3 Dimensional Printing

My first exposure to a printer was in kindergarten, I was saddened to learn that the car I was printing off would not spring out of the paper like a jack-in-the-box.  However, that type of technology is no longer fantasy.  Three dimensional printing is the next generation of computer design, with a printer that is able to print 3D objects through multiple layers, one plane at a time.  Most anything that can be designed in a CAD program has the capability of being printed in three dimensions.  A 3D printer in essence, could print another 3D printer.

            There are many benefits that will come with this type of technology.  When the time comes that most households will be able to afford one, it will allow the public to produce many items right from their home.  The range of house hold items that could be printed is pretty wide, ranging from a comb, a fork, to even hangers.   This aspect to me is very intriguing.  I frequently am performing projects around the house and in the garage, and the prospect of being able to make materials without ever leaving the house is beyond exciting.  Even at my summer job at the local garage, when a part is needed it has to be ordered or picked up.  The advantage of being able to manufacture certain items in shop goes without saying.  One economical advantage that could stem from this type of technology is that the U.S.’s dependence on overseas labor would be greatly diminished. 

            The medical field is also benefitting with the ability to further study stem cells through advanced technology in 3D printing.  Previously, scientists would study stem cells after extracting them from their environment, but would have a small window of time due to a deprivation of nutrients and oxygen.  With advances in 3D printing, researchers can actually print biological tissue with vascular channels similar to those in their native environment.  This will allow researchers to increase the life-span of stem cells in a laboratory setting in order to further study them.  Amputees can also benefit from 3D technology when it comes to the cost of manufacturing prosthetic limbs.  At a fraction of the cost, proper prosthetic limbs can be made for disabled persons who otherwise might not be able to afford the procedure.

            The aspect to 3D printing that has some people on edge is the endless possibilities of what can be printed.  The company ‘Defense Distributed’ produced blueprints for a printable, plastic lower receiver to an AR-15; the part of the gun that requires a serial number.  ‘Solid Concepts’ printed a fully functioning metal, M1911 pistol.  At the moment, it’s problematic because someone who otherwise could not pass a background test for a firearm license, could potentially manufacture regulated part(s) at the cost of a printer.  For the future, it becomes more problematic if 3D printers become less commercial, and more affordable and applicable for the everyday consumer.  The access kids will have to 3D printers in their households will present a new problem not seen before with the advance in technologies.  To prevent persons from being able to manufacture or sell printed firearms/parts, new laws need to be passed to accommodate the ever-fast growing pace of technology.

Online Dating

Online dating has grown so much in just the past few years. It's estimated that around twenty million users sign on to an online dating site each month. While many people seem to be sceptical about online dating since there isn't one site out there that has completely nailed it, I think it is an amazing way to find and meet new people.

There are many different types of methods that online dating sites use. Sites like tinder show you pictures of potential matches near you and you are able to choose if you'd like to talk to this person based on their picture alone. Sites like meet me or zoosk have you make an online profile about yourself similar to Facebook but geared more towards dating. OK cupid has the profile aspect of it, but also uses algorithms to better match you with potential partners. Sites like eharmony and match also claim to algorithms to find your perfect match. Sites like the league only allow "elite" members and the way that the pick the members is based on how successful they are on their LinkedIn profile. With all of these choices and new dating sites popping up every day. It can seem a little overwhelming for someone who is new to the online dating world.

I truly believe that online dating works. I am living an online dating success story. When I had just gotten out of a four and a half year relationship that I had been in all through high school and half of college, I had no idea how people my age were meeting and going on dates. I decided to try an online dating site to meet new people in my area. What better site to sign up for than meetme.com since it literary had what I wanted in the title. I was only on the site for about three months before I had met my now boyfriend. We talked for a few weeks before deciding to meet in person. When we met he had just moved from California and didn't have a permanent place to live in PA yet. I told him he could stay for the weekend, but he ended up living with me from the moment we met. Two years later we are still happily together, expecting our first child, and planning a wedding shortly after the baby arrives. I always laugh when people make fun of online dating or put it down because I am living my fairytale and it would have never happened without an online dating site.

 http://www.newsweek.com/2014/12/05/online-dating-less-stupid-cupid-286291.html

Cody Wilson, 3D Guns, and Gun Control

When we watched that video in class about Cody Wilson wanting to make free the code to print 3D guns to any and all with 3D printing capabilities, all I could think the whole time was “Murica!” which, according to Urban Dictionary, “is generally seen as a derogatory yet humorous way to describe most Americans: fat, lazy, gunwielding, war loving, horse riding, saloon fighting, beer drinking, sex wanting or etc”. Or, in layman terms, the stereotypical American as seen from an international perspective. Searching “Murica” on google images makes me want to do a blog post with literally just all of the pictures that come up, over half of which include some reference to guns and democracy while the other half is just about us all being fat and lazy. Seen below is the picture that I believe 100% represents ‘Murica because in this prime example of art, you have both the obese aspect and the facets that make it up (motor scooter, flat tires, fast food and oxygen tank) as well as the patriotism and democracy between the flag, the eagle on his hat and, of course, the machine gun rapid firing bullets.

                Which then brings me on to my next topic related to Cody Wilson and his version of the American Dream: the free allowance of guns and his worst nightmare: gun control. According to a Huff Po article (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/20/us-guns-statistics-outlier_n_2331892.html), the US is one of only two countries (out of 28 surveyed) that consider civilian ownership of a firearm as a basic right. The other country is Yemen but apparently Yemen has begun clamping down on civilian guns. That’s right, no UK, no Germany, no Japan, no China, none of the other developed countries that we’re considered relatively equal to but Yemen. I bet most people don’t even know where Yemen is. The US also has more guns than any other nation (40 percent of the worlds total), despite us making up such a small percentage of the world population (4.5 percent of world population). This ratio of overabundance also stands true with the US vs global prison population and military spending. Those are just the ones that I already knew about but I’m entirely certain that more discrepancies exist.  

                Sticking with Cody Wilson, his reasoning behind his actions essentially boiled down to “I can, so I will” which is just a bad way to think about things. He felt that we shouldn’t restrict ourselves for whatever reason even though the gun that he was trying to 3D print (AR-15) is a very dangerous gun that is often used in mass shootings because of its capabilities. One could go so far as to extrapolate his thinking pattern to “well we should just rape and murder all the women and children as we please because we can so why restrict ourselves from doing it?”

The real question is why do we even need these weapons? Admittedly I don’t know much about guns so I don’t know what the difference is between this gun and any other standard gun used for hunting or etc. BUT, I do know that this is the gun used in the Sandy Hook shooting which is what brought around the whole gun control debate at the time. I also know that on the exact same day, there was a similar attack on elementary school kids in China (Chenpeng Village Primary School stabbing) done by another mentally ill man. The main difference? Our tragedy was with bullets, theirs with a knife. 0 deaths, and 24 non-fatal injuries versus 28 deaths and 2 non-fatal injuries. The fact of the matter is, there is always going to be violent crime. We’re only doing ourselves a disfavor allowing it to be committed by mentally unstable citizens who get their hands on serious weapons with potential for a lot of harm. Cody Wilson is doing more harm than good, he’s not helping those he wants to help because most of them won’t take advantage of his offer. But you can bet criminals will (exemplified by finding a 3D printed gun for sale through TOR when I was doing deep web research).

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/09/19/u-s-has-more-guns-and-gun-deaths-than-any-other-country-study-finds/

Negative Side Of Hashtags

In class we discussed hashtivism pretty in depth and also had an online discussion of it for a lab, but what we didn’t discuss was the negative side to hashtags. Hashtags can be a great way to get your message out to the public and several campaigns, like #Kony2012 and #BringBackOurGirls, raised awareness to millions of people. With that being said, there are sadly many people out there abusing the power of the hashtag. For instance #rapeface. In 2008 a meme surfaced that was intended to label the expression on the face of a man before he is about to rape a woman, meant to be a joke you can find thousands of photos and videos all over social media with the hashtag “rapeface”. After the meme the hashtag evolved into people taking pictures of themselves with an awkward smile and then hashtagging “rapeface”. The hashtag was most common among junior high aged kids where most of them were not old enough to really understand what they were exactly making fun of or the consequences of what they were doing. In November of 2013 RAINN launched an online campaign to get #rapeface taken down from Instagram (Yes it took five years for any progress to be made).  Within 48 hours the hashtag was removed from Instagram, but when I was doing my research for this blog post I saw that people are still using the hashtag on Twitter and YouTube. Just as I was writing this someone tweeted this:

 

Another example of the dark side of social media is the hashtag “jadapose”. A 16 year old girl named Jada went to a party, drank punch that was offered to her and passed out. Later, after seeing pictures of herself circulating on social media she realized that she was sexually assaulted. The pictures of her passed out and naked inspired the awful hashtag, #jadapose, where people would take a picture of themselves mimicking Jada sprawled out on the ground. Thankfully though, when you search #jadapose, the idiots who were cruel enough to mock a rape victim have overwhelmingly been drowned out by supporters of Jada.

While researching this topic the majority of the negative hashtag “campaigns” I found were somehow related to slut shaming and rape culture, which I was not entirely expecting. When I started this blog post I had no idea that it was going to turn into a post about rape culture. I knew that with the rise in social media there has also been a rise in slut shaming and rape culture, but I had no idea just how prevalent it was. When I typed in hateful hashtags into google I was expecting to find articles on cyberbullying and people’s responses to it. While what I did find was a form of cyberbullying, I was shocked at what people were actually saying. The three most common hateful hashtags used on twitter were #BecauseOfChrisBrown, #ThatsWhatSlutsDo, and #ItsNotRapeIf. I’m really just astonished at how strong the rape-supportive culture is.

https://storify.com/SlutWalkTO/thatswhatslutsdo

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/07/10/_jadapose_a_disgusting_twitter_hashtag_spreads_in_response_to_a_houston.html

https://www.rainn.org/news-room/lets-retire-rapeface

 

Bitcoins

Crypto-currencies have been around since the 1980’s however bitcoin, surfacing in 2009, has been by far the most successful.  It gained fast popularity for its ability to fix issues that plagued many of the earlier currencies.  As the first decentralized crypto-currency, bitcoins are mined by a single or groups of computers using processor power to solve complex math equations.  Numerous teams can be calculating the same block of equations at once, but the first to solve the block will receive the bitcoin.  One of the many early goals for bitcoin was to compete with banking services, those that dealt with lending and receiving money.

            The American dollar, from an economical standpoint, holds no real value, besides the trust held in the government’s ability to regulate it.  The bitcoin was designed as a currency built on a principle similar to the gold standard in place on the US dollar prior to 1971.  There will only be 21 million bitcoins and at an average rate of 25 released to the market every 90 seconds, they will become scarce and harder to mine as they deplete.  Nevertheless, in order for inflation to drive up the value, it would need to be traded.  One of the software companies that produced the hardware necessary to mine began accepting bitcoins as payment.  This created a cycle: In order to mine one needed the newest equipment, so in the time it took for the next generation of software to come out, miners had already put away enough bitcoins and could afford to buy it.  In other efforts to trade, bitcoins made their way onto the black market.  This was no surprise since it is a decentralized currency; the government had no way of tracking who was spending what amount of money.  It was also advantageous because they were very hard to trace back to an individual, which made them largely appealing and led to a strong presence on the black market.  Another way they were circulating was between users interested in sending money internationally.  This was especially common with foreign residents looking to send money back to their families at lower transaction fees.  Bitcoins allowed them to avoid substantial conversion fees that were common when sending US dollars. 

            However, these innovations did not go unnoticed.  One of the first big corporate players to pick up on the competition was Apple, who then came out with Apple pay.  Apple pay allowed a person to pay, where the vendors do not actually receive the merchant’s information, but rather an encryption.  Chase followed with a similar program that assigns a 16 digit QR code to a registered account.  These have similar characteristics to bitcoins because they keep consumers’ financial information encrypted in cyberspace when buying from vendors.   The government also preferred these programs over the decentralized bitcoin because they could see where people were spending their money.  With the introduction of these programs, the value of bitcoin began to drop and now stands at only a fraction of the original projected value.  This can be attributed to the complexity of trying to manage and trade them from a phone.  Not only does it require a vast knowledge of the market (that many people don’t have), a person also needs to download 3 to 4 simultaneous programs, whereas Apply Pay and Chase only require a single application.  In conclusion, bitcoins were definite factors in driving the financial innovation curve, but lost their charm along the way to other user-friendly programs in a day and age of simplicity.

More than Meets the Eye

By Sarah Hammaker

It is 7:54pm on Sunday, December 7, 2014, and I just now searched the word “octopus” into Google and acquired 58,400,000 results in .39 seconds. Although Google brought me an enormous amount of results, these results were located in the surface web, while millions more may be hiding in the deep web. For example, if I were to log onto my Tor software and search for “octopus,” I would probably find thousands more sites showing me how to buy one illegally, types of drugs I could buy under this name, and… who knows what else. I will explain both of these terms and how their effects on the internet as we know it (or do not know it).

What is the surface web?

The surface web consists of any information that is “indexed” by a standard search engine. This indexing occurs when you type a keyword into the search engine, and automated “spiders,” “crawlers,” or “robots” proliferate around by locating an accessible website based on its domain and accessibility, and finds more websites hyperlinked to this one. Any websites that these little automations can detect, are part of the surface web.

What is the deep web?

The deep web sounds chalk-full of creepy crawly information, videos, and services that only the most curious, daring, or dark-minded people would care to visit. However, this is a misconception. The deep web consists of information on the internet that cannot be “seen” by standard search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. This means that the aforementioned automated crawlers cannot access these websites, for variable reasons. The website may require login information in order to move onto other site url’s that allow a person to view different content. In this case, Facebook is a part of the deep web, as a member is required to use login information to access certain pages of content. Other website owners may simply not desire their information to be accessible to the entire public, so they can make the site non- accessible to the crawlers by giving it a “robot.txt” address. Much of the deep web includes things like medical records, financial information, unlisted or old blog posts, picture galleries, and research journal articles.

What is the dark web?

The dark web is an area of the deep web that can only be accessed through specific software that both allows the user to be anonymous, and also is able to connect to certain domain sites. This represents the true “dark side” of the internet itself, in that it provides definite answers to people in search of anything from child porn to human trafficking, from marijuana to LSD, from a hit man to a gun. These could of course be found outside of the internet, but the dark web provides a relatively easy, anonymous way to get the goods without needing crazy personal connections, or even needing to leave the comfort of home! The dark web is accessible through “Onion Router” software, more commonly known as  Tor. This software provides a web browser that connects to multiple servers around the world, and access hidden sites that end in the domain “.onion” as opposed to “.com” or “.org.” These site domains grant access to the Silk road and other illegal web utilities.

How did the dark web start? And how does it continue?

The dark web began as a tool for the US Navy to communicate about potential political upheavals without the rebels detecting the communication. Unfortunately, criminals found a way to hack into this system and contaminate it with its own social upheaval. These criminals are able to remain anonymous by using the Bitcoin form of currency, allowing for completely anonymous money transactions to occur online.  The product bought with the Bitcoins can then be dropped of at a random location, of which the receiver will be sent the GPS coordinates. These anonymous exchanges, as well as many other tricks, allow the dark web to continue without the participants being caught.

All bad?

Although the dark web sounds spooky, it actually has its upside as well. It allows people to privately chat about things that bother them for example, an oppressive government, without being caught by any officials. That could be cause for upheaval, but could also help to alleviate stress rooted from oppression. It also consists of social media sites, email services, and news providers that work off of complete anonymity. In an age where privacy seems nonexistent, this area of the internet could provide refuge for those searching for private support.  

Conclusions

The internet is like a human life. There are a lot of great times, as well as some unpleasant times that people can see, or you can tell them. These make up surface interactions with people, and the audience sometimes feels safer only knowing these surface pieces of information. However, one’s whole life is broadcast to the world at all times, but everyone’s lives consist of mostly normal, every-day transactions, a few rotten moments, and some great times. These are simply not seen by most people, but they certainly exist and actually, make up almost the entirety of a person’s life. A common analogy is the iceberg analogy- the surface web comprises the tip of the iceberg, and the deep web is everything underneath the water. All in all, the deep web is by no means completely malicious- only slightly misunderstood.

 

 

More information!! (And my sources of information)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JebkBLhcPU

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/how-the-deep-web-works6.htm

http://www.sickchirpse.com/deep-web-guide/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Y4XNSNErqg

Photo Credit (above): http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/168277-silk-road-how-to-be-a-deep-web-criminal-and-get-away-with-it

(below): http://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/p/47147585/deep-web-update-feds-make-more-arrests/  

 

 

3D Printing

We live in a world of ever changing technology. Technology is becoming so integrated into our current lifestyle that it can leave some feeling naked without something so much as their phone with them. With this evolution in technology comes progress, but sometimes at a cost. In recent years three dimensional printing has begun to rise up. With this advance in technology people are becoming able to create everyday object out of nothing using a 3D printer. Some see this new advancement as a God-send, allowing them to open their imagination and create whatever they think in the blink of an eye.

3D printing works by created an object layer by layer using a digital blueprint or model. This new process has become very popular for many for various reasons such as reduced cos and the speed at which they can product an item. While initial costs for these machines are high for some, over time the costs will begin to even as the requirement for manufacturers will become lower. Over the time 3D printing has emerged the cost of these machines has begun to climb lower and lower. Anyone can even buy a miniature one online for as low as $100 just for personal use. These machines could possibly become another part of everyday life such as our phones and our computers.

With every good must come bad however. With all new technology, there are people who will begin to tinker with it. Although most will tinker in a positive way, there will always be some that won’t. Recently, in 2013, just last year, a gun was made using one of these 3D printers. This gun was fully operational and was fired successfully. While this is an extremely interesting advance that these machines are capable of creating such an item, it clearly sets off alarms. The possibility of someone becoming able to create weapons such as guns and knives raises the stability of this product being open to the public. 3D printers typically use a type of plastic to create there objects so as a result, the gun created not only fired but was made of this plastic. This could cause a serious panic against safety as these new plastic guns could possibly get through current security systems undetected. This also proves that anyone could possibly create these weapons for their own use.

            3D printer is clearly part of our future. This technology has opened the door to many new creation and ideas of how this could be put into modern day life. Quite possibly in the near future we could all be using one of these machines if we haven’t already. The possibilities behind the machine are limitless which can be both a good thing, and a bad. As I said before, there are always those people who will tinker with the technology. Negatives about this machine are as limitless as the positives. Weapons have been made with this printer and with this possibility come a threat. As with most technology we currently have, we are in the beginning stages of our integration with technology. There are as many negatives that can be done with technology as there are benefits. 3D printing will continue to grow within businesses and personal use. 3D printing is something we’ll be seeing much more of in the future and I’m interested to see where this technology can bring us.