At-home DNA test kits have transformed lives – just ask Sigrid Johnson, a 63-year-old black woman who grappled with identity when a DNA ancestry kit delivered unexpected results. The New York Times piece wrangles with questions of family, statistical accuracy, consumer privacy and company transparency. Has any direct-to-consumer product challenged identities so directly? IN OTHER NEWS: More on Amazon’s […]
“Herman” comes back from vacation over Veteran’s Day weekend to a mess. Herman, who leads the HR department at his company, doesn’t know that a salesperson opened an infected Excel document from an email claiming to be a client over the weekend; on this day, all he knows is that $100,000 of payroll has been […]
The Dallas Morning News released what Jeff Bezos probably would have written to the losing cities in the saga of choosing Amazon’s H2Q (“initials+numbers = very hip/very now”) location, had he not been busy doing, uh, something else. “We can’t attest to its provenance. We doubt Amazon would confirm it. Nor will we even deny […]
Nearly 140 West Virginian citizens living abroad in 29 countries cast their ballots via blockchain on Tuesday, the largest pilot test of blockchain voting ever, reports the Washington Post. Yet, security experts still worry the technology contains vulnerabilities that will risk election integrity in the case of broader use. IN OTHER NEWS: Microsoft visionair […]
In the 1950s, the threat was nuclear, and even the school children were prepared. The U.S. Civil Defense Administration enlisted the help of animators to create “Duck and Cover,” a short film featuring Bert the turtle to teach children how to protect themselves in case of a nuclear explosion. “If you duck and cover, you […]
When introducing the keynote speaker at the Iowa Tech Summit Tuesday morning, Paul Hlivko, chief technology officer at Wellmark Blue Cross and Blue Shield, jokingly warned the audience to turn off any devices they wanted to keep control over. Charlie Miller waved it off: “I’m not good enough to hack and give a speech at the […]
BLOOMBERG: Months after the Cambridge Analytica scandal erupted Facebook’s daily business, LinkedIn Corp, the Microsoft-owned social networking site for professionals, says it will open its trove of user data to approved academic researchers. Chief data officer Igor Perisic made the announcement in a blog post on Monday, insisting LinkedIn will have controls in place to […]
Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate has been reappointed to a national cybersecurity risk mitigation committee, Pate’s office announced today. Secretary Pate was a charter member of the Election Infrastructure Subsector Government Coordinating Council (EIS-GCC) during the council’s creation in October 2017. The council meets regularly with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the […]
BUZZFEED NEWS: Here’s a reminder to update your router at home. At least two people tied to the U.S. military accidentally leaked secret files to a hacker after failing to change either the default username, password, or both to their routers, researchers at Recorded Future found. The hacker told Recorded Future researchers that he found the […]
Forty-three percent of Des Moines tech hiring managers expect to grow their teams before the end of 2018, according to a new report released from staffing firm Robert Half Technology. The firm’s latest report surveyed hiring managers in 26 metropolitan areas in the U.S., and found respondents cited cybersecurity and cloud architecture as the two […]