This is a well-written, interesting book, covering many of the aspects of cybercrime today, from online scams to ransomware. A lot of the background oThis is a well-written, interesting book, covering many of the aspects of cybercrime today, from online scams to ransomware. A lot of the background of each is provided and explanations are in terms that the average business person can follow. Footnotes cover new terms, and chapters reference one another, for example DDOS attacks or IOT are covered separately but can occur in other chapters.
We see that viruses and their ilk were originally pretty harmless but became scarier and more for illicit gain. The biggest information-gathering viruses appear to have been organised by China, which is why there wasn't a flood of identity theft from these, but ID theft is a major crime with even children and the dead, and migrant workers, being targeted.
Cryptocurrency gets a chapter all to itself and keeps recurring. Whether as ransomware extortion payment or pyramid investing schemes.
Phishing, vishing and catfishing are covered, with the usual warnings to be careful what you let into your mailbox; and not to click on links, to double check every odd request with another line of communication to your bank, relative, store etc. or even, as we see, the contact form on an F1 car maker's website. While we're warned to search images, the author should add to search for unfamiliar file extensions and e-mail address extensions, such as .xyz, adding 'spam' or 'scam' to the search. Passwords are covered.
While laws in the UK and US are covered and recent court cases are too, there is no mention whatsoever of the EU Digital Services Act, enacted Nov. 2022. This puts the onus on major online platforms to clean up their acts, effective since August 25th, 2023 and fully in force across the EU since 17 February 2024. Example: prior to this, a fake message on WhatsApp from a stranger could be blocked if recognised as spam by recipient. After, the same message would have a warning label with the country of origin shown (not the same as it stated) and a note that the sender was not in the contact list, and if blocked, WhatsApp would read their last three messages to determine if the sender should be barred. Large fines are at the EU's disposal to inflict.
The author goes into some dire consequences of using social media sites. From ID theft to romance scams, to relatives apparently kidnapped, to social engineering for credentials. She really should say that the sites are enabling and in some cases profiting from this conduct, for instance, Facebook didn't tell users that all their personal data would immediately be sold to a Russian search engine. Twitter/X will carry content that has been posted by someone who doesn't hold the copyright, selling it or claiming to provide free downloads, and the only way the copyright holder can get it taken down is by first, joining Twitter/X, and second, allowing Twitter/X to give their full name and address to the illegal poster. The poster's details are not shared with the victim. This is used for trolling and ID theft. The best response is not to use any of these sites, and many firms and colleges bar staff from using them.
Another item not covered is the possibility of hacking webcams to spy on the owner, without a light coming on. Lists of hacked webcams have been traded. My advice would be to keep cams unplugged or covered. No mention of the environmental cost of the crime, from trashed computers and phones, to the energy used to power them and store their spam postings in datacentres.
The text is generally well edited, but one story doesn't seem sure whether the surname involved is Coughlan or Coughlin. That may be cleaned up from my ARC by the time it gets published. A chapter also ends abruptly, but we can guess the missing words describe some sort of criminals. I'd already seen that QR codes are now a risk, but the text calls them quick-release, when QR is quick response.
References for each news story or study are provided after every chapter, which is helpful. I had seen a great many of the stories on The Register, which I didn't see quoted, but of course the Reg would get them from media releases originally. Often I'd read more that way than was provided in the book, for instance in a Cambodian cyber-slavery case, not alone immigrant workers were forced to scam, but kidnapped American tourists.
With many real-life instances and in some cases, reformed criminals speaking, we can see how people with or without experience can get conned or hacked, and it's just like burglars; the criminals have nothing else to do all day but wait for a window to be left open. Add in AI models churning out persuasive messages, and the English standard of fake emails could improve. Let's keep reading books like this one and keep double-checking. Talk to your friends about anything unusual and make them aware of potential problems. Two heads are often better than one at spotting the scam. Support senior people who didn't grow up with tech.
Hacked will be of particular interest to business people, tech journalists, IT workers and those in legal or financial affairs or law enforcement, and to students generally.
I read an e-ARC from Net Galley. This is an unbiased review....more
I was thrilled to find an SF book with an Irish hero. Tom is a city kid who started playing RPGs early, and now earns from streaming his adventures inI was thrilled to find an SF book with an Irish hero. Tom is a city kid who started playing RPGs early, and now earns from streaming his adventures in a massive online world called Epic. He's still in school, but has amassed an army of online friends who join him at the start to take down a dragon.
Tom's knowledge of the game world and organising abilities draw the game makers to consult him about their new version, Epic 2, which is nearly ready for release. There's a slight problem, as the dragon was this time given an AI and has started to take over large sections of the landscape. If Tom is willing to sign a contract he gets paid to game test in America, catching bugs.
I like that Tom isn't a perfect character. He still makes mistakes and owns up to them pretty quickly, hoping to keep the loyalty of his online friends, who are nearly all older. They're mistakes that someone of his age would easily make. Sometimes the friends are exactly what he needs, more wary of corporate greed and potential outcomes. Like, why can't the makers shut the game down, or debug it themselves? Why are they paying dozens of gamers and making them sign non-disclosure agreements?
The best battle of the game is one near the end, against a god of war in a jungle ziggurat, and after that, the rest is rather anticlimactic, but the real star is the game landscape and the immersion created by gaming rigs with surfaces, scent, sights and sounds recreated. I want to go. I was homesick for Oblivion and Morrowind and Aranna and Dungeon Siege, and they aren't MMOGs. Read, enjoy, sit up late several nights like I did, not wanting to put the book down but wanting to have more to read tomorrow. I hadn't read any others by this author but will now look out for them.
I found this an excellent read, which sums up the current state of development of AI computing and looks at some pathways and some possible outcomes. I found this an excellent read, which sums up the current state of development of AI computing and looks at some pathways and some possible outcomes. Each chapter has the references at the end so it's easy to follow, and there's a glossary but no index. The writing is nicely done and there are some clear tables that are very helpful.
I think readers will benefit from having read some other books before coming to this one. For instance I had read the mentioned books by Neal Stephenson, Nick Bostrom, Robin Hanson, and more not mentioned, which had covered the issue of Target sending vouchers for pregnancy products to a young teen girl, etc., how AI batches are trained to physical work, or the Go moves in the computer match against the master, rather better and at more length. But you can hunt these up if interested. The topic is AI and this author wants to stick to it. Familiarity with the topic also means you know terms like LLM, IOT and AGI, which are explained briefly, but you don't want to keep flicking pages when they come up again. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is another item which it's assumed you'll know.
We cover issues like hacking, pen testing, accidental data leak, and ethics of security. Also, legal frameworks and loopholes. We go from responsible users to third party chip suppliers to inbred datasets - training an AI on a dataset which is the output of a previous AI, with inherent issues. Bias in race, gender and other areas are looked at and suggestions are provided. Again, not in depth. The author is briefly summarising other papers and books.
Not much space is given to the races between the big name players in the market. Nor how trustworthy the general public finds their firms. From personal experience, I have been sent ads by Google onto my list of emails in my phone, for dating sites where I could meet fat women. I'm a woman, and have been an athlete most of my life, but obviously Google misinterpreted the keenness of my internet reading of science and computing papers and books, and my reading on health and good diet. Now suppose the same ads are sent to the phone of a married man, and his wife sees them. I reported the ads as offensive every time, and got automatically told they didn't contravene policies, until eventually Google got tired of serving me ads for services I was never going to buy. On the good side, other Google products such as Maps, Lens and Gmail are becoming more helpful.
A friend showed me his Facebook phone feed over a lunchtime meal, and it contained large ads for pints of beer of various brands. I said, "They know you're in a pub, they're geolocating you." He turned off the location on his phone. The ads were without regard for the fact that he might be a driver, or returning to work, and he does not drink beer, because he doesn't like it. Given the above story about me, I speculate that he might also have been a pregnant woman or under legal age.
A mere paragraph is given to the environmental cost of AI computing, and it's glossed over and we're told that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. Do they really? Having spent pages counting the number of ways that an AGI might destroy the world, or destroy all humans, or demand ever more resources, or enslave all humans, etc. we're assured it'll be fine. That's after the list of numerous ways that AI is taking our jobs, leaving only gig work, removing training of young staff so they can't progress to senior posts, taking on creative outputs and peddling lies and deepfakes to targeted electorates. The author does not explain that an AI search as opposed to a standard internet search, uses 6 to 10 times as much energy. And we see that the results are prone to hallucinations, lies, sarcastic or bad answers from a single Reddit post presented as truth. The usage of REEs and precious metals, which could go into other items like MRI scanners and e-bikes, and trashpiles of chips, motherboards and GPUs from which metals are not recovered... this will make it necessary to mine the asteroids, not for us, but for AI demands.
Glossary p. 294 - 299 in my e-ARC. This book will be useful to those in the computer industry, tech journalists, students, and business people generally. A good point is that after each chapter we get a box on the bottom line, the big picture, and another on leadership actions. This might include providing opt in or opt out material to employees or users, regular checks that data is secure, collaborating with others and with universities. No photos - I thought a few photos of datacentres, AIs being trained on physical tasks, and some of the major names in the field, would be helpful to students. Largely names are absent and general ethics discussions are prominent. But it'll all work out fine. Maybe that's what an AI would say if it wrote this book. I can but speculate.
I read an e-ARC from Net Galley. This is an unbiased review by a live human....more
This book is more suited to teen readers, or adults who are not really familiar with the topic. We all need to be aware and beware of fake informationThis book is more suited to teen readers, or adults who are not really familiar with the topic. We all need to be aware and beware of fake information spread, faked photos and videos. As young people spend so much time looking at tiny screens - where it's harder to spot the photoshopping - anything that provides clues and motives as to deception online is welcome.
I downloaded an e-ARC from Net Galley. This is an unbiased review. ...more
I found this a highly interesting book. Domestication is taken to mean literally bringing inside the home. So not only is it about the evolution of peI found this a highly interesting book. Domestication is taken to mean literally bringing inside the home. So not only is it about the evolution of personal tech and how we use it, but the evolution of the interaction of increasingly large numbers of women with tech.
For example, a study looked at mobile phone adoption. The researchers asked people how they got their first mobile. The earliest adopters were generally men, who needed the phone for being contactable by work. The majority of women respondents said their first phone was a gift from a male partner who had a phone, so they could keep in touch.
Similar studies dot the book. The blurb looks quite dense and unreadable, but the book itself is quite easily readable, and could form the basis of articles or essays. The subject will be of interest to anyone studying media, tech, modern living, modern women's issues. I read this book from the IADT college library. This is an unbiased review....more
I'm paraphrasing what the author has to tell us, as he knows a great deal more about AI than I do - having worked for Google and watched an army of grI'm paraphrasing what the author has to tell us, as he knows a great deal more about AI than I do - having worked for Google and watched an army of gripping robots learning from one another how to lift children's toys. Direct quotes are in quotes.
First he tells us about the development of various AIs, narrow and general, and explains what they do. Then he tells us why we are and should be concerned about the development of AIs as it currently stands. Even though he loves dictating and using spell check to write. (Which may explain why he has two spelling mistakes immediately obvious in his Linked In profile. Use it or lose it.)
"By following a strict prescriptive method, we become dumber, because we lose the ability to think for ourselves." Artilect - term for machine with AI.
AI currently used for “selling, killing, spying and gambling” according to Dr Ben Goertzel.
"Instead of focusing on preventing the bad, let's shift our focus to creating more good." Google researchers have been helping predict floods in India and mapping earthquakes and aftershocks to warn of earthquakes. (Lately I've seen the forest fire overlay working on Google maps.) Machine that tracks farm animals and learns their movements and poses - learns if they are happy.
AI will happen Machines will outsmart us Mistakes will happen.
Machines will want / do what we want / do: Self preservation Resource aggregation Creative problem solving.
Mainly if people have just one wish, they want to be happy. But we can't just tell computers that or they could dope us.
You have purchasing power and social media like and share choices. "If we align their gain with our benefit, they will change." Don't click on ads. Don't click on content recommended to you. Don't approve on your Linked In feed of fintech buying and selling. Stop using photo editors and spreading fake content. Reject AI that is tasked to invade your privacy to benefit others or to propagate fake information. Stop using them, stop linking them and make your position - that you don't approve of them - publicly clear. (I don't use fb or ig or tw or the others, but the author does.)
At the same time, use AI that is good for humanity. Tell others about it. We should teach others so we collectively become smarter at identifying AI that is good for humanity. "Matching algorithm" on recommendation engines is actually a filtering algo or just trying to convince you to buy what other people bought. Teach each other how to teach the AI. (This ought to be 'one another' as more than two people are involved.)
"Children don't learn from what you say. They learn from what you do." AIs are already reading and learning from what we say and choose and do online. And what we support. Every year we create more information than we created in human history to date. So "the store of collective human knowledge is diluted by 50% each year" and altered in tone by the new data. Be polite to machines, to AI, phones, thank them. Show machines how we want to be treated by treating them that way. Decide what makes you happy, and invest in your own happiness. Tell machines that we want others to be happy too. They are watching all the trends, not just the ones they are told their owners want.
References P323 -325 in my e-ARC. Most of these are just given as website links, which don't work in a book. They also don't tell me if the author of the point he is referring to, is male or female. I found a few graphs, which were useful. I found the circled points a little annoying, but maybe the author learns better this way. Mention is made of Portal, "one of the earliest mainstream games to feature a female avatar" - not at all, Dungeon Siege I played as a female since 2002.
I read an ARC from Net Galley. This is an unbiased review....more
As someone not addicted to social media, I found this short book interesting and I hope it will help others. The points are made in an introduction, wAs someone not addicted to social media, I found this short book interesting and I hope it will help others. The points are made in an introduction, which might not be ideal, as then some people will feel no need to read the rest of the book. Negative consequences and possible problems of social media use for the individual user are the main focus. The positive sides also get a chapter. Suggestions for care in using accounts and phones are given.
The author's presentation is that of a university thesis with creditable references at the end. They seem to have used a straight comparison with alcohol addiction, suggesting that some people turn to social media when they are upset or exhausted. Concern for the effect on children is evident, with self-image and bullying, fear of missing out, fear of not looking as interesting as friends. I did not see any mention of gender issues, race issues, etc. although plenty of studies and university books have been written on these topics. Cambridge Analytica was mentioned but not explained. If you are going to mention a specific instance you should explain the circumstances. I would have expected to see a comparison with Gamergate, in which women and people of minority races were bullied in online gaming worlds.
I feel that a few personal interviews would help people relate to the content, especially younger people who may find non-fiction dry. Also, some clipart, graphs or photos would liven up the pages, especially if people are being asked to tear their eyes away from a screen with visuals. The main downside for me is that clearly the author's first language isn't English, and a translator or synonym program has been used. There is an example in every paragraph, so I'll just go with "the state fledgling of Nebraska." This is extremely difficult for me to read, because my mind keeps catching on the language and I have to work out what the original would be. I started to skip depth and just read for a sense of the content. I would recommend the author hire or swap services with an English speaker to correct their copy.
While telling us that advertisers are the main users of personal data, there is no mention of using ad blockers, just VPNs which still expose users to the ads; and while sites store data about a user shared by others, the book does not mention the court-enshrined right to be forgotten. It could also warn of paid trolls, such as the Russian troll farm reported by Peter Pomerantsev, and paid false content promoters, such as those from the oil industry who shout down people sharing facts about climate change.
Overall I am pleased that yet another warning about antisocial media has been published, and that some useful reminders such as reducing and gatekeeping screen time for kids, are provided. References p. 81 - 82 in my ARC. I read an ARC from Net Galley. This is an unbiased review. ...more
This book which is a little dated now, has an American flavour but a broad appeal to the beginning web writer. Plenty of starter exercises are provideThis book which is a little dated now, has an American flavour but a broad appeal to the beginning web writer. Plenty of starter exercises are provided and good advice, but I did find some generalisations and a desire to make everything more basic than perhaps is required. This reminded me of Don't Make Me Think, a book about designing websites. Keeping vocabulary appropriate to the site and reader is one point. Making bulleted lists instead of vague lines of text is another. Each chapter ends with an admonition to sit and write, practising what that chapter has told you. For those already writing web content, this won't be necessary. Mainly I would suggest learning better English (or which ever language you use) would benefit many writers today, as many firms don't want to employ editors any more. I don't expect seasoned writers will need much from this read, but a flick through can be useful to remind anyone of particular points.
I borrowed this book from the DBS Library. This is an unbiased review. ...more
I preferred the author's first book, 'Nothing is True and Everything is Possible.' That was an account of his own experiences inside the Russian televI preferred the author's first book, 'Nothing is True and Everything is Possible.' That was an account of his own experiences inside the Russian television industry over a decade. This book reads differently as a series of accounts of work by other people, held together loosely by some recollections by the author or his parents. In particular I don't like the lengthy passages in italics, as italics are hard on the eyes. At the end of the book I learned that the contents were a few essays or journalistic pieces written at different times. That explains it. A couple of lines in the last piece try to reach back and wrap them, but I just felt the style was choppy and lacked unity.
Troll farms run from Russia are an early important item - if people are paid to have a day job creating fake personas on the basis that online voices are more powerful in a multitude, is that State sponsored lies? The later essay about Cambridge Analytica - which bought astonishing amounts of information about online users in order to attempt to influence their votes all around the world - ties directly in to this item.
If you've ever wondered whether you should take a facebook or twitter account after all, read this and you won't. But the author doesn't give us the hard facts about how many trolls and bots are on twitter, doesn't update the old essays or ask if click farms are part of the methods. More data needed.
In between is a lengthy piece about a man who claims to have gone around the world telling every country in need of a citizens' revolution how to organise it. Is there another viewpoint than this one interview?
A look at a BBC radio station that broadcast to Russia. This is more personal to the author, whose father was a radio presenter before there was a YouTube.
A look at a man who was told by Muslims that he could not be Islamic and British at the same time. He at first agreed, then looked into the written teachings and decided that the men didn't understand the teachings so he now tries re-converting other converts on line. No mention of the stupidity of basing a society's behaviour on the twelfth century. No figures.
And a piece on Syria, and Assad bombing Aleppo, but no mention of how the men who walked away to Europe openly told journalists that they were dodging the draft so they would not have to go and fight IS. We get that bombing your own civilians is always wrong. But the civilians have a duty to join up and fight for their country, homes and family. Every other nation does that. Also no mention that journalists - the Sunday Times being one paper - were told by people smugglers that they were very sure they were taking money from IS terrorists to bring them to Europe. This item is too one-sided to be good journalism. Actually just about all of them are, and in some cases awkward facts are glibly brushed over. That said, it's good to read this viewpoint, because as Pomerantsev says himself, he is an outsider everywhere.
I read this book from the RDS Library. This is an unbiased review. ...more
Stephen Wolfram collects various articles, presentations and memoir accounts from his life of enjoying physics, disliking maths, and designing computeStephen Wolfram collects various articles, presentations and memoir accounts from his life of enjoying physics, disliking maths, and designing computers so he doesn't have to do the math. If you know who he is and have used Wolfram Alpha you might enjoy this book more; if you have not, well, this man's firm invented the popular Raspberry Pi. 'Nuff said. (Earlier this year I was in a draw for a Crow Pi, don't think I got it though.)
The book contains many photos, drawings and diagrams; unfortunately less than a quarter of them were viewable by me in the Net Galley download. I am sure the generally accessible standard I saw is maintained. A few chapters do get into complex equations, but we can skip those and get on with seeing how this man organises his business day. The fact that the book aims for two markets and isn't all that cohesive, but spends much time on the development of a 3-D logo or deciding the words for the name of a new tool, mean that I won't give five stars, but some readers will undoubtedly find the contents fascinating.
I downloaded an e-ARC from Net Galley. This is an unbiased review. ...more
I only got a quarter way through this book when another student put in a request for it to the college library and I had to return the book. The authoI only got a quarter way through this book when another student put in a request for it to the college library and I had to return the book. The author has been telling us how keeping websites simple so people can find what they want with one or two clicks, is ideal. Yes. And you know what, that applies to many other programs as well.
I'll write more when I get the book again. ...more
I found it very hard to read and rate this book because it bears little relation to the version of FCP on my college Macs even though I borrowed the bI found it very hard to read and rate this book because it bears little relation to the version of FCP on my college Macs even though I borrowed the book from the college library.
The first pages are all about loading clips into bins and nesting bins within bins and keeping filing orderly and renaming files. Whereas we were given a download of various clips, told how to import them and to get on with making a music video.
The book presents clips by file names and bin titles. We are recommended to practise on a film about orcas on the web, which clips are imported with word titles. The emphasis is all on keyboard shortcuts, none of which I have needed to know. Instead, our clips showed up immediately as visuals. Unless it was a sound file, which looked like wavelengths. The files showed their relative lengths and we could clip out a section, drag and drop it to the master file being made, with the mouse.
The book shows many coloured sections and options; our viewer is grey.
The book tells you to save work (with a keyboard shortcut) as you go along so you can leave it and come back. But in college you want to take your half-made film away for next week and wipe the computer. You don't want to make a master file that can't be unpicked. This never occurs to the book writers. The help screen of the FCP I am using does not explain how to do this; it promises a section on the drop-down File menu that does not exist. Googling the matter produced no right answer. After an hour of hitting every button and menu and tool (better and bigger labelling needed) I hit the arrow on the far mid right that gave an option to Save As a file and put it on the desktop for removal. On the good side, the Mac saves it as it goes along all by itself, so every time it crashes (about once a session) I can hope to find a version made in the last ten minutes.
The book does make me aware of fancy tricks like split screen which I have not tried. As I didn't find them on my version yet, they may not be there; or they may but not well labelled. Problems that showed up when I was using my version are not covered in the book that I saw. Like a master file being made with seven minutes of blank space added on the end.
If you are running the version of FCP this book relates to and you want to use keyboard shortcuts you may find it useful. The pages are cleanly laid out with colour photos. A friend is using free download DaVinci Resolve on her PC which says it can be run on MAC, PC or Linux and a file made on it can be transferred to FCP.
I borrowed this book from the Dublin Business School Library. This is an unbiased review....more
Well written and this is the second edition, although as the author knew would happen, film production has moved on fast.
This tells how an editor makeWell written and this is the second edition, although as the author knew would happen, film production has moved on fast.
This tells how an editor makes choices and cuts film - originally a physical cut - and how machines used to be large, noisy and heavy but have moved to be computers.
We are told to bear in mind that seeing a film on a big screen is more immersive than seeing it on a two foot wide screen, and more detail will be seen in a big picture; at the same time, readily available screen time means that people can watch a film over and again, seeing new nuances and character aspects.
This is very interesting for those studying how the mechanics of film making have changed. Analogue to digital. Speed is important in a big budget film. Apparently a question asked when hiring an editor is 'how fast do they work?'
However, some things won't change, such as an orderly process for film editing, backing up copies, choosing a good cut. The author points out that people watching something intently don't blink, but people changing their mind, submitting, or holding conflicting thoughts, blink rapidly. We can blink as we move our line of sight, seeing a different picture as the eye opens. He suggests that we accepted film right from the start because it was like blinking.
I borrowed this book from the Dublin Business School Library. This is an unbiased review. ...more
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