Our Vanishing Internet: Disappearing Data, Paywalls, and Memory Holes

May 27, 2023 Floo

In light of the recent Internet Archive lawsuit, Dennis has some serious questions about what it and other recent happenings may mean for the future of online content. Will we see an increase in lost access to data or permanently deleted content? Tom doesn’t necessarily think so, but the guys dig deeper into this topic to hash out their thoughts on freedom of information, paywalls, and whether we ought to be concerned about the fate of internet content.

Later, time for a checkup on Dennis and Tom’s 2023 tech resolutions! Tune in for their self-assessments on resolution progress to date.

As always, stay tuned for the parting shots, that one tip, website, or observation that you can use the second the podcast ends.

Have a technology question for Dennis and Tom? Call their Tech Question Hotline at 720-441-6820 for the answers to your most burning tech questions.

Transcript

[Music]

Intro: Web 2.0. Innovation. Trend. Collaboration. Metadata —

Got the world turning as fast as it can, hear how technology can help legally speaking, with two of the top legal technology experts, authors and lawyers, Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell. Welcome to the Kennedy-Mighell Report here on the Legal Talk Network.

Dennis Kennedy: And welcome to Episode 338 of the Kennedy-Mighell Report. I’m Dennis Kennedy in Ann Arbor.

Tom Mighell: And I’m Tom Mighell in Dallas.

Dennis Kennedy: In our last episode, we interviewed Natalie Anne Knowlton of A to J Ventures as part of our ongoing Fresh Voices on Legal Tech series. Highly recommend it. Tom has been wanting to do interviews but now that we’ve done a few, he would like to get back to our usual format for a show or two. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about our seemingly vanishing Internet. It’s an important and worrying topic for me and it plays right into Tom’s information governance perspective. Do I really need to be as worried as I seem to be? Tom, what’s all on our agenda for this episode?

Tom Mighell: Well, Dennis, in this edition of the Kennedy-Mighell Report, we will indeed be discussing whether the Internet as we know it and all the information that resides on it might indeed be vanishing, or whether Dennis is being an alarmist and we may see where I fall on that. In our second segment, we’ll revisit our 2023 tech resolutions to give each other a little accountability and encouragement and see what we need to focus on for the summer and as usual, we’ll finish up with our parting shots that one tip website or observation that you can start using second that this podcast is over. But first up, we wanted to take a look, or maybe I should say Dennis wanted to take a look into whether or not the Internet as we know it is vanishing like the Amazon rainforest. Dennis’ words, not necessarily mine. Are we now in a world of disappearing sites? Are we in a world of removed

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Tabitha James named R.B. Pamplin Professor of Business Data Technological know-how | VTx

April 13, 2023 Floo

Tabitha James, professor of business enterprise information and facts technology in the Pamplin Faculty of Business enterprise at Virginia Tech, was named the R.B. Pamplin Professor of Enterprise Info Technology by the Virginia Tech Board of Guests.

Recognized in 1994, the R.B. Pamplin Professorship in Company Data Technological innovation is one of numerous named professorships established with element of the $10 million present offered to the faculty by the Robert B. Pamplin spouse and children. The professorship supports excellence in administration science and data technological know-how training.

A member of the Virginia Tech college given that 2002, James is an internationally acknowledged scholar whose present-day investigation focuses on the societal and organization impacts of technological know-how use. Especially, her investigation investigates how the use of systems these as health technologies and social media impact people’s perfectly-currently being, privateness behaviors, and adverse psychological results this sort of as habit or envy. Her research also examines how analytics can be employed to assist small business conclusions, like how to style metaheuristic algorithms to present far better answers for intricate enterprise issues.

She has revealed about 40 peer-reviewed journal posts and about 15 meeting papers. Her paper “Using Organismic Integration Concept to Explore the Associations among Users’ Work out Motivations and Physical fitness Technological innovation Function Established Use,” posted in Administration Details Systems Quarterly, is part of a research system that examines how people’s motivational traits are involved with how they use health and fitness systems these kinds of as Fitbit and Strava and the impact of people’s use of these systems on their perfectly-remaining. This investigation has experienced an affect on the health and fitness information technological know-how area by aiding to pioneer a lively stream of data techniques research on wearables and wellness applications.

James also has produced considerable contributions to the social media literature by examining, for example, how people’s need to belong drives habit to social media platforms such as Facebook, how diverse forms of use can assistance establish team dynamics on on the internet wellbeing communities that make improvements to users’ perceptions of the social assistance that they acquire from them, and what drives privacy selections this sort of as the selection to disclose facts or the use of privateness controls on social media platforms.

In the classroom, James has taught 14 various undergraduate and graduate courses and has labored to establish, lengthen, and greatly enhance undergraduate and graduate instruction in details visualization, data security, and artificial intelligence.

She also has taught details visualization and artificial intelligence at IÉSEG College of Administration in Paris and Lille, France, as very well as cybersecurity for Virginia Tech’s partnership with NMIMS in India. She is active in doctoral training, acquiring taught a doctoral seminar on social community evaluation, and a short while ago designed and taught a multidisciplinary doctoral seminar on artificial intelligence, equipment finding out, and deep finding out in business.

James has co-chaired or served on the dissertation or thesis committees of various Ph.D. and master’s college

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Data Oriented Programming in Java

July 10, 2022 Floo

Key Takeaways

Project Amber has brought a number of new features to Java in recent years. While each of these features are self-contained, they are also designed to work together. Specifically, records, sealed classes, and pattern matching work together to enable easier data-oriented programming in Java.

OOP encourages us to model complex entities and processes using objects, which combine state and behavior. OOP is at its best when it is defining and defending boundaries.

Java’s strong static typing and class-based modeling can still be tremendously useful for smaller programs, just in different ways.

Data-oriented programming encourages us to model data as (immutable) data, and keep the code that embodies the business logic of how we act on that data separately. Records, sealed classes, and pattern matching, make that easier.

When we’re modeling complex entities, OO techniques have a lot to offer us. But when we’re modeling simple services that process plain, ad-hoc data, the techniques of data-oriented programming may offer us a straighter path.

The techniques of OOP and data-oriented programming are not at odds; they are different tools for different granularities and situations. We can freely mix and match them as we see fit.

Project Amber has brought a number of new features to Java in recent years — local variable type inference, text blocks, records, sealed classes, pattern matching, and more. While each of these features are self-contained, they are also designed to work together. Specifically, records, sealed classes, and pattern matching work together to enable easier data-oriented programming in Java. In this article, we’ll cover what is meant by this term and how it might affect how we program in Java.

Object-oriented programming

The goal of any programming paradigm is to manage complexity. But complexity comes in many forms, and not all paradigms handle all forms of complexity equally well. Most programming paradigms have a one-sentence slogan of the form “Everything is a …”; for OOP, this is obviously “everything is an object.” Functional programming says “everything is a function”; actor-based systems say “everything is an actor”, etc. (Of course, these are all overstatements for effect.)

OOP encourages us to model complex entities and processes using objects, which combine state and behavior. OOP encourages encapsulation (object behavior mediates access to object state) and polymorphism (multiple kinds of entities can be interacted with using a common interface or vocabulary), though the mechanisms for accomplishing these goals vary across OO languages. When modeling the world with objects, we are encouraged to think in terms of is-a (a savings account is-a bank account) and has-a (a savings account has-a owner and account number) relationships.

Well-known npm offer deletes data files to protest Ukraine war

March 29, 2022 Floo

This month, the developer at the rear of the popular npm package ‘node-ipc’ released sabotaged variations of the library in protest of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War.

Newer versions of the ‘node-ipc’ package began deleting all info and overwriting all documents on developer’s devices, in addition to creating new text files with “peace” messages.

With over a million weekly downloads, ‘node-ipc’ is a outstanding package applied by key libraries like Vue.js CLI.

Protestware: Ukraine’s ongoing disaster bleeds into open resource

Select variations (10.1.1 and 10.1.2) of the massively popular ‘node-ipc’ offer were being caught containing destructive code that would overwrite or delete arbitrary documents on a method for consumers dependent in Russia and Belarus. These variations are tracked less than CVE-2022-23812.

On March 8th, developer Brandon Nozaki Miller, aka RIAEvangelist launched open resource software program deals called peacenotwar and oneday-take a look at on both of those npm and GitHub.

The offers appear to have been originally designed by the developer as a suggests of peaceful protest, as they mainly add a “concept of peace” on the Desktop of any consumer installing the offers.

“This code serves as a non-harmful illustration of why managing your node modules is important,” explains RIAEvangelist.

“It also serves as a non-violent protest versus Russia’s aggression that threatens the environment proper now.”

But, chaos unfolded when pick out npm versions of the well-known ‘node-ipc’ library—also managed by RIAEvangelist, have been seen launching a destructive payload to delete all data by overwriting files of consumers setting up the bundle.

Interestingly, the malicious code, committed as early as March 7th by the dev, would go through the system’s external IP tackle and only delete details by overwriting information for customers based mostly in Russia and Belarus.

The code present inside ‘node-ipc’, especially in file “ssl-geospec.js” contains base64-encoded strings and obfuscation ways to mask its accurate objective:

node-ipc malicious code — **Destructive code in ‘node-ipc’ that runs for Russian and Belarusian users** (BleepingComputer)

A simplified duplicate of the code offered by researchers exhibits that for consumers dependent in Russia or Belarus, the code will rewrite the contents of all documents existing on a procedure with a heart emoji—effectively deleting all info on a method.

In addition, because ‘node-ipc’ versions 9.2.2, 11.., and all those bigger than 11..0 bundle the peacenotwar module inside of on their own, influenced buyers saw ‘WITH-Appreciate-FROM-America.txt’ documents popping up on their Desktop with “peace” messages:

WITH-LOVE-FROM-AMERICA.txt file — **WITH-Really like-FROM-America.txt file with multilingual ‘peace’ messages **

Researchers at open supply safety company Snyk also tracked and analyzed the destructive exercise:

“At this stage, a very clear abuse and a essential provide chain protection incident will take place for any procedure on which this npm package will be known as upon, if that matches a geo-place of either Russia or Belarus,” writes Liran Tal, Director of Developer Advocacy at Snyk in a website publish.

Vue.js people worry more than source chain assault

Preferred JavaScript front end framework ‘Vue.js’ also uses ‘node-ipc’ as a dependency. But prior to

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Data Doctors: Are extended warranties on computers worth it?

October 30, 2021 Floo

Practically anyone selling you a computer will likely try to get you to pay a little extra for a “protection plan” that goes above and beyond the standard factory warranty. Should you go for it?

Q: Are computer extended warranties worth buying?

A: No matter what tech device you buy, practically any retailer will likely try to get you to pay a little extra for a “protection plan” that goes above and beyond the standard factory warranty.

In some cases, it seems like such a small amount of money that you may think, “Why not get the extra coverage?”

But the credit card you made the purchase with may already provide basic protection.

Many of the electronic devices you’ll buy today don’t have the moving parts that would commonly wear out in the past, making the “protection” even less likely to pay off.

In the vast majority of cases, you’re simply improving the profitability of the sale for the retailer — which is why you’re seeing it virtually everywhere.

It’s not covered

When it comes to computers, there are a variety of reasons that buying “extra protection” up front can be a waste of money.

First and foremost, these protection plans generally only cover hardware components, which is rarely what causes aggravating computer problems.

In our 30-plus years of servicing computers, the vast majority of issues that we see are software- or operating system-based, which isn’t covered by most extended warranties or protection plans.

Retailers know most consumers don’t realize this, and won’t take the time to read the fine print. Even when some form of coverage includes the operating system, it means they will return the computer to the factory settings.

That means the stuff you really care about — your programs, data files, browser settings, printer drivers and desktop icons — are all going to be wiped out.

When you get your computer back from this type of “warranty” service, the burden of reloading your programs, restoring your data files (hopefully you had them backed up), reinstalling printer drivers and getting the computer to work the way it used to, is all on you.

Warranty service can also take a lot longer depending upon your device as large retailers may require the device to be shipped to a central repair facility in another state.

Maintenance plans

If you’re going to pay for extra coverage on a computer, it’s best to get a plan that covers software-based issues and includes data backup and restoration. Another thing it should address is the one that very few computer owners ever think about: maintenance.

The reason so many computer problems become complicated, time-consuming and expensive to fix is because most users tend to ignore the signs of a problem when they first appear.

They don’t reach out for help until the computer becomes unbearable to use, which means it’s likely loaded with problems by then. Imagine how expensive car repair would become if you never maintained your vehicle and waited until it

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Tag: Data