October 2017 - Geek for Hire

Girls and Technology

Posted on October 31, 2017November 15, 2017 by Gail Eddy in Tips

I learned a new acronym recently in an article about girls and technology. “STEM”, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. Here are some disturbing statistics I read in another article from Observer.com:

Women own only 5 percent of startups.
They earn only 28 percent of computer science degrees.
Only 7 percent of partners at top 100 venture capital firms are women.
After peaking in 1991 at 36 percent, the rate of women in computing roles has been in steady decline. Now, they hold only 25 percent of computing jobs.
Women hold only 11 percent of executive positions at Silicon Valley companies.
In the high tech industry, the quit rate is more than twice as high for women (41 percent) than it is for men (17 percent).
Last year, venture capitalists invested just $1.46 billion in women-led companies. Male-led companies earned $58.2 billion in investments.
While 82 percent of men in startups believed their companies spent the “right amount of time” addressing diversity, nearly half of women—40 percent—disagreed, saying “not enough time was devoted.”
For women in the tech industry under age 25, earnings on average are 29 percent less than their male counterparts.
Women receive lower salary offers than men for the same job at the same company 63 percent of the time.

Part of the problem is that girls are deterred from an interest in the sciences at a young age. If a girl in your family is showing an interest in the sciences, here are some resources to assist you in fanning those flames for your girls and technology:

Girls and Technology – a subset of WIT – Women in Technology
Ignite – Inspiring Girls Now in Technology Evolution
Girls Who Code
Girl Develop It
Ladies Learning Code
Girl Start

Go get ’em girls!

Chris Eddy of Geek For Hire, Inc. has been providing computer service to families and small businesses with Mac’s and PC’s for the past fifteen years. His company is highly rated by both the BBB (Better Business Bureau) and by Angie’s List. You can find more on our website, or give us a call 303-618-0154. Geek For Hire, Inc. provides onsite service (Tier 3) to the Denver / Boulder / Front Range area as well as remote service throughout North America.

We’ve been using Amazon Prime for the past few years. We like the free 2-3 day shipping and the online streaming. I haven’t tried the Kindle lending library yet. I’ll try that next! Prime is normally $99/year, but you can try it for 30 day for free by clicking on this link: Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial (Yes, we’ll get a small commission if you check it out.)

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Best Way to Catalog Your Books, Movies, and Music

Posted on October 24, 2017November 9, 2017 by Gail Eddy in Tips

If you’re a collector like me, sometimes it is hard to keep track of everything. How do you catalog your books, movies, and music? I’ve been using a great app for my books, but when it comes to my movies and books, I don’t know what I have.

BOOKS:

For books, hands down, the app to use is LibraryThing. I’ve been using it for the past eight to ten years, at least, and it does a great job at keeping everything organized. It’s free, but if you’d like to make a donation, they’ll be happy to take it. I contributed a modest amount a few years ago and am now a “Lifetime Member”. It’s easy to add books and to put them into different categories. I have categories like “historical fiction”, “Written by Family”, “Religion”, and “signed by author”. I especially love adding books using the app on my iPhone because I can use the camera to scan the bar code on the back. It automatically adds the book and all associated details. The iPhone app doesn’t allow you to do everything though. You do need to go to your computer to add tags and notes. I do not think they have a limit for the number of books.

MUSIC:

I looked at two apps to categorize music.

CLZ music has a limit of 100 entries in their free version and it seemed easy to search online to add different albums. For each album you add, it includes a list of the songs. It did appear that you could only add CD’s. I wasn’t able to add any vinyls to my collection.
RW Music seemed very complex. In order to get started, I had to enter the IP address of my computer, even though I accessed the app via my iPhone. I don’t recommend that one.

MOVIES:

I also looked at two apps for movies.

The first one, My Movies, allowed only 50 titles in the free version. You also needed to create an account before you could trial it. Since I don’t like providing personal information unless I absolutely have to, I moved on.
I also looked at Movie Buddy. There did not appear to be a limit to the number of movies you could enter. It was easy to search and add new movies and it gives you the ability to tag a movie that you have loaned out, and to whom. There was a link to watch the trailer and it listed a summary of the movie along with the cast and producers. All in all, I thought this one was very good.

Which apps do you use to catalog your books, movies, and music?

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Facial Recognition – History and Privacy

Posted on October 17, 2017November 25, 2019 by Gail Eddy in Privacy

Have you been hearing more about Facial Recognition software? I have, especially with the new iPhone coming out. I’ve been wondering how well it works. I’m also wondering about the impact on our privacy. But first, a little history.

History of Facial Recognition:

Scientists developed Facial Recognition Software in the 1960s. The scientist’s names were Woody Bledsoe, Helen Chan Wolf, and Charles Bisson. (There are two surprises to me here. First that scientists were working on this more than a half-century ago. Secondly, one of the scientists – in the 1960s! – was a woman.) “Their programs required the administrator to locate features such as the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth on the photograph. It then calculated distances and ratios to a common reference point which was then compared to reference data.”

Certainly, the technology continued to advance decade by decade. In 1993 one of the US Defense agencies took it over. They named the project FERET or Face Recognition Technology Evaluation. In 2006, “The Face Recognition Grand Challenge (FRGC) evaluated the latest face recognition algorithms available. High-resolution face images, 3D face scans, and iris images were used in the tests. … Some of the algorithms were able to outperform human participants in recognizing faces and could uniquely identify identical twins.”

More Recent Developments:

A big failure occurred in 2002. The software scanned crowds at Super Bowl 35 for known criminals. Consequently, they found that the tech was not quite ready. Now, it is more accepted by US consumers. Then, in 2010, Facebook began using the software on uploaded photos. In 2014, Law Enforcement began to adopt facial recognition in the Automated Regional Justice Information System (ARJIS). ARJIS is currently only used in Southern California.

Drawbacks:

Privacy is the biggest drawback with Facial Recognition.

In addition, Racial Bias is a big negative. Japanese and Chinese software recognize Asian faces with a great degree of accuracy. European and US companies recognize Caucasian faces very accurately, but not so much blacks and other “non-white” faces.

Today:

First of all, Facial Recognition Software is used to identify travelers. (A boarding pass or passport are used as alternate forms of ID.)
Also, a fast food restaurant in China is using “Smile to Pay” to pay their bill. (ANT Financial developed this facial recognition software.)
In addition, in a few months, Apple will release the iPhone X which uses your face to unlock your phone.

Privacy Implications:

As I said to a friend recently, there is no privacy. And we’ve helped with that. We freely give plenty of photos of our face for anyone that wants them. We upload photos to social media, get passports, and just appear in public. The Economist stated, “…could obtain pictures of visitors to a car showroom say, and later use facial recognition to serve them ads for cars”.

Importantly, the article continued, “photos of half of America’s adult population are stored in databases … used by the FBI.”

Above all, you should know that the software is not just recognizing faces. In some cases, it also has the ability to guess at a person’s sexuality and IQ. The Economist writes “firms … filter all job applications for ethnicity and signs of intelligence and sexuality”.

As a result, companies deny jobs to qualified people based entirely on what software learns from their face.

Research:

I used these articles while writing this post:

Forensic Psych Blog
Face First Blog
FBI PDF
The 9/9/2017 issue of the Economist had several articles about face recognition.

Please forward this to your colleagues who may find this interesting.

Information about Geek For Hire, Inc.

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Chris Eddy of Geek For Hire, Inc. has been providing computer service to families and small businesses with Mac’s and PCs for the past fifteen years. Angie’s List and the BBB rate his company highly. You can find more on our website, or give us a call 303-618-0154. Geek For Hire, Inc. provides onsite service (Tier 3) to the Denver / Boulder / Front Range. We also provide Remote Service in the US and Canada.

We’ve been using Amazon Prime for the past few years. We like the free 2-3 day shipping and online streaming. I haven’t tried the Kindle lending library yet. I’ll try that next! Prime is normally $119/year, but you can try it for 30 days for free by clicking on this link: Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial (Yes, we’ll get a small commission when you sign up.)

Online and Facebook Privacy – Is It Possible?

Posted on October 10, 2017January 14, 2019 by Gail Eddy in Privacy, Tips

Lately Chris has been forwarding articles to me about online and Facebook privacy. Now, if you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, I know you know that I don’t think anything is private on the internet. These articles seem to solidify my opinion. The story that piqued my interest early this week was this one in Gizmodo. In this case you had people who had to keep a part of their identity secret, so they have set up a separate online identity. So they have a different emails, phone numbers, social media, etc., which may be connected to each other, but are not in any way connected to their “real” identity. In this case, the people are sex workers, but they could just as easily be someone who was in an abusive relationship or another situation that requires real-life, general online, and specifically, Facebook privacy.

Here are some excerpts from that article:

“Her “real identity”—the public one, who lives in California, uses an academic email address, and posts about politics—joined Facebook in 2011. Her sex-work identity is not on the social network at all; for it, she uses a different email address, a different phone number, and a different name. Yet earlier this year, looking at Facebook’s “People You May Know” recommendations, Leila (a name I’m using using in place of either of the names she uses) was shocked to see some of her regular sex-work clients.

“Despite the fact that she’d only given Facebook information from her vanilla identity, the company had somehow discerned her real-world connection to these people—and, even more horrifyingly, her account was potentially being presented to them as a friend suggestion too, outing her regular identity to them.”

and:

“Darling used to have a second, private account under her legal name for connecting with people she knew in her normal, vanilla life, but it was getting recommended to her fans, revealing her “real” identity to them. Some of them began harassing her and trying to track down her family.

“We’re living in an age where you can weaponize personal information against people,” Darling said. She’s not sure how Facebook linked her porn identity to her legal identity, but it meant one had to go. She deleted her private account a few years ago, leaving only her public, porn one.”

You might think that, as people who have chosen an alternative career and life style, that they somehow “deserve” to be outed. But imagine if you had an ex-spouse who had been stalking you and a restraining order wasn’t working.

Facebook Privacy How To:

Here are some suggestions if you need to keep your identity secret, but still want to use Facebook:

Set your posts to “Friends Only”, and don’t tag anyone in your status. (When you tag other people, then their friends can see your post as well.)
Don’t allow other people to post on your page, and, if they tag you in a post, make sure you approve (or not) it before it posts.
Make sure any personal information stays private. Don’t allow Facebook to share your birthday, phone number, email, etc. –
You should also lock down your Online Facebook Privacy Settings
Finally, all of these options are available to you under Facebook Settings.

Other Strategies:

Because people can recognize your face, make sure there are no photos of you on your account. Use a beautiful photo or a meme or cartoon to represent your profile picture.
After a post has been up for a week or so, consider changing the privacy level to “only me”. You’ll keep a historical record of what you posted and who commented, but it will be invisible to everyone else.

Are there other strategies you’re using to manage your Facebook privacy? Please share those in the comments!

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Is the Kaspersky Anti-virus safe?

Posted on October 3, 2017October 12, 2017 by Gail Eddy in anti-virus, News, Tips

We’ve been getting a lot of questions recently about Kaspersky. Is it safe? Why has the US government banned it? Should I keep on using it?

In doing a little bit of research to answer these questions, I haven’t been able to find a definitive answer. Yes, the US government has taken the software off of their list of recommended software. And, yes, Best Buy has removed the product from their physical (and virtual) shelves. But is there any logic behind the removal other than general suspicion about Russia in general?

According to this article in Bloomberg: “While the U.S. government hasn’t disclosed any evidence of the ties, internal company emails obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek show that Kaspersky Lab has maintained a much closer working relationship with Russia’s main intelligence agency, the FSB, than it has publicly admitted. It has developed security technology at the spy agency’s behest and worked on joint projects the CEO knew would be embarrassing if made public.”

The NY Times reported that: “The F.B.I. has also been investigating whether Kaspersky software, including its well-regarded antivirus programs, contain back doors that could allow Russian intelligence access into computers on which it is running. The company denies the allegations. The officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inquiries are classified, would not provide details of the information they have collected on Kaspersky.”

Kaspersky has responded by saying: “Regardless of how the facts are misconstrued to fit in with a hypothetical, false theory, Kaspersky Lab, and its executives, do not have inappropriate ties with any government. The company does regularly work with governments and law enforcement agencies around the world with the sole purpose of fighting cybercrime.”

This seems to be a reasonable response from an international company.

PC Magazine thinks this is all a bunch of hogwash and reached out to one of it’s experts, Graham Cluley, for his opinion.

“I’ve seen no evidence of Kaspersky having any inappropriate interaction with the Russian government,” said Cluley, “and no one seems to have presented any evidence of its software putting its US customers at risk. What I have seen are non-Russian security companies taking advantage of the current smear campaign against Kaspersky to promote their own solutions, which I find rather distasteful.”

If you’re interested, here are some additional articles on the subject:

BBC – 9/14/2017 – http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41262049
Moscow Times – 7/12/2017 – https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/kaspersky-lab-denies-claims-of-cooperation-with-Russian-spy-agency-58368
Slate – 7/11/2017 – http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/07/11/how_worried_should_we_really_be_about_security_firm_kaspersky_lab_s_ties.html
The Hill – 7/2/2017 – http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/340420-kaspersky-willing-to-turn-over-source-code-to-us-government

By the way, I did ask Chris for his opinion about Kaspersky. He said that it is a “perfectly good anti-virus, but we don’t recommend it. It isn’t designed in an efficient manner and tends to put a drag on the overall operational performance of the machine.”

The anti-virus we do recommend is ESET’s NOD32.

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