5.1 Hacks

Blog Post Reflection

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

Three of my own beneficial effects of computing include: increasing your productivity, keeping you connected to the world, and connecting you to the internet. Although there are beneficial effects to computing there are harmful effects to computing. Computing can increase your productivity, however, it is also easy to be distracted by something else on your computer. One can be distracted by messages, games, and social media apps on their computer. Overall, leading to a decrease in one’s productivity and porosity levels. Computing can keep you connected to the world, however, being connected to the world comes up with issues like experiencing human traffickers and hackers online. Computing can keep you connected to the internet, but the internet has several disadvantages and harms such as addictions, spam, hacks, and viruses.

2. Talk about dopamine issues above. Real? Parent conspiracy? Anything that is impacting your personal study and success in High School?

Something that is impacting my personal study and success in High School is the Advanced Placement courses I take and the activities and extracurriculars I do outside of school. I am often occupied with something which is a blessing and curse because being free with nothing to do puts me in my thoughts. However, having so much to do is bad for my mental health and contributes to my stress levels. I mainly just struggle with having so much on my plate and juggling all my responsibilties. In order to be less stressed I take time to myself each day and priotize going on a walk or going on a run to relax my body and mind. Setting time aside each day for myself has signifcantly helped and helps me get my mind off anything. It is overall really helpful to step outside into the nature and helps me rejuvenate.

5.2 Hacks

Blog Post Reflection – Digital Empowerment

1. How does someone empower themself in a digital world?

Someone can empower themselves in a digital world by not relying on technology. They can engage and empower themselves by going outside into nature and finding an acuity they enjoy. In order to be less attached to technology, one can also set limits and make use of the Apple screen time feature. This way they will have an idea of how long they spend their time looking at a screen. This would significantly help one because it would reduce the amount of blue light exposure to their eyes overall improving and better their life and mood. One can also use features such as night shift on their digital devices or even adjust the screen brightness on their phone. So, it does not affect their retina too much.

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

Someone that is empowered can help someone that is not empowered by encouraging them to decrease and adjust their screen brightness on their digital devices. Additionally, telling someone the changes they have noticed in their life after reducing brightness and screen time can help persuade them to also consider reducing blue lights from screens. Something that I could do at Del Norte High School is reminding students to decrease their screen time and screen brightness. I would tell them to spend time doing things they love that do not involve using or looking at a screen. Additionally, I think counselors or the Del Norte High School team can give presentations or a lesson plan to teachers to present to students. I think implementing things on paper can also potentially help students because it reduces the amount of bluelight they are exposed to by spending time on their phones for social media or doing homework.

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

Yes, I think red tape is blocking digital empowerment because the government is constantly trying to protect us from dangerous or violent things. The government protecting us is nice, however, I think it is also good for people to have access to things because the government hiding certain stuff it almost creates a feeling of danger for some. Since it seems like something is being hidden from you, and you will never figure out what it is. Yes, I think there are such barriers at Del Norte High School too because as a student you know information about a certain area. However, there is so much information students do not know because the school does not release or announce a lot of information. For example, several families donate money to the school, but paying to go on field trips still costs a lot. I also think red tape hides stuff elsewhere too.

5.3 Hacks

1. Write summary/thoughts/conclusions from each of the exercises above. Focus on avoiding Bias in algorithms or code you write.

After watching the YouTube video about HP, HP intentionally is racist because they only tested with dominantly white people. They should have tested with a more diverse selection of individuals, in order for the camera to facially recognize those with darker skin. HP should have done a better job testing considering that they are a huge company they should have done a signifcantly better testing job. Due to their exclusive selection of people while testing has led them here. This is only disadvantegeous and harmful to HP because now they have a group of people who do not support their company and will not buy their HP computers. One can avoid bias in their algorithms or code they write by testing with a diverse group of people and ultimately focusing and priortizing diversity in their code. This way they can avoid bias and have a product or item that has a large audience.

5.4 Hacks

1. 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?

A crowdsource idea and how I might initiate it in our environment is based on Night at the Museum. At Night at the Museum, we can set up a raffle system at the entrance where each parent, student, or individual receives a raffle ticket when they walk in order to ensure each person gets a raffle ticket. This way we will be able to reach a larger and diverse audience, which is perfect because this way we can reduce computer bias.

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

Del Norte High School crowdsourcing can be beneficial because the school has thousands of students which would help to do the crowdsourcing procedure. We can obtain the information we need from the Del Norte High School students and use that information towards our project. Yes, my project could be better with crowdsourcing because getting people’s input and opinion about how they search for activiites to do and places to go to in San Diego county. Hearing their valuable inputs can help improve my project and helps me improve the user’s experience on my website.

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

Data I can capture at Night at the Museum is how people search for activities to do and places to go to in San Diego County and also using it as a marketing technique can tremendously help. Showing people our website and guiding them around the website and the features they website has can help us gain the opinions of users. This way through user input we can improve the website and change it to better it since that is our goal and purpose to keep track of what landmarks and activities users like and keeps and organizes user’s progress in one place.

5.5 Hacks

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.

These are all the license types that one can chose when creating a GitHub repository: Apache License 2.0, GNU General Public License v3.0, MIT License, BSD 2-Clause “Simplified” License, BSD 3-Clause “New” or “Revised” License, Boost Software License 1.0, Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal, Eclipse Public License 2.0, GNU Affero General Public License v3.0, GNU General Public License v2.0, GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1, Mozilla Public License 2.0, and The Unlicense.

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 and personal analysis on Software Licenses/Options, Digital Rights, and other Legal and Ethical that we discussed in class today are how having licenses prevents us from getting hacks and data breaches. Licenses like GitHub licenses encrypt keep our information safe. Also, this is why Google has two factor authentication to ensure that it is the actual person logging in and accessing their information and accounts.

3. 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.

Personal Blog License

Group Blog License

For both my personal and group blog, I chose to use a MIT license because anyone could use it and could be credited. My group’s blog and my personal blog, are both blogs I do not plan to profit off of, which is why I specfically chose to use an MIT blog since in this case it makes the most sense to do so.

5.6 Hacks

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

Personal Identifiable Information (PII) I have seen on a project in AP CompSci Principles is GitHub. Each student’s GitHub account appears when they search their name and their GitHub account shows their projects and repositories. Since we use other programs and softwares in APCSP like Postman, AWS, or Slack, these softwares use PII measures such as encryption, secure storage, access controls, and data minimization in order to keep information safe.

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

My perosonal feelings about PII are mixed. I like it in terms of it pulling up my LinkedIn when someone searches my name, however, I do not like it in terms of it pulling up personal information like my address, passwords, or phone numbers. For others, I think it is also a problem to them because of their social media. They would not want their social media accounts to appear along with their professional work since it would degrade their professional view.

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

A good password is one that is strong and secure, making it difficult for unauthorized individuals to guess or crack. Strong passwords usually are lengthier, complex, and unique. Whereas, weak passwords include one’s personal information, small amount of characters, and simple.

4. Try to describe Symmetric and Asymmetric encryption.

Symmetric encryption uses a single secret key to both encrypt and decrypt data. The same key is used for both encryption and decryption and it is used to scramble the data into an unreadable form, and the receiver uses the same key to unscramble the data and access the original message. Asymmetric encryption uses a public key to encrypt the data, while the private key is used to decrypt the data. The public key can be freely shared with anyone, but the private key must be kept secret. When someone wants to send an encrypted message to the owner of the public key, they use the public key to encrypt the data. The owner of the private key is the only one who can decrypt the data, since only they have access to the private key.

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

One example of encryption used in AWS deployment is the encryption of data stored in Amazon S3, which is a scalable and durable object storage service. In Amazon S3, one can enable server-side encryption for objects by specifying an encryption algorithm and is done using Amazon S3-Managed Encryption Keys (SSE-S3) or AWS Key Management Service (SSE-KMS) encryption. With SSE-KMS, specifying a customer master key stored in AWS Key Management Service to encrypt the data, there is more security and encryption.

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

A phishing scheme I have learned about the hard way are fake login pages that looks like the login page of a website. The user puts in their information thinking it is the actual website asking for login credentials. However, a hacker behind the scenes is taking record of the credentials and is using it in the wrong ways. Some phishing techniques include gathering information about the one through social media and public records and using this information to their advantage. Another phishing technique includes creating a fake email or message that appears to be from someone they know. While the person on the other side is prompted to take action or provide personal information.