Category: Technology

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Latest Read: Flash Boys

Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis is a remarkable Wall Street story. Lewis lays out a series of interwoven stories that result in flaws around High Frequency Trading (HFT). While not the subject of a SEC investigation, the book’s publication has resulted in fines for companies trading in less-than-honest environments.

Flash Boys begins with the story of Sergey Aleynikov. Sergey is a talented programmer who is key to this story. We meet him as he faces prosecution.

The early chapters involve cutting fiber optic cable runs via Spread Networks from Chicago to New Jersey, This was most appealing to me. There was an understanding that trades could be altered in measurements of just milliseconds. 4 milliseconds is the timeframe trading companies needed in order to gain an advantage against their trading competitors. 4 milliseconds!

Enter the ability for large corporate banking firms to trade within their own dark pools. The practice of front running was taken to a new level with millisecond transfers. It adds up to shifts in profits away from smaller traders to benefit Wall Street banks.

The idea of milliseconds sounded strange at first. It is impressive to learn how trading firms and large banks were pouring money into advanced networks. Yet this resulted in the 2010 Flash Crash. Most could not understand how computers could cause the market to crash. It was just the beginning of questionable trading practices.

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Design Education Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: Think Like a Freak

The authors of Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner publish Think Like a Freak. This is their third, and potentially last book in the Freakonomics platform.

think like a freak

Their idea is to train people to … well, think like they do, like a Freak. For example, the soccer penalty kick. Which way will the kicker try to strike the ball into the net? Go left side, middle or right? Well this is their first lesson to dig into the analytics and the mental thoughts of the kicker and goalie.

The level of attention they pay to the soccer question may be viewed as overthinking. Yet with your legacy riding on the kick, you have to decode a lot of data in a minute. Take this idea further. You will see the book’s insights develop for your life.

They teach readers to boil events down to incentives. Then measure the hell out of it. Yes this is an interesting take on how to change someone’s position. They even address the idea that you are too old to change your ways. The book’s subtitle is their offer to retrain your brain.

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Design Education Innovation Network Technology

Pediatric Medical Devices

The Global Medical Device Podcast Episode 115 Challenges with Pediatric Medical Devices is an honest discussion addressing medical devices for children and pediatric hospitals set inside the marketplace.
medical device podcast

This episode was refreshing to hear calls for medical devices designed specifically for children. The voices of experience shared longstanding vendors cannot simply ‘retrofit’ a device for young kids.

As mentioned there is quite a difference in treating small children with devices designed for adults. Mike Drues of Vascular Sciences and Jon Speer discuss the lack of availability for such medical devices and prescription drugs, specifically with children in mind.

Simply manufacturing a “smaller version” of adult medical devices and drugs for pediatric populations may not be the best solution. Lack of availability is simply due to a lack of market.

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Education Network Ransomware Technology

Philips ISCV and Xcelera flaws

Philips has yet to patch a flaw that allows cybercriminals to inject ransomware or backdoors which can result in PHI at risk of compromise.Philips reveals code execution vulnerabilities in cardiovascular devices

The Philips ISCV version 2.x and earlier and Xcelera 4.x and 3.x the servers contain 20 Windows services of which the executables are being present in a folder where authenticated users have write permissions.  The services run as a local admin account or local system account, and if a user were to replace one of the executables with a different program, that program too would be executed with local admin or local system permissions.

Philips confirms these vulnerabilities affect their IntelliSpace Cardiovascular system version 2.3.1, 3.1 and earlier. Also impacted are version 4.x and 3.x Xcelera systems (PDF). In ISCV version 3.x and earlier and Xcelera 4.x and 3.x there are 16 Windows services flaws allow hackers to run the computer with local admin rights.

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Cyberinfrastructure Education Network Ransomware Technology

Harvard Cybersecurity

Harvard’s cybersecurity course is certainly a demanding slice of your life. However, I gained valuable insights from Eric Rosenbach and cybersecurity leaders from National Security Agency, Akamai, and Google. In addition, this offered me an opportunity to connect with cybersecurity leaders across wide ranging business and geographic locations.harvard cybersecurity2018 proved a challenge, looking beyond repeated megabreaches that dominated news headlines. Did you suffer from breach fatigue? It was like the movie Groundhog Day.

At some point (probably sooner than we think) all the data impacting all the users connected to the global internet will all be available on the dark web. All for a price…

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