• AN ALTERNATIVE MEDIA LANDSCAPE IS BEING FED by “polemicists, conspiracists and outright fabulists – where the implausibility of a claim is no bar to its acceptance… The Trump era has given rise to a vast alternative left-wing media infrastructure that operates largely out of the view of casual news consumers, but commands a massive audience and growing influence in liberal America… Some traffic heavily in rumor and wage campaigns of misinformation; others are merely aggregators and commentators who have carved out a corner of the web for themselves. But taken together, they form a media universe where partisan hysteria is too easily stoked, and fake news can travel at the speed of light.”  [THE ATLANTIC – July 2, 17]
  • AND BEYOND THIS ‘FAKE NEWS’ BATTLE IN PRINT & TV MEDIA THESE DAYS, images and sound recordings are also becoming inherently untrustworthy. Audio is now easier to phony-up, reproducing millisecond statistical properties to put words into the mouth of anyone. Image creation is tougher, but a machine algorithm can now produce small images from “one sentence of instruction…to create photos within a few percent error rate… It’s becoming easier to create convincing audio & video of things that never happened, threatening the credibility” of all transmitted material. [THE ECONOMIST – July 1, 17]
  • NEIGHBORHOODS ARE REVOLTING AGAINST MOBILE TRAFFIC APPS – mostly WAZE mapping software which reroutes traffic based on user-reporting – as local streets have become clogged with traffic and noise. Local residents have been rebel-ling by reporting phantom wrecks & traffic jams, by erecting speed humps & traffic circles, and by pressuring politicians to install No-Turn-during-rush-hours signals, or erecting ‘No Thru Traffic’ signs to close off streets to non-residents. [THE WEEK –July 7, 17]  
  • “THE FIGHT AGAINST HACKING PROMISES TO BE A NEVER-ENDING BATTLE… While the interlocking networks that power every company these days have made them infinitely more efficient and adaptive, they are way more vulnerable… Business is under assault like never before from hackers, and the severity of the problem is escalating almost daily (Cisco projects over 3 million attacks in the next few years)…as the biggest and badest hacker groups are now backed by nation-states… Moreover, cybercriminals no longer need all the skills to complete any particular crime, since they can procure hacking tools and/or hire other criminals online. In that sense, hackers have become service providers like doctors or lawyers… Most hacking attacks come about in two ways – neither of which involves a high level of technical sophistication: either clicking on a booby-trapped link or attachment, or by someone stealing log-in credentials for network access; last year 81% of hacking-related breaches were from either stolen and/or weak passwords… In a handful of years, digital ambushers have morphed from a mere annoyance to, in some cases, an existential threat.” DCG affiliates can help you protect assets and business risks. Call us.  [FORTUNE – July 1, 17]
  • PRESIDENT TRUMP’S ‘BASE’ IS FAR FROM AN UNDEPLORABLE MONOLITHIC. A new Cato Institute study reports “a coalition of at least five different types of voters…who like him for different reasons” and who collectively support his consistently high Republican approval rating.” Nearly a third are social & fiscal Conservatives; 25% are Free Market or Wall Street types who want deregulation; for 20%, Immigration is the core issue; another 19% are ‘anti-elites’ who feel ignored by politicians & bureaucrats; with the remaining few percent ‘disengaged,’ simply “wanting to use Trump as a wrecking ball.” [WASHINGTON EXAMINER – June 20, 17]
  • LATEST P.C ACTIVISM: The American Disabilities Act requires that disabled individuals “be provided with full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges & advantages of any place of public accommodation.” Stretching the concept, a U.S. District Court judge found Winn-Dixie, a retail chain, liable for its website “failing to offer screen-reader software, leaving a blind person with cerebral palsy unable to navigate.” The premise was that its website is “heavily integrated with physical store locations and operates as a gateway” to find store locations, link digital coupons to customer reward cards, and utilize their online pharmacy system, therefore subjecting the chain to ADA provisions.  [MANATT ADVERTISING LAW – July 7, 17]

       Windows 10 can not only record your every keystroke, but also record your voice and even stylus handwriting, depending on how it was configured during setup. To disable: select SETTINGS, then PRIVACY & SPEECH/ INKING/TYPING, and click STOP GETTING TO KNOW ME.

       Over 75% of the cybersecurity industry’s most experienced professionals, surveyed by Black Hat, think that “a major breach of U.S. critical infrastructure will occur in the next two years, and that current U.S. defense and government agencies are unprepared to respond.”  50% rank phishing and social engineering as their greatest concerns; 36% rank ransomware as most serious.