Current Events in April 2018

Consumers who ordered food online from the bakery-cafe chain Panera Bread via the company’s website could potentially have had their payment information exposed.

Panerabread.com leaked eight months’ worth of customer records from its website, according to a report by KrebsOnSecurity.

The data leak included customer names, email and home addresses, birthdays, and the last four digits of credit card numbers. The beach affected "millions" of customers who ordered food on the company's website, panerabread.com, the blog post said.

Issue has been resolved

Panera claims that fewer than 10,000 consumers had potentially been affected by the breach and stated that the issue has since been resolved.

Although their investigation is ongoing, Panera maintains that there is no evidence of payment records or other large amounts of personal information being accessed or retrieved.

“Panera takes data security very seriously and this issue is resolved,” the company said in a statement. “Following reports today of a potential problem on our website, we suspended the functionality to repair the issue.”

“Our investigation is continuing, but there is no evidence of payment card information nor a large number of records being accessed or retrieved. Our investigation to date indicates that fewer than 10,000 consumers have been potentially affected by this issue and we are working diligently to finalize our investigation and take the appropriate next steps.”

Target Corporation of Minneapolis, Minn., is recalling an undetermined amount of frozen ready-to-eat and not-ready-to-eat meat and poultry products.

Temperature abuse during transport may have resulted in the growth of spoilage organisms or pathogens such as Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus aureus, Shiga-toxin producing E. coli, Listeria monocytogenes and Salmonella.

There have been no confirmed reports of adverse reactions due to consumption of these products.

The complete list of products, product labels and UPC code numbers can be found here.

The frozen ready-to-eat and not-ready-to-eat meat and poultry items were sold from March 23, 2018, to March 27, 2018, at one Target retail store located at 1450 Ala Moana Blvd., Ste 2401, Honolulu, Hawaii 96814.

What to do

Customers who purchased the recalled products should not consume them, but discard them and call Target at 1-800-440-0680 for a refund.

Consumers with questions may call Target at 1-800-440-0680.

Tesla has issued an update on the fatal accident involving one of its cars in California last month, drawing a rebuke from the government agency charged with determining the cause of the accident.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is on the scene in Mountain View, Calif., still investigating the cause of the March 23 fiery crash of a Model X. The car plowed into a concrete highway divider, taking the full force of the impact because the crash attenuator had been removed.

A spokesman for the NTSB told the Washington Post Sunday evening that the agency was not happy when Tesla unilaterally released information about the crash while the investigation is still open.

Tesla update

"In the moments before the collision, which occurred at 9:27 a.m. on Friday, March 23rd, Autopilot was engaged with the adaptive cruise control follow-distance set to minimum," Tesla said in a statement on Friday.

According to Tesla, the data the company retrieved from the car revealed the driver had received warnings earlier in the drive from the car's automated system to put his hands on the wheel. Tesla said the data read-out shows the driver’s hands were not detected on the wheel for six seconds prior to the collision.

"The driver had about five seconds and 150 meters of unobstructed view of the concrete divider with the crushed crash attenuator, but the vehicle logs show that no action was taken," the company said.

The NTSB took exception to the company's statement -- implying the accident was due to operator error -- because the official investigation is still underway.

Regulators not happy

“At this time the NTSB needs the assistance of Tesla to decode the data the vehicle recorded. In each of our investigations involving a Tesla vehicle, Tesla has been extremely cooperative on assisting with the vehicle data. However, the NTSB is unhappy with the release of investigative information by Tesla,” NTSB spokesman Chris O’Neil told the Post.

The NTSB investigation is not focused on Tesla's Autopilot feature. When it launched its probe last week, the agency said in a Tweet that it is only investigating the post-crash fire and safety issues involved in the removal of the wreckage.

However, Tesla may be sensitive to issues involving its Autopilot feature, which some have erroneously equated with autonomous driving technology. Tesla has made clear that drivers must remain in control of the vehicle at all times, even when Autopilot is engaged.

Being the focus of a federal safety investigation comes at a bad time for Tesla. The company's stock has declined for five straight weeks and was down 5 percent as trading resumed Monday after a three-day weekend.

In recent days Tesla has recalled every Model S built before April 2016 to address a potentially faulty bolt, while Moody's has downgraded its debt to near junk-bond status.

Hudson’s Bay Co. says customer payment card information may have been stolen from shoppers at certain Saks Fifth Avenue, Saks Off Fifth, and Lord & Taylor stores in North America.

The retailer said in a statement that it has identified the issue and taken steps to contain it, but it has stopped short of disclosing how many payment card numbers were taken.

“Once we have more clarity around the facts, we will notify our customers quickly and will offer those impacted free identity protection services, including credit and web monitoring,” the statement said.

Five million records taken

However, one cybersecurity firm analyzed the available data and found that five million credit card and debit card numbers had been compromised in the breach.

Gemini Advisory LLC said in a report that the information was stolen from 83 Saks Fifth Avenue or Saks Off Fifth stores, and from all Lord & Taylor locations. Approximately 125,000 of the five million records compromised have been released for sale on the “dark web,” the firm said.

“Although at this moment it is close to impossible to ascertain the exact window of compromise, the preliminary analysis suggests that criminals were siphoning the information between May 2017 to present,” Gemini Advisory said.

Hudson Bay says it is “working rapidly with leading data security investigators to get customers the information they need, and the investigation is ongoing.” The company is coordinating with law enforcement authorities and the payment card companies for the investigation.

Consumers affected by the breach will not be liable for fraudulent charges, the company said.

Following pilot programs in select rural communities in North and South Carolina, Google is expanding its Rolling Study Halls program to 16 more school districts across the country.

The program’s expansion will give “thousands of students” access to Wi-Fi and Chromebooks on their trip to and from school, which Google says will translate to 1.5 million learning hours reclaimed.  

The company says providing students with Wi-Fi connectivity on their bus gives those without broadband internet at home two more opportunities to complete assignments or study.

Expanding to 12 additional states

Google will equip school buses in the following states with mobile Wi-Fi routers, data plans, and Chromebook devices:

• Alabama

• Colorado

• Georgia

• Kansas

• Minnesota

• New Mexico

• Oregon

• Pennsylvania

• South Carolina

• Tennessee

• Texas

• Virginia

Closing the digital divide

In an addition to providing students with internet access while heading home, school buses will have an “onboard educator” who can help with assignments.

Google said the program yielded positive results when it was tested in parts of North Carolina, where kids often had lengthy commutes to and from school.

“What we saw when we did this in North Carolina is that test grades went up and one teacher saw even more importantly is that the students came back more engaged more challenged and feeling more confident because of just those few extra hours,” said Susan Molinari, the Vice President of Policy for America for Google.

Google says it first started the program in the hope of bridging the digital divide.

“When we first started this program, I wanted to open up opportunities for students in need, and knock down barriers—like lack of access to internet at home—that stood in their way,” Lilyn Hester, Google’s head of external affairs, Southeast US Region, wrote in a blog post.

“Our program builds on the hard work and dedication of so many teachers, parents, school officials and nonprofit organizations who are making it all possible. And together, we can give these kids access to the learning opportunities they deserve,” Hester said.

Starting May 7, those called to serve federal jury duty will get paid 25 percent more. Last week, President Donald Trump signed a bill increasing the daily rate for juror service from $40 to $50.

The juror pay raise is the first in 28 years. The new rate will bring jurors closer to being compensated at the federal minimum-wage rate of $58 a day.

U.S. District Chief Judge Ruben Castillo told the Chicago Tribune that the pay bump will ease the economic burden of serving, which should make the juror panel more reflective of the overall population.

“More diverse juries is what we’re all after,” Castillo said.

Included in discretionary spending bill

Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of 11 House members called for the pay boost in a letter to the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees judiciary spending.

“While juror compensation was never meant to serve as a substitute for a salary and obviously does not, raising the daily rate of juror compensation to $50 per day would provide some small relief for the sacrifices made by jurors,” the lawmakers wrote.

The pay increase was included in one paragraph of a 2,231-page bill that provided the federal judiciary with $7.1 billion in discretionary spending -- an increase of $184 million from the previous fiscal year, according to a news release from the U.S. Courts.

“We are especially pleased that Congress recognized the critical public service provided by the citizens who serve on juries as well as the attorneys who represent defendants who can’t afford a lawyer,” said James C. Duff, director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

The new rate applies to both grand jurors and those who serve on trial, or petit, juries.

Cloudflare has released a free website performance and security tool called 1.1.1.1., billed as “the fastest, privacy-first consumer DNS service.”

At a time when prying eyes seem to be popping up everywhere, hackers are having field days, and the net neutrality rules are being tossed aside by the Trump administration, having someone ride in on a white horse might just be the answer consumers were looking for.

Cloudflare plans to stake its reputation on the promise that 1.1.1.1.  will be “the internet’s fastest, privacy-first consumer DNS service.” The company vows to wipe clean all logs of DNS queries within 24 hours.

Making internet browsing more private

DNS stands for “Domain Name System” -- a system of computers that allow users to browse the internet by connecting Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to a website’s server. In the simplest of terms, it’s what gets an internet user to the site they want to go to.

“Cloudflare's business has never been built around tracking users or selling advertising. We don't see personal data as an asset; we see it as a toxic asset,” wrote Matthew Prince, co-founder & CEO of Cloudflare.

“We began talking with browser manufacturers about what they would want from a DNS resolver. One word kept coming up: privacy. Beyond just a commitment not to use browsing data to help target ads, they wanted to make sure we would wipe all transaction logs within a week. That was an easy request. In fact, we knew we could go much further. We committed to never writing the querying IP addresses to disk and wiping all logs within 24 hours.”

Unfortunately, the DNS servers also allow Internet Service Providers (ISP) to identify any site that’s visited, which raises questions of privacy. In the wake of the criticism Facebook took over the misuse of its users’ data and Equifax’s hack last year, putting privacy back into the hands of the user might be a welcome relief.

An ISP typically takes care of the DNS for the end user, but the downside is that it gives the ISP a way to track and log every website you visit. Data like that, as the world found out in the Facebook data brouhaha, is worth money to data collectors that do deep dives on internet users’ browsing histories. With 1.1.1.1. keeping that information out of the grasp of an ISP, it makes it that much harder to track and tally a web surfer’s site visits.

Did someone say “fast” and “easy”?

DNSPerf analyzes the speeds of DNS providers worldwide. In its latest survey, Cloudflare’s speed ranked first with a query speed of 13.06ms -- twice as fast as Verizon ROUTE, nearly four times faster than GoDaddy, and almost five times faster than Google Cloud.

Whether you’re a novice or a geek, Cloudflare claims that setting up 1.1.1.1 takes two minutes and requires no technical skill or special software. All an interested Internet user needs to do is type 1.1.1.1 into their web browser to get started.

Who is Cloudflare and why do they want to help us?

Cloudflare claims to “run one of the world’s largest networks, powering more than 10 trillion requests per month.” The company’s customer base is made up of everything from local blogs to international Fortune 500 companies. And in its attempt to raise venture capital, tech giants like Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Google have all stepped up to write a check.

Cloudflare’s partner in 1.1.1.1. Is APNIC (Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, pronounced A-P-NIC), a not-for-profit, membership-based organization whose primary role is the distribution and management of internet protocols such as IP addresses. APNIC’s members include ISPs, universities, telecommunication providers, and others in the Asia Pacific region’s 56 economies, which include China, India, and Australia.

The marriage of Cloudflare and APNIC came out of a parallel desire to help build a better Internet. Cloudflare could provide the network and APNIC had the IP address (1.1.1.1).

“We talked to the APNIC team about how we wanted to create a privacy-first, extremely fast DNS system,” commented Prince. “They thought it was a laudable goal. We offered Cloudflare's network to receive and study the garbage traffic in exchange for being able to offer a DNS resolver on the memorable IPs. And, with that, 1.1.1.1 was born.”

While surveys show consumers continue to have doubts about self-driving cars, homeowners may feel differently about a new application of autonomous technology.

A Canadian robotics firm, AI Incorporated, has harnessed artificial intelligence and autonomous technology to produce a garbage can that can be programmed to wheel itself to the curb on trash pick-up day.

A homeowner simply uses an app to schedule the trip to the street and back to the house. In case the garbage can needs help with navigation, the user can make course corrections using the app.

Officially, it's called an autonomous refuse receptacle robot (ARRR) and employs what is called Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) technology, teamed with AI. AI Incorporated  produced the video below to demonstrate the ARRR in action.

High hopes

The company has high hopes for its invention, predicting that humans having to remember to wheel trash cans to the curb on trash day will become a thing of the past.

"Robots are the perfect solution for eliminating those tasks which humans do not wish to conduct," said Ali Afrouzi, CEO of AI Incorporated. "With our cost-efficient Q-OS SLAM solution, it is now economically viable to automate trash cans that autonomously navigate to the curbside when the truck arrives!"

The company has not yet released price information, but these containers will probably cost a bit more than the trash cans that must be moved manually. The robotic trash cans use a sophisticated navigation system that combines proprietary software, deep reinforcement learning, and computer vision.

The company says its automated trash can will be able to map its environment, travel autonomously, communicate with other devices, and monitor their internal contents with an extensive array of sensors.

Motorists across the country have seen gasoline prices rise as refiners make the switch from winter-grade gasoline to summer blends.

The AAA Fuel Gauge Survey shows the national average price of regular gasoline is about $2.66 a gallon, up five cents in the last week and 11 cents higher over the last two weeks. Gasoline is more than 30 cents a gallon higher than at this time last year.

The average price of premium gas is $3.18 a gallon, increasing by a similar amount over the last two weeks. The average price of diesel fuel is $2.97.

“Today, only 38 percent of U.S. gas stations are selling gasoline for $2.50 or less and that percentage will likely dwindle in coming weeks,” said Jeanette Casselano, a spokesperson for AAA. “The holiday weekend, strong demand, and preparation for summer gasoline are all factors that have driven and will continue to drive higher gas prices into early spring.”

Where prices are rising fastest

Fuel prices have risen faster in some parts of the country than others. According to AAA, average gas prices jumped 14 cents a gallon in the last month in Utah, 10 cents in Kentucky, and nine cents in Missouri, Florida, and Arizona.

The most expensive fuel in the country is still found in Hawaii, where the statewide average is $3.52 a gallon. But California is catching up, with an average of $3.51. Other expensive states for gasoline are Washington ($3.17), Alaska ($3.13), Oregon ($3.09), and Nevada ($3.01).

The cheapest gasoline in the nation is in Arkansas, at $2.38 a gallon. It's followed by Mississippi ($2.39), Missouri ($2.40), and Oklahoma ($2.41).

Higher prices still ahead

In a Tweet, GasBuddy analyst Patrick DeHaan noted prices at the pump in Chicago are close to going over $3 a gallon for the first time since 2015. He says rising oil prices are as much to blame as the seasonal changes at refineries.

If gasoline prices hold to their normal seasonal pattern, they should continue to rise until Memorial Day, after which they should begin to slowly fall. Providing hope that the rise may be moderate this year is the fact that consumers are using less gasoline this spring.

The Energy Information Administration reports that gasoline demand fell to 9.2 million barrels a day last week, the lowest point during March.