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  2. October 2013

October 2013

Think You Can Live Offline Without Being Tracked? Here's What It Takes

Even as more people become aware they are being tracked throughout their daily lives, few understand to what extent.

In a recent Pew Internet study, 37% of respondents said they thought it was possible to be completely anonymous online. From experts like Sell, you'll get a different range of answers about whether it's possible to live without any data trail: "100% no," she says. The people who have actually attempted to live without being tracked--most often due to a safety threat--will tell you that security cameras are just about everywhere, RFID tags seem to be in everything, and almost any movement results in becoming part of a database. “It’s basically impossible for you and I to decide, as of tomorrow, I’m going to remain off the radar and to survive for a month or 12 months,” says Gunter Ollmann, the CTO of security firm IOActive, who in his former work with law enforcement had several coworkers who dedicated themselves to remaining anonymous for the safety of their families. "The amount of prep work you have to do in order to stay off the radar involves years of investment leading up to that."

Fast Company interviewed the most tracking-conscious people we could find about their strategies for staying anonymous to different degrees. People interviewed used tricks ranging from enveloping their toll passes in foil to paying in cash only and zapping T-shirts with embedded RFID tags in the microwave, but all were described to be somewhat cumbersome.

The Internet Is a Universal Human Right. Just Ask the Homeless

Roughly 50 percent of people making less than $25,000 a year doesn’t have access to the Internet, according to a May 2013 US Census Bureau report on computer and Internet trends. The Tech Lab aims to change that -- at least in San Francisco -- and others are doing the same in other parts of the country.

Darrell Pugh is an instructor at the Tenderloin Technology Lab. The five-year-old operation offers free Internet access six days a week as well as basic computer skills classes and workshops on blogging, photo editing, social media, and even entrepreneurship. The lab is part of a growing movement where nonprofit organizations are using computers, mobile devices, the Internet, and even digital currencies to help improve the plight of the country’s poor and homeless, nudging them towards new jobs, new homes, regular healthcare, and other things most people take for granted. Instructors at the People’s Emergency Center in Philadelphia are helping the underprivileged in similar ways, and in Pensacola, Florida, Jason King -- the founder of an organization called Sean’s Outpost -- is giving the local homeless a leg up by showing them the ins and outs of Bitcoin, the world’s most popular digital currency.

Not everyone sees the value of places like the Tech Lab and People’s Emergency Center in Philadelphia. Tan Vu — the director of digital inclusion and technology at the People’s Emergency Center — says it’s often hard to convince donors that the center’s mission is worthwhile. “We are actually struggling to have more money to continue our efforts than before,” he says. “There’s not enough recognition of how much certain parts of society need these kinds of services.”

A Day to Remember the First Computer Programmer Was a Woman

In 1842, Ada Lovelace, known as the “enchantress of numbers,” wrote the first computer program. Fast-forward 171 years to today (which happens to be Ada Lovelace Day, for highlighting women in science, technology, engineering and math), and computer programming is dominated by men. Women software developers earn 80 percent of what men with the same jobs earn. Just 18 percent of computer science degrees are awarded to women, down from 37 percent in 1985. Fewer than 5 percent of venture-backed tech start-ups are founded by women. Those statistics, released by Symantec, the security company, and the Anita Borg Institute, which works to recruit and promote women in tech, provide context for recent debates in Silicon Valley, like why Twitter has no women on its board.

Does Hollywood have itself to blame for its piracy problems?

Why does movie piracy persist after years of efforts to stamp it out? A new website called PiracyData.org suggests a simple explanation: people pirate movies because they don't have the option of paying for a legitimate copy online.

Every week, the file-sharing news site TorrentFreak publishes a list of the 10 most pirated movies. PiracyData.org mashes this list up with data from CanIStreamIt, a search engine that helps consumers find legitimate sources for copyrighted films. The results are striking: in last week’s results, not a single film was available from streaming from services like Netflix or Amazon Prime. Only three of the top 10 films were available for online rental. For example, several services offer After Earth for $4.99. Hollywood could "change its business model to take their own voluntary measures to deal with piracy," Jerry Brito, team leader of Piracydata.org says, by making movies more readily available through legal online channels. If it chooses not to do that, he believes, they have no business complaining that tech companies aren't doing enough to combat the problem.

Need to Talk to a Doctor, Pronto? Now There’s an App for That, Too.

American Well is launching an app for iPhones, iPads and Android devices that can be used to connect with a doctor for a video-chat visit. A typical 10-minute visit costs $49. American Well visits are available even when a regular doctor isn’t. The service is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, in 45 states. (The service isn’t available in Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Alaska and Louisiana.) Seeing patients online, said Teresa Myers, a physician in Copley (OH), is both more convenient for patients, and a better use of health-care resources than having those with a cold or other minor ailment go to an emergency room.

Watch out AT&T: Verizon’s new LTE network monster stirs in NYC

AT&T’s LTE service has been beating Verizon’s 4G network soundly in performance tests, but the days are numbered in which AT&T can claim the title of country’s fastest network. Since the past spring Verizon Wireless has been planning a new LTE rollout that would put AT&T or any other US carrier’s network speeds to shame. And that network has quietly popped up in New York City. When this new network officially comes online, Verizon will have a powerful weapon to combat AT&T in the 4G wars.

Major challenges looming for health IT leaders

A nationwide shift to the International Classification of Diseases 10th Revision of diagnostic and procedural codes is pending. The one-year countdown began Oct. 1 for the federally mandated upgrade to the ICD-10 codes, many times more numerous and complex than the ICD-9 codes they will replace. It has been deemed a heavier lift for healthcare IT than the Y2K preparations. The compliance deadline for ICD-10 is Oct. 1, 2014. Meeting it industrywide will require installation of thousands of new or upgraded systems as well as millions of hours of training for coders and clinicians. Several surveys show the healthcare industry is behind schedule on ICD-10. “What I hope doesn't occur is just-in-time training, because this is of a complexity that the front-line physicians and other clinicians are going to need ample time in training,” said College of Healthcare Management Executives (CHIME) President and CEO Russell Branzell.

Many in San Joaquin Valley look for free alternative to costly cable, satellite TV

As cable and satellite services offer hundreds of channels in dozens of languages and cater to almost every niche of viewing interest -- at prices ranging from $30 to $100 or more every month -- the notion of using a rooftop antenna to receive "free TV" seems almost quaint. But as channels proliferate on subscription-based pay-TV systems such as cable, satellite and telephone companies (collectively known in the industry as "multi-channel video providers"), the conversion by broadcasters to digital transmission a few years ago means there are also more local channels available for free.

Cord-cutting is a difficult trend to pin down on a national level. The Nielsen Company -- famous for its TV ratings -- estimated earlier in 2013 that broadcast-only households numbered almost 11.2 million. That's just under 10% of all TV households counted by Nielsen -- about the same share as it was in 2010. While there is a great deal of uncertainty over the growth of cord-cutting, one thing that is clear is that the cable TV industry has lost customers over the past year or so. The real winners appear to be online streaming services, which provide movies and other programs not available on cable, satellite or over the air. The Leichtman survey estimated that of TV households that don't subscribe to multichannel services, 42 percent do subscribe to at least one online streaming service such as Netflix, Amazon Prime or Hulu Plus.

Labor’s NBN plans too ambitious: Conroy

The Australian Labor minister most responsible for initiating the national broadband network has admitted the schedule to build the fiber network was too ambitious and his government overestimated the abilities of the construction industry. Stephen Conroy said it was “undeniable” that the company building the network, NBN, missed its targets.

“We clearly underestimated and I think it’s fair to say the construction model could be legitimately criticized,” he told an Australian Computer Society event in Sydney. “We wouldn’t have been so aggressive if we’d known how tough it was for the company. So that was an area where we were overly -ambitious.” He said “the failure of the construction industry to mobilize resources” was the main cause of problems.

Analysis

High-capacity Broadband and E-rate: Libraries as Community Leverage

Broadband, especially of the high-capacity variety, once mostly the province of network engineers and large organizations, is now everyone’s concern. Whether at home, school, on the job, or walking down the street, speedy response in using the Internet is the new normal. For libraries, this need and expectation is even more pronounced. A single broadband connection to one library provides access for thousands of people over the course of a year. And with these Internet connections come the full range of resources and expertise that libraries and librarians offer.

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