Category: Information Technology

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will require some financial institutions to disclose security breaches within 30 days of learning about them.

On Wednesday, the SEC adopted changes to Regulation S-P, which governs the treatment of the personal information of consumers. Under the amendments, institutions must notify individuals whose personal information was compromised “as soon as practicable, but not later than 30 days” after learning of unauthorized network access or use of customer data. The new requirements will be binding on broker-dealers (including funding portals), investment companies, registered investment advisers, and transfer agents.

“Over the last 24 years, the nature, scale, and impact of data breaches has transformed substantially,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said. “These amendments to Regulation S-P will make critical updates to a rule first adopted in 2000 and help protect the privacy of customers’ financial data. The basic idea for covered firms is if you’ve got a breach, then you’ve got to notify. That’s good for investors.”

Notifications must detail the incident, what information was compromised, and how those affected can protect themselves. In what appears to be a loophole in the requirements, covered institutions don’t have to issue notices if they establish that the personal information has not been used in a way to result in “substantial harm or inconvenience” or isn’t likely to.

The amendments will require covered institutions to “develop, implement, and maintain written policies and procedures” that are “reasonably designed to detect, respond to, and recover from unauthorized access to or use of customer information.” The amendments also:

• Expand and align the safeguards and disposal rules to cover both nonpublic personal information that a covered institution collects about its own customers and nonpublic personal information it receives from another financial institution about customers of that financial institution;
• Require covered institutions, other than funding portals, to make and maintain written records documenting compliance with the requirements of the safeguards rule and disposal rule;
• Conform Regulation S-P’s annual privacy notice delivery provisions to the terms of an exception added by the FAST Act, which provide that covered institutions are not required to deliver an annual privacy notice if certain conditions are met; and
• Extend both the safeguards rule and the disposal rule to transfer agents registered with the Commission or another appropriate regulatory agency.

The requirements also broaden the scope of nonpublic personal information covered beyond what the firm itself collects. The new rules will also cover personal information the firm has received from another financial institution.

SEC Commissioner Hester M. Peirce voiced concern that the new requirements may go too far.

“Today’s Regulation S-P modernization will help covered institutions appropriately prioritize safeguarding customer information,” she https://www.sec.gov/news/statement/peirce-statement-reg-s-p-051624 wrote. “Customers will be notified promptly when their information has been compromised so they can take steps to protect themselves, like changing passwords or keeping a closer eye on credit scores. My reservations stem from the breadth of the rule and the likelihood that it will spawn more consumer notices than are helpful.”

Regulation S-P hadn’t been substantially updated since its adoption in 2000.

Last year, the SEC adopted new regulations requiring publicly traded companies to disclose security breaches that materially affect or are reasonably likely to materially affect business, strategy, or financial results or conditions.

The amendments take effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register, the official journal of the federal government that publishes regulations, notices, orders, and other documents. Larger organizations will have 18 months to comply after modifications are published. Smaller organizations will have 24 months.

Public comments on the amendments are available here.

Pressing play on a Conner O’Malley video is a disorienting experience.

Could it be a continuation of a previous character or universe? Could it be another installation of Truth Hunters host Mark Seevers, O’Malley’s creation for the 2016 election that resembled Alex Jones if he were locked in a Wisconsin basement for two years, subsisting only on hot dog relish and stale buns? Sure. Could it be another video featuring the version of O’Malley hosting a late-night show on a bike, cruising through the streets of New York City while also in a blood feud with Greg Kinnear? Of course.

But the video could also be a one-off bit of brilliance, like “Endorphin Port,” a perfect and bizarre send-up of tech’s strange obsession with VR.

So when I saw O’Malley was dropping a stand-up special on his YouTube channel — an increasingly common move for comics — I had no clue what to expect. It was far from your average comedy special.

If you’re unfamiliar with the background and lore of O’Malley’s work, I’ve covered it for Mashable in the past. In general, his work is interested in the absurdity of the modern world. He often makes comedy centered on tech. But, instead of lampooning the companies or billionaires at the helm, he usually portrays a deranged everyman completely besotted by technocrats’ promises. Frequently, these characters intersect with the weird, rightwing manosphere that exists online, the folks who cosplay being in the military, eat far too much meat, and treat capitalism as some sort of religion.

“Imagine Joe Rogan without the money,” O’Malley’s character says in his latest work, which was a surprise moment of crowd-work clarity.

In the traditional sense, Stand Up Solutions is hardly a stand-up special, even if it was filmed in front of a live Brooklyn audience. O’Malley plays a character named Richard Eagleton, who gives a presentation on a 5G-powered AI avatar he created to do stand-up. If that sounds boring, I promise it is anything but.

I cannot begin to explain the avenues this video takes. There are lamentations on the Toyota Rav-4, background info on Des Plaines, Illinois, and so much about McDonald’s. There are some of the most vulgar images imaginable and a weird, somewhat touching backstory for why Eagleton embarked on his AI quest. There are moments of cultural criticism that somehow arise naturally from this deranged man onstage.

During the hour, O’Malley does a gonzo performance of stand-up, and there are moments where you feel like you’re actually watching a small-time AI evangelist do a real investor pitch. And, as someone who writes about the internet and tech, there are moments where things sound a hell of a lot like, say, a two-hour presentation from a tech giant promising how great AI will be for everyone.

There is a pitch-perfect reveal of what O’Malley’s character believes his AI tech could ultimately do — effectively force-feeding Americans AI politicians — and what it will do, which is help create prisons. And yes, again, I promise this special is funny as shit. It may also be the crassest you have ever watched.

Anyway, enough from me. I’ll embed the special at the bottom of this post. But if you’ve looked at all the AI headlines lately and felt a bit skeptical, this special is for you.

There’s a perfect little moment that totally sold me. O’Malley’s character is talking to the crowd, asking them to guess a problem with the AI he created. “Nobody wants it,” an audience member yells out.

O’Malley doesn’t break from his evangelist character. “Well, you have a negative attitude,” he answers. He then immediately goes on to eulogize a pair of Croatia’s leading vaping artists. It’s all nonsensical and exactly like the world we live in.

Good question!

First, a little about me: I’m not a lighting engineer, but I’ve tested and reviewed light bulbs for CNET for over five years now. That includes hundreds of hours in our homemade lighting lab — a climate-controlled room equipped with a spectrometer and an integrating sphere that lets us run the most scientific and accurate light bulb tests we can possibly run. I’ve also visited and written features about major North American lighting manufacturers such as Cree and GE to get a better understanding of their methods and standards. This is one of numerous LED buying guides and roundups that I try to update as often as possible.

We load each bulb we test into the center of our integrating sphere — a big, hollow ball with special, reflective paint coating the inside. Our spectrometer peeks in through a tiny hole in the side of the sphere, with a “baffle” that blocks it from looking directly at the light bulb. Instead, the bulb’s light bounces around inside, which lets our spectrometer take reliable, calibrated measurements for things like brightness and color temperature.

We log those brightness measurements every 10 minutes for 90 minutes, then take a final reading at the end. At that point, I plug the sphere’s power cord into a variety of dimmer switches, then measure for the average maximum and minimum settings across all of them while also keeping a close lookout for flicker or buzz.

Once a bulb we’re testing is done in the lab, we take a close look at things like light spread, tone and color quality. Our photo and video team (Tyler Lizenby, Chris Monroe and Vanessa Salas here in Louisville) are a huge help at this point, with standardized photography that lets us take a really close look at those metrics. They’re also just really damned good at taking pictures of light bulbs.

All of that said, the most important thing isn’t what I think when I’m taking readings in our lighting lab — it’s what you and your family think after screwing the bulbs in and turning them on in your living room or other area. Like I said, LEDs like these are designed to be durable and waterproof and last years, so it’s well worth buying ones that you’ll actually like living with. You’ve got a lot of good options these days, so there’s really no need to compromise. I’m just here to help you find those “just right” bulbs a bit faster — or more efficiently, you might say.

You may work with a minimal budget when shopping for a new gaming PC. And fortunately, the HP Victus is priced under $1000 while still giving you what you need. It’s built with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600G CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and an AMD Radeon RX 6400 graphics card. And just because it has an older GPU, that doesn’t mean you can’t still play all of the latest triple-A and indie games. 

The HP Victus can support up to 32GB of RAM and any storage you want, which means that you can save a good bit of cash by buying the prebuilt configuration and upgrading piecemeal as time goes on. And speaking of upgrades, this model features a second RAM slot and three storage drive bays, making upgrading a relatively fast and easy process. 

One drawback of this PC is the 350-watt power rating, so if you want to add a second storage drive or a more powerful GPU, you’ll need to drop in a more powerful PSU as well. Customers who purchased this gaming PC on HP’s website call out the company’s reliable customer service for troubleshooting any issues you may have during setup or your warranty period, as well as the fact that the Victus 15L is an excellent option for kids and teens looking to buy their first gaming PC.

HP Victus specs: CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G | GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6400 | RAM: 8GB | Storage: 256GB SSD