Popular digital exchange Coinbase has announced support for Bitcoin Cash. “Bitcoin Cash was created by a fork on August 1st, 2017, ” a blog post reads. “All customers who held a Bitcoin balance on Coinbase at the time of the fork will now see an equal balance of Bitcoin Cash available in their Coinbase account. Your Bitcoin Cash balance will reflect your Bitcoin balance at the time of the Bitcoin Cash Fork, which occurred at 13:20 UTC, August 1, 2017.” The recent announcement has disrupted the markets. Bitcoin has dropped 12 percent, with the other two cryptocurrencies supported via Coinbase not faring too well either. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Coinbase Adds Support For Bitcoin Cash
In America the Internal Revenue Service used to pick who got audited based on math mistakes or discrepancies with W-2 forms — but not any more. schwit1 shares an article from the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law describing their new technique: The IRS is now engaging in data mining of public and commercial data pools (including social media) and creating highly detailed profiles of taxpayers upon which to run data analytics. This article argues that current IRS practices, mostly unknown to the general public, are violating fair information practices. This lack of transparency and accountability not only violates federal law regarding the government’s data collection activities and use of predictive algorithms, but may also result in discrimination. While the potential efficiencies that big data analytics provides may appear to be a panacea for the IRS’s budget woes, unchecked these activities are a significant threat to privacy [PDF]. Other concerns regarding the IRS’s entrée into big data are raised including the potential for political targeting, data breaches, and the misuse of such information. While tax evasion cost the U.S.$3 trillion between 2000 and 2009, one of the report’s authors argues that people should be aware âoethat what they say and do onlineâ could be used against them. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous reader quotes CNET: Anthem, the largest health insurance company in the U.S., has agreed to settle a class action lawsuit over a 2015 data breach for a record $115 million, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs. The settlement still has to be approved by US District Court Judge Lucy Koh, who is scheduled to hear the case on August 17 in San Jose, California. And Anthem, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for confirmation and comment, isn’t admitting any admitting any wrongdoing, according to a statement it made to CyberScoop acknowledging the settlement. But if approved, it would be the largest data breach settlement in history, according to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, who announced the agreement Friday. The funds would be used to provide victims of the data breach at least two years of credit monitoring and to reimburse customers for breach-related expenses. The settlement would also guarantee a certain level of funding for “information security to implement or maintain numerous specific changes to its data security systems, including encryption of certain information and archiving sensitive data with strict access controls, ” the plaintiff attorneys said. The breach compromised data for 80 million people, including their social security numbers, birthdays, street addresses (and email addresses) as well as income data. The $115 million settlement averages out to $1.43 for every person who was affected. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous reader writes: Wendy’s is adding self-service ordering kiosks “to at least 1, 000 restaurants, or about 15% of its stores, ” reports the Los Angeles Times, while McDonald’s and Panera Bread are now planning to add kiosks to every restaurant. “Lots of restaurants, not just fast-food chains, are really trying to mitigate the costs of higher wages, ” says one market research firm, while also citing a survey which found 40% of millennials willing to use kiosks (compared to 30% of restaurant-goers overall). But in some cases this means more work for human employees. Quartz points out that McDonalds doesn’t plan to reduce its workforce after installing kiosks, and Panera Bread “has said that at some locations where it has ordering kiosks, it has actually increased human hours to help the kitchen keep up with the higher number of orders that come in through the more efficient ordering system.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
dcblogs writes from a report via Computerworld: The University of California is laying off a group of IT workers at its San Francisco campus as part of a plan to move work offshore. Laying off IT workers as part of a shift to offshore is somewhere between rare and unheard-of in the public sector. The layoffs will happen at the end of February, but before the final day arrives the IT employees expect to train foreign replacements from India-based IT services firm HCL. The firm is working under a university contract valued at $50 million over five years. This layoff affects 17% of UCSF’s total IT staff, broken down this way: 49 IT permanent employees will lose their jobs, along with 12 contract employees and 18 vendor contractors. This number also includes 18 vacant IT positions that won’t be filled, according to the university. Governments and publicly supported institutions, such as UC, have contracted with offshore outsourcers, but usually it’s for new IT work or to supplement an existing project. The HCL contract with UCSF can be used by other UC campuses, which means the layoffs may expand across its 10 campuses. HCL is a top user of H-1B visa workers. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
An anonymous reader writes: Last month a man sent an email to Elon Musk explaining how his Tesla Model S with Autopilot activated may have saved a pedestrian’s life. Now, it appears Autopilot may have saved the life of a Tesla Model X driver. CNBC reports: “A Missouri man says his Tesla helped saved his life by driving him to the hospital during a life-threatening emergency. Joshua Neally is a lawyer and Tesla owner from Springfield, Missouri, who often uses the semi-autonomous driving system called Autopilot on his Tesla Model X. The system has come under fire after it was involved in a fatal Florida crash in May, but Neally told online magazine Slate that Autopilot drove him 20 miles down a freeway to a hospital, while Neally suffered a potentially fatal blood vessel blockage in his lung, known as a pulmonary embolism. The hospital was right off the freeway exit, and Neally was able to steer the car the last few meters and check himself into the emergency room, the report said.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.