technology

How to Check if Your Online Accounts Were Compromised

Posted on by Niall Madhoo

Let’s face it, many people fear to use their personal data online in case it gets compromised or even stolen.Thanks to the hard work of Australian information security expert Troy Hunt, there’s an easy way to check if your personal data has been compromised called Have I Been Pwned. How often have you received an email from a website or app telling you that you need to change your password as your data may have been compromised? I’ve received many, including this one from Twitter a few days ago:

 

But what if you didn’t read these emails? Or maybe the website/app didn’t inform you of a data breach in the first place. That’s where Have I Been Pwned comes in handy, with its database of over five billion “pwned accounts” from over 280 data breaches. It allows you to check whether your accounts have been affected by a data breach. Simply enter your email address or a password you use and hit the “pwned?” button (or press enter!).

Here’s an email address of mine that’s been compromised in a number of data breaches:

have-i-been-pwned-compromised

Plus it gives you details about the breaches:

have-i-been-pwned-compromised-details

Here’s another that hasn’t been comprised:

have-i-been-pwned-not-compromised

Don’t be worried about entering your email address into a system that claims to tell you whether it’s been comprised. Well, at least not this one! Hunt holds a Microsoft Regional Director and Microsoft Most Valued Professional accreditation for Developer Security. Over 1.7 million subscribers use the Have I Been Pwned service, which has been active since Dec. 2013. The U.K. and Australian governments use the service to monitor their email addresses, according to TechCrunch. This service is well-established and highly respected.

To find out more about how the site and data breaches work you can find that in the site’s useful FAQs. You can also subscribe, so you’ll be informed if you’re involved in future data breaches. Have I Been Pwned is free, safe and easy to use, so go ahead and check your accounts now!

Google Search Filled with Factual Errors

Posted on by Niall Madhoo

Let me first preface this post by saying that not all Google Search features fall short of expectations. But the rich results, knowledge graph and carousel features do. These features display snippets of information at the top of Google Searches, such as lists, names and numbers. Don’t trust them! Despite their launch in 2012 and a 2016 Washington Post article pointing out how flawed they are, these features still do not display correct information.

The same Washington Post article noted that Google does not specify its sources. So when, for example, you search for the results of today’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, you’ll notice a problem with the rich results. The McLaren Renault cars, in positions seven and nine, aren’t called McLaren Honda as Google shows.

google-false-info-azerbaijan-grand-prix

The Official Formula 1 website, arguably the best source for this information, names them as McLaren Renault:

formula-1-azerbaijan-grand-prix-official-results

Wikipedia and McLaren’s own website state that McLaren’s cars use Renault and not Honda engines. I even tried finding a single source that associates the 2018 car with Honda and found none.

A search for “prime minister of Armenia leaves out the fact that Serzh Sargsyan was prime minister from 2007 to 2008 in the carousel:

google-false-info-prime-minister-armenia

So that just leaves Google’s knowledge graph, though I use the word “knowledge” only because that’s what Google calls it. I heard about a competitive eater Takeru Kobayashi and wondered how much money someone like that could have earned. Google says his net worth is US$ 4.1 billion, according to a source this time, Forbes list of billionaires:

google-false-info-takeru-kobayashi

You can imagine my surprise and mistrust, however. A different Forbes article states Kobayashi’s net worth as only $3,000,000. So too do the Google traditional search results (ahem):

google-false-info-takeru-kobayashi-2

That’s probably because Google thinks he’s either Kazutoshi, Takao, or Masanori Kobayashi, the US$4.1 billion net worth brothers who own Kose Global. Takeru is not related to them.

Don’t even get me started on the fact that when you search for health information, Google sometimes prioritizes pharmacies over better sources like the US CDC or U.K. NHS.

Google does provide a wealth of information through its traditional searches. But its “rich results” will leave you lacking factual knowledge. Don’t trust them!

Never get your mom a phone.

Posted on by nanearushanyan

February 26th. My moms birthday. My mother is an amazing woman that I always want to get back to. She has done so much for me and my sister that it is impossible to thank her by giving her materialistic stuff. However, my sister and I thought we would get her a phone on her birthday since she had some issues with her old phone.

So, we got pumped! We planned it a couple months ahead and started looking for a phone. Obviously, we wanted her to be able to use it as well that is why we planned on teaching her basic rules about phones nowadays.

Anyway, the day had come and we got her a phone. We spent a couple days teaching her everything. Now, it is the middle of the spring. I forgot what it’s like to have a regular mom who asks “Hey, how can I print this?”, “Can you turn on the internet or we-fe (pronounced with an [e:]), whatever it is? “How do you delete this?”

She has watched over 30 movies on her phone. And she started using headphones. Yes, those exact things that “will make you deaf honey!”. Yeah, well it doesn’t work on moms, they’re magical! Their ears have an extra protection layer called “I am your mom, not your daughter!”

She also started using internet and texting us. She uses a lot of emojis. Can you guess which ones? Well, her favorite emojis are the poop emoji and any heart “cute” emoji. She also started taking some photos. I’m talking photos like “What’d just happen? I heard a noise!”

The point of this is – be smart. Yes, maybe get your mom a good phone, but do not I repeat do NOT teach her the internet! Simple basic rules are enough! If she can call you throughout the day, then that is already an accomplishment!

Microsoft’s Confusion with Names, Numbers, Words & Letters

Posted on by Niall Madhoo

Anyone whose ever tried naming something will know that it isn’t as easy as it seems. With so much competition, copyrights, trademarks and other issues to overcome, naming a product requires careful thought. One would assume that keeping it simple would help. But that isn’t always the case, as some of Microsoft’s products prove.

Microsoft has a confusing range of products. If you try following any sort of logic with the naming scheme, you’ll certainly fail.

Xbox

For example, here’s a direct comparison between Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PlayStation game consoles:

Microsoft’s Xbox Sony’s PlayStation
N/A PlayStation
Xbox PlayStation 2
Xbox 360 PlayStation 3
Xbox One PlayStation 4

If one considers that the Xbox One is Microsoft’s third Xbox console and that the Xbox is actually the first Xbox (“Xbox 1”), then that’s just confusing. I suppose they spelled out the number “1” as “One” to avoid confusion?

Office

Fortunately, Microsoft’s launch dates for Office coincide very well with their names, except when they don’t. Alternatively, Microsoft decided on using numbers in favor of two letters once, which were the same as its latest operating system at the time (Windows XP). Xbox uses numbers and letters too, so I suppose there is some logic to Microsoft’s naming scheme? Here’s some more logic and lack thereof too:

  • Office 95 (launched 1995)
  • Office 97 (launched 1996)
  • Office 2000 (launched 1999)
  • Office XP (no numbers here)
  • Office 2003, Office 2007, Office 2010, Office 2013 (launched in their respective years)
  • Office 2016 (launched 2015)
  • Office 2019 (to be launched 2018)

Windows

Microsoft named “its first NT operating system ‘Windows NT 3.1,'” according a bewildered Guardian writer. Maybe the list below makes sense to someone somewhere:

  • Windows 2000 (actually, launched in 2000)
  • Windows XP
  • Windows Vista
  • Windows 7 (numbered 6.1 by Microsoft, although it’s the 9th Windows version).
  • Windows 8
  • Windows 8.1
  • Windows 9 (coz that’s Windows 7, or?)
  • Windows 10

Windows Phone

Microsoft finally succeeded in a (somewhat) logical naming scheme for Windows Phone. Windows Phone 7 more or less coincided with Windows 7, as did Windows Phone 8 with Windows 8 and Windows Phone 10 with Windows 10.

However, Microsoft discontinued development of Windows Phone in 2017, as it couldn’t compete with rivals Google Android and Apple iOS.

Maybe they should have chosen more confusing names instead.

Why Armenia May Become a Start-Up Nation

Posted on by mariaazakaryan

Armenian and Jewish people are considered to be the oldest nations in the world. Both of the nations gave many prominent people to the world, both of the peoples faced a Genocide and the risk to lose their land. The two countries are nowadays surrounded by enemies. Indeed, there are many similarities.

Last week our Microeconomics professor told us that he was going to invite a guest speaker from Israel to talk about Israel’s economic strategies. Our professor believed that the two countries have many similarities and that Armenia has many lessons to study from the experience of Israel.

Картинки по запросу israel start up nation

Source: https://medium.com/@200apps/the-story-of-the-startup-how-israel-became-the-startupnation-e6c5e64656cc

Dr. Gad Ravis, a professional in psychology and management from Israel, walked to the classroom with a confident facial expression. “The GDP per capita of Israel is 33.000 USD per year, whereas, in Armenia, it ranges from 3000 to 4000 US dollars,” said our professor by making the opening of the lecture.

Throughout the whole lecture, Dr. Ravis told us the brief history of Israel as well as about its economy nowadays.

The State of Israel was proclaimed in 1948, from the United Nations’ agreement after the Holocaust. The authorities invited all Jewish people to live in the new country. Jewish people around the world came to their land without anything in their hands. Meanwhile, the neighbors of Israel were constantly breaking the peace by demanding certain lands. Despite the war and political tensions, the government of Israel raised its population from 60000 to 8 million people and made economic innovations.

“We knew we could not beat our enemies with numbers, so we started working on technology and innovation,” said Dr. Ravis.

The large portion of Israel’s economy is based on the military. Military technology is Israel’s comparative advantage. The education of Israeli people is paid from the income of military technologies’ exports.

These innovations raise optimism among foreign investors, so many major organizations invest their business in Israel.

armenia-economy-economic-condition-country-with-vector-10289462.jpg

Source: https://www.vectorstock.com/royalty-free-vector/armenia-economy-economic-condition-country-with-vector-10289462

I hardly believed that Armenia could follow the same path to reach success. The strategies mentioned by Dr. Ravis were largely depended on the fact that the Haulacost was admitted, that the Jewish have a united, strong and widespread diaspora and the role of the political condition plays in their specialization.

However, as I analyzed later, the point of the lecture was not to convince that Armenia should become a military equipment exporter, but that Armenian people should consider education and innovations in new technologies as a key part for their development.

We have great minds who have to leave their country because of the lack of opportunities and innovations. For a moment let’s imagine that Armenia has the comparative advantage in new technologies, cyber technology, etc.

Armenia really has the possibility of becoming a start-up culture.

Of course, I view this possibility completely free from different obstacles, for example, corruption.

At least, the future is in our hands so we can try to have our role in making Armenia one of the successful start-up nations.

We Should Start Thinking for Ourselves Again

Posted on by Niall Madhoo

My recent experience with someone hesitating to give their mobile number alongside the Facebook data controversy made me ponder the state of societies worldwide.

Why is it that we’re wary of contact with people we barely know? Is there a reason we avoid giving out personal information to people who aren’t really strangers to us? I mean, at least they’re acquaintances. When people in stores and the street ask us questions for surveys they’re conducting, why do we avoid or ignore them entirely?

Yet, when any number of major social networking services, email providers or mobile operating systems ask for more than a phone number, we happily give out that information without second thought. Then, when we find out that those same companies use that information to manipulate us, we get concerned.

But there’s a big problem. None of the Facebook controversy is exactly new. Perhaps the extent of it may be a surprise to some. But online privacy and anonymity advocates have warned us about the uses of our data and how we’re tracked. They’ve been doing that long before this scandal broke.

Machines tell us what we should watch (I’m looking at you YouTube autoplay). They tell us what we like, even if we didn’t know we did or don’t (I’m looking at you online advertising). And machines tell many of us what we should think (Facebook, cough, cough). In fact, even the inventor of Facebook’s like button has warned against its addictive properties.

We live in a relatively free world, one that the likes of Da Vinci could only have dreamed about. If we’re clever enough to draw parallels between mass surveillance today and Orwell’s 1984, we’re smart enough to stick it to the man.

It isn’t difficult to avoid being manipulated online thanks to the likes of tracking-free search engine DuckDuckGo‘s Spread Privacy or the extensive PrivacyTools.io. So instead of letting a machine tell us how to behave and think, let’s take a step back and start thinking for ourselves again. Hopefully, if enough of us do that, companies will have no choice but to stop this ridiculous use of our data.

Improve your writing skills with Microsoft Word's built-in proofing tools

This Microsoft Word Setting Will Help Improve Your Writing

Posted on by Niall Madhoo

Microsoft Word contains a proofing feature most people do not know about. It is free and comes with Word, adding features to the default spelling and grammar check function.

There are 53 different grammar and style checks available, including ones for the infamous Oxford Comma, quotation marks (especially useful for APA and AP styles), and even gender-specific language.

office-word-proofing-gender-specific-language

office-word-proofing-punctuation

 

 

How to activate the advanced proofing feature of Microsoft Word

For office 2016 (Office 2013 instructions are here):

  1. Click on the File tab, then click on Options.
  2. Click Proofing.
  3. Under When correcting spelling and grammar in Word, select Show readability statistics

    office-advanced-proofing-improve-writing-step-1

  4. Click on Settings.

    office-advanced-proofing-improve-writing-step-2

  5. Select Grammar & Style (the default is Grammar Only).office-advanced-proofing-improve-writing-step-3
  6. Select your preferred options under Requireoffice-advanced-proofing-improve-writing-step-4a
  7. Select all the options under Grammar.office-advanced-proofing-improve-writing-step-4
  8. Click on the OK button, then again on the next OK button.office-advanced-proofing-improve-writing-step-5

Now you can use the proofing tool as normal.

office-advanced-proofing-improve-writing-step-6

Note: You may first have to install the proofing tools from Microsoft for free.

What about Grammarly?

Generally, Word’s advanced proofing features offer similar functionality as Grammarly Premium, which starts from $139.95 USD annually! If you do own Word, a combination of Word’s advanced proofing features and Grammarly Free would help improve your writing for a more reasonable cost.

The old-fashioned way

While proofreading tools built-in to Word and apps like Grammarly will help improve your writing, nothing beats these three tips:

  1. Learn how to write with good grammar and punctuation. Use a style guide like “The Elements of Style” by William Strunk, Jr., read more and practice writing. Then you won’t really need a proofing tool, except for double-checking.
  2. Ask a good writer you know (preferably a native English speaker if that is not your first language) to proofread and edit your writing.
  3. Read your writing out loud. You will find issues you had not noticed before doing so.

Improved writing

Word’s more advanced proofing features will help improve your writing or at least your proofreading skills. If you’re already good at writing then they will still serve as a second set of eyes for checking your work for mistakes.

More or less jobs: The AI/Automation takeover

Posted on by Niall Madhoo

By 2030 about 800 million workers worldwide may be out of jobs due to automation, according to global management consultants McKinsey Global Institute.

The potential for jobs to be replaced by automation

The World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) Future of Jobs report, based on research by the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University predicts that AI will “outperform humans in tasks such as:”

  • translating languages (by 2024)
  • writing high-school essays (by 2026)
  • driving a truck (by 2027)

But, “jobs such as:

  • working in retail (by 2031)
  • writing a bestselling book (by 2049)
  • working as a surgeon (by 2053)

will take longer to replace, as robots will take longer to better humans at these skills.”

A February 2018 PwC report identified that there will “three waves of automation between now and the mid-2030s: algorithm wave, augmentation wave and autonomy wave.” Repetitive and routine tasks will be replaced by automation during the algorithm wave (early 2020s). The later two waves (late 2020s to mid 2030s) will be where automation replaces the most jobs. Women will be more affected than men.

However, historically, technology tends to create new jobs. 8-9% of the global working population will be in jobs that haven’t yet been invented. Healthcare and technology will see the largest growth.

In fact, a paper by James Bessen of the Boston University School of Law reveals that only one job occupation in the US has been replaced automation in the last 70 years or so.

Historical occupations in the US

Likewise, another McKinsey report shows that while jobs in agriculture and manufacturing were replaced almost entirely by automation, the growth of jobs in every other industry grew significantly. There are already many job opportunities for AI and automation and it’s growing rapidly.

Historical employment

If it is anything like the Industrial Revolution, the AI/automation takeover may create more jobs in future. If not, we’re all in trouble! Unless you’re an AI or a robot.

Featured image from Pixabay.