E-Waste

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E-waste has been the subject of our class recently, and it’s certainly not a good thing. E-Waste is the waste created when we get rid of an old electronic. This goes from toasters to state of the art computers. If you throw it away, it’s E-Waste. At the moment, the USA is the one pumping out most of this E-Waste. They produce 9.4 million tons of E-Waste every year. This is a very big issue.

What’s the problem with it? Well, a lot of the waste isn’t being disposed of properly. Instead of being recycled in a plant where it can be correctly taken apart and burned with minimal pollution, it’s shipped off to other countries like Ghana and China. This is called digital dumping. Yes, some of these parts are recycled for new computers, or put back to use, or smelted to sell for money, but the price is way bigger than the benefit. In these recycling places, they burn a lot of the e-waste to either get the gold and copper out of it, or burn the left over plastic. This creates toxic fumes with a very high amount of lead in them, which in turn pollutes the soil, water, and lungs of the people living there. Among that, there are many other toxic materials that can cause things like brain damage and cancer. Mercury being one of them. Who is doing this job? Children and adults alike, some even young as 5 years old looking for money, which they do get. Though in return they get damaged lungs and burned hands.

I think a potential solution to this issue is just to build the recycling plants over there. It creates safer jobs for the people that do that kind of thing in the first place, there’s less pollution to deal with, and they might even get paid more because of the efficiency of the plant compared to them doing it by hand. I’m not entirely sure whether those dumping grounds should stay open or not. On one hand, the problem is just going to move somewhere else, creating an even bigger dead zone and many people won’t have the income that it brings them, and developing countries that use the e-waste to make their own electronics will be out of luck too. On the other hand, people are suffering and dying because of the lead in their blood, lungs, food, water, and so on. There’s also a lack of wild life in these places as well as a lot of the trash going to pollute the oceans.

Emerging Technology

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This unit we’ve been learning about emerging technologies, and have gone over quite a few very interesting ones that are in development, or just hit store shelves. What are emerging technologies, though? To put it simply, they’re technologies that aren’t popular yet, and could disrupt or add to the market. Things like education technology and artificial intelligence can be considered emerging technologies. There are a few “big things” that are being produced at the moment, like new drones and the self-driving car that’s becoming popular in the media. Out of everything that we looked over in regards to emerging technology, my favourites were robots.

The first being this little ball-shaped robot that LG is developing, it’s on preorder now for $249.00. It’s called the “Rolling Bot”. It’s a very cute thing that has a variety of features. A few of these being; a camera, microphone and speaker, and a laser pointer. They can connect to your phone, so you can monitor your home from wherever you are. It’s very useful for watching pets when you’re out, so you can talk to them and play with them too. It could also keep any criminals out, because you’ll be able to see them before they see you. It’s a fascinating little toy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovrkz12UFBM

My other favourite robot is also very small. It was created my Sony, and is still in development at the moment. They call it the “Xperia Agent”. It’s a little table top robot that has little eyes, and it can move its head. It has a screen on its “stomach” and a projector to project things onto the table. The screen works like a phone. Right now, it’s most useful for companies and board meetings, but it looks like it’ll be more directed to the general public as the development goes on. It also uses speech to take commands, instead of having to press buttons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXmAmhg7WnU

As for the future of technology, I think things like smart homes and driver-less cars will become an everyday thing. Pretty much everyone will have some kind of larger smart device, whether that be a car or home or entire city. We’ll rely on technology more than we do now, which is kind of concerning. I’m excited to see how this goes.

The Ins and Outs of Cybercrime

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Well first of all, what even is cybercrime? Google defines cybercrime as “criminal activities carried out by means of computers or the internet.”

The end of 2016 had us meet with some crazy statistics for cybercrime. According to hackmageddon.com these are 2016’s statistics;

  • In an Osterman Research Survey that involved over 500 organizations from Germany, North America, and the U.K., almost half of them had a ransomware attack in the last year.
  • 30% of phishing emails are opened, and 12% of those who get phishing emails click on the bad link or download.
  • 72.1% of hacks last year were motivated by cyber crime.

During technology class, we watched a mini documentary from Norton about the most dangerous town on the internet. In the mini documentary, several hackers were interviewed including a grey hat hacked named Guccifer, who not only has one of the best names in history, but also hacked into several important email accounts. Some of the accounts he hacked include the Bush Family, Hillary Clinton, The Rockefeller and Colin Powell. He states, ” It’s much more curiosity, to find out the ultimate truth.” That’s the reason he hacks. It’s pretty eye opening to see these hackers talking about their experiences, and how nonchalant they talk about it, as though it was like doing basic math.

We also watched a documentary called Nova, Rise of the Hackers. It was pretty interesting and talked about things like stuxnet and semi-primes. Though the most interesting thing was about a man named Mat Honan. He was hacked by a few teenagers, and within hours he was locked out of every account and device he owned. They way they did it was interesting. First they tried to get into his amazon account. They called up amazon and gave them a fake credit card number to add to the account. Then they called amazon back up and said they were locked out of the account and used the fake credit card to get back in. Doing that, they got a temporary password from amazon. Then they were able to see the last four digits of his real credit card. At the time, Apple was using the last four digits as a verification method for apple accounts. They used the newfound information to get into his apple account. From his apple account, they could get into basically any other account he owned. Their ultimate goal was his twitter account, which they took as a prize.

So, with all of the ways someone can get into your account, and the statistics for cybercrime rising, here are a few ways provided by securitytomorrow.mcafee.com ;

  • Extremely good passwords. Use crazy and weird passwords you have to write down somewhere to remember, so no one can get in. Better yet, use semi-primes to come up with a password.
  • Protect your information. Don’t share your password to ANYONE. Don’t share it with your buddy, or boyfriend, or even your dog. They all could steal your stuff.
  • Think before you click on things. See something that says “YOU JUST WON A LIFE TIME SUPPLY OF MAC AND CHEESE!!”? Don’t click on it, you’ve just won a lifetime of fighting hackers off of your accounts and a potentially dead computer.

Anyways, stay safe!