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  Greg Collier 4:03 pm on August 8, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Comcast ( 2 ), internet ( 9 ), ISPs ( 5 ), privacy ( 46 )   

  Comcast wants to charge for privacy 

  

  If there’s one inherent truth to the internet it’s that someone is selling your data. I’m not talking about malicious hackers selling your personal information to identity thieves, but the Facebooks and Googles who sell your browsing habits to advertisers. They do this, they say, in order to show you advertising tailored more to your likes. Now, one of the country’s largest internet providers wants to charge you extra to not sell your data.

  Comcast has petitioned the FCC to allow ISPs to charge their customers extra for not selling their browsing habits. If Comcast had its way the ISPs could charge you an extra fee to not sell your data to advertisers. That sounds a lot like a protection racket from an old black and white gangster movie with Comcast playing the heavy that says “That’s some real nice privacy you’ve got here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.”

  What’s worse is that Comcast acts like they’re doing customers a favor…

  Comcast said in its filing that “such a prohibition would harm consumers by, among other things, depriving them of lower-priced offerings, and as FTC Commissioner [Maureen] Ohlhausen points out, ‘such a ban may prohibit ad-supported broadband services and thereby eliminate a way to increase broadband adoption.’

  What’s really depriving consumers of lower-priced offerings for broadband is the lack of competition between ISPs. In most markets you can either choose the cable company or the phone company for internet service. A duopoly doesn’t encourage much competition and without competition prices not only stagnate, but they tend to rise because who else are you going to use? If you’ve ever been in an area that offers the upstart Google Fiber you’ll see the incumbent providers start slashing their prices in order to compete.

  So instead of trying to extort customers over their privacy, maybe the ISPs should start offering better services in order to make more money.

   

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  Greg Collier 9:35 am on August 5, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: clickbait ( 2 ), Facebook ( 182 ), newsfeed   

  Facebook to clamp down on clickbait 

  

  Facebook just became a little less annoying. No, they haven’t stopped your relatives from saying wildly inappropriate things. No, they haven’t stopped your friend from going on their latest ill-informed political diatribe. What they have done is to limit the amount of clickbait in your news feed. While you may not know the term ‘clickbait’ you’ve definitely seen it on Facebook. They’re the articles that have phrases in their headlines like “You won’t believe what happens next” or “This will shock you”. In a nutshell clickbait is any article that purposely withholds information in order to get you to click on the link.

  Entire websites have been built around Facebook clickbait and now they’ll have to rethink their strategies in order to get views from the social media giant. Hopefully their new strategy will be to write engaging content but I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for it. Shady publishers and content mills will always be looking for the next way to try to fool Facebook users to click on the web content version of fast food and your friends and family will continue to clog your news feed with them.

   
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  Greg Collier 10:02 am on August 4, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: moon, Moon Express, NASA, space ( 2 )   

  US company receives government approval for moon landing 

  

  It’s been 47 years since the world was first glued to their TVs watching Neil Armstrong taking the first human steps on the moon while uttering his famous phrase. It’s been 44 years since the Apollo 17 mission was the last manned mission to Earth’s closest neighbor in space. Due to political and financial reasons we haven;t been back to the moon since.

  Now for the first time ever, the US government has given approval to a private company to land on the moon. Moon Express is a private company financed by some Silicon Valley bigwigs, that is looking to land on the moon in 2017. Will it bring back the excitement of 1969? Probably not since it won’t be a manned flight. Moon Express plans on sending a robotic lander to the moon in order to win the Google X Lunar Prize which promises $20 million to the first private company that can reach a lander on the moon and have it return.

  It’s far from a guarantee, but if Moon Express could complete a successful trip to the moon it could start a whole new industry of commercial space flight. Then maybe we’ll be able to have our imaginations captured by space flight once again like it was with Apollo Missions. Or, in Silicon Valley terms, will it be just another startup that will fail to launch?

   
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  Greg Collier 10:45 am on August 3, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: passwords ( 5 ), security ( 46 )   

  Changing your password frequently might actually be less secure 

  

  Ever since there have been computers in offices we’ve always been told to change our passwords on a regular basis. usually 60 days. This was done in the name of security. We were told that this practice will keep out the bad guys. It’s been this way for decades and the practice has been treated as gospel however, it may just be superstition.

  Carnegie Mellon University professor Lorrie Cranor, who is also chief technologist at the Federal Trade Commission, says that requiring employees to change their password every 60 days makes systems even more vulnerable. Research indicates that people who are made to frequently change their passwords only change them in incremental amounts. If a bad actor was able to come into possession of someone’s old passwords, they may be able to determine the current password due to the patterns in the old passwords.

  A password like “tarheels#1”, for instance (excluding the quotation marks) frequently became “tArheels#1” after the first change, “taRheels#1” on the second change and so on. Or it might be changed to “tarheels#11” on the first change and “tarheels#111” on the second. Another common technique was to substitute a digit to make it “tarheels#2”, “tarheels#3”, and so on.

  This can also lead to people writing down their passwords on post-it notes that are stuck under their keyboards.

  Instead of passwords companies may want to look to biometrics, such as fingerprint readers, to secure their systems. While it’s not completely unhackable it is exponentially more secure than passwords.

   
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  Greg Collier 11:29 am on August 2, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: employee benefits ( 2 ), employment ( 46 ), student debt ( 16 ), student loans ( 18 )   

  Is student loan debt relief the new 401k? 

  

  In the past, most employers provided a helpful benefits package to their employees. Robust health and dental plans along with a helpful 401k plan used to be the norm. A number of employers even had a program where you could be reimbursed for your college education if you attended classes while working for the company. Unfortunately, since the financial crash of 2008 a lot of employers have started scaling back on the amount of benefits that they offer. The financial crash also resulted in higher amounts of debt for college students who took out student loans in order to pay for their education.

  Now, some companies are offering a student debt relief plan as part of their employee benefits to attract recent college graduates. Much like a 401k, the company matches an employee’s deduction amount, and the plans can give out up to $1200 a year for six years. While it doesn’t completely wipe out a student’s debt it can take years off the payback process.

  If this practice becomes more widely accepted by more companies do you think this will encourage more people to seek a college education? Please let us know in the comments.

  Sharonda Fentress is discussing. Toggle Comments

   
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    Sharonda Fentress 1:22 pm on August 19, 2016 Permalink

    Yes that would help a great deal that is an awesome idea!

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  Greg Collier 12:32 pm on August 1, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: child labor, electronics, Slavery ( 5 ), technology ( 7 )   

  The form of slavery we’re all complicit in 

  

  Here at Greg’s Corner we often talk about the human trafficking and slavery that is facilitated by less than scrupulous sites like Backpage. Unfortunately there is another form of slavery that most of us are supporting whether we realize it or not. Most gadgets that we are dependent on today like our phones, computers and tablets, have roots in overseas child labor. While a number of us are aware of the child labor in many assembling plants overseas did you know that there are around one million children who are working in dangerous mines for our gadgets? Many of the materials in our electronics such as gold and cobalt are mined by children across the globe. Even with the safety precautions that miners here in the US have it’s still one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Now imagine being a child down in some mine without such safety protections.

  The conundrum is that as a society we can’t function anymore without these electronics. From basic communication to international business we’ve all become reliant on these devices. It’s almost impossible to function properly in our country without them. So what can be done about the abuses these children have to endure? For starters, Mashable has a great post about how you can help but I think the most important point they bring up is that we need to hold the electronics manufacturers to task for allowing their partners to engage in these practices. However, this would cut into the profits of many of these companies and too many of them would probably not be willing to do that but there is hope. According to the Mashable post…

  “If even half the people who own smartphones spoke up and said, ‘You know, I’m really worried about these kids mining these minerals in my cellphone,’ I really think that would get companies’ attention,” Reid Maki, director of child labor advocacy and coordinator for the Child Labor Coalition says. “If there were enough evidence of consumer concern, the company would then be forced to take the lead on that.”

  Think about dropping an e-mail to your tech’s manufacturers asking them about their child labor practices. These children deserve the same opportunities that the children in our country do. It’s the least we can do.

   
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  Greg Collier 10:02 am on July 29, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Android ( 8 ), Apple ( 35 ), iPhone ( 16 ), mobile phones ( 8 )   

  Apple sells billionth iPhone: Best product ever? 

  

  Earlier this week, the little company that could from Cupertino, California, tech goliath Apple, announced that they had sold their billionth iPhone. To put that in perspective, Apple has sold more iPhones in the past 9 years than Sony has sold PlayStations since their debut in the late 90s, and has sold more iPhones than Rubik’s Cubes have been sold since the 80s. This has led some people to ask, is the iPhone, the best product ever?

  Before the advent of the iPhone, even the most sophisticated smart phones were rudimentary in their design and purpose. The biggest seller at the time, the Blackberry, had a small screen and a physical keyboard. For anyone that did not have a smart phone probably only had a flip phone that could only text message through the T9 way of texting. Now we live in a world where most of us can’t imagine not having our smart phones within arm’s reach. Without Apple developing the iPhone there’s no reason for Google to try to develop the Android operating system in order to compete with Apple and without Android smart phones would not be as affordable as they have become in the past decade. A reasonably well-functioning smart phone can now be purchased for less than a $100. What really launched the iPhone into the proverbial stratosphere was the development of its app store. Because of that we have had brand new economies and business built solely around apps.

  While it’s no cure for polio, in the grand scheme of things, the iPhone can’t be denied its profound impact in the shaping of our current culture.

   
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  Greg Collier 9:52 am on July 28, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: advertising ( 11 ), Tumblr, Verizon ( 11 ), yahoo ( 13 )   

  Tumblr tries to straddle a fine line when it comes to ads 

  

  After being classified as ‘worthless’ in the Yahoo-Verizon deal, micro-blogging site Tumblr will be rolling out ads on its users’ blogs today. The problem is that Tumblr has the unenviable task of trying to be profitable without alienating their core user base.

  Tumblr’s main demographic tends to skew much younger than most comparable services like Twitter or Facebook. Due to their users’ naiveté, Tumblr’s users tend to not only be resistant to change but they tend to resent any kind of corporate influence into what they perceive as a fragile ecosystem. When Yahoo first purchased Tumblr in 2013, many of its users took to their keyboards to voice their displeasure (NSFW language), to say the least.

  What their young minds may not understand is that not a lot of people run a free service on the internet purely out of the goodness of their hearts, and in no uncertain terms, advertising is the currency of the internet. Tumblr needs to make money in order for it to survive and Tumblr users are already raging against the advertising machine. If Tumblr continues to be valued as basically worthless, then new parent company Verizon, may decide to shutter Tumblr altogether. If Tumblr’s users want to keep their favorite platform, then it might be time for their user base to do some growing up.

   
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  Greg Collier 10:04 am on July 27, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Backpage ( 70 ), Human trafficking ( 100 ), Slavery ( 5 )   

  Backpage’s role in sex trafficking by the numbers 

  

  Recently, women’s news blog Broadly posted an article about the trouble that law enforcement and regulators have been having with Backapge and the hand they have in sex trafficking entitled “Why Is It So Hard to Fight Child Sex Trafficking on Backpage.com?” In it the article’s author, Matt Ramos, goes over the history of Backapge’s role in the sex trade and some of the atrocities that many believe they have had more than just a cursory involvement in.

  Even with these well documented incidents attributed to Backpage, most people still don’t understand the far-reaching effect Backpage has had when it comes to the trafficking of women and children for the purposes of sexual slavery. In his article Mr. Ramos mentions these statistics from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children…

  According to Yiota Souras, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, the NCMEC has seen an 846 percent increase in reports of suspected child sex trafficking over the last five years. The increase, according to NCMEC, is “directly correlated to the increased use of the Internet to sell children for sex.” Souras added that 71 percent of child sex trafficking cases reported to NCMEC are related to Backpage listings.

  Let’s add those statistics to previous ones like the estimate that says that 82 percent of all online prostitution takes place on Backpage, or that over 80% of Backpage’s overall ads were for prostitution. Pretty sobering statistics for a company that claims to be part of the solution rather than the problem.

   
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  Greg Collier 10:02 am on July 26, 2016 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Google ( 33 ), Microsoft ( 23 ), News ( 7 ), Verizon ( 11 ), yahoo ( 13 )   

  Yahoo: What could have been 

  

  Yesterday it was announced that Yahoo has been purchased by communications giant Verizon for $4 billion. While that may seem like a fair price for the aging internet icon, it pales in comparison to what might have been for Yahoo.

  Although hindsight is 20/20 Yahoo has made some financial decisions that even through the looking-glass of history seem questionable. For example, Yahoo had the chance to buy Google twice. In 1998, Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin were trying to sell their company, that would later become Google, for $1M. Both AltaVista and Yahoo turned them down. In 2002 Yahoo entered into negotiations to purchase Google but walked away from Google’s asking price of $5B. In 2008, Microsoft sought to purchase Yahoo for upwards of $40B. Once again, Yahoo walked away from the deal. However, the question has to be asked, if Yahoo did purchase Google, what’s to say that they still wouldn’t be a floundering tech company today? Not to mention we’d be without a lot of Google services that many of us rely upon today. If history is any indicator, Yahoo would more than likely find themselves in the same situation they’re currently in.

  The news isn’t all bad for Yahoo though, at least not as far as Verizon sees it. Verizon already owns another massive tech property in AOL. While the AOL brand may not have the same punch it once did it still has such properties under its banner as TechCrunch and the Huffington Post. Business Insider purports that with the addition of Yahoo to its portfolio, Verizon could have a bigger web network than both Google and Facebook. That may not be hyperbole since Yahoo was once the most visited website in the world and still holds a place in the top ten.

  Tumblr tries to straddle a fine line when it comes to ads | Greg's Corner is discussing. Toggle Comments