Ransomware Nightmare For New Baltimore Mayor
International AI Ethics Rules / Hiding FreeFile Tax Services / Edge Your Mac / Xbox Antitox / Huawei Barred From USA
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Ars Technica’s Sean Gallagher: Baltimore ransomware nightmare could last weeks more, with big consequences
Days after Mayor “Jack” Young took over for disgraced Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh, ransomware took down Baltimore City’s networks. It may be weeks or months before things return to normal — and “normal” wasn’t that great, either, based on the city’s IT track record. (credit: Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images)
It’s been nearly two weeks since the City of Baltimore’s networks were shut down in response to a ransomware attack, and there’s still no end in sight to the attack’s impact. It may be weeks more before the city’s services return to something resembling normal — manual workarounds are being put in place to handle some services now, but the city’s water billing and other payment systems remain offline, as well as most of the city’s email and much of the government’s phone systems.
The ransomware attack came in the midst of a major transition at City Hall. Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young assumed office officially just days before the attack, after the resignation of former mayor Catherine Pugh, who is facing an ever-expanding corruption investigation. And some of the mayor’s critical staff positions remained unfilled — the mayor’s deputy chief of staff for operations, Sheryl Goldstein, starts work today.
To top it off, unlike the City of Atlanta — which suffered from a Samsam ransomware attack in March of 2018 — Baltimore has no insurance to cover the cost of a cyber attack. So the cost of cleaning up the RobbinHood ransomware, which will far exceed the approximately $70,000 the ransomware operators demanded, will be borne entirely by Baltimore’s citizens.
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Engadget: US to back international guidelines for AI ethics
American companies have fostered ethical uses of AI before. Now, however, the government itself is posed to weigh in. Politico understands that the US, fellow members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and a “handful” of other countries will adopt a set of non-binding guidelines for creating and using AI. The principles would require that AI respects human rights, democratic values and the law. It should also be safe, open and obvious to users, while those who make and use AI should be held responsible for their actions and offer transparency.
The guidelines also call on governments to boost AI funding and establish frameworks that help turn research into real-world applications. There could be “deregulated environments” to test AI before unleashing it in the wild, as an example.
The guidelines should be released on May 22nd and come from 50 experts in the public and private sectors, including governments and tech companies.
This cooperation isn’t unexpected. President Trump pushed for regulations in his executive order prioritizing AI. American companies and institutions have pressed for positive uses of AI, too. The larger concern is that this might not translate to real action. While the principles could help shape laws, there’s no obligation to honor them. Also, these guidelines only affect a small number of countries. China isn’t included, and it’s well-known for abusing AI to erode privacy and free speech. This is a nudge in the right direction, but only a nudge.
Read the rest of this article.
TechDirt’s Timothy Geigner: Getting Worse Part 1: Intuit Routinely Lies To Customers To Avoid Paying Refunds For Tax Prep Work
It appears Intuit has decided to make things worse rather than better. Just after tax season, we discussed ProPublica’s excellent research article on the extreme lengths Intuit had gone to keep its Free File service an unknown to the public. This service is the result of an agreement the top tax prep companies out there reached with the IRS. Essentially, by promising to allow members of the public that earn under a certain amount of money to use their services to file their taxes for free, the IRS in turn has agreed not to pursue its own free to file service. It’s an extremely dumb deal for any number of reasons, one of which being how much more efficient it would be for the IRS to carry the weight here, given that it already has all the information most taxpayers need to file.
The other reason, as it turns out, is because Intuit has decided to behave pretty much as cynically as it possibly can. As we detailed in our previous post, the company engaged in a strategy coupling the buying of ads for Google searches and hiding the free to file via the robot.txt file. As a result, something like 3% of eligible taxpayers file for free using the system, while Intuit set up a layer of websites and landing pages all designed to direct the public to paid services, without ever telling them they qualified for free to file tax prep.
As a result of the ProPublica post, many who paid for these services called up Intuit and asked for refunds. If you thought that this public light on shady behavior would lead to an attitude adjustment for Intuit, you’re sadly mistaken.
Find out more about this PR disaster here.
Engadget: Microsoft releases first test version of its Edge browser for Mac
Last month, Microsoft released a preview of its new, Chromium-powered Edge browser for Windows 10. Now, you can test drive the browser with macOS, too. For the most part, the macOS Canary build comes with the same features you’ll find in the Windows 10 preview, but Microsoft promises subtle changes to “make it feel at home on a Mac.”
PC World’s Leif Johnson: Need a dragon fix after Game of Thrones’ finale? Head to Elder Scrolls Online’s Elsweyr expansion
ZeniMax Online either has an impeccable sense of timing, or it’s so lucky that all its employees should go buy lottery tickets this second. The smoke and memes have barely cleared in the aftermath of last night’s series finale of Game of Thrones, and yet, mere hours later, ZeniMax is kicking open the gates of early access for Elder Scrolls Online’s Elsweyr expansion ahead of its official release next Monday. (Only for PC and Mac users, though — if you’re on a console, you’ll have to wait until next week.)
Elsweyr is a perfect chaser for HBO’s tale of politics and fantastic beasts. You’ll see dragons, for one, and lots of them. You’ll find family members with decidedly different opinions about the invasion of a city, and you’ll even find an army of the undead worked into the mix. And if that all sounds a little too familiar, get this: Elsweyr’s also got a bunch of cat people. And we all know how much the Internet loves its cats.
To read this article in full, please click here
Engadget: Xbox chief outlines plans to curb toxic behavior
Xbox head Phil Spencer has laid out some measures to combat some of the more negative aspects that pervade gaming communities such as toxicity and abuse. He wrote in a blog post that “gaming is for everyone” and people everywhere, from all backgrounds and walks of life, “are welcome to play and welcome to all the fun and skill-building that comes with gaming.”
Ars Technica‘s Jennifer Ouellette: A disillusioned Aaron Paul longs for someone “real” in Westworld S3 trailer
HBO released the first teaser for Westworld season 3 right before last night’s Game of Thrones finale.
HBO took advantage of the record number of viewers tuning in to the Game of Thrones finale last night to release the first teaser for season three of Westworld. The teaser is deliberately vague on details, but it looks like we’re in for a dystopian near-future scenario set not in the original theme park but in the real outside world.
(Some spoilers for first two seasons below.)
If you’re new to the series, the titular Westworld is one of six immersive theme parks owned and operated by a company called Delos Inc. It’s essentially Live Action Role Play (LARP-ing) combined with a choose-your-own-adventure experience. The park is populated with a “cast” of very human-looking androids, called hosts, who follow a bunch of intertwining narratives, rebooting the same narrative every day. The park’s well-heeled visitors can pretty much do whatever they like to the hosts — rape, pillage, torture, murder — and they do so more often than not, because they don’t see the hosts as anything more than unfeeling props in their private dramas.
Read the rest, by clicking through.
TechDirt’s Timothy Geigner: Getting Worse Part 2: Intuit’s CEO Informs Employees That Free To File Was Hidden For The Public’s Own Good
Like we said, Intuit apparently wants to keep digging this hole for itself. After our initial coverage of ProPublica’s excellent posts on how Intuit was going to crazy lengths to keep anyone from finding its free to file tax prep site, we followed up with reports of how many Intuit reps were lying to keep from giving people refunds. Those lies included claims that Intuit and TurboTax don’t even run the free to file program and that it was instead operated by the IRS itself with TurboTax branding. Another lie was that ProPublica’s reporting was all wrong and that the news organization was about to run a retraction. Spoiler alert: no they are not.
But it seems that the Intuit brass aren’t content only to lie to the public. Intuit’s CEO managed to cobble together an internal video — which of course leaked — so that he could lie to his own staff as well.
Wow… even more about this… Click here.
Engadget: Intel, Qualcomm and other chipmakers cut off supplies to Huawei
Huawei has more to worry about beyond Google’s decision to suspend Android support. Bloomberg sources said that American chipmakers Intel, Qualcomm, Broadcom and Xilinx had told staff they wouldn’t supply Huawei with parts “till further notice,” leaving the Chinese tech giant without potentially vital components. Nikkei tipsters also claimed that Germany’s Infineon had cut off “certain shipments” to Huawei out of caution, although a spokesperson since said that most of its products wouldn’t be subject to the US blacklisting that had prompted companies to back away.
The effective trade ban could seriously damage Huawei’s ability to do business. The company depends on Intel chips both for its servers as well as PCs like the MateBook X Pro. Broadcom and Xilinx supply chips for its networking business. And while Huawei makes its own processors for many of its phones, it may still need Qualcomm for some chips.
(correction: In today’s recording, I mispoke when talking about XBox’s rep, calling him Phil Spector, it’s Phil Spencer.
Also, I credited Tech Republic with the stories about tax software, when I should have stated it was Techdirt.)
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