5/20/2017 1 Comment College Tuition debt crisis (#16)Today I finally was able to graduate from university and was able to receive my bachelors degree in Computer Science. I feel really thankful and appreciative of the people that I meet along the way and the new friends that I will meet. From talking to a lot of people that I have met, there was always a recurring topic that would come up, which was the amount of student debt that students have. The amount of student debt that there is in this country has been out of control within the last couple of years causing the economy to suffer and keeping millions of students in debt with most of them having more than $10K in debt. This also tends to demoralize many students from pursuing higher education cause the only possible way to pay for them is to take out loans.These loans tend to have a high interest rate and many adults are not able to pay it off even when they have graduated from school more than a decade ago. Many of these people only have two options, pay off the loans for the rest of their life or declare bankruptcy. Many of them declare bankruptcy cause they are not capable of paying for it. Even though this seems like the easiest option to choose, it also tends to have a bad consequence as it stays in their record that they are not capable of paying bills they have.
When it comes to this topic, I think that it is something that should be address more seriously than it currently is. I think the government should pay more attention to this issue before it continuous to get out of hand. I think that there should be some certain regulations that should be set up in order to make sure people who would want to go to Higher Education should be given the option to do so. One model that I think the US should adopt might be the educational system in Europe in which some countries offer free college to students. Once they graduate, they pay off the amount they owe by getting some pay cuts in their paychecks. They also don't take a lot of money so people don't have to worry about all their money going to pay off their college tuition.
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Recently there has been a new technology that is being tested within the laboratory and has made headlines. These technology that I am referring is a plastic bad, but not just any plastic bag. This plastic bag is designed to mimic the womb of a mammal such that premature animals can continue to develop in an environment that closely resembles a mother
s womb. Although this is such a great idea, it is still not available to test on humans, but it has had great results with animal. This technology has the potential to save countless lives of premature babies and make sure that they can fully develop and grow normally. Personally I think that is a great technology to have for several reasons. I think that it has the potential to reduce the side effects or damaged is a result of being born premature, such as developing breathing problems. Breathing problems tends to result due to the lungs not being fully developed yet when the baby was born. According to an article found in Romper website, it mentions how “ your baby's lungs don't fully develop until the end of the third trimester”. Baby’s that are born before the third trimester, I feel are the ones that will benefit the most from this technology as it is during this time is crucial in the development of babies. This technology behind this also has the potential to change the lives of adults as well. I mainly see this technology being able to be used in adults who, for example, have sever spinal injuries the best possible way of reconstructing their spine is with the use of embryonic stem cell as they can be easy created and used within the womb of an animal. This could be really beneficial as it will not only provide an environment where stems cells can excel in their natural environment. Even thought this seems like a good idea to have, it still has some ethical issues within itself, mainly when it comes to trying to mess with nature in trying to recreate the process of creating life. This comes with its own issues such as any potential problems or dangers that could arise from this sort of technology. Whether there could be any reverse side effects that may have not been taken into consideration when the experiments first began. It can also cause a great deal of debate from people who are advocates of human life and against human experimentation. https://www.romper.com/p/11-problems-premature-babies-may-face-later-in-life-22437 Crimes happen in a daily basis and can rage from anything a shoplifting to homicides. We mainly hear about these incidents throughout the media, whether it be through News stations as CNN, NBC, etc. or reading it online such as Facebook, Yahoo news, and many more platforms. When people here about these crimes, they get a basic overview of what happened, how many people got hurt, and other stuff as well as showing us the place where the incident occurred. This censored version can be viewed by anyone of different ages cause there is nothing disturbing to the users, but that has changed in recent years as more and more crimes are being streamed suing Facebook Live. Facebook introduced Facebook Live as giving users the ability to live stream themselves or show they were they are. Facebooks mainly did this, in my opinion, as a way of competing against other social media platforms that already have that, such as YouTube, Twitter, etc. During the time, Facebook didn’t think that these new tool created to connect the world could be used to live stream the deaths of people. When streaming through Facebook, there is no censorship at all and users have the option to make their stream public or not, so anyone is able to view the videos. This has come with a dire consequence as people have been able to stream graphical content that anyone is able to view over and over again. These videos also start trending and get even more popularity through Facebook itself. There have been several graphical murders that occurred with the most recent being the death of an elderly African American in Minnesota as the killer live streamed the whole event. There were even points in which he would stream the body of the elderly man, especially his face, as it was were the killer shot him at. With advances in technology, we always see the benefits that it tends to cause, but we sometimes don’t know what the consequences may be. Personally, I think this is a great example because it is a technology that is already out in the public that was created for a purpose, but is used for another thing. It is also a challenge to fix as well cause it is already being used by millions of people and this technology doesn’t have any type of censoring available. Even after reading the article, it talks about how Facebook is always is already having teams created to monitor what is being streamed as well as creating algorithms that will prevent graphical videos from trending across the internet. Facebook still has a lot of work ahead of itself in order to make sure that something like this or different happens in the future. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-minnesota-police-facebook-idUSKCN0ZN2MN 4/28/2017 2 Comments Alive or Dead user account (#13)As advances in modern medicine continue to expand the life expectancy of people within the world, we tend to perceive death of someone we knew as tragic. Our perception of death has changed within the past couple of decades when we would see them as just another phase of life, especially when people had a lower life expectancy when compared to today. As time passed by, we see how the advancement in technology has allowed us to keep tangible pictures of the loved ones for the future. Fast forwarding to now, April 2017, we can store pictures of people in different places such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. Most of these accounts tend to be public so we are able to see their pictures of them and the adventures they have. When the person is no longer with us, their social media accounts are still on and everyone is able to view their pictures and things they posted when they were alive. People who don’t even know that they are not alive will even send them friend request or even tag them into things they are doing. Currently there aren’t really any rules or regulation, that I am aware about, that deals with the removal of social media accounts for people who aren’t alive anymore. According to an according I found online called “Dead Facebook users will soon outnumber the living” states “30 million Facebook users died in the first eight years of its existence. In fact, 428 of them die every hour, so they’re practically dropping like flies. And every day, these dormant accounts receive friend requests, get tagged in photos, and sometimes, they’re even wished a happy birthday.” Even though this doesn’t seem to be an immediate life or death problem for people, but it does bring into the light the question as too when should these types of accounts be deactivated and who should be the one to give the command, whether it be the family of the deceased user or the social media company itself? My personal opinion on this is that social media sites, like Facebook, should be able to take down a deceased persons account within a year or so. If the family or loved ones want to keep user account alive, then they should either ask or petition for it to be up. But if they do that, the account should be modified in such a way that it should not accept friend request, messages, and other things that a regular, living user would use. It should also have something that is a give away that this users account is not active because the person is deceased. Even when I was thinking about this, I realized that this itself poses an ethical issue when it comes to Facebook itself knowing that a person is deceased and therefor taking action against that. Whether they should have access to that specific and somewhat private information is up for debate, but when there are literally millions of inactive accounts online, it would probably be a good idea to start deleting some of them as time goes by. http://www.theloop.ca/dead-facebook-users-will-soon-outnumber-the-living/ 4/21/2017 5 Comments Alexa hears all (#12)As we begin to integrate technology more into our daily lives, we tend to rely on it more. We use assistants such as Siri or Google when we would like to do a specific task without having to type it. It can range from asking for the weather to having it search for something online or even play music. We also have other more upcoming pieces of technology such as Amazon’s Alexa, which is solely used listen to the user and execute what the user requests. In order for Alexa to determine when the user said the activation word “Alexa”, the device is always recording everything that it is listen to. It then sends the recorders somewhere else where Amazon determines whether the user at any moment said “Alexa”. These recording, according to Amazon are store somewhere in an Amazon server and are deleted in a “later time”. The exact time that they are stored range and there is no clear indication as to when they will get deleted. Given that Amazon’s device records the conversations, it will be useful in solving investigations such as the one I found online and that I also linked. According to the police report, there was murder that took place in a house. The exact occurrences as to how it happened are unknown, but the only clew lies within an Amazon echo device that was playing music when the incident occurred. Investigators are asking for Amazon to provide them with the recording for that specific date and time. This mainly goes back to the design of the Amazon echo in which it is always listen to its surrounding for the activation keyword. What this means is that there could be a recording of what happened the day of the incident stored somewhere in Amazon’s servers. Even though these device holds vital information to solving the crime at hand, Amazon is not just going to hand it over cause that is private information of the user and they are not just going to hand over private information of the user without there being a legal statement or lawsuit in this case against Amazon itself. This case is similar to the “investigation into the 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, pitted Apple, which built one of the shooter's mobile phones, against the FBI, which wanted the tech giant's help cracking the device's PIN code.” When it comes to these type of scenarios, there will always be a constant struggle with keeping people information private and the government wanting access to their information. http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/28/tech/amazon-echo-alexa-bentonville-arkansas-murder-case-trnd/ 4/14/2017 3 Comments Dangers of webcams (blogpost #11) We live in a time in when everyone has at least a computer at their house, whether it be a personal laptop or a desktop. We always tend to have these devices and others connected to the internet and the average person doesn’t really think about having their devices hacked by other people. This is especially concerning when it comes to most modern day laptops coming with webcams already installed in them or they can be easily bought at the store and could be as cheap as $20. The issues, as you might have guessed already, is that people can easily hack into your laptop and hijack your laptop/desktop and could do several things that they would like to. One thing that is most concerning is that they can turn on or off the webcam without you ever noticing. This is something that a parent would be extremely worried about as they would not feel safe or comfortable in having someone spy on them. According to the article “The Dangers of Webcams”, it mentions how “Webcams pose a serious risk to children because it allows an open window into the actives and lives (and bedrooms) of children and teens, and sexual predators are using this technology to their own perverted advantage to target and sexually abuse innocent children.” This is the thing that is the most concerning to me, just knowing that people like that are able to just watch children without them knowing.
In my opinion, I feel like the average adult should be familiar with risk of technology has, and not just look at the benefits that it has. People should be aware of the threats and dangers that are becoming more and more talked about and the negative impacts that it would have. Such as this example as was previously mentioned, if parents were more knowledgable about this sort of things, they would be more cautious of having technology around the house. Whether it be making sure to disconnect the computer from the internet when not being used, covering up webcams and audio ports so nobody listens to conversation, or even making sure that your computer doesn’t have any viruses. People should be more proactive making sure that they know as much as possible about the threats and dangers that come with buy a computer or anything other piece of technology has. http://www.tellinitlikeitis.net/2008/07/the-dangers-of-webcams.html 4/6/2017 2 Comments Wearable technology (Blog #10) We live in a world that is heavily dominated by technology such that everywhere we go, technology plays a role in shaping the way we live in the modern world. Whether it be the creation of autonomous cars that are capable of driving themselves from A to B or like the phones that we in our pockets right now. Within recent years, there has been a shift in the use of technology to more wearable technologies such as Apple’s iWatch, Fitbit sport watches and wristbands, and the list can go one. What these devices offer is sometimes more than what the phone itself is able to do, such as measure your heart rate, sleep patterns, level of exercise, and many more. Some people like these features and just the convenience that these devices offer the user, but all this comes at a price. If you have heard the expression before “Nothin in life is free”, then you know that all this comes at a price. Even though you did pay for the device with your hard earned money, you are also paying the company as well for the amount of time you use their product. In this case, you don’t pay the company with cash, necessarily, you are paying them with you data. Data that could range anywhere from your level of activity to your sleep patterns, companies will use the data to collect from you to try to figure out ways to improve their product or they can even sell your data to other companies so they can try to sell you their product. That is how big companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, and many more are able to offer there product for free because they are just selling your information to other companies. Which goes back to what quote mentioned earlier about there is no such thing as something free. Another threat that people are more concerned when it comes to wearable technology is that they can easily be hacked. According to the article “A New Wake of Gadgets Can Collect Your Personal Information Like Never Before” mentions how “According to two security experts, wearable computing devices can get hacked, but it remains unclear as to whether or not there's real motivation in stealing data from wearable devices just yet.” This can be quite alarming for many of us, just knowing that other people are able to hack our devices and know things about us that we wouldn’t like to other people to know about us. One issue that comes to mind is the fact that some wearable technologies are able to gather GPS location of the user, which can be really frightening to know that someone knows exactly where you are at all times is scary. http://www.businessinsider.com/privacy-fitness-trackers-smartwatches-2014-10 2/24/2017 1 Comment Blog Post #5Within recent times, the US government has been trying to get more of the American people’s information as it deems it necessary for national security. It is weird how they need to get every American Citizen’s information, even information from other citizens in other countries, especially when it comes to wanting access to their text messages. Even though I do agree to some extent, that the government should be aware of what its people are doing, I don’t think it should be to the extent that they are trying to do to. Especially when it comes to wanting access to people’s messages. Messages that are shared between two people should only be known by them, unless they decide to share it with their friends. When it comes to government wanting to also be aware of what the “chisme” is about, then that is something completely different. First, I think it is because the government doesn’t have any reason to want to know what those people are talking about as it is non of their business. In the situation that they do want/need permission, they should ask the user(s) whether they can access this information and what information they are only able to access. After all, you can’t just let the government know everything that you are doing because there are such things that you wouldn’t even let nobody know about, maybe not even family members. This type of social pact should be used in order to make sure that the lines are finely drawn as to what the government is able to access and what it is not able to. These attempt at getting user specific information is something I came across when reading the article “Tech Companies like Gmail, WhatsApp…” as it talks about how the government is now trying to creates rules to include in Section 67C of the Information Technology Act that “will spell out what type of data has to be stored, in which format, and for how long, according to three members of the newly-formed committee. All this is so that law-enforcement agencies can access the information if they need it.” Companies in the United States, such as Google, Facebook, Snapchat, etc., would have to abide by these rules given the fact that they must abide by the laws of the United States. Even though the government will require such a thing, it doesn’t mean that the tech industry will want to follow by their rules, especially since they want to make sure to keep their user’s data private. For instance, WhatsApp promises their user end-to-end encryptions of messages to their clients, which already makes the messages hard to access if you are not the person sending or receiving them. Although there are ways to get around such issues, these protocols were set up in place to make sure that the user’s privacy was kept safe from everyone, including the government. When it comes to something like this, I don’t think that the government has the right to access people’s information, without their consent. At that point, it becomes invasion of privacy which is something that is protected under the government itself. Even if the user’s were to give the government permission to access their data, I don’t agree that government should be aware of what people are doing. Even if it deals with the invasion of privacy or not, it is not a valid reason to invade people’s privacy. Sources: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/ites/tech-companies-like-gmail-whatsapp-may-be-asked-to-store-user-information/articleshow/54839888.cms 2/10/2017 2 Comments Rogue NationRoque Twitter AccountsRecently within the news, there have been several issues with Trump wanting to sensor out important information regarding climate change. As Trump believes that climate change is not a real even that is occurring around the world, he wants to make sure that the nation is also aware about this. He is capable of doing this by censoring many government agencies that release information regarding climate change. This censorship of information has resulted in the creation of twitter accounts that are similar to actual twitter accounts of government agencies. These twitter accounts are called rogue twitter accounts because they almost have identical symbols to the government agencies they are copying, except for some small changes. Nobody really knows who created these rogue Twitter accounts, but most of them in general have more followers than the actual Twitter agency accounts. These rogue Twitter accounts tend to talk about some of the things that official government agency Twitter accounts are not able to talk about. These accounts have been under debate recently, mainly due to the fact that they are apposing the "rule" of Trump. This results in several groups of people being affected by this which mainly include Twitter, Trump Administration, and mainly people who follow these accounts. These people can range from just people living within the United States or people in other countries, after all, Twitter is open for everyone. The only issue that I think might cause there to be issues might be the fact that the Trump administration is going to try to shut these Twitter pages down. This type of action from the result would result in their being a debate about the topic of the government trying to regulate people’s speech within social media. This will result in a controversial issue that could cause a great amount of chaos internally. This could be as bad or worse than the rights that happened at Berkeley earlier this year in (either late Jan. or early Feb. 2017). I personally think that this is a direct way to appose freedom of speech because the Trump administration is trying to keep us in the dark. People should have the right to know about the things that are happening around them, especially if is something that is going to affect either them or their children. Such things like this should always be open to people so they can be aware of what is happening around them. I think that this is a good way to make sure that people are not kept in the dark about things that are happening around them. Links to helpful pages: www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/01/27/512007632/its-not-just-the-park-service-rogue-federal-twitter-accounts-multiply www.sltrib.com/home/4919308-155/rogue-fed-workers-use-alt-twitter-accounts 2/3/2017 3 Comments Online privacyWe live in a world that is connected to the internet in one way or another. Whether it be through smart phones, computer, or even the latest in wearable technology, everything is either directly or indirectly connected to the internet. With this increase in the use of technology, we begin to encounter issues that generations in the past never did, one being internet privacy. Internet privacy has become a big issue recently in the news as more and more people are worried about the type of information other people can obtain from them. There are companies that actually benefit from people's online information as it is as good as gold. Well known companies include Facebook, Uber, Amazon, etc. Facebook is a social media company that allows users to create accounts for free and provides a platform for people to communicate with the world around them. Facebook is a popular social media platform where is has approximately 1.49 billions accounts. Even with so many accounts, how is Facebook able to keep its services for free? Well, it really isn't free because Facebook sells your data to other companies for profit. According to the website, "The price of free: how Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Google sell you to advertisers" talks about how in Facebook "We collect the content and other information you provide when you use our Services, including when you sign up for an account, create or share, and message or communicate with others. This can include information in or about the content you provide, such as the location of a photo or the date a file was created. We also collect information about how you use our Services, such as the types of content you view or engage with or the frequency and duration of your activities.” This type of information is what Facebook is selling to advertisements companies that target their advertisements to specific users. Some simple examples of this can include a user hovering their mouse over a produce they see on Facebook and the next time they log into another website, they see the same product. Is it a coincidence or not? What about wearable technology? Wearable technology is another device that is collecting information about the user, whether it be something as simple as a Fitbit for measure your heart rate up to the latest smart watches from Apple or Samsung. These wearable devices collect information about the user as well and even though it has the possibility of having a positive impact, many people are worried that the data being collected by these devices will be sold for profit. Knowing the types of advertisements people get just by using the web are bad enough, now image the possibilities that obtaining more personal user data can have. Whether it will create a positive or negative impact is yet to be determined. www.pcworld.com/article/2986988/privacy/the-price-of-free-how-apple-facebook-microsoft-and-google-sell-you-to-advertisers.html |
AuthorHi, my name is Jose Sanchez, but many of my friends tend to call me Pepe. I am a Computer Science major at CSUMB and this is my blog post. Enjoy! :) Archives
May 2017
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