Ilan Granot

Employer:	De Anza College
Occupation:	Student
Nationality:	Israel
Languages:	English, Hebrew
Country:	USA

I’m a Computer Science major for transfer. I am fascinated by the internet and constantly trying to break away from my curse of knowledge. in regard to my thinking about the internet, and also broaden my view of the internet.

I like reading books about math, science, philosophy and classic novels, playing car racing video games, Netflix and chill and traveling.

For my Grand Challenge Project, I've chosen to write about "Off-Grid Energy Access". Internet and electricity are connected together, with no electricity there’s no internet. And, without the ability to communicate problems of electricity-power reach to the rest of the world, using the internet, the problem will persist or degrade at a slow rate. Communities around the world that are not connected to electricity anywhere in their vicinity are both disconnected from the reality most of humanity is experiencing, and at the same time are neglected by the world because of not raising enough awareness.

Individual Project

1. Introductions

Selected media - Society * Personal Best☀

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a technology that is discussed extensively in the last couple of years. Basically what it means is that the world around us will contain more and more smart devices that are connected to the internet, thus many objects in the world will be connected to the internet, which in turn will become into an internet of things. For example, a sidewalk on the street will be connected to the internet and count the steps of people walking on it, if there will be a spike of traffic in a certain place the police will be able to send a self-driving car with cameras to check if everything is under control. A more “relaxed” example can be that the refrigerator in your kitchen will be connected to the internet and will order milk from safeway’s website whenever it’s about to finish. The milk will then be brought with a self-controlled drone. Anyone can experiment with IoT technologies development really easily spending about $30 on a raspberry-pi or an Arduino, two IoT kits (mobile computing) that became really popular in recent years.

I am wondering how deep exactly will this revolution become and how long will it take before almost everything will be connected. I am also wondering what will be the really great and life changing applications that will be created using the IoT technology. Also, what applications will have terrible implications on our day to day lives.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/internet-of-things/overview.html

Computer Geek's History * Personal Best☀

Since I am a computer geek I had hard time to find a subject to talk about. I do know a few of them. Eventually I decided to talk about MD5 (MD4 in the Geek’s History site (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.).

MD 5 is a hash function. More specifically it is a one-way hashing method. I will explain what it is in simple words, it is a computer algorithm that is based on a proven mathematical model to encrypt any message into a secret key, but only in one way. One way means that it can only encrypt a message, but it cannot decrypt it back into the original message. It is also a one to one encryption. Meaning, the message “Hello Friend” and “Hello Frank!” will be encrypted into a completely different secret code (hash). Any message that was encrypted using MD5 (a MD5 hashed code) can never be turned back in to the original message. This is due to the way that MD5 works. It is based on a mathematical formula that makes it mathematically impossible.

Why would anyone would want to encrypt something without being able to decrypt it back to the original message? The answer lies in the method (way) in which the MD5 encryption algorithm is used.

The way MD5 is used, to store your passwords in websites that you register to and it is actually the most common method to do that. The first time that you are asked to provide a password upon registration the website, the part of the software that is responsible for securing your password before storing it in the website’s database, called a hashing algorithm, converts your password into a one-way hashed code and then stores it in its database. At this stage the original password is not known to no one but you. This is because what is stored in the website’s database is a hashed version of your password that ca never be turned back into the original password you supplied.

So how does the website can use your password to verify it is really you? Here comes the interesting part.

Every time you return to the website and try to login using your password, the website is hashing the password that you have just provided using its MD5 algorithm. If the password that you have just provided is translated using MD5 to the same MD5 stored hash of the password you provided the first time (that they both were compared and they are the same hash) then the website lets you in.

So, if for instance I am a hacker and I succeed in hacking into the website that you have signed up for and which stores your password, and I steal the website’s database. It is mostly useless, all I have is a long list of hashed passwords that I cannot decrypt back into the original passwords people used, and you among them.

But, on the flipside:

Having the hashed passwords database may help hackers because most people are lazy and use only one or two passwords that are many times “weak” (like 123456) and use them on all the websites they use, and so hacking a “weak” website to gain their “weak” passwords can help get “smoothly” in their accounts on websites like facebook and gmail.

Consequently, MD5 can be kind of “hacked” (in double quotes) if and only if people use “weak” (bad (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.) passwords on websites. The reason is that the password angel for instance in MD5 is F4F068E71E0D87BF0AD51E6214AB84E9

And 123456 is E10ADC3949BA59ABBE56E057F20F883E (Try generating MD5’s (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. yourself) and if I will come across these exact long strings of characters I will know (using special software) it’s angel or 123456. So, if you’ll use one of the bad passwords and someone will hack your accounts you can at least understand why it happened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5

2. Privacy and Freedom of Speech

Privacy and Freedom of Speech Keywords * Personal Best☀

I chose encryption and the related article is: Researchers crack the world’s toughest encryption by listening to the tiny sounds made by your computer’s CPU

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/173108-researchers-crack-the-worlds-toughest-encryption-by-listening-to-the-tiny-sounds-made-by-your-computers-cpu (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Basically what it means is that the very same technology that protects your internet connection when doing online banking called SSL (Secured Sockets Layer) using 4096-bit RSA as been cracked.

The more assuring side of this story it is that has been cracked by RSA. RSA is the name of the company that invented this very strong security and it is the abbreviation of the names of the 3 creators of the technique, one of them Adi Shamir is also one of the researchers that broke it in this special case. We can be at somewhat ease (and keep doing our banking online) also because in order to break it a special equipment is needed and very close physical proximity needed either to your computer or the bank's server. You can read exactly how it is done, but to lay it basically in order to break it what they figured out doing was listening with a very sensitive microphone to the CPU (main processor) of the computer when it's "thinking about doing the math" of the encryption.

My second choice for a keyword was communications interception and I chose the StuxNet virus which attacked Iran's nuclear program and severely damaged the program

http://www.businessinsider.com/stuxnet-was-far-more-dangerous-than-previous-thought-2013-11 (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

StuxNet is (if it exists of course) a very advanced computer virus. A computer virus is a program (think software) that has a purpose that's sneaky and usually against the user. Another trait of a virus and hence its name is that it duplicate it self by copying it self to other computers and thus infecting them and spreading like a biological virus. StuxNet is very advanced because of few reasons, it had a very specific purpose, it was very hard to detect, and it sneaked and did it's thing in a sneaky way tricking the people in the nuclear facility into thinking everything is okay.

It appeared to travel large parts of the world (between computers) until it reached it's final destination, the Iranian nuclear plant. It was then "messing around" with very specific equipment that controls the enrichment facility while during all that time (months to couple of years) it was submitting false data to the control room that everything is going just okay. Whether it really exist and who are the people or countries behind it may be known or left a mystery, but, if really existed that's some smart peace of software.

Privacy and Personal Information

How to stay anonymous on LinkedIn

https://www.fullcontact.com/blog/view-profiles-anonymously-linkedin/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

LinkedIn shows it’s members who was viewing their profile, so, in case you are taking a peek at someone's profile he is going to know you snooped on him. This feature can be turned off, but then you also will not be able to see who took a peek at your profile.

We are not used to this option, for example, Facebook lets you snoop on other people freely, and you can snoop on them (as long as your's and their's privacy settings allow that), do you think it is fair game on LinkedIn? Would you prefer having the same option on other social networks? What are some implications of the current and the proposed above situations?

3. Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property Keywords

Is open source really free?

https://opensource.org/faq (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

This is a question I had and what I know is that open-source is free in some senses, there are two that I am interested about it is free to use, and it is free to change the source (computer code or creation). But, there are some caveats. It mostly depends on the type of open-source license. Open source licenses are licenses that are usually open-source as well, meaning the license itself as a legal document can be altered for free use. The most famous license is GNU-GPL (it’s a complicated (partly recursive abbreviation of - GNU's Not Unix! – General Public License), this license basically say that it’s free for personal use and personal alteration of the code. In case you are going to use it commercially then you have to release your altered code you are generating revenue from as open-source. Thus, keeping it open-source and improving it (hopefully) at the same time. Few interesting examples of open-source uses are, GIMP (google it) is a free open-source alternative to Adobe Photoshop which is very popular and useful to alter and edit photos and still very professional. Same goes for open-office (many versions to it), which is an alternative to the costly Microsoft Office. Another one that is very interesting is commercial companies use of open-source and here I will mention Apple specifically. If you have any laptop from the last 10 years or so, the OSX operating system on it is based on openBSD which is a linux (google it) flavor made in UC Berkley and this is why it is called open Berkeley Software Distribution. Also, if you have an Apple product like an iPod you can scroll to the general information option and see a really long list of attributions of open-source software used to create that product. From the mp3 decoder to the fonts used, etc. The iPod is of course not free.

Napster: the day the music was set free

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/feb/24/napster-music-free-file-sharing (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

When I think of sharing I think of Napster. When Napster become popular the record companies got paranoid. They thought they completely lost their business, and they almost were. The next obvious step was dragging Napster’s co-founders Sean Parker (he later became famous also for being Mark Zuckerberg’s partner and mentor) and Shawn Fanning to court. The rest is history, Napster was closed and the record companies relaxed. But the world has changed. Peer-to-peer sharing was born. Peer-to-Peer sharing basically means that people transfer files over the internet between their computers using special software that controls the transfer and search of these files. Today Peer-to-Peer software exist in many forms and software products like eMule (old), uTorrent, BitTorrent, and others. Peer-to-Peer also contain many security issue from people accessing files on your computer you don’t want to share to downloading software that contain viruses.

Internet Predictions Database

I chose Stories From Experts About the Impact of Digital Life

Louis Rossetto stated that Wired magazine editor-in-chied summed it all up that nothing happens today without some digital technology part in it.

Mike Leibhold noted that in every family almost all members of the family regularly use the internet to improve aspects of their lives , like well-being, education, entertainment, employment, commerce and engagement.

What I am wondering is does digital life is going to change in a sense that we will no longer know that we are not "one-part" of the internet. What I am asking is basically can it be that in the future people will be so connected that they will really believe that the internet and the human are one?

http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/07/03/stories-from-experts-about-the-impact-of-digital-life/

4. Crime

Computers and Crime

Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht sentenced to life in prison

https://www.cnet.com/news/convicted-silk-road-founder-ross-ulbricht-sentenced-to-life-in-prison/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

To those of you who heard about Ross Ulbricht I believe his story made you uncomfortable when hearing about the sentencing that computer crimes can yield. To those who didn't hear about him, Ross Ulbricht started a website for trading illegal merchandise on the dark web called the Silk Road. Basically this website met seller with buyers of illegal drugs, weapons, merchandise, etc. The website embedded bitcoin as the trading currency and was hosted on the dark web which made the website and its users untraceable and hard to shut down. Dark web is a special version of network that works on the same infrastructure as the internet, but is using technologies that hide all identifying information of the users such as, IP address, location, Internet Service Provider, browser and computer data, etc. After a long investigation made by law enforcement including the FBI the CEO of the Silk Road who was living in San Francisco and made about $180 million from his website, was brought to justice and sentenced to life in prison.

Do you think it is a fair punishment for his crime?

Hacked - Now what?

12 Signs That Your WordPress Site is Hacked

https://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/signs-that-your-wordpress-site-is-hacked/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

If you have your own website whether it is your family's business, your blog or your startup your site can get hacked. When it happens to people they usually get paranoid because of the feeling that somewhat resembles a break in into their house. The link above will help in a case it happens to you. Basically it first will come you do and explain this can happen to anyone and in fact it is pretty common. Also, it is usually fixable and the state of the website can be restored and turned back online in a good shape usually within a few hours to a couple of days. In some cases the damage can be bigger and even permanent. But usually it will be okay. It is also interesting to read if you don't have a website, just to learn a little about how websites can go "down".

5. Employment, Education and Entertainment

Employment, Education and Entertainment keywords * Personal Best☀

Global Workforce - Deloitte UK

https://www2.deloitte.com/uk/en/pages/tax/topics/global-workforce.html# (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Rating: 4/5

Deloitte is a multinational and widely known consulting group. In this section of their website they provide information about how corporations can manage global workforce efficiently and successfully. I think Deloitte is standing among the top firms that provide consulting services for embedding a global workforce strategies and the videos in the linked page are fascinating.

Quality Management on Amazon Mechanical Turk

http://www.misrc.umn.edu/workshops/2012/fall/Ipeirotis.pdf (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Rating: 5/5

This is (PDF) a highly technical research about Amazon Mechanical Torque which is an innovative service launched by Amazon Web Services (Amazon cloud computer pay-per-use service) division. The AMT allows anyone to hire people from all over the world to do micro-tasks for them, like for example copy thousands of website URL to an excel table, etc. This document examines a way to build an artificial intelligence software to track the quality of work received from AMT workers which may be low and is a known problem.

Games in Education

I played Admongo.gov, http://www.gamesforchange.org/game/admongo/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Which is a game that was developed for the Federal Trade Commission with the goal of teaching young children how to notice that they are being exposed to an ad. I think the idea is really clever and I played the game and it was actually fun and reminded me of when I was younger and enjoyed this types of games as well (I still play car racing games on my xBox 360). I played and was able to succeed, but actually couldn't figure out the educational message through the game. Maybe I didn't progressed enough in the game.

6. Midterm - Grand Challenges

Off-Grid Energy Access * Personal Best☀

Current State

Internet and electricity are connected together, with no electricity there’s no internet. And, without the ability to communicate problems of electricity-power reach to the rest of the world, using the internet, the problem will persist or degrade at a slow rate.

Communities around the world that are not connected to electricity anywhere in their vicinity are both disconnected from the reality most of humanity is experiencing, and at the same time are neglected by the world because of not raising enough awareness.

As the United Nations Development Programme notes that,” About 1.2 billion people worldwide lack access to electricity, and 2.8 billion rely on solid fuels, such as wood, charcoal and coal, which cause noxious indoor air pollution, for cooking.” (p. 128), and “Electrification in rural communities in Guatemala and South Africa has helped increase employment among marginalized groups” (p. 12), (source: UNDP report, http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/2016_human_development_report.pdf)

Of course we can find direct correlation between countries that have low rate of electricity reach and low rate of internet reach to their populations, the links below demonstrate these statistics. Internet users by country, http://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users-by-country/2014/, and the percentage of population that has electricity https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/world-without-power/?noredirect=on

Solution

A possible solution would be connecting the population to both electricity and the internet at the same time even if the connection will begin at the community level in place like the community center, church, etc. This will connect the local community to the world’s knowledge, while at the same time raise worldwide awareness to the situation in remote communities throughout the world by the participation of these people as additional internet users.

Kenya a developing country that is known to be a country that is struggling with many deficiencies is less known to be a leading country in terms of its use of renewable energy sources. This link discusses its use of geothermal power and shows interesting stats comparing it to an advanced country like Germany, https://www.purposeplus.com/world/insights/kenya-and-renewable-energy/

Another example would be a case study by General Electric shows how they achieved minimized costs of establishing a new power station while meeting demand using advanced technologies in providing 75,000 Egyptian households in Upper Egypt, https://www.ge.com/power/case-studies/upper-egypt-electricity-company

On the other hand, an example of a place that is currently under suffrage because of an ongoing, long civil war is Syria. Where part of that suffrage is from power failures. I found a website that provides real-time stats about the deficiencies that the Syrian population is suffering from as a result of the civil war, and also provides electricity usage stats as part of the real-time updated information. Thus, we can see that connecting between the internet and electricity consumption can raise awareness to the problem of the lack of population connectivity to electricity. https://data2.unhcr.org/en/dataviz/15

7. Evaluating and Controlling Technology

Evaluating and Controlling Technology keywords

Machine Learning – Coursera

https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Keyword: machine intelligence, Rating: 5/5

Reason for rating: accurate, comprehensive, aesthetic, organized, creative

This course is taught by Andrew Ng which is considered to be a key player in the artificial intelligence scientific society. Andrew is also the founder of Coursera which is a website for online learning, and where they offer many free courses.

Internet of Things and Industrial Control Systems

https://www.cpni.gov.uk/internet-things-and-industrial-control-systems (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Keyword: control systems, Rating: 3/5

Reason for rating: accurate, aesthetic, organized. Not: comprehensive, creative

This is an informative website offered the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI), a British governmental institute. This website presents in general three prominent technologies that are used in many industrial facilities to do machine automation. These systems can control machines and robots that are found in industries from food manufacturing, through car manufacturing, to power and nuclear plants.

Simulations

GeoFS

https://www.geo-fs.com/geofs.php (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Ever wanted to fly an airplane? This is a link to an online flight simulator. This is a simulator in the pure sense of the word. It is not a professional simulation, but it is still both fun and educational. You can learn how to do basic maneuvers on the plane and to learn the basics of flying. It is also online so you can see other players flying in the sky with their airplane, helicopter or hot air balloon.

8. Risks, Failures and Responsibilities

Risk, Failures and Responsibilities Keywords

Online Professionalism

https://ed.psu.edu/cife/professionalism/online-profile (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Keyword: Professionalism

This is an interesting website for how to keep you professional life separated from your personal life. This website is geared towards teachers and instructors, but I think it applies to many professions.

Internet Ethics For Internet Users

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140617143929-88402981-internet-ethics-for-internet-users/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Keyword: Ethics

This is an interesting article that covers and defines the concept of internet ethics. It covers subjects like, acceptance, sensitivity to others, using email and chat, fake identities, keeping your personal information hidden, etc.

This link may require you to have an active LinkedIn account, which I think will be useful anyway in your professional life.

Evaluating Internet Resources

https://www.library.georgetown.edu/tutorials/research-guides/evaluating-internet-content (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Keyword: reliability

This is an interesting website for how to keep you evaluate an internet resource for its reliability which will help you to think about it critically.

It portrays the basics of evaluating the content through examining aspects like, who is the author, what is the purpose of this website, is the language seem objective, is information seem to be accurate, etc.

Learn to Code

Code Academy

https://www.codecademy.com (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

I have been to Code Academy before and I think it's a really cool website and I have recommended it to several friends to start their journey in pursuit of mastering computer coding over there. In Code Academy they did a really good job to make programming accessible to everybody, making it fun, simple and easy. I would recommend someone who is just starting to learn JavaScript. It's a simple yet powerful language and it's moderately elegant.

9. Anytime, Anywhere

Smartphones

Duda Mobile

https://www.duda.co (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Except for the famous mobile applications of the iPhone, android and windows phone there are many more options to bring more possibilities to the mobile phone. One challenge that was evident from the beginning of the mobile revolution was the lack of mobile optimized websites. The problem was especially evident when important websites such as for businesses and corporations were showing on the mobile phones but they were almost unusable on their screens because lack of optimization. Duda mobile is a startup that helps to close this gap.

Anytime, Anywhere Keywords

eyword: commerce

RadiumOne - Advertising company

https://www.rhythmone.com/publishers#UZ3e0wyomz9BE3uC.97 (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Rating: 4/5, informative, good design, organized, accurate, but not obejctive

RadiumOne now know as RythmOne is an online advertising company that offers online advertising solutions to big companies. Their have many S&P 500 companies listed as their customers. RythmOne is using advanced methods to do effective advertising campaigns and is a leading company in the online advertising company. In the provided link you can learn and understand how they grow their network of publishers.

InnerActive - Online publishing and ad network

https://www.fyber.com/performance-campaigns/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Rating: 4/5, objective, good design, organized, accurate, but not too informative

Inneractive now part of Fyber is an online ad network that was primarily working from Israel and was offering ad distribution on its network primarily through mobile in-game advertising. They were among the first companies to offer such a solution in what was then an emerging market. They were acquired last year by Fyber a German ad network for around $80 MM.

10. Technology Advances, Social Trends

Future of Computers

Chill: Robots Won’t Take All Our Jobs

https://www.wired.com/2017/08/robots-will-not-take-your-job/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

This is an interesting article about how robots will NOT take our jobs, well at least not all of our jobs. Robots are a promising technology and are expected to be in very wide use in the future. In recent years there was a big advancement in the development of robots due to machine learning technologies and artificial intelligence research that allows the robots to think autonomously. People are scared that the robots will overtake the world, and in the least bleak predictions will eliminate all jobs. If the second is taken into consideration it is actually funny to worry about that because then we will not have to work at all and will be able to concentrate about what we really care about which is having fun.

Interesting Quantitive Facts

What's my internet speed

http://www.speedtest.net (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Beside of this website usefulness, especially when you want to negotiate with you internet service provider about the monthly bill, it gives me a sense of how the internet is developing all the time even in its most basic terms - the infrastructure. In order to support the huge amounts of data that moves around the world and specifically in the U.S. new technologies and infrastructure advancements are constantly made. The speeds of our home network communication has improved so much over the years that it always startles me to see where that gauge of my speed test will show this time.

User:Ilan1010

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