed him just to jump over the turnstile.

It was later discovered that the system required a “sign in” and a “sign out,” and if a member was recognized as someone else when attempting to sign out, the system rejected the input, and the turnstile remained locked in position. This was not good.

The scene repeated itself several times that day. Worse, the fingerprint scanner at the exit was getting kind of disgusting. Dozens of sweaty fingerprints required the scanner to be cleaned hourly, and even after it was freshly cleaned, it sometimes still couldn’t read fingerprints right. The latticed patterns on the barbell grips would leave indented patterns temporarily on the members’ fingers, there could be small cuts or folds on fingertips just from carrying weights or scrapes on the concrete coming out of the pool, fingers were wrinkly after a long swim, or sometimes the system just misidentified the person for no apparent reason.

Fingerprint Scanning

In much the same way that it’s not a good idea to store passwords in plaintext, it’s not a good idea to store raw fingerprint data. Instead, it should be hashed, so that the same input will consistently give the same output, but said output can’t be used to determine what the input was. In biometry, there are many complex algorithms that can analyze a fingerprint via several points on the finger. This system was set up to record seven points.

After a few hours of rollout, though, it became clear that the real world doesn’t conform to how it should’ve worked in theory. There were simply too many variables, too many activities in the gym that could cause fingerprints to become altered. As such, the installers did what they thought was the reasonable thing to do – reduce the precision from seven points down to something substantially lower.

The updated system was in place for a few days, and it seemed to be working better; no more people being held up trying to leave.

Discovery

… [The monitor] showed Ray as coming in several times that week, often twice on the same day, just hours apart. For each day listed, Ray had only come the later of the two times.

Reducing the precision of the fingerprint scanning resulted in the system identifying two people as one person. Reviewing the log, they saw that some regulars weren’t showing up in the system, and many members had two or three people being identified by the scanner as them.

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Interviewed for an article about mis-uses of Twitter

business, law, personal, social software, tech in changing society / /

The Saint Louis Beacon published an article on 27 April 2009 titled “Tweets from the jury box aren’t amusing“, about legal “cases across the country where jurors have used cell phones, BlackBerrys and other devices to comment – sometimes minute by minute or second by second on Twitter, for instance – on what they are doing, hearing and seeing during jury duty.” In it, I was quoted as follows:

The small mobile devices so prevalent today can encourage a talkative habit that some people may find hard to break.

“People get so used to doing it all the time,” said Scott Granneman, an adjunct professor of communications and journalism at Washington University. “They don’t stop to think that being on a jury means they should stop. It’s an etiquette thing.”

Moreover, he added, the habit can become so ingrained in some people – even those on juries who are warned repeatedly they should not Tweet or text or talk about they case they are on – that they make excuses.

“It’s habitual,” Granneman said. “They say ‘It’s just my friends and family reading this.’ They don’t know the whole world is following this.

“Anybody can go to any Twitter page. There may be only eight people following you, but anybody can go anyone’s page and anybody can reTweet – forward someone’s page: ‘Oh my God, the defense attorney is so stupid.’ That can go on and on and on.”

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Steve Jobs on mediocrity & market share

business, history, tech in changing society, technology / /

From Steven Levy’s “OK, Mac, Make a Wish: Apple’s ‘computer for the rest of us’ is, insanely, 20” (Newsweek: 2 February 2004):

If that’s so, then why is the Mac market share, even after Apple’s recent revival, sputtering at a measly 5 percent? Jobs has a theory about that, too. Once a company devises a great product, he says, it has a monopoly in that realm, and concentrates less on innovation than protecting its turf. “The Mac user interface was a 10-year monopoly,” says Jobs. “Who ended up running the company? Sales guys. At the critical juncture in the late ’80s, when they should have gone for market share, they went for profits. They made obscene profits for several years. And their products became mediocre. And then their monopoly ended with Windows 95. They behaved like a monopoly, and it came back to bite them, which always happens.”

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Newspapers are doomed

business, politics, social software, tech in changing society / /

From Jeff Sigmund’s “Newspaper Web Site Audience Increases More Than Ten Percent In First Quarter To 73.3 Million Visitors” (Newspaper Association of America: 23 April 2009):

Newspaper Web sites attracted more than 73.3 million monthly unique visitors on average (43.6 percent of all Internet users) in the first quarter of 2009, a record number that reflects a 10.5 percent increase over the same period a year ago, according to a custom analysis provided by Nielsen Online for the Newspaper Association of America.

In addition, newspaper Web site visitors generated an average of more than 3.5 billion page views per month throughout the quarter, an increase of 12.8 percent over the same period a year ago (3.1 billion page views).

Contrast that with the article on Craigslist in Wikipedia (1 May 2009):

The site serves over twenty billion page views per month, putting it in 28th place overall among web sites world wide, ninth place overall among web sites in the United States (per Alexa.com on March 27, 2009), to over fifty million unique monthly visitors in the United States alone (per Compete.com on April 7, 2009). As of March 17, 2009 it was ranked 7th on Alexa. With over forty million new classified advertisements each month, Craigslist is the leading classifieds service in any medium. The site receives over one million new job listings each month, making it one of the top job boards in the world.

Even at its best, the entire newspaper industry only gets 1/5 of what Craigslist sees each month.

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Extreme male brains

business, education, science / /

From Joe Clark’s “The extreme Google brain” (Fawny: 26 April 2009):

… Susan Pinker’s The Sexual Paradox, which explains, using scientific findings, why large majorities of girls and women behave almost identically at different stages of their lives – while large minorities of boys and men show vast variability compared to each other and to male norms.

Some of these boys and men exhibit extreme-male-brain tendencies, including an ability to focus obsessively for long periods of time, often on inanimate objects or abstractions (hence male domination of engineering and high-end law). Paradoxically, other male brains in these exceptional cases may have an ability to experiment with many options for short periods each. Pejoratively diagnosed as attention-deficit disorder, Pinker provides evidence this latter ability is actually a strength for some entrepreneurs.

The male brain, extreme or not, is compatible with visual design. It allows you to learn every font in the Letraset catalogue and work from a grid. In fact, the male-brain capacity for years-long single-mindedness explains why the heads of large ad agencies and design houses are overwhelmingly male. (It isn’t a sexist conspiracy.)

In the computer industry, extreme male brains permit years of concentration on hardware and software design, while also iterating those designs seemingly ad infinitum. The extreme male brain is really the extreme Google brain. It’s somewhat of a misnomer, because such is actually the average brain inside the company, but I will use that as a neologism.

Google was founded by extreme-male-brain nerds and, by all outward appearances, seems to hire only that type of person, not all of them male.

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German twins commit the perfect crime

business, law, science, security / /

From “Twins Suspected in Spectacular Jewelry Heist Set Free” (Spiegel Online International: 19 March 2009):

Saved by their indistinguishable DNA, identical twins suspected in a massive jewelry heist have been set free. Neither could be exclusively linked to the DNA evidence.

German police say at least one of the identical twin brothers Hassan and Abbas O. may have perpetrated a recent multimillion euro jewelry heist in Berlin. But because of their indistinguishable DNA, neither can be individually linked to the crime. Both were set free on Wednesday.

In the early morning hours of February 25, three masked men broke into Germany’s famous luxury department store Kaufhaus Des Westens (KaDeWe). Video cameras show how they climbed into the store’s grand main hall, broke open cabinets and display cases and made off with an estimated €5 million worth of jewelry and watches.

When police found traces of DNA on a glove left at the scene of the crime, it seemed that the criminals responsible for Germany’s most spectacular heist in years would be caught. But the DNA led to not one but two suspects — 27-year-old identical, or monozygotic, twins with near-identical DNA.

German law stipulates that each criminal must be individually proven guilty. The problem in the case of the O. brothers is that their twin DNA is so similar that neither can be exclusively linked to the evidence using current methods of DNA analysis. So even though both have criminal records and may have committed the heist together, Hassan and Abbas O. have been set free.

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Criminal goods & service sold on the black market

business, law, security, tech in changing society / /

From Ellen Messmer’s “Symantec takes cybercrime snapshot with ‘Underground Economy’ report” (Network World: 24 November 2008):

The “Underground Economy” report [from Symantec] contains a snapshot of online criminal activity observed from July 2007 to June 2008 by a Symantec team monitoring activities in Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and Web-based forums where stolen goods are advertised. Symantec estimates the total value of the goods advertised on what it calls “underground servers” was about $276 million, with credit-card information accounting for 59% of the total.

If that purloined information were successfully exploited, it probably would bring the buyers about $5 billion, according to the report — just a drop in the bucket, points out David Cowings, senior manager of operations at Symantec Security Response.

“Ninety-eight percent of the underground-economy servers have life spans of less than 6 months,” Cowings says. “The smallest IRC server we saw had five channels and 40 users. The largest IRC server network had 28,000 channels and 90,000 users.”

In the one year covered by the report, Symantec’s team observed more than 69,000 distinct advertisers and 44 million total messages online selling illicit credit-card and financial data, but the 10 most active advertisers appeared to account for 11% of the total messages posted and $575,000 in sales.

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According to the report, a bank-account credential was selling for $10 to $1,000, depending on the balance and location of the account. Sellers also hawked specific financial sites’ vulnerabilities for an average price of $740, though prices did go as high as $2,999.

In other spots, the average price for a keystroke logger — malware used to capture a victim’s information — was an affordable $23. Attack tools, such as botnets, sold for an average of $225. “For $10, you could host a phishing site on someone’s server or compromised Web site,” Cowings says.

Desktop computer games appeared to be the most-pirated software, accounting for 49% of all file instances that Symantec observed. The second-highest category was utility applications; third-highest was multimedia productivity applications, such as photograph or HTML editors.

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Some facts about GPL 2 & GPL 3

business, law, tech in changing society / /

From Liz Laffan’s “GPLv2 vs GPLv3: The two seminal open source licenses, their roots, consequences and repercussions” (VisionMobile: September 2007):

From a licensing perspective, the vast majority (typically 60-70%) of all open source projects are licensed under the GNU Public License version 2 (GPLv2).

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GPLv3 was published in July 2007, some 16 years following the creation of GPLv2. The purpose of this new license is to address some of the areas identified for improvement and clarification in GPLv2 – such as patent indemnity, internationalisation and remedies for inadvertent license infringement (rather than the previous immediate termination effect). The new GPLv3 license is nearly double the length of the GPLv2 …

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GPLv3 differs to GPLv2 in several important ways. Firstly it provides more clarity on patent licenses and attempts to clarify what is meant by both a distribution and derivative works. Secondly it revokes the immediate termination of license clause in favour of licensee opportunities to ‘fix’ any violations within a given time-period. In addition there are explicit ‘Additional Terms’ which permits users to choose from a fixed set of alternative terms which can modify the standard GPLv3 terms. These are all welcome, positive moves which should benefit all users of the GPLv3 license.

Nonetheless there are three contentious aspects of GPLv3 that have provoked much discussion in the FOSS community and could deter adoption of GPLv3 by more circumspect users and organisations.

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Open source & patents

business, law, politics, tech in changing society / /

From Liz Laffan’s “GPLv2 vs GPLv3: The two seminal open source licenses, their roots, consequences and repercussions” (VisionMobile: September 2007):

Cumulatively patents have been doubling practically every year since 1990. Patents are now probably the most contentious issue in software-related intellectual property rights.

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However we should also be aware that software written from scratch is as likely to infringe patents as FOSS covered software – due mainly to the increasing proliferation of patents in all software technologies. Consequently the risk of patent infringement is largely comparable whether one chooses to write one’s own software or use software covered by the GPLv2; one will most likely have to self-indemnify against a potential patent infringement claim in both cases.

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The F.U.D. (fear, uncertainty and doubt) that surrounds patents in FOSS has been further heightened by two announcements, both instigated by Microsoft. Firstly in November 2006 Microsoft and Novell1 entered into a cross- licensing patent agreement where Microsoft gave Novell assurances that it would not sue the company or its customers if they were to be found infringing Microsoft patents in the Novell Linux distribution. Secondly in May 2007 Microsoft2 restated (having alluded to the same in 2004) that FOSS violates 235 Microsoft patents. Unfortunately, the Redmond giant did not state which patents in particular were being infringed and nor have they initiated any actions against a user or distributor of Linux.

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The FOSS community have reacted to these actions by co-opting the patent system and setting up the Patent Commons (http://www.patentcommons.org). This initiative, managed by the Linux Foundation, coordinates and manages a patent commons reference library, documenting information about patent- related pledges in support of Linux and FOSS that are provided by large software companies. Moreover, software giants such as IBM and Nokia have committed not to assert patents against the Linux kernel and other FOSS projects. In addition, the FSF have strengthened the patent clause of GPLv3…

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Another huge botnet

business, security / /

From Kelly Jackson Higgins’ “Researchers Find Massive Botnet On Nearly 2 Million Infected Consumer, Business, Government PCs” (Dark Reading: 22 April 2009):

Researchers have discovered a major botnet operating out of the Ukraine that has infected 1.9 million machines, including large corporate and government PCs mainly in the U.S.

The botnet, which appears to be larger than the infamous Storm botnet was in its heyday, has infected machines from some 77 government-owned domains — 51 of which are U.S. government ones, according to Ophir Shalitin, marketing director of Finjan, which recently found the botnet. Shalitin says the botnet is controlled by six individuals and is hosted in Ukraine.

Aside from its massive size and scope, what is also striking about the botnet is what its malware can do to an infected machine. The malware lets an attacker read the victim’s email, communicate via HTTP in the botnet, inject code into other processes, visit Websites without the user knowing, and register as a background service on the infected machine, for instance.

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Finjan says victims are infected when visiting legitimate Websites containing a Trojan that the company says is detected by only four of 39 anti-malware tools, according to a VirusTotal report run by Finjan researchers.

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Around 45 percent of the bots are in the U.S., and the machines are Windows XP. Nearly 80 percent run Internet Explorer; 15 percent, Firefox; 3 percent, Opera; and 1 percent Safari. Finjan says the bots were found in banks and large corporations, as well as consumer machines.

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How right-wing talk radio works

business, history, politics / /

From Dan Shelly’s “Former News Radio Staffer Spills the Beans on How Shock Jocks Inspire Hatred and Anger” (AlterNet: 17 November 2008):

To begin with, talk show hosts such as Charlie Sykes – one of the best in the business – are popular and powerful because they appeal to a segment of the population that feels disenfranchised and even victimized by the media. These people believe the media are predominantly staffed by and consistently reflect the views of social liberals. This view is by now so long-held and deep-rooted, it has evolved into part of virtually every conservative’s DNA.

To succeed, a talk show host must perpetuate the notion that his or her listeners are victims, and the host is the vehicle by which they can become empowered. The host frames virtually every issue in us-versus-them terms. There has to be a bad guy against whom the host will emphatically defend those loyal listeners.

This enemy can be a politician – either a Democratic officeholder or, in rare cases where no Democrat is convenient to blame, it can be a “RINO” (a “Republican In Name Only,” who is deemed not conservative enough). It can be the cold, cruel government bureaucracy. More often than not, however, the enemy is the “mainstream media” – local or national, print or broadcast.

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This is a common talk show tactic: If you lack compelling arguments in favor of your candidate or point of view, attack the other side. These attacks often rely on two key rhetorical devices, which I call You Know What Would Happen If and The Preemptive Strike.

Using the first strategy, a host will describe something a liberal has said or done that conservatives disagree with, but for which the liberal has not been widely criticized, and then say, “You know what would happen if a conservative had said (or done) that? He (or she) would have been filleted by the ‘liberal media.’ ” This is particularly effective because it’s a two-fer, simultaneously reinforcing the notion that conservatives are victims and that “liberals” are the enemy.

The second strategy, The Preemptive Strike, is used when a host knows that news reflecting poorly on conservative dogma is about to break or become more widespread. When news of the alleged massacre at Haditha first trickled out in the summer of 2006, not even Iraq War chest-thumper Charlie Sykes would defend the U.S. Marines accused of killing innocent civilians in the Iraqi village. So he spent lots of air time criticizing how the “mainstream media” was sure to sensationalize the story in the coming weeks. Charlie would kill the messengers before any message had even been delivered.

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Microsoft Exchange is expensive

business, technology / /

From Joel Snyder’s “Exchange: Should I stay or should I go?” (Network World: 9 March 2009):

There are many ways to buy Exchange, depending on how many users you need, but the short answer is that none of them cost less than about $75 per user and can run up to $140 per user for the bundles that include Exchange and Windows Server and user licenses for both of those as well as Forefront, Microsoft’s antispam/antivirus service. …

If you really want to make a case for cost, you could also claim that Exchange requires a $90 Outlook license for each user, a Windows XP or Vista license for each user, and more expensive hardware than a similar open source platform might require.

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How to increase donations on non-profit websites

business, language & literature / /

From Jakob Nielsen’s “Donation Usability: Increasing Online Giving to Non-Profits and Charities” (Alertbox: 30 March 2009):

We asked participants what information they want to see on non-profit websites before they decide whether to donate. Their answers fell into 4 broad categories, 2 of which were the most heavily requested:

  • The organization’s mission, goals, objectives, and work.
  • How it uses donations and contributions.

That is: What are you trying to achieve, and how will you spend my money?

Sadly, only 43% of the sites we studied answered the first question on their homepage. Further, only a ridiculously low 4% answered the second question on the homepage. Although organizations typically provided these answers somewhere within the site, users often had problems finding this crucial information.

…

In choosing between 2 charities, people referred to 5 categories of information. However, an organization’s mission, goals, objectives, and work was by far the most important. Indeed, it was 3.6 times as important as the runner-up issue, which was the organization’s presence in the user’s own community.

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More on Google’s server farms

business, science, technology / /

From Joel Hruska’s “The Beast unveiled: inside a Google server” (Ars Technica: 2 April 2009):

Each Google server is hooked to an independent 12V battery to keep the units running in the event of a power outage. Data centers themselves are built and housed in shipping containers (we’ve seen Sun pushing this trend as well), a practice that went into effect after the brownouts of 2005. Each container holds a total of 1,160 servers and can theoretically draw up to 250kW. Those numbers might seem a bit high for a data center optimized for energy efficiency—it breaks down to around 216W per system—but there are added cooling costs to be considered in any type of server deployment. These sorts of units were built for parking under trees (or at sea, per Google’s patent application).

By using individual batteries hooked to each server (instead of a UPS), the company is able to use the available energy much more efficiently (99.9 percent efficiency vs. 92-95 percent efficiency for a typical battery) and the rack-mounted servers are 2U with 8 DIMM slots. Ironically, for a company talking about power efficiency, the server box in question is scarcely a power sipper. The GA-9IVDP is a custom-built motherboard—I couldn’t find any information about it in Gigabyte’s website—but online research and a scan of Gigabyte’s similarly named products implies that this is a Socket 604 dual-Xeon board running dual Nocono (Prescott) P4 processors.

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Google’s server farm revealed

business, tech in changing society, technology / /

From Nicholas Carr’s “Google lifts its skirts” (Rough Type: 2 April 2009):

I was particularly surprised to learn that Google rented all its data-center space until 2005, when it built its first center. That implies that The Dalles, Oregon, plant (shown in the photo above) was the company’s first official data smelter. Each of Google’s containers holds 1,160 servers, and the facility’s original server building had 45 containers, which means that it probably was running a total of around 52,000 servers. Since The Dalles plant has three server buildings, that means – and here I’m drawing a speculative conclusion – that it might be running around 150,000 servers altogether.

Here are some more details, from Rich Miller’s report:

The Google facility features a “container hanger” filled with 45 containers, with some housed on a second-story balcony. Each shipping container can hold up to 1,160 servers, and uses 250 kilowatts of power, giving the container a power density of more than 780 watts per square foot. Google’s design allows the containers to operate at a temperature of 81 degrees in the hot aisle. Those specs are seen in some advanced designs today, but were rare indeed in 2005 when the facility was built.

Google’s design focused on “power above, water below,” according to [Jimmy] Clidaras, and the racks are actually suspended from the ceiling of the container. The below-floor cooling is pumped into the hot aisle through a raised floor, passes through the racks and is returned via a plenum behind the racks. The cooling fans are variable speed and tightly managed, allowing the fans to run at the lowest speed required to cool the rack at that moment …

[Urs] Holzle said today that Google opted for containers from the start, beginning its prototype work in 2003. At the time, Google housed all of its servers in third-party data centers. “Once we saw that the commercial data center market was going to dry up, it was a natural step to ask whether we should build one,” said Holzle.

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$9 million stolen from 130 ATM machines in 49 cities in 30 minutes

business, law, security, tech in changing society / /

From Catey Hill’s “Massive ATM heist! $9M stolen in only 30 minutes” (New York Daily News: 12 February 2009)

With information stolen from only 100 ATM cards, thieves made off with $9 million in cash, according to published reports. It only took 30 minutes.

“We’ve seen similar attempts to defraud a bank through ATM machines but not, not anywhere near the scale we have here,” FBI Agent Ross Rice told Fox 5. “We’ve never seen one this well coordinated,” the FBI told Fox 5.

The heist happened in November, but FBI officials released more information about the events only recently. …

How did they do it? The thieves hacked into the RBS WorldPay computer system and stole payroll card information from the company. A payroll card is used by many companies to pay the salaries of their employees. The cards work a lot like a debit card and can be used in any ATM.

Once the thieves had the card info, they employed a group of ‘cashers’ – people employed to go get the money out of the ATMs. The cashers went to ATMs around the world and withdrew money.
“Over 130 different ATM machines in 49 cities worldwide were accessed in a 30-minute period on November 8,” Agent Rice told Fox 5.

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Now that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has switched to the Web …

business, politics, social software, tech in changing society / /

From William Yardley and Richard Pérez-Peña’s “Seattle Paper Shifts Entirely to the Web” (The New York Times: 16 March 2009):

The P-I, as it is called, will resemble a local Huffington Post more than a traditional newspaper, with a news staff of about 20 people rather than the 165 it had, and a site with mostly commentary, advice and links to other news sites, along with some original reporting.

…

The new P-I site has recruited some current and former government officials, including a former mayor, a former police chief and the current head of Seattle schools, to write columns, and it will repackage some material from Hearst’s large stable of magazines. It will keep some of the paper’s popular columnists and bloggers and the large number of unpaid local bloggers whose work appears on the site.

…

Because the newspaper has had no business staff of its own, the new operation plans to hire more than 20 people in areas like ad sales.

Now that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has switched to the Web … Read More »

Social software: 5 properties & 3 dynamics

business, history, politics, security, social software, tech in changing society / /

From danah boyd’s “Social Media is Here to Stay… Now What?” at the Microsoft Research Tech Fest, Redmond, Washington (danah: 26 February 2009):

Certain properties are core to social media in a combination that alters how people engage with one another. I want to discuss five properties of social media and three dynamics. These are the crux of what makes the phenomena we’re seeing so different from unmediated phenomena.

A great deal of sociality is about engaging with publics, but we take for granted certain structural aspects of those publics. Certain properties are core to social media in a combination that alters how people engage with one another. I want to discuss five properties of social media and three dynamics. These are the crux of what makes the phenomena we’re seeing so different from unmediated phenomena.

1. Persistence. What you say sticks around. This is great for asynchronicity, not so great when everything you’ve ever said has gone down on your permanent record. …

2. Replicability. You can copy and paste a conversation from one medium to another, adding to the persistent nature of it. This is great for being able to share information, but it is also at the crux of rumor-spreading. Worse: while you can replicate a conversation, it’s much easier to alter what’s been said than to confirm that it’s an accurate portrayal of the original conversation.

3. Searchability. My mother would’ve loved to scream search into the air and figure out where I’d run off with friends. She couldn’t; I’m quite thankful. But with social media, it’s quite easy to track someone down or to find someone as a result of searching for content. Search changes the landscape, making information available at our fingertips. This is great in some circumstances, but when trying to avoid those who hold power over you, it may be less than ideal.

4. Scalability. Social media scales things in new ways. Conversations that were intended for just a friend or two might spiral out of control and scale to the entire school or, if it is especially embarrassing, the whole world. …

5. (de)locatability. With the mobile, you are dislocated from any particular point in space, but at the same time, location-based technologies make location much more relevant. This paradox means that we are simultaneously more and less connected to physical space.

Those five properties are intertwined, but their implications have to do with the ways in which they alter social dynamics. Let’s look at three different dynamics that have been reconfigured as a result of social media.

1. Invisible Audiences. We are used to being able to assess the people around us when we’re speaking. We adjust what we’re saying to account for the audience. Social media introduces all sorts of invisible audiences. There are lurkers who are present at the moment but whom we cannot see, but there are also visitors who access our content at a later date or in a different environment than where we first produced them. As a result, we are having to present ourselves and communicate without fully understanding the potential or actual audience. The potential invisible audiences can be stifling. Of course, there’s plenty of room to put your head in the sand and pretend like those people don’t really exist.

2. Collapsed Contexts. Connected to this is the collapsing of contexts. In choosing what to say when, we account for both the audience and the context more generally. Some behaviors are appropriate in one context but not another, in front of one audience but not others. Social media brings all of these contexts crashing into one another and it’s often difficult to figure out what’s appropriate, let alone what can be understood.

3. Blurring of Public and Private. Finally, there’s the blurring of public and private. These distinctions are normally structured around audience and context with certain places or conversations being “public” or “private.” These distinctions are much harder to manage when you have to contend with the shifts in how the environment is organized.

All of this means that we’re forced to contend with a society in which things are being truly reconfigured. So what does this mean? As we are already starting to see, this creates all new questions about context and privacy, about our relationship to space and to the people around us.

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Kids & adults use social networking sites differently

business, politics, social software, tech in changing society / /

From danah boyd’s “Social Media is Here to Stay… Now What?” at the Microsoft Research Tech Fest, Redmond, Washington (danah: 26 February 2009):

For American teenagers, social network sites became a social hangout space, not unlike the malls in which I grew up or the dance halls of yesteryears. This was a place to gather with friends from school and church when in-person encounters were not viable. Unlike many adults, teenagers were never really networking. They were socializing in pre-exiting groups.

Social network sites became critically important to them because this was where they sat and gossiped, jockeyed for status, and functioned as digital flaneurs. They used these tools to see and be seen. …

Teen conversations may appear completely irrational, or pointless at best. “Yo, wazzup?” “Not much, how you?” may not seem like much to an outsider, but this is a form of social grooming. It’s a way of checking in, confirming friendships, and negotiating social waters.

Adults have approached Facebook in very different ways. Adults are not hanging out on Facebook. They are more likely to respond to status messages than start a conversation on someone’s wall (unless it’s their birthday of course). Adults aren’t really decorating their profiles or making sure that their About Me’s are up-to-date. Adults, far more than teens, are using Facebook for its intended purpose as a social utility. For example, it is a tool for communicating with the past.

Adults may giggle about having run-ins with mates from high school, but underneath it all, many of them are curious. This isn’t that different than the school reunion. … Teenagers craft quizzes for themselves and their friends. Adults are crafting them to show-off to people from the past and connect the dots between different audiences as a way of coping with the awkwardness of collapsed contexts.

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