Notes From The Electronic Cottage

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

The University of Alabama has created an app that tracks student attendance at football games to help prevent students from leaving the game early when Alabama is pummeling their opponents. And there is a vigorous private marketplace for companies collecting license plates scans from cars as they drive around on their driver’s daily business. What to these two things have in common? Location, location, location.

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Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Have you heard of Deepfakes? If not, you will, and probably fairly soon. Here’s why.

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Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Many folks have heard of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, but how about HARPA? The “H” in HARPA stands for “Health” and proponents of this proposed new agency think they have come up with a way to reduce or eliminate mass shootings in the US. We’re not so sure. See what you think.

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Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

On the Electronic Cottage, we have recently noted the upsurge in student surveillance and data collection going on in many schools. These huge troves of data offer very attractive attacks for hackers of all types, including, as it turns out, a 16 year old curious about the software his school and thousands of others use. What he found and the ease with which he found it is very disturbing.

Also very disturbing is the prevalence of Dark Patterns on shopping and other web sites. A group of Princeton researchers recently analyzed the 11,000 biggest shopping sites on the web looking for Dark Patterns that are meant to cajole or deceive us into making purchases we might otherwise not make, or offering personal information we might not otherwise share online. They found thousands of these Dark Patterns, and the odds are pretty good we have all come across them without knowing it.

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Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

We’re mentioned on past programs that many schools, and the commercial companies that they work with, are collecting and, in some cases, selling unprecedented amounts of personal information about students which students and parents often know nothing about. Now there are beginning to be reactions to this collection and distribution of data. Here are a couple of important ones.

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Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Well, school is starting again in a week of so which means it might not be a bad idea to think about some of the tech that is being used in many schools across the country. The aims of these school technologies are lofty: their applications maybe not so lofty. In any event, parents should know what tech is being used by and on their children. Here are some of them.

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Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Two topics today: One: how can you be sure that those shortened URL addresses you are often pointed to actually take you where you think they will take you? Here are three services that check on those shortened addresses for you so you don’t wind up someplace on the web you really wouldn’t want to go: safeweb.norton.com, www.urlvoid.com, scanurl.net.

Two: we all click “Yes” or “Agree” when we come upon things like “Terms of Service” that we have to accept is we want to use things such as Google Drive. Unfortunately, many of us don’t bother to read them. Sometimes, it is a good idea. Here’s one example.

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Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Here are a few things worth pondering in the summer heat – one may be familiar, the others not so much.

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