Unit 5

5.1 Beneficial and Harmful Effects

  1. Come up with three of your own Beneficial and corresponding Harmful Effects of Computing
Beneficial Effects Harmful Effects
  • lots of technology allows us to have a better quality of life since there are tools that exist that allow us to have greater efficiency and less of a workload.
  • Computers allow us to stay connected to the internet which in turn allow us to be informed about whats happening in the world
  • Computers are a great way to store and organize data in a way that doesn't take up space. In addition, they are very easy to use making it so that anyone could utilize a computer
  • Computers come with digital divide, there will be people who don't have access to computers and thus lose out on all the benefits which is unfair
  • Computers can cause people to spend too much time sitting down and looking at a screen. This can have bad long term affects on ones eyesight and physical health.
  • some computing technology is used with bad intentions. These can include military technology and devices that invade privacy
  • Spending too much time on computers can effect a person's social life because they can become addicted to a screen
  1. Talk about dopamine issues above. Real? Parent conspiracy? Anything that is impacting your personal study and success in High School? Sometimes when i’m on my computer, I lose track of time and end up spending my entire day on my computer. This can be both good and bad. Far starters, it has a negative impact because I don’t spend any time with my family or socializing with people in person. Since a computer allows me to do everything online including communicating with others, it creates a lazy mindset that makes me less social and outgoing. However, computers are also a crucial and beneficial part of my life because it allows me organize and complete my school work. In addition, my computer gives me access to the internet which provides me with millions of resources that are just a click away.

5.2 Digital Divide

  1. Think of three beneficial effects of your projects based on 5.1 Unit
    • Our project can help people make an informed decision about what type of car they are looking to buy. Users can gain specific information on the type, model, mileage, and price of a car.
    • Our project can help people save time when buying a car. Instead of having to spend hours going from car dealer to car dealer asking questions about a car, the user can find all the information they need in one place on one website.
    • Since our project has a sign up and log in feature, this means that users can “save” cars their account and refer beck to them by logging in to the website again. This feature makes looking for information easy and fast.
  2. Think of a potential harmful effect of your project.
    • I think that our website could potentially be a disruptor in how people look for a car to buy. Instead of seeing the car in person, the user might base their purchase only on what they see online but when they actually get the car, it isn’t what they were anticipating. This can create some false expectations which wouldn’t be good for someone trying to make an important purchase.
  3. What concerns do you have personally about the digital divide? For yourself or for others.
    • Its obviously very upsetting that digital divide is something that exists. I think its very unfair that not everyone has access to the same opportunities and education, something that is partially effected by the digital divide. Those who do not have computers lose access to the internet and all the information that comes with it. As a result, they fall behind other, not because they lack the skill, but because they lack the resources which is extremely unfair.
  4. Answer with an opinion and learnings so far this year: What are pros/cons on internet blockers at router and lack of admin password on lab machines at school?
Pros Cons
  • prevents students from getting distracted (ex: games, youtube, instagram etc.).
  • could block websites and videos that are actually informational and needed during classroom work-time
  • This creates a bias against what should and should not be filtered. Some content that is actually purposeful and informational might get blocked just because of it's source which is considered "bad"
  • students don't have access to good internet which can impair the quality of learning

5.3 Computer Bias

Google “What age groups use Facebook” vs “… TikTok”? What does the data say? Is there purposeful exclusion in these platforms? Is it harmful? Should it be corrected? Is it good business?

  • The age group that uses Facebook are people ages 25-34
  • The age group uses tik tok are people ages 10-19
  • there are purposeful exclusions on platforms like tik tok. For example, people who are 13 and under can’t sign up and tik tok does this to prevent young children from viewing possibly inappropriate content so it’s beneficial in that sense so it shouldn’t be corrected. It’s bad business for a company like Facebook which is primarily a platform for older people. Facebook thus loses younger users.

Why do virtual assistants have female voices? Amazon, Alexa Google, Apple Siri. Was this purposeful? Is it harmful? Should it be corrected? Is it good business?

  • using only female voices might imply to some that females fill the role of “submissiveness” as they serve the owner of the virtuous devices. It might also promote the bias that women are assistants.
  • this should be corrected and virtual assistants should include more male voices to make things more balanced
  • it’s good business because people might find female voices more pleasing and thus be more inclined to buy the device so in that sense, it’s very purposeful that these companies choose to set the voice to female by default.

Talk about an algorithm that influences your decisions, think about these companies (ie FAANG - Facebook, Amazon, Apple,Netflix, Google)

  • there are algorithms that different companies use to capture the users attention. For example, tik tok has a “for you page” which shows videos that appeal to the users interests and these interests are filled out beforehand by the user. In addition this algorithm pushes trends to the user which can have harmful effects such as in the case of the “devious lick” trend. In addition companies like Facebook and Amazon have ads on the side of your screen based on your search history.

Does the owner of the computer think this was intentional? If yes or no, justify you conclusion.

  • I don’t think the owner thinks its intentional because he’s carrying a light joking tone throughout the video showing how he’s more so making fun of the machine vs being angry at it.

How do you think this happened?

  • the lightning might have been bad or during development, the developers may have only tested the technology with white testers thus failed to recognize the errors when a black man tested the tech

Is this harmful? Was it intended to be harmful or exclude?

  • this is harmful because it’s unintentionally exclusive

Should it be corrected? What would you or should you do to produce a better outcome?

  • this should be corrected and developers definitely need to solve the tech to make it inclusive of people with all skin colors. I think the company needs to do more testing.

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

  • Every product that is developed will have some type of bias. The best way to combat this bias is to get feedback and opinions from a diverse group of people. That way, any software can have an inclusive usage and be good for everyone

5.4 Crowd Sourcing

We have all experienced Crowdsourcing by using external data through API’s, namely RapidAPI. This data has influenced how we code and shown possibilities in obtaining and analyzing data. Discuss APIs you have used.

  • I have used an API with symptoms including cough, fever, etc. I used this in my tri1 project. Our crossover team used a Wikipedia API.

We have all participated in code Crowdsourcing by using GitHub. Many of you have forked from the Teacher repository, or exchanged code with fellow students. Not only can we analyze GitHub code, but we can obtain profiles and history about the persons coding history. What is the biggest discovery you have found in GitHub?

  • the biggest discovery I’ve found on GitHub is GitHub.dev. It allows you to look at peoples code and it’s format through the web.

Kaggle datasets for code and science exploration. The avenue of data points us youtube or netflix channels. Analyzing crowd data helps us make decisions. Exam top 10 to 20. Did you see anything interesting?

  • there is a lot of medical apis, car apis, covid data, election results, and even arrests in the city of Chicago.

CompSci has 150 ish principles students. Describe a crowdsourcing idea and how you might initiate it in our environment?

  • I think slack is in a sense apcsps form of crowd sourcing. Important information is sent there and people can ask questions and get answers on the slack as well

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

  • Del Norte definitely needs better crowd sourcing. Currently, a lot of decisions made by the school are done by the staff or ASB, however regular students don’t really have a chance to say much. I think making a board of students could help with this problem. These students could get feedback from classes and then give that input to those who make final decisions.
  • my own project could be better with crowd sourcing because it would gain more advice and perspectives thus allowing it to grow

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

  • I could make a google form, but to make it more csp related, I could set up a SQLite database to collect feedback from every student who stops to see the project. This feedback would all be collected in one place.

When you create a GitHub repository, it asks you to choose a license type. For this Tech Talk, you need to review the license options and make notes in your personal blog. The licenses include:

Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal: This license dedicates the work to the public domain, waiving any copyright interest. Open Source GPL License: This license lets people do almost anything they want with the project, except distributing closed source versions. Open Source MIT License: This license allows for free use of the code and making and distributing closed source versions, but the author usually wants credit for the work. In your blog, you should summarize the discussions and your personal thoughts about software licenses, digital rights, and legal and ethical considerations from the College Board topic. You should explain that open source licenses require code to be public, while closed source licenses allow the code to be private. Some open source licenses prevent closed source distribution. Digital rights are the terms of service that protect, play, and distribute content, but there are ways to bypass these digital rights, which can have negative impacts on the content creators.

You should create a license for your personal blog and the team repositories for the CPT project, making sure to have a license for both the frontend and backend repositories. You should document the license(s) you chose and the reason behind the choice. The frontend, built on GitHub pages, may come with its own license and restrictions, so you should document the team’s process of making the license choice and updating it in your blog.

You added a GNU General Public License v.3.0 license file called LICENSE.md to your Fast Pages Blog and did the same for the backend and frontend servers.

In your CompSci Principles project, you have seen Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in the form of email and password for the user login and sign-up system. You feel that some PII will be publicly available, but sensitive information like passwords and personal credentials should be kept private. You have PII available on platforms like Instagram and LinkedIn.

A bad password is one that lacks authentication, such as Symmetric encryption where only one key is used for encryption and decryption. A good password has a system of authentication, like Multi-factor authentication where a code is required or Asymmetric cryptography where a pair of related keys are used for encryption and decryption.

You explained Symmetric encryption as a type of encryption where only one key is used for both encryption and decryption and Asymmetric cryptography as a process using a pair of related keys to encrypt and decrypt a message and protect it from unauthorized access. You used asymmetric cryptography for the security of your Fast Pages site.

You have experienced a phishing scheme where you received a message from someone claiming to offer free Nitro, but in reality, it was a trap to get your personal information and hack your Discord or Instagram account. You should describe this as an example of phishing and mention other phishing techniques like fraudulent emails or websites.

5.6 Safe Computing

Can you explain the PII you encountered during your project in Computer Science Principles?

In our project, we developed a username input, which can be considered as Personally Identifiable Information (PII). What are your thoughts on PII and your own experience with it?

I believe that some PII is bound to be public, but it’s crucial to keep sensitive information like passwords and personal credentials private. As for my own experience, I have PII available on the internet, particularly on my Instagram and LinkedIn profiles where I have my name and achievements listed. Can you describe good and bad passwords and another method used for authentication?

A bad password is one that lacks proper authentication methods. For instance, symmetric encryption is not an appropriate system for passwords as it uses only one key (a secret key) to encrypt and decrypt information. A good password should have a strong authentication system. For instance, multi-factor authentication that requires users to enter a code sent via text or email. Another method for ensuring good password security is asymmetric cryptography, also known as public-key cryptography, which uses a pair of related keys - one public and one private - to encrypt and decrypt messages and protect against unauthorized access. Can you explain Symmetric and Asymmetric encryption?

Symmetric encryption uses a single secret key to encrypt and decrypt electronic information, which makes it unsuitable for password security. Asymmetric cryptography, on the other hand, uses a pair of related keys, one public and one private, to encrypt and decrypt messages and protect against unauthorized access. We implemented this method on our fastpages site for enhanced security. Can you give an example of the encryption we used in our AWS deployment? Can you describe a phishing scheme you’ve encountered and other phishing tactics you know of?

I’ve been a victim of a phishing scheme when I received a message on Discord from someone claiming to be a friend with a link to “free nitro”. However, the link redirected me to a page where I was asked to provide personal information, which was then used to hack my Discord account. I’ve also had similar experiences on Discord and Instagram.