Ken Garen, CPA, Co-Founder and President, UBCC

Self-driving cars reach a fork in the road, and automakers take different routes By Ashley Halsey III and Michael Laris August 24 at 5:43 PM Cars capable of driving themselves may be on the showroom floor sooner than you think, but whether they should come with all the current essentials — including a steering wheel and pedals on the floor — has the auto industry at a fork in the road. Ford sided with the pioneering engineers at Google last week in announcing plans to introduce limited-use vehicles without traditional controls within five years. Some other major automakers — and virtually all of them are well along in their work on self-driving vehicles — say they will introduce automated elements one step at a time, until drivers accept that they no longer need to control their cars. The different approaches are rooted in conflicting views of safety and what the public is willing to accept. “It’s almost like asking people before they even really knew what an iPhon...

98 personal data points that Facebook uses to target ads to you By Caitlin Dewey August 19 Say you’re scrolling through your Facebook Newsfeed and you encounter an ad so eerily well-suited, it seems someone has possibly read your brain. Maybe your mother’s birthday is coming up, and Facebook’s showing ads for her local florist. Or maybe you just made a joke aloud about wanting a Jeep, and Instagram’s promoting Chrysler dealerships. Whatever the subject, you’ve seen ads like this. You’ve wondered — maybe worried — how they found their way to you. Facebook, in its omniscience, knows that you’re wondering — and it would like to reassure you. The social network just revamped its ad preference settings to make them significantly easier for users to understand. They’ve also launched a new ad education portal, which explains, in general terms, how Facebook targets ads. “We want the ads people see on Facebook to be interesting, useful and relevant,” a Facebook spokespers...

Commentary: Evidence points to another Snowden at the NSA By James Bamford Mon Aug 22, 2016 8:04am EDT In the summer of 1972, state-of-the-art campaign spying consisted of amateur burglars, armed with duct tape and microphones, penetrating the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Today, amateur burglars have been replaced by cyberspies, who penetrated the DNC armed with computers and sophisticated hacking tools. Where the Watergate burglars came away empty-handed and in handcuffs, the modern day cyber thieves walked away with tens of thousands of sensitive political documents and are still unidentified. Now, in the latest twist, hacking tools themselves, likely stolen from the National Security Agency, are on the digital auction block. Once again, the usual suspects start with Russia – though there seems little evidence backing up the accusation. In addition, if Russia had stolen the hacking tools, it would be senseless to publicize the theft, let alo...

If You Only Read The New York Times And Washington Post, You Have No Idea The Soros Leak Happened By Peter Hasson Reporter, Associate Editor 8:48 AM 08/22/2016 On June 4, 2016, the New York Times editorial board wrote an article titled “Big Money Rearranges Its Election Bets.” “Both parties are busy exploiting the power of barely regulated super PACs to accept unlimited six and seven-figure donations for candidates,” the editors wrote. “At the same time, campaigns are concealing the names of other rich donors in ‘dark money’ operations palmed off as tax exempt ‘social welfare’ agencies supposedly dedicated to doing good, not to bare knuckle politics.” But two-and-a-half months later, when the internal workings of a powerful political network palmed off as a tax-exempt “social welfare” agency supposedly dedicated to doing good were released to the public — unveiling the big money ties to many of the left’s top social causes — the Times kept its readers in the dark. ...

American journalism is collapsing before our eyes By Michael Goodwin August 21, 2016 | 5:40am Donald Trump may or may not fix his campaign, and Hillary Clinton may or may not become the first female president. But something else happening before our eyes is almost as important: the complete collapse of American journalism as we know it. The frenzy to bury Trump is not limited to the Clinton campaign and the Obama White House. They are working hand-in-hand with what was considered the cream of the nation’s news organizations. The shameful display of naked partisanship by the elite media is unlike anything seen in modern America. The largest broadcast networks — CBS, NBC and ABC — and major newspapers like The New York Times and Washington Post have jettisoned all pretense of fair play. Their fierce determination to keep Trump out of the Oval Office has no precedent. Indeed, no foreign enemy, no terror group, no native criminal gang, suffers the daily beating that ...

AT&T, Apple, Google to work on 'robocall' crackdown By David Shepardson August 19, 2016 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 30 major technology and communication companies said on Friday they are joining the U.S. government to crack down on "robocalls," automated, prerecorded phone calls that regulators have labelled a "scourge." AT&T Inc , Google parent Alphabet Inc , Apple Inc , Verizon Communications Inc and Comcast Corp are among members of the "Robocall Strike Force" that held its first meeting with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. The strike force will report to the FCC by Oct. 19 on "concrete plans to accelerate the development and adoption of new tools and solutions," said AT&T Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson, chairman of the group. The strike force hopes to implement Caller ID verification standards to help block calls from spoofed phone numbers and consider a "Do Not Origi...

Yes, It's Possible to Hack the Election By RICHARD CLARKE NEWS ANALYSIS — Aug 19, 2016, 10:25 AM ET After reports of alleged Russian hacking into Democratic Party computer networks, some commentators have suggested that the Russians could hack the results of the U.S. elections. Other analysts have, well before this year’s campaign, suggested that election results in the U.S. could be electronically manipulated, including by our fellow Americans. So could an American election’s outcome be altered by a malicious actor on a computer keyboard? I have had three jobs that, together, taught me at least one thing: If it’s a computer, it can be hacked. For Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, I served as the White House senior cybersecurity policy adviser. For President Barack Obama, I served on his five-person post–Edward Snowden investigative group on the National Security Agency, intelligence and technology. And for over a decade I have advised American corporations o...