Small but important correction: the chemical is injected into the retina, not the cornea.
I was thinking this was cool because if it works in the cornea, it could possibly be injected into a contact lens and achieve the same effect. But it looks like that won't work because the effect depends on the chemical being in (very) close proximity to photoreceptors in the retina.
That makes sense, it needs to be where the image is focused in order to produce more than just a haze or blur. If it was on the lens or cornea it'd probably just produce a washed out brighter background that made night-vision worse.
There's something to be said for getting rid of excessive waste and unnecessarily large warehouses of "cheap junk", but it's also worth remembering that toys play a very important part in teaching children fundamental skills like hand-eye coordination, simple problem solving, fostering imagination, etc.
It's a game of "what-ifs", but I'm fairly confident in saying I wouldn't be pursuing the career I am now if I had never had the experiences of walking down the Lego aisle at the toy store and falling in love with piecing together toy cities.
Same - except for me it was also Capsela (now called IQ Key), a bunch of cheap plastic crap that let you engineer modular machines.
I think the medium that kids play with 'toys' has changed with tablet and phone devices. Now they're solving puzzle apps and building Minecraft cities - whether or not that's a good or bad thing, I'm not sure, but it doesn't bode well for toy stores.
I think so too, but I wonder about the long term effect that doing everything in the virtual world will have on abilities in the physical world. It's extremely anecdotal, but my little brother, who almost exclusively plays Minecraft, seems to have a fantastic imagination but very poor fine motor skills. He has trouble doing anything physical that requires not using a keyboard and mouse.
I feel like there's a point far into the future where they might consider the current technology age as a turning point in our evolution as biological beings. Consider a future 1000 years from now, after we've spent a thousand years interacting with the virtual world. Imagine a world where the virtual is indistinguishable from the physical - where the virtual IS physical, and the physical IS virtual.
Virtual worlds that are infinitely customizable, creating scenarios for your mind that are infinitely more compelling than what you can experience in the purely physical realm. Reset your life to any point in time. Fast forward. Rewind. Play through every conceivable event. Travel to any destination you can imagine. Meet anyone or any creature. BE any creature. Live an existence that can be shaped by your very whim; reality could be whatever you wanted it to be, changes made as quickly as thoughts come and go. For all intents and purposes, you are the architect of your own reality. God.
Computer chips implanted into the body to regulate vital functions. Nanobot technology to repair or modify biological cells. Countless methods to sustain and prolong your biological life.
Eventually the biological dies, but the virtual simulation is not interrupted. Instead, your consciousness is uploaded to the world's mainframe server, where your mind is allowed to continue on it's journey of self-discovery within the virtual world. You and your loved ones can continue to interact virtually, forever. Where you can continue to explore, to learn, and to experience life long after your death.
Being "alive" forever, virtual or otherwise, sounds creepy and revolting. You are welcome to it, I think [1]; I and many others enjoy the inherent richness that comes with the ephemerality and unpredictability of biological life.
[1] my concern is how this line of thinking and "living" might continue on a path of mindlessly destroying everything that isn't it.
Capsela! THANK YOU! I've been googling "little plastic bubbles with gears in them" occasionally for years without finding these.
Between this, K'nex and the original Macintosh my life as a programmer was more a destiny and less a choice :P
Edit: Holy shit, when I google "little plastic bubbles with gears in them", Capsela comes up. Maybe google has gotten better at vague searches in the last decade :P
FYI the "President of US Information Solutions" at Equifax is a role that has nothing to do with their IT/security department. It's not the same thing as the CIO or head of IT, as many people are confusing him for. He's the head of a product line which is called "information solutions". The head of IT/CIO is a completely different person (who has since been fired/resigned).
This is a good clarification, but the guy shoudn't be absolved in either case. Here's the description of his duties from their website:
> Trey Loughran leads the company’s United States Information Solutions (USIS) business, which includes U.S.-based services that provide businesses with consumer and commercial information and insights related to areas of risk management, identity and fraud, marketing and other industry-specific solutions.
He would definitely be in the loop regarding a breach of this nature.
I don't necessarily think so. Just because he manages the risk management offering which is sold to other companies doesn't mean he would be aware of or involved in day-to-day risk management at his own company.
At my consulting firm, the execs in charge of our cybersecurity consulting practice are absolutely not involved in any internal cybersec investigations that happen to our own firm. In fact, we have specific procedures which say that our cybersecurity consultants cannot be involved with internal incidents. All internal investigations have to be done by outside, impartial firms.
I'm not interested in giving the benefit of the doubt to a C-suite executive who cashes out about a week after the company suffers one of the most newsworthy data breaches in recent history. To my mind, they are in exactly the right position to know about this sort of thing.
For sure, an investigation will be forthcoming and, in this country, one is innocent until proven guilty. But it seems, in my opinion, exceedingly likely that we'll find an email or text or some bit of ephemera notifying these people of the breach.
Have you worked at a BigCo or know what it's like to be in senior leadership? I would not be surprised in the least if this guy had no clue about the hack. These organizations are huge. People are actually very tight lipped when these things happen. You are/should be told not to speak about it even with your peers.
I also wouldn't be surprised if he did know, but just wanted to emphasize these BigCo org charts tend to be insanely big and complicated. At the senior levels you may not talk to or see your boss for weeks; especially when some big shit like this is being uncovered. So totally possible he knew nothing.
Having worked on the incident response teams for these types of breaches, the "PR machine" is only part of the reason why companies "sit" on the info. It also takes a long time to do investigations on the breach to know what was stolen, how much was stolen, and how to mitigate it. The FBI also gets involved in breaches like this, and sometimes they'll ask to put off announcing the breach while they do their investigation of it as well.
It doesn't do anyone any good if you release a statement as soon as you notice abnormal behavior that just says "we might have been breached and our customers may be affected, but we don't know who is affected and we don't know how it affects them yet".
None of the managers had anything to do with or were in the chain of command of the security team, so it's entirely possible they had absolutely no idea about the breach until long after 8/2.
The CFO is the one that is a little iffy, because the CFO might be involved in the hiring of the external firm. However, having worked for security consulting firms, it's also entirely possible that the CISO is given a blank check for this type of stuff without having to get CFO approval. I've worked in plenty of organizations doing cybersecurity work where the C-suite (including CIO, CFO, etc) was completely unaware we are there because they don't have to rubber stamp every single transaction.
It's also a possibility that the 8/2 date on which they "contacted" the firm was just when discussions started between the two parties, and it might have been a few days before a contract was ironed out enough to involve the CFO or anyone else.
There's a bunch of other possibilities/scenarios in which I think it's entirely believable that they didn't know. It's shady and worthy of investigation, yes, but I'm not willing to convict them just yet.
I don't believe there's any claim that they didn't learn of it until the public announcement, only that they didn't know of it at the time of the stock sale which was on Aug 1st, only a few days after the breach was "discovered".
Now, based on my experience, it's entirely possible that the July 29th "discovery" date only refers to the date on which some security analyst noticed abnormal behavior. That, combined with the possibility that Equifax doesn't have good security communication practices in place, it easily could have been a few days (or even weeks) before the security team looked into it enough to know the size of the breach and escalated it up to the C-suite.
Lifted it off a glass/phone/anything else you touched. Or it can be "compromised" in the same way your SSN can be compromised through hacking. The millions of people who were exposed in the OPM hack all have records of their fingerprints now floating out on the darkweb somewhere.
> The face scan isn't "insecure" even if you're worried about border searches. Just turn off your phone when you get in the security line! Pin will be required on start.
As far as border searches go, border officers have the authority to request your PIN just as they have the authority to request your thumbprint/faceprint/etc. If you don't give it to them, you can be detained and/or your phone confiscated [1]. Rebooting your phone won't help.
They can request your PIN all they want, but you are not obligated to provide it. They can temporarily detain you but not indefinitely, and the EFF is challenging their authority to even do that. [0]
Personally, I would refuse to unlock my phone. My privacy and upholding civil liberties is worth being detained for a few hours (or even days).
Also, the border is 100 miles from the Mexico/Canada borders and 100 miles from the shore. So, if you're concerned it's not when you're entering or leaving the country. It's any time you're in LA, NY, DC, SF, Huston or Detroit. Or any of the other thousands of miles of border.
Common misconception: If you have crossed the boarder, then within 100 miles of it they can search you.
Of course, how you prove you didn't cross the boarder is an open question. But you can in fact refuse the search on that claim. I suppose they may detain you then.
I think you're looking for the phrase `probable cause`. If the officer has probable cause to think you crossed the border, they can search you. I'm not a lawyer, but i think they can search you anyway. It just won't be admissible in court.
edit
to clarify, US law pushes police right up to the edge. there is a preference for false positives rather than false negatives. it's more important to catch all of the criminals than it is to inconvenience some innocent people. The risk of letting one criminal go is much more than cost of detaining a doctor for a couple of hours.
Now, we're in this weird time where that doctor can have 20 years of hippa protected medical records in their pocket that they might be forced to disclose. Historically, that doctor may have some records in a briefcase, but not tens of thousands.
They can even nab American citizens for drug possession:
"One of the people arrested was a U.S. citizen who fled the checkpoint and led the police on a five-mile chase. The unnamed man was arrested and charged with three felonies, including reckless driving, possessing a controlled substance, and endangering the welfare of a minor."
I read that they are not able to force you to provide a pin.
But even if you're right, this doesn't change my argument. Most people are less secure most of the time in the absence of biometric authentication. Because without it, they will opt for zero security. You can always use the pin in addition, for whatever that's worth.
You know what would be really neat? A different, restricted/camouflaged unlock when you make a slight facial expression that would probably go unnoticed.
regular face: regular unlock
right eyebrow raised a tiny bit: hide my sensitive stuff from a casual search*
*and after a few minutes, if I don't deactivate it, start deleting.
It's worth noting that despite the prosecutors saying "its a foregone conclusion", they have not actually even charged Reynolds with possession of child pornography. It seems to me that while their words say they already have proof, their actions say they don't have any.
I was thinking this was cool because if it works in the cornea, it could possibly be injected into a contact lens and achieve the same effect. But it looks like that won't work because the effect depends on the chemical being in (very) close proximity to photoreceptors in the retina.