The following is bibliography of what I read and listened to throughout the year.
1. “#99 Black Hole, New Jersey | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/5whmxd.
Podcast on a bizarre company that poses as a shipping stop but in reality steals packages and sends them to Europe. Podcast brings to light some of the problems with security and trust over the internet and how it can be hard to recover items and press charges against these types of companies
2. “#104 The Case of the Phantom Caller | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8ho3a.
A massive computer program scapes internet for phone numbers and makes hundreds of thousands of phone calls a day. Uses strange noises to mask calls. Program targets 1-800 numbers. Cost of call is charged to company and then shared with phone companies that helped connect this call. The software was traced back to a scam company that would always play a small part in these calls, therefore earning money.
3. “#109 Is Facebook Spying on You? | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/z3hlwr.
Interesting podcast that did a good job of highlighting people’s fears with facebook and there reasoning for why they think they are seeing targeted adds. After listening, I am still convinced that facebook is in fact not using mobile devices to listen to conversations.
4. “#112 The Prophet | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4hl36.
This podcast does a good job of highlighting some of the issues around using social media as a platform for mass bullying.
5. “#115 The Bitcoin Hunter | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/z3hl9r.
Super Tech Support episode that delves into some of the problems with crypto and how difficult it can be to track it and access it if you lose a password.
6. “#123 An Ad for the Worst Day of Your Life | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/8whoek.
I had always wondered who was responsible for the clickbait ads and why they are a thing. Through this podcast I discovered that there a two main companies that are responsible for almost all of the clickbait adds we see on the internet which is absurd. I also found it interesting to learn about the payment structure between these add companies and the websites (like new york times) that display them.
7. “#127 The Crime Machine, Part I | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2hx34.
Part one of a podcast that tells the origin story of the system used by the NYPD to lower the crime rate in NYC. One of the effects of this system is increased racial profiling and ticket quotas.
8. “#128 The Crime Machine, Part II | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8hwl7.
Part two of a podcast that tells the origin story of the system used by the NYPD to lower the crime rate in NYC. One of the effects of this system is increased racial profiling and ticket quotas.
9. “#130 The Snapchat Thief | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/v4he6k.
This podcast takes a dive into the blackmarket hacking world of social media accounts. Hackers use weaknesses in phone number security and the obliviousness of servuce providers as an entry point into getting login information. Hackers then either hold this info for ransom, black mailing, or selling to other hackers
10. “#135 Robocall: Bang Bang | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/awhk76.
Interesting podcast that details the rise of robo calls. This was my first introduction into how insecure phone numbers are and how easy it is for companies to track your location via a phone number.
11. “#136 The Founder | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/dvhd9k.
This podcast talks about a relatively unknown person who used the internet to commit crimes on a global scale. He starts in the black market pharmaceutical business and eventually hires his own private army and hitman. Eventually this leads to his downfall.
12. “#138 The Great Momo Panic | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4h6jd.
social media craze where digital figure convinces children to do things. Eventually leads to digital figure “momo” telling children to commit suicide. Podcast brings up questions on how to protect children in the age of social media. It seems like there is fine line between using social media to benefit your children vs having it harm them. How do parents makes this decision?
13. “#140 The Roman Mars Mazda Virus | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/brh8jm.
silly podcast that bring up an interesting problem. Certain podcasts are unable to be played in a particular car because of characters in the title of the podcast. These problamatic characters cause the program playing the podcast to crash and make the episode unplayable.
14. “#141 Adam Pisces and the $2 Coke | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/z3hgd2.
This podcast talks about a problem plagueing dominoes stores across the U.S. Mysterious online orders under the name “Adam Pisces” for $2 coke come into stores across the U.S. It is unknown what the cause of this is. Some people think they are coming from hackers that are testing dominoes internal security for weaknesses, some think its credit card thiefs testing stolen cards, while others think it is coming internally from Dominoes.
15. “#142 We Didn’t Start The Fire | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed May 26, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/gmhr36.
Podcast talks about multiple things happening in the world specifically inside jokes happening on social media. The group deciphers a confusing tweet that references things happening in deep internet culture.
16. Jonathan Albright, “#Election2016: Propaganda-Lytics & Weaponized Shadow Trackers,” Medium (blog), November 22, 2016, https://medium.com/@d1gi/election2016-propaganda-lytics-weaponized-shadow-trackers-a6c9281f5ef9.
This article details an experiment into news sites and how insecure they are. The author of this article wrote a program that visited over 100 news sites that had interest in the 2016 election and scraped the mechanisms that were tracking peoples navigation of them. He found that many of these sites are not safe and held a lot of third-party software trackers that could easily be used by others for nefarious reasons.
17. Jesse Hausler, “7 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about Accessibility,” Medium (blog), April 15, 2015, https://medium.com/salesforce-ux/7-things-every-designer-needs-to-know-about-accessibility-64f105f0881b.
A great introductory article into some of things keep in mind when design accessible web applications. Some of the key takeaways from this article were do not use color as the only way to convey a certain piece of information. Be wary of building forms. The biggest takeaway was the that accessibility is not a barrier to innovation.
18. Lily Hay Newman, “Facebook Broadens Its Bug Bounty to Help Fix Third-Party Apps,” Wired, September 17, 2018, https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-bug-bounty-third-party-apps/.
This article gives a brief history of Facebooks bug bounty program which launched in 2011 and details a new initiative that will allow researchers to submit vulnerabilities in the third-party apps that it uses. Reading this article made me ask the question: Why has it taken 7 years for this become a thing? It seems like this addition to the program is in response in the Facebook’s recent bad press rather than step they took on their own. The article also mentions that they will only accept submissions that were found while passively using a third-party service. This means that vulnerabilities uncovered through malicious activity (a very common way to discover vulnerabilities) will not be accepted. To me it seems like they could be doing more.
19. “Facebook’s A.I. Whiz Now Faces the Task of Cleaning It Up. Sometimes That Brings Him to Tears. – The New York Times,” accessed May 26, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/technology/facebook-ai-schroepfer.html.
This article describes the story of Facebook’s Mike Schroepfer the current CTO of facebook. It goes into detail on his journey through the ranks of facebook and some of the things he has been a part of and some things he has been responsible for. It also goes into depth on his reaction to facebook being used to post violent disturbing content and how much of an effect it has had on him. What is the main goal of this article?
20. “Google’s New Voice Recognition System Works Instantly and Offline (If You Have a Pixel),” TechCrunch (blog), accessed April 22, 2019, http://social.techcrunch.com/2019/03/12/googles-new-voice-recognition-system-works-instantly-and-offline-if-you-have-a-pixel/.
This article is about NLP and google’s new voice recognition system for its pixel phone. Google came up with a way from their voice system to work instantly. This is an important breakthrough in NLP because network latency is one of the things that has been holding innovation back in this sector of NLP.
21. “How to Implement Inclusive Design in Your Organization,” Adobe Blog (blog), July 10, 2018, https://theblog.adobe.com/how-to-implement-inclusive-design-in-your-organization/.
This article lists ways to create an inclusive work environment. some of the key reasons include making inclusion a priority and hiring inclusively.
22. “Https://Www.Shopify.Com/Partners/Blog/Why-and-How-to-Improve-Ecommerce-Website-Accessibility,” n.d.
Article discusses ecommerce and some of the accessibility problems that exist with this type of internet platform. Also goes into detail on ways to fix this and reasons for doing so.
23. “The Political and Ethical Problems of 5G Internet – The Politicalists – Medium,” accessed May 26, 2019, https://medium.com/the-politicalists/the-political-and-ethical-problems-of-5g-internet-7c5ab0ba9458.
Article pairs well with the Huawei article. This one talks about some of the ethical implications of moving to 5G. Which areas of the country will get 5G first. What kind of an advantage does this provide?
24. “The Real Reason America Is Scared of Huawei: Internet-Connected Everything – MIT Technology Review,” accessed May 26, 2019, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612874/the-real-reason-america-is-scared-of-huawei-internet-connected-everything/.
Interesting article that talks about 5G and why adoption of it may be a problem for the U.S. The Chinese company Huawei has a monopoly on the production of phones which would be one of the primary devices used to implement 5G. Huawei has been accused by the U.S for selling information to the Chinese government. This is poses an interesting problem for the U.S regarding technological infrastructure
25. Alexis C. Madrigal, “The Servant Economy,” The Atlantic, March 6, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/what-happened-uber-x-companies/584236/.
It was interesting to think about this business model after Uber (the company that inspired this movement) went public with their IPO. I think a lot of times it is lost on people that we only hear about the companies that work and there are tens and tens of companies that followed the uber model that failed miserably. It was also a helpful thought experiment to think about who benefits from this type of business. Users? Drivers? Company execs?
26. Mightybytes, “What Is Sustainable Web Design?,” accessed April 14, 2018, https://sustainablewebdesign.org/.
It’s nice how sustainable practices actually benefit your website because your making your website run faster, act smoother, and be easier for users. This reminds me of how jobs and environmental practices also go hand in hand despite the fact people often see them as opposing. Doing the right thing–being sustainable–doesn’t have to be a burdan: it can actually act as a guiding tool to improve your design. Knowing of these practices and understanding taking the time to build a better UX is worthwhile for both users and the environment is good to keep in mind as I continue web development.
27. “Why Web Accessibility Should Be a Priority Now: 3 Stats to Prove It,” Siteimprove, accessed October 18, 2018, https://siteimprove.com/en-us/blog/why-web-accessibility-should-be-a-priority-now-3-stats-to-prove-it/.
Article gives three big reasons for why web accessibility should be a priority right now. 1) The worlds aging population is expected to triple by 2050. 2) mobile screen reader usage has increased by 70%. 3) 23% of accessibility litigation has happened in the last year.
