Wednesday, June 15, 2022

GUARD RAILS FOR ANTI-COMPETITIVE BEHAVIOR....Fandom + Social Media Re-creating The Intermedia

Intro: While Republicans and Democrats support the bills, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has yet to call them up for a vote.
Specifically, Oliver noted two bills making their way through Congress aimed at reining in these anti-competitive behaviors, including the American Choice and Innovation Act (AICO) and the Open App Markets Act.
Earlier this year, Schumer promised to bring them up for “early Summer,” but nothing has been scheduled as Congress prepares to vote on a bipartisan gun control bill.

John Oliver exposes how Google and Amazon stifle competition

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‘These bills would crack the door open for innovation’

By Makena Kelly

 "During his Sunday night show, Oliver explained the ways large tech companies rule the internet. From Apple and Google taking huge cuts from app store sales to Amazon’s stranglehold on the online sellers’ market, Oliver outlined how the power these companies hold could stifle innovation and how lawmakers could shake up the industry.

“The problem with letting a few companies control whole sectors of our economy is that it limits what is possible by startups,” Oliver said. “An innovative app or website or startup may never get off the ground because it could be surcharged to death, buried in search results or ripped off completely.”

. . .These measures would bar major tech companies from recommending their own services and requiring developers to exclusively sell their apps on a company’s app store.

> For example, AICO would ban Amazon from favoring its own private-label products over those from independent sellers.

> The Open App Markets Act would force Apple and Google to allow users to install third-party apps without using their app stores.

“These bills would crack the door open for innovation and budge the internet back towards what it was supposed to be from the start,” Oliver said.

Activists, like Fight for the Future’s Evan Greer and Yelp’s senior vice president of public policy Luther Lowe, were thrilled over Oliver’s Sunday segment. “Stop what you’re doing and watch this,” Lowe tweeted on Monday."

Reference: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/13/23165955/john-oliver-last-week-tonight-amazon-apple-facebook-google-antitrust

                   
 

FANDOM -- overall is a cultural and political force that can’t be ignored; it shapes elections, it drives cultural conversation, it can bring joy to people who feel lonely, and it can result in dramatic harassment campaigns when fans turn on someone....Basically, fandom is the social internet, and our popular culture and the biggest social platforms are shaped by fandoms in ways we only sometimes understand.

How fandom built the internet as we know it, with Kaitlyn Tiffany

Her new book on the long history of fangirls, from the Beatles to One Direction

By Nilay Patel@reckless

Jun 14, 2022, 11:00am EDT
The Verge 
. . .Even our engagement with cultural objects, political figures, and news events has a really fan-inflected tone, which became notably alarming to people around the 2016 election and afterwards. Trump’s fandom is quite upsetting. There is also the liberal tendency to take figures like Elizabeth Warren or Ruth Bader Ginsburg and hold them up as heroes in a fictional story, to talk about them the same way that you would talk about your favorite character on Glee. I think that is something that came out of fandom that people have started to reconsider recently. . .

Next Up In Policy

               

Next Up In Policy

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Tuesday, June 14, 2022

DATA BREACH Exposes health data of 69K people

Intro: While Kaiser Permanente did not reveal the exact number of affected patients in the breach notice, information filed with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights shows that this incident has led to 69,589 individuals having their PHI (Personal Health Information) exposed.

We Have A Breach Violation GIF - We Have A Breach Violation Negligence GIFs

Kaiser Permanente data breach exposes health data of 69K people

Sergiu Gatlan
BleepingComputer

Kaiser Permanente, one of America's leading not-for-profit health plans and health care providers, has recently disclosed a data breach that exposed the health information of more than 69,000 individuals.

Founded in 1945, Kaiser Permanente provides health care services to over 12.5 million members from 8 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. 

The company revealed in a notice published on its website that an attacker accessed an employee's email account containing patients' protected health information (PHI) on April 5, 2022, without authorization.

"This notice describes a security incident that may have impacted the protected health information of some Kaiser Permanente patients who may have been affected by an unauthorized access incident on April 5, 2022," the health care provider said.

"The specifics of the unauthorized access were provided to individuals affected in a letter sent by Kaiser Permanente on June 3, 2022."

Sensitive info exposed in the attack includes:

  • The patients' first and last names
  • Medical record numbers
  • Dates of service
  • Laboratory test result information

The organization says no Social Security numbers and credit card numbers were exposed during this breach. 

The security incident only affected the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Washington patients.

Access to breached email severed within hours

Kaiser Permanents terminated the attacker's access to the email account within hours and began investigating the incident to assess its impact.

"After discovering the event, we quickly took steps to terminate the unauthorized party’s access to the employee’s emails," Kaiser Permanent added [PDF].

"This included resetting the employee’s password for the email account where unauthorized activity was detected.

"The employee received additional training on safe email practices, and we are exploring other steps we can take to ensure incidents like this do not happen in the future."

The health care provider did not find evidence that the PHI stored in the hacked email account was stolen or misused after the incident but couldn't completely rule out this possibility.

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Shields Health Care Group data breach affects 2 million patients

Mandiant: “No evidence” we were hacked by LockBit ransomware

FBI seizes domains used to sell stolen data, DDoS services

GitHub: Attackers stole login details of 100K npm user accounts

General Motors credential stuffing attack exposes car owners i

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REAL LIFE INTERRUPTS PENCE & DUCEY BORDER ROAD SHOW...The Big Story: Raging Wildfires in Northern Arizona

Intro: The meeting would have been significant because both politicians once were close with Trump but have since fallen out of his favor and made moves to distance themselves
The visit was intended to position former VP Pence for an expected 2024 presidential run – potentially against his former boss. Neither Pence nor Trump has officially announced a 2024 campaign, however.
Governor Doug Ducey had planned to accompany Pence to the border and the news conference but tested positive for COVID-19 and cancelled planned joint public appearances.
BIG STORY: Pipeline Fire ignited by a homeless man camping-out in a national forest when he tried to burn toilet paper after 'going-the-the-bathroom' (scroll down below)

Report from Cronkite News

‘Border security is national security’: Pence in Arizona to discuss immigration

<div class=__reading__mode__extracted__imagecaption>“Under the Trump-Pence administration, our neighbors to the south knew we expected them to do their part to secure their border and ours,” former Vice President Mike Pence tells the Arizona Commerce Authority in Phoenix on Monday. (Photo by Troy Hill/Cronkite News)

(“Under the Trump-Pence administration, our neighbors to the south knew we expected them to do their part to secure their border and ours,” former Vice President Mike Pence tells the Arizona Commerce Authority in Phoenix on Monday. (Photo by Troy Hill/Cronkite News)
 
By Troy Hill/Cronkite News
Cronkite News - Arizona PBS

PHOENIX – Former Vice President Mike Pence visited the U.S.-Mexico border in Cochise County on Monday, then addressed a crowd at the Arizona Commerce Authority in Phoenix on his vision for U.S. border security and immigration, which echoed many of the policies of the Trump administration.

“Along our 2,000 mile border is a crisis of epic proportions, and it’s costing lives on both sides of the border,” Pence said, referring to federal agents’ encounters with migrants entering or attempting to enter the U.S. illegally. . .

[     ]  Although he hasn’t announced a campaign for an elected office, Pence outlined an agenda he wanted for the border, including finishing former President Donald Trump’s signature border wall; getting rid of sanctuary cities; rejecting amnesty, recommitting to the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forces asylum seekers to wait out their cases in Mexico; and deporting any migrants who entered the U.S. illegally.

“Border security is national security,” Pence said, echoing Mark Morgan, a former acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection in the Trump administration, who spoke before him at the news conference. “And to keep America safe, we must secure our southern border now and always.”

(Border security is national security, Mark Morgan, a former acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, tells the Arizona Commerce Authority before Mike Pence takes the stage. (Photo by Troy Hill/Cronkite News)

. . Despite their fraught relationship, Pence spoke highly of his time in Trump’s administration, specifically immigration policies.

“The truth of the matter is under the Trump-Pence administration, our neighbors to the south knew we expected them to do their part to secure their border and ours,” Pence said. “They showed respect to America during the Trump-Pence years.”

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Hundreds are urged to evacuate due to wildfire near Flagstaff, Arizona, as thousands more are told to prepare to leave

<div class=__reading__mode__extracted__imagecaption>Authorities evacuated hundreds of households Sunday due to a fire in the outskirts of Flagstaff, Arizona.

By Elizabeth Wolfe, Joe Sutton, Ella Nilsen and Brandon Miller, CNNUpdated 3:40 PM ET, Mon June 13, 2022
CNN | 2022-06-13T06:39:47Z

(CNN)A wildfire burning just six miles north of Flagstaff, Arizona, has prompted evacuations for hundreds of people, and thousands more have been told by authorities to prepare for future evacuation, authorities said Sunday night.

The Pipeline Fire was first reported by a fire lookout at around 10:15 a.m. Sunday and has grown to 4,500 acres, according to InciWeb, a US clearinghouse for wildfire information. Burning slightly west of Schultz Pass, the blaze is active on all sides and continues to grow, InciWeb said.
A total of 690 households have been ordered to evacuate and another group of households has been informed they may have to evacuate soon or imminently, Coconino County spokesman Trey Williams told CNN Sunday evening. An additional 2,410 households have been told to prepare for imminent evacuation. . ."
 
Top stories

 

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THE HIGH COSTS OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY: After Pre-Inflation Surges and Massive Excessive Injections of Liquidity

Intro: Taking way-to-long to "MULL" after all that Quantitative Easing where there's not much of a chance for what they're wanting to call a soft landing. . .

Global markets plunge as Fed mulls biggest rate rise in decades

<div class=__reading__mode__extracted__imagecaption>The trade war has is having an impact on global markets (Image: GETTY) 

Dominic Rushe in New York, and agencies Tue
 14 Jun 2022 01.10 EDT
First published on Mon 13 Jun 2022 12.16 EDT
the Guardian

 

TOP STORIES ........................................................................................................................
 

 

Media posted by Mohamed A. El-Erian
These are eye-popping one day moves in #Crypto space…in quite a session for virtually every asset class that benefited directly and indirectly from what, for a long time pre inflation surge, were massive and predictable injections of liquidity by central banks. #markets #bitcoin
Twitter • 8 hours ago

 

The Bear Market Has Finally Arrived. Here’s How to Move On and Act Now

With the S&P 500 more than 20% off its peak, and tech stocks down even further, your first task is to take a deep breath and assess your risk.

relates to The Bear Market Has Finally Arrived. Here’s How to Move On and Act Now

[Illustration: Michael Kennedy for Bloomberg BusinessWeek]

By Suzanne Woolley
Bloomberg.com

"Individual investors need a new playbook—or maybe a revised version of the old one. The rally in stocks that had been boosting retirement fund balances sputtered early this year, but it came to a sharp end on June 13. That’s when the S&P 500 finally slipped into a bear market, which is generally defined as a market close at least 20% below its peak.

But honestly, it probably feels a lot worse than that for many investors—and it has for a while. The handful of megacap tech stocks that served as jet fuel for the overall market have fallen much harder since the S&P’s Jan. 3 peak, with  down more than 50%, falling 39%, and , , and  all losing about a quarter of their value.

Is the crypto bear market here?

The growth-stock driven Nasdaq Composite Index has been in a bear market since March and is down 32% from its high last year. . ."

/
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Monday, June 13, 2022

DANGEROUS PATHOGENS IN UKRAINIAN BIOLABS BANKROLLED BY U.S. Department of Defense

US Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland on March 9, speaking at a hearing at the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US Senate, said that there were facilities in Ukraine that did research in the field of biology and that Washington was trying to prevent them from falling under the control of Russian forces
Previously, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that during the special military operation in Ukraine Russian forces unearthed evidence pointing to an emergency cleanup by the Kiev regime of traces of a military biological program, carried out in Ukraine and bankrolled by the US Defense Department.
According to Konashenkov, staff from these Pentagon-run Ukrainian-based labs revealed the emergency disposal of particularly dangerous pathogens on February 24, namely, the plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera and other deadly diseases.

China demands full information about US biolabs in Ukraine

On June 9, the Pentagon released a factsheet saying that the US authorities supported civilian laboratories and health care centers in Ukraine as part of peaceful program

<div class=__reading__mode__extracted__imagecaption>Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian<br>© EPA-EFE/WU HONG</div>
TASS

BEIJING, June 10. /TASS/. The Chinese government demands that the United States disclose full and detailed information about the activity of US military laboratories in Ukraine, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told a news briefing while commenting on the Pentagon’s factsheet concerning support for Ukrainian biological facilities.

"Once again we call on the United States to explain fully and in detail the activities that it had carried out in Ukraine, and not the activity that was carried out by the Ukrainian side," he said. "Also, we urge the United States once more to drop objections to creating a verification protocol," Zhao said.

The Pentagon on Thursday released a factsheet saying that over the past 20 years the US authorities supported 46 various civilian laboratories and health care centers in Ukraine as part of peaceful programs.

Previously, Russian Defense Ministry Spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that during the special military operation in Ukraine Russian forces unearthed evidence pointing to an emergency cleanup by the Kiev regime of traces of a military biological program, carried out in Ukraine and bankrolled by the US Defense Department. According to Konashenkov, staff from these Pentagon-run Ukrainian-based labs revealed the emergency disposal of particularly dangerous pathogens on February 24, namely, the plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera and other deadly diseases . . ."

 

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