Fabroa ICS2O

By now, everyone who is the slightest bit technologically inclined - or just interested in the news - has heard of the 'questionable' activities of the NSA. The National Security Agency, for the uninitiated, is a United States government agency that deals with national security and recently became the object of scrutiny after leaked information showed the massive data collection effort of the agency. This included: recording phone calls, ingoing and outgoing call identities, computer browsing, emails, key-logging and much much more. Needless to say, this was perceived as a tad scandalous and independent panels were brought in to assess the agencies spying program. Recently, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board concluded that the metadata collected by the NSA was obtained through illegal means. Before you cheer, however, this sort of conclusion has been reached before and has only resulted in a promise to limit spying. This is bad because its merely a promise; a promise from a government who lied repeatedly, committed perjury, knowingly covered its tracks, and chased a citizen away with the threat of life in prison. Unfortunately, many people have since stopped caring because its no longer new news, but we need to stand up for our right to privacy and demand legal action to prevent such breaches of trust in the future.

Brendan Eich, the chief executive of open-source software company that makes the Mozilla Firefox web browser resigned - the reason seemingly to befall on his beliefs of gay marriage. As a company, Mozilla's goal was not to make a ton of money and call for fame. Instead, the Firefox team aimed to be an activist organization in promoting the Internet as a public resource (but who honestly still uses Mozilla???) . When you think about it, how does a man's beliefs on the gay rights affect and even begin to relate to his line of work and leadership in an internet company? Apparently ,because of Eich's opinion towards homosexuality, his affiliates and colleagues were uncomfortable and unsure whether their new boss could lead the company in the right direction as an activist organization when his moral story tells otherwise. Maybe this is karma for being not so accepting and acknowledging equality towards other people.

Simply, there are creepers on the internet that will steal whatever image you think yourself to be without hesitation and then commit mysterious, illegal, dangerous, suspicious activity under your name which could unfortunately get you into jail even though you are innocent. This is a fact. And you know what helps them create this problem of identity theft? It is the information people freely and openly decide to share on their social media accounts like Facebook. Just one insignificant status allows bad people to assume your identity - all they even need is a vague birth date and birth place, and you are basically done for. YOU COULD BE FRAMED. This goes beyond security issues and transcends what illegal is defined as. Say goodbye to your privacy laws and hello to a never ending game of pretend. Identity fraud is swarming on this site and people don't even realize the massive extent it goes to. People are oblivious and frankly don't care if someone is unfortunate enough to fall victim to identity theft.

A new app for android users shows that a 90 minute sleep cycle can ensure you that you wake up energized, and a 90Night makes it simpler for you to get this sleep bu letting you choose the best time to wake up. This free app asks you to put the time you want to fall asleep and accordingly on the screen gives you different timings based on a 90-minute cycle. In the app's settings, you can also add the amount of time it usually takes for you to fall asleep that 90Night can take that into account when giving you timings. Overall, it is a much easier process than setting an alarm for yourself. The app also works the other way around as you can set the time you want to wake up and 90Night will give you options of what time you should go to bed.

Five-year old Kristoffer Davies was able to login in to his dad's, Richard, Xbox Love account and was able to play video games that were off limits to him. Kristoffer entered a series of spaces and clicked enter, gainning access to his father's account. Richard Davies said that he found it incredible that a five-year old is able to launch a "secured" Xbox Live account. Richard Davies did report this to Microsoft and they are taking matters into their own hands. According to KGTV-10, an affiliate station to CNN said that Microsoft will give Kristoffer 4 games, a $50 gift card and a year-long subscription of Xbox Live.

Cyber bullying is defined as a young person tormenting, threatening, harassing, or embarrassing another young person using the internet or other technologies. This page gives 11 important facts on cyber bullying that you might not have heard of. Some of these facts include: 70% of students report seeing frequent bullying online, only one in 10 victims will inform a parent or trusted adult of their abuse. I completely agree with these facts and agree with the motive of this site. Cyber bullying is a cowards way out and is not nice in any way.

The smartphone wars are taking a turn for the worse. Last week both apple and Samsung companies made patent infringement lawsuits against each other. Apples lawsuit of 2 billion dollars against Samsung is for use of the slide-to-unlock feature, auto word correction, universal search of the phone, and Internet and background syncing of data. While Samsung's 7 million dollar lawsuit against Apple is for the use of remote video transmission and on digital imaging. I believe that apples case is a little childish compared to Samsung's especially with the part about the slide to unlock future. Samsung's case seems to be about more important matters like using its camera and the remote control patents. I personally would like Samsung to win because I prefer their products and customer service over Apple's.

A survey reviled that more than nine out of ten teenagers lose sleep because of their smartphones. They lose a few house checking their phone, texting, or watching videos. I find that these kinds of reports are really saddening. These kinds of diversions from everyday life and sleep can be devastating. Another study proved that about one out of ten people had a present sleep after using their electronics before going to sleep. This will probably cause a drop in grade averages and destroy the future of great nations. I myself had been doing this last year and found myself almost missing the bus and my grades slipping. Although technology is good like everything it must be used in moderation so we don't harm ourselves.

Some game developers are tired of pirates taking their game at no cost. Some game developers have implemented ways to trick the pirate as the list shows. Some like Alan Wake allow you to play the whole thing but others like Serious Sam 3 won't let you past the first mission by putting in an immortal enemy. These are 8 funny ways to mess with the pirates but there are many more...

Unlocking an iPhone is now illegal. Any smartphone bought after January 26, 2013 can not be unlocked as it is illegal in the USA at least. Although unlocking an iPhone is illegal jailbreaking is not. At least it is legal to jailbreak an iPhone or iPod Touch but to jailbreak an iPad is illegal. With all this in mind the real winner is the carrier/provider as the consumer cannot jump from company to company with the carriers phone. Only in the states can one go to jail for unlocking a phone but can own an assault rifle!

Amazon already has an online grocery shopping business with competitive prices and same or next day shipping. This business venture is called amazon fresh. Amazon Fresh has also announced a new gadget that aids their website. "Dash" allows you to automatically scan barcodes to order food, or speaking into a mic for a certain need of food. "Dash" is completely changing the world of online grocery business'. The problem is though, that this service will cost up to 300$ a year for the same-day+next day shipping. In my opinion I would personally purchase this if I lived in an area that was Amazon Fresh supported. Toronto is still not on the list yet for delivery.

Just when you thought that the Apple-Samsung dispute was long gone, the two rivaling tech companies will once again appear in court next week in Silicon Valley. As usual, they are accusing each other of ripping off designs and features. Apple is accusing Samsung of infringing on 5 patents including Samsung's popular Galaxy smartphones and tablets. Samsung on the other hand is accusing Apple of stealing ideas to use on Apple's iDevices. According to Apple attorneys, Apple "revolutionized the market in personal computing devices, while Samsung "systematically copied Apple's innovative technology and products. Samsung in defense says that it has been a "pioneer in the mobile business sector since the inception of the mobile device industry, and that Apple copied many of Samsung's innovations on Apple's iDevices. Some things Apple claims that Samsung copied are tap to search technology, and "slide to unlock" the latter in my opinion, is not true. However, each smartphone has many patents, but Apple is only challenging 5 of them. personally I think that Apple and Samsung devices are very different. Sure some features may be similar or identical, but that's just to have competition. Although both of them are innovators, I think that Samsung/Google is innovating more nowadays than Apple.

A man has created a controller out of an empty lotion bottle, because why not. The creator said that "mouse and keyboard games are pretty common, so I thought I'd make a weird controller." I honestly think that this is a great idea. The character in game is just a lotion bottle with wings. This is probably not a game that anyone would play constantly, but it is a game nonetheless. The fact that he made a controller out of a lotion bottle, surprises me. It makes me think about the many other possibilities that can happen.

The future of gaming is set and Sony has clearly decided to be apart of it. At a recent conference, the company displayed a sleek prototype of a headset that will give players a high definition, panoramic view of the game as if they were present in the server, all in 3D. Sony has already sold thousands of headsets to developers and is inspired and encouraged to make their own virtual reality game and are looking forward to working with new technology. I think that this new format of gaming would be really interesting and futuristic. Certainly, the game play would be more realistic as I don't think there would be as much restrictions to pressing a sequence of buttons, when technically using the headset would allow you to act out exactly what you want to happen. Although I am aware of the dangers of virtual reality due to a specific anime, the fact that technology has made it so far is purely amazing.

In this article it talks about how computers are a bigger threat to the enviroment than SUVs! They say that because a lot of computers are not very energy effeicient and they waste a ton of electricity. And in the report, An Inefficient Truth it says that with mopre than 1 billion computers on the planet they are responsable for about 2% of human carbon dioxide emissions. In the article it says that one of the biggest issues is the fact that with SUVs you can clearly see that it damages the enviroment but with computers nobody really sees it as a problem so nobody tries to fix it. I can certainly see that computers are a problem for the enviroment and the biggest issue is that they can only grow in size.

When people decide they have no use for old technology and do not think twice before throwing it out, they probably do not realize that their outdated piece of hardware finds its grave half way across the world. Possibly even in Guiyu, China where the largest electronic waste or "E-waste" dump site exists. People are oblivious to the fact that this is a recurring problem, not just a small matter of sorting and recycling through a few pieces of plastic, metal and wires. This black hole of scrapped computers, television sets, air conditioners and even refrigerators is toxic towards the environment, and is contaminating the growth of crops all around the area, such as rice, from the gases of the poisonous elements contained within the gadgets to make them work. The consuming pile of E-waste is not just environmentally deadly but also causes health hazards, along with the expensive and dangerous recycling operations that are needed. If people continue to neglect this issue, E-waste will continue to grow, swallow the earth with a blanket of harmful bi-products and affect everyone's lives, which is something we do not want. E-waste is hazardous and will eventually kill the planet with the path that it seems to be following without any real rise against the issue. This is such a nice way to give back to the environment don't you think? Polluting the earth and by proxy ourselves with technological garbage is obviously a smart thing to do, as if we aren't destroying the world enough already.

For about a century, scientists thought that human noses were able to recognize 10,000 different odours. Although this has been true for a number of years, new research shows that we can actually detect over 1,000,000,000,000 distinct scents. That is over a trillion different smells. Leslie Vosshall and colleagues, who work at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, says that the 10,000 number had to be wrong. They considered that the human eye perceives 10 million different colours using only 3 types of light receptors, and the human nose has 400 different receptor types in comparison. Vosshall and her team created an experiment to prove this new theory, but because testing a trillion different scents would take eternity, the team crafted never-before-smelled scents composed of 10-30 odour ingredients. Each volunteer in the experiment smelled 264 different groupings of odours and then the team used that data to determine how many different scents the average human could identify. This is very cool new information that I have learned because it shows us that we are capable of so much more than we expect ourselves to be capable of. Considering that the whole existence of the human race could be wiped out by one single infection, this information reminds me that humans are too awesome to go into extinction.

This article is about how Apple plans to increase its music sales by bringing iTunes to Android and launching a paid music subscription service. Google has already brought their Google Play Music to iOS devices. Even though Apple takes up about 40% of the U.S. digital music market, it has declined in the double digits in the past few years. They plan to expand to Android and open its store to hundreds of millions of users. I don't think this will work good for Apple because there already so many other music services such as Spotify, Pandora, Beats Music and Google Play Music itself on Android, and most people these days just download their music online because they do not want to spend lots of money to buy a song or an album.

Once again it is a race for the worst company in the United States of America. The matchups are good but Electronic Arts will be going for the win as they have won the last two years and are now going for the hat-trick. EA has been delaying a lot of games and has had plenty of launch problems. Who will the winner be?