Posts

Week 15

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  My Not So Social, Social Media Ever since I started using the internet, my parents have instilled the values in me to be cautious of what I put online, since it will be out there forever. Obviously, being a 10 year old kid when I started a Facebook account, I was extremely worried about the things I said and liked because of my parent's influence. Thus, I generally only played awful Facebook games to pass the time. Now, I can't thank my parents enough for making me afraid because of the collecting of data Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. conducts on their consumers. I remember how terrifying it was the first time I got a targeted ad: it was for an Xbox controller after just looking up on amazon the price of one. After this event, I have been extremely careful about using a VPN, what browser I use, and what search engine I use. How Large is my Online Footprint? Today, I own a Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and a LinkedIn. However, I hardly ever use any of these services for...
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Week 13

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  Whistleblowers Summary For this blogpost, I am going to to discuss what I learned from Julia Mays' presentation on whistleblowers. Before her presentation, the only time I heard the term "whistleblower" was in reference to Edward Snowden, who released the information about the government illegally spying on American citizens. Whistleblowers are necessary in our society, especially today, to expose the corruption of governments/corporations who are abusing their employees, exploiting deals, or conducting illegal activities (like surveillance), on its consumers/people. What I found particularly interesting about the negatives of a whistleblower is that is revolves around the retaliation from companies. As Julia points out, whistleblowers " will most likely lose their job and other companies may be hesitant to hire that person due to their loyalty,". This fact is sadly what deters people from exposing corruption since the person knows that they will lose their li...
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Week 12 Key Post

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  Total Information Awareness What is it?  Total Information Awareness, otherwise known as Terrorism Information Awareness, was a 240 million dollar program created after the tragic event of 9/11 in order to prevent terrorist attacks from happening in the future ( privacysos ). The TIA used predictive policing to connect specific information about an individual in order to anticipate and prevent an act of terrorism.  They collect, “government records of all kinds and individuals' medical and financial records, political beliefs, travel history, prescriptions, buying habits, communications (phone calls, e-mails and Web surfing), school records, personal and family associations, and so on,” ( aclu ). Terrifyingly, this gave the government complete access to everything about a person, allowing for a digital profile of an individual to be made that predicted their patterns within their day to day life. Through these developed patterns, the government was able to hypothesize e...
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Week 11 Storm

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 Privacy is Dying I have always been skeptical about putting personal information online, as well as conscious about the risks involved with sharing my life with the world. Recently, Google is being sued for 5 billion dollars for tracking and taking "potentially embarrassing" information while its user was in incognito mode. According to Ethan Baron,  " Google continues to track, collect, and identify their browsing data in real time, in contravention of federal and   state laws  on wiretapping and in violation of consumers' rights to privacy," ( Baron ). Obviously, this is  terrifying and fear-inducing for the millions of people that use Google chrome, having their every click tracked and site visited stored away on a computer somewhere. In addition, the level of invasion is equivalent  to having one's home invaded, trashed, and completely robbed. Google chrome itself my not store your activity, but its ad manager and analytics will track what you do. Then...
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Week 10 Storm

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  Diffusion Theory of  Refrigeration Pioneers/Innovators When we first think of refrigeration, we picture the antique blue ice boxes that our grandparents used to store their food. However, refrigeration extends farther back than the simple rectangle we see today. In the 18th-century, ice harvesting was the only form of refrigeration available, in which servants in England would go and collect ice in the winter and store it in ice houses . Ice houses, " were places where the sheets of ice were packed in salt, wrapped in flannel, and stored underground to keep them frozen until summer,"  ( historyofrefrigeration ) .  While not the most  conventional  form of refrigeration, it aided in slowing the decomposition process of fruit, butter, and vegetables during the summer. This early innovation pioneered the development of the box that we use to this day by creating the idea for a personalized food storage system. The man William Cullen is credited to creating t...
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Week 8 Storm

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  Mobile Game History For this blog post, I will be focusing on what I learned from Tift's presentation on mobile games. As a game design major, I found this presentation particularly interesting as in our major, there is surprisingly not an abundance of focus on the development of mobile games, despite them being the main money-maker for the games industry.  As is pointed out in Tift's presentation, mobile game's make up about 77.2 billion dollars out of the 159.3 billion dollar industry, or a whopping 48% of its total income. For me, this information is exceedingly useful as throughout my college career, I have focused mainly on developing games for the PC, with only an afterthought of making a mobile game. The reason for this logic is that mobile games have a stigma of being repetitive: the same game republished over and over again with a different appearance. Since the market is incredibly saturated, it is difficult to strike rich from making a mobile game as it will li...
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Week 7 Key Post: Netflix

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  Netflix: The Streaming King   Netflix needs no introduction. The king of video streaming, Netflix has weaseled its way into the homes of families all across the globe. But how did Netflix extend its influence? Where did it all start? In this key post, I will be discussing the history of Netflix, its influence on the video industry, and pitfalls it has faced over its twenty-three years of existence.  History   The two people pictured above are Reed Hastings (left) and Marc Randolph (right), the founders of Netflix. While according to this article by Dave Butler the stories about Netflix's history differs between Hastings and Randolph, the discrepancies between the two revolve around taking additional credit for Netflix's creation, or specifically,  Hastings attributing not paying a late fee for late rental returns as the reason why Netflix exists.  Netflix was created in 1997 as a way to rent movies through the internet. Within the next year, the website ...
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