5.1 Beneficial and Harmful Effects

Blog Post Reflection

  1. Come up with three of your own Beneficial and corresponding Harmful Effects of Computing

    Benefits

    • people have access to many recources they can use to study for tests and even find free ones so they don’t have to pay money.
    • people starting businesses can use the platforms on the internet to advertise their product and put up ads.
    • we can contact people a lot easier and don’t have to meet them in person to convey a message.

      Harms

  2. the internet can be used for cyberbullying or hurting others.
  3. people can additcted to the things they find on the internet, such as social media platforms.

  4. People may start to depend to much on it and even misuse it to search up answers to their problems.

  5. Benefits and Harmful Effects of my own personal project based on 5.1
 HARMS:  BENEFITS:
 1.
People may depend on the food plans/recources too much
  1.
Saves time by providing quick and easy recipes you can choose from
 2.  2. 
It is perfect for someone who is health conscious as it helps them develop healthy eating habits and provides meal plans according to their liking
 3.  3. 
Saves money because provides you with recipes you can make using ingredints you already have, so you don't have to go buy more or takeout.
  1. Talk about dopamine issues above. Real? Parent conspiracy? Anything that is impacting your personal study and success in High School?

Dopamine issues is a real thing many people go through. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter made in your brain. It plays a role as a “reward center” and in many body functions, including memory, movement, motivation, mood, attention and more. It’s made in your brain and acts as a chemical messenger, communicating messages between nerve cells in your brain and your brain and the rest of your body. Things like social media and video games can impact people a lot as they release happy chemicals when people use them, therefore also making them addicting and hard to let go of. I personally don’y play video games, but I do sometimes get carried away with media platforms like youtube and instagram.

5.2 Digital Empowerment

  1. How does someone empower themself in a digital world? The digial world has it’s many perks, but in the end it is still a dangerous world. Someone can empower themselves both in postive and negative ways. For example, an entrepreneur can empower themselves by using the internet to advertise their product, or a student can empower themselves by using recources found on the internet to study and improve in area they are weak in. On the other hand, people can also misuse it. Since it is a virtual world and we can’t see who is on the other side of the screen, it makes it easier to bully and hurt people.

  2. How does someone that is empowered help someone that is not empowered? Describe something you could do at Del Norte HS.

Books like SAT prep books or even AP books are really expensive nowdays, making them hard to afford by many people. Someone who is empowered and has access to these books but no longer uses them can let people who cant’t afford the books use them to study.

  1. Is paper or red tape blocking digital empowerment? Are there such barriers at Del Norte? Elsewhere?

I believe it is, because many students don’t have the same privilages as other students to afford certain things like electronics to have access to the same resources as many student have.

  1. Answer with an opinion and learnings so far this year: What are the pros/cons of internet blockers at routers and the lack of admin passwords on lab machines at school?

I think it’s really good that the school has put some restrictions to the recources students have access to because many times people may misuse them and access things that aren’t apporiate. However the con of this is that many websites and recources that we students actually need for school purposes are also blocked, which limits the amount of resources we have access to for school projects.

  1. What concerns do you have personally about the digital divide? For yourself or for others.

Personally, I have no problems or concerns about the digital divide, however some people are greatly affcted due to this divide, as they don’t have the money to buy a computer or phone to access the resources that many of us are privelaged to have. This concerns me as I believe it’s not fair for those people, because they have to go through a lot of trouble, especially students whose teachers use the internet and computers to access school material.

5.3 Computing Bias

Intentional or Purposeful bias (Crossover Group Up, 10 minutes)

  • Google “What age groups use Facebook” vs “… TikTok”? What does the data say? Is there purposeful exclusion in these platforms? Is it harmful? Should it be corrected? Is it good business?

According to Google the largest Facebook audience in 2021 is men aged between 25 and 34, accounting for 19% of total potential reach. Men using Facebook between the ages of 18-24 make up 15%, while female users between the ages of 24-35 are responsible for 13%. While the percentage of U.S.-based TikTok users by age: 10-19 – 32.5%, 20-29 – 29.5%, 30-39 – 16.4%, 40-49 – 13.9%, 50+ – 7.1%.

This data shows that the younger generation is more into tiktok, while the older generation is more into facebook. This may be because of the “age” difference of the two palatforms, but also because tiktok is more based on entertainment, while facebook is more informational, which the older generation might find more interesting. This is not harmful, and it is good business for both.

  • Why do virtual assistants have female voices? Amazon, Alexa Google, Apple Siri. Was this purposeful? Is it harmful? Should it be corrected? Is it good business?

According to google as tech futurist and author Bernard Marr tells Cosmopolitan UK, “Research might suggest that humans have a preference for the sound of female voices, and studies have found that female voices tend to articulate vowel sounds more clearly which makes them easier to understand.

I believe that this shouldn’t be harmful in the sense that at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what gender the voice is, we just need them to answer our questions, so this shouldn’t cause problems until people make it a problem with their opinions.

  • Talk about an algorithm that influences your decisions, think about these companies (ie FAANG - Facebook, Amazon, Apple,Netflix, Google)

The Netflix algorithm uses item-item similarity measurements to identify further content that is similar to the content a member has already watched before returning to the content that is most like the member’s already consumed content.

  • HP computers are racist.

I believe that HP computers are not racist, and that it was just a lack of experiment that caused the computer to fail to recognize the man in the video. The company should have experimented with different colored people so it wouldn’t fail to work for people that aren’t white.

5.4 Crowdsourcing

Think of a use case for crowdsourcing in you project …

  • CompSci has 150 ish principles students. Describe a crowdsource idea and how you might initiate it in our environment?

During the Night of the Museum, we can have students take a survey about their projects and projects they might have liked.

  • What about Del Norte crowdsourcing? Could your project be better with crowdsourcing?

I believe crowdscouring would be great for our project as we can learn ways to improve it by asking for people’s opinions and features that they would want to be added or needs to be improved.

  • What kind of data could you capture at N@tM to make evening interesting? Perhaps use this data to impress Teachers during finals week.

We can capture data about people who liked our project or want improvements. For my groups project, we could have a page for users to enter their opinions, maybe a text box where users can enter their experience and that would be stored for us to see. We can also personally question our peers and ask about improvements or features they liked or didn’t like.

5.5 Legal and Ethical Concerns

  1. When you create a GitHub repository it requests a license type. Review the license types in relationship to this Tech Talk and make some notes in your personal blog.

    • GitHub offers several license options to choose from when creating a repository. These licenses determine how users can use and distribute the code in the repository. Here are a few license types and what they do (I had to search up what each did)

    • MIT License: This license allows users to use, copy, modify, and distribute the code as long as they include a copy of the license in their work.

    • Apache License 2.0: This license allows users to use, copy, modify, and distribute the code, as well as use it for commercial purposes. However, they must include a copy of the license in their work and provide proper attribution.

    • GPL v3 License: This license requires that users who use, copy, modify, or distribute the code must make the source code available to others and use the same license for their work.

    • BSD 3-Clause License: This license allows users to use, copy, modify, and distribute the code, but they must include a copy of the license in their work and provide proper attribution.

  2. In your blog, summarize the discussions and personal analysis on Software Licenses/Options, Digital Rights, and other Legal and Ethical thoughts from this College Board topic.

The discussions highlight the importance of choosing the right license for a particular software to determine how others can use and build upon the code. The license typically includes information on the scope of use, such as whether the software can be used for commercial purposes, and any restrictions on the number of users or computers the software can be installed on. It also outlines any conditions for modifying or distributing the code, and any warranties or guarantees provided by the developer. Some commonly used licenses include the MIT License, Apache License 2.0, GPL v3 License, BSD 3-Clause License, and Creative Commons License.

  1. Make a license for your personal (blog) and Team repositories for the CPT project. Be sure to have a license for both Team GitHub repositories (frontend/backend). Document license(s) you picked and why. FYI, frontend, since it is built on GitHub pages may come with a license and restrictions. Document in blog how team made license choice and process of update.

5.6 Safe Computing

  1. Describe PII you have seen on project in CompSci Principles.

Some that I have seen are when we log in or sign up for something and have to provide our name and the login information such as username, pasword, ect. Another I have seen is through githib, when making a repo.

  1. What are your feelings about PII and your personal exposure?

I think PII are needed to some extent, because it helps people/websites identify who we are in order for us to access the right information. I think that providing someone with our name and gmail is okay, however some information like adresses are sensative and shouldn’t be given out carelessley. From my own personal experience, I am okay with giving out my name and email address, but when it comes to my homes address or giving out too much personal information, I don’t give it out easily.

  1. Describe good and bad passwords? What is another step that is used to assist in authentication.

I think a bad password could be a password that contains information everyone knows, like your name, or birthday. Bad passwords are easily guessed, while good passwords are hard to figure out and are secure. Another step that is used to assist in authentication could be birthday, email, phone number, address, ect.

  1. Try to describe Symmetric and Asymmetric encryption.

The use of the same key for encryption and decryption is referred to as symmetric encryption. This means that in order to encrypt and decrypt the data, both the sender and the receiver must have access to the same key. On the other hand, asymmetric encryption employs 2 different keys for encryption and decryption. For encryption, one key is used, and for decryption, a separate key is used as. In other words, the sender can encrypt the data using their encryption key, and the recipient can decrypt the data using their decryption key.

  1. Provide an example of encryption we used in AWS deployment.

  2. Describe a phishing scheme you have learned about the hard way. Describe some other phishing techniques.

I haven’t had to learn it the hard way, but I have recieved suspicious emails or phone calls/texts that I never respond to. I also know that phishing in emails is one common example. In an email phishing scam, an attacker usually sends an email that seems to be from a trustworthy business, like a bank or online retailer. By clicking on a link and inputting their personal information on a fake website that mimics the real one, the email receiver may be asked to update their account details. Some other examples are:

  • fake websites or email links
  • pop-up ads that appear on a user’s screen and ask them to enter their personal informatio
  • Attackers send text messages to users