Today, President Obama is expected to land in Silicon Valley. Yes, they’re security threats to talk about, like the health insurance company Anthem hack. But there’s an elephant in the room. The elephant is called: Tech and federal relations.
For decades, technology companies and the US government had a great alliance, from World War One to the Cold War to the 21st century War on Terror. Tech firms and corporations have been asked to help build equipment and strategies in war time to job creation and growth. But in 2013, that buddy-buddy relationship went sour when the NSA/Edward Snowden scandal broke out. Tech companies claimed the NSA forced them to turn over private consumer records, like cell phone conversations and social media posts. Many customers believed Silicon Valley and Washington were in collusion invading our privacy and violating our rights. Silicon Valley distanced itself as far from DC as possible. The net neutrality debate is hardly helping matters. Now this current administration wants to stop tech giants from strengthening encryption. They don’t want enforcement agencies cracking their codes. Now there’s the zero days controversy. The government wants to deliberately build up flawed software and use it to fight future enemies. I can only imagine how Silicon Valley feels about that one.
But yet hacking, security breaches, revenge porn, ID theft, and other cyber crimes are at all time highs. And this will be a part of the discussion as well. I hope they talk about security more than they do their disagreements. If the tech and government communities can come together to end wars, bring east and west together, and fight terrorism, surely they can come together to fight these cyber evils. I know you’re getting tired of hearing it, but we on the side of right need each other more than ever. Can tech and federal relations be improved?
Cloud storage companies trying to get into the game of free storage to get people in the door are growing and growing. We also have plenty of pay cloud storage as well. Here at Computer Geeks, we have done some digging, and found something great for you! Well one of the big players is making a big stake. Microsoft is ready to strike hard with an offer that may be too hard to refuse. Microsoft is offering 100GB of free OneDrive cloud storage for two years!
If you don’t know Onedrive you may know it as Skydrive which was the original name for the cloud storage for the Microsoft office products. Microsoft has really been doing a great job at getting the One drive integration into Windows which makes it the easiest cloud storage for your Windows operating system. Especially once Windows 10 come out for sure.
Now the offer is for US residents only but you do have to do something to get this enormous amount of storage. You must sign up for a free Bing Rewards account. When you have done that you go to your Bing Rewards dashboard and then click on the 100GB free link. Once you click the link you have to agree to receive promotional One Drive e-mails which is a minor price to pay for a 100GB of cloud storage.
So now you must be asking yourself, what do I do after the two years are up? Well if you think Microsoft is trying to trap you with big prices for that storage after the two years, well your wrong. After the two years your storage will only cost you $1.99 per month. Which is around $24 a year, for tons of storage!
Now if you are worried about getting this storage and figuring out how to use it, our friends at C|Net have a tutorial to show you how to move your data from your PC to your cloud. Click here to view the tutorial.
So there you have it. An easy two years of free 100GB storage. Microsoft is coming up big with the new Windows 10 looking so promising and now with the free storage they are really trying to get some good will from consumers. What are your thoughts on Microsoft just giving away so much storage? Let me know in the comments section below.
January 7, 2015 will go down in French history. Terrorist gunned down French newspaper Charlie Hedo headquarters, killing 12 and injuring 11 others. Now, French lawmakers are taking action.
Moves are being made for France to block terror sites. They’re blocking child abuse sites as well. This bill is a revised version of 2011’s Loppsi Act. But these revisions give French cyber police authority to force Internet service providers to block certain sites within 24 hours, whether they have a court order or not. Blocked sites will be replaced by a page from the government telling them why the particular website is blocked. The system will be checked quarterly to see if sites are appropriately blocked. This bill isn’t without criticism. The criticism in France is led by Felix Treguer, leader of a French free speech group. Treguer and others say this bill leads to censorship and could be an enemy to free speech. Mr. Treguer said, “Website blocking is ineffective since it is easily circumvented. It is also disproportionate because of the risk of over-blocking perfectly lawful content.?
I want to believe the French government is trying to do right and prevent terrorists and child predators from spreading propaganda. But Felix Treguer has a point. First off, if they can’t do it online, the bad guys are going to try the old fashioned way, like pamphlets. And if you give cyber cops this kind of power, then who are bad guys? Are they terrorists and abusers? Or are they the blogs that criticize the French government? Or are they the websites that are too ‘controversial’??This bill just opens the floodgates to censorship. I’m all for fighting these kinds of evil. But will this do any good? Are they going to go after the true monsters or use this as an excuse to shut down other websites? Or worse, are they using tragedy to exploit other peoples’ freedom of speech?
Did you watch President Barak Obama’s State of the Union address last night? Did you watch it on television, or on You Tube, or on Yahoo, or on…?
You had so many choices because last night’s State of the Union went social. Social media outlets from Facebook to Twitter has been used to promote and/or report on the annual speech to target teens, Millennials, and anyone else who consider themselves Internet savvy. And that’s not all. Traditionally, a news embargo (a gentlemen’s agreement between media and sources) was enforced to not reveal the State of the Union until after the address had been delivered. And yes, they do send the press a copy of the President’s speech trusting it won’t leak to the public. This year was different. A copy of the speech was sent to blog platform and alternative journalism website Medium.com?to make the speech public even before delivery. White House Adviser Dan Pheiffer called this preview ‘SOTU spoilers’. The Obama administration has used Twitter to preview technological issues such as cyber security and the broadband Internet debate.
President Obama knows support among 18-35 year olds is slipping. This is a great way to win them back.??And like President Obama himself said, “I’m done campaigning…I won both mine.” So now it’s less about winning elections, or helping win people elections. It’s about leaving a lasting legacy for future generations. And using tools and strategies like this could set the stage for the next president and the one after that to keep the younger generation involved. But my question is why did the administration use Medium to break the age old news embargo? Why not CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox News, MSNBC, or CNN? I think it’s because more people are blogging and reading turning to alternative media than ever before, and they know it. So this is the kind of media they’re reaching out to. So what does this say about the state of mainstream media today?
It’s been over a week since the terror attacks in Paris, France that left 17 dead, 14 wounded and a whole nation shocked, scared, confused and exposed. Now, as cyber attacks on France continue, this nation faces more turbulence.
In the past eight days, there has been approximately 19,000 cyber attacks in and on France. Some of them, have been carried out by radical Islamic hacking groups. Thankfully, most have been minor annoyances and have caused no serious damage or destruction. But all aspects of life from the French military to pizzerias have been hit. But it’s the quantity of the attacks that have many security experts and authority figures alarmed. “…19,000 sites, that’s never been seen before,” said Adm. Arnaud?Coustilliere, who is head of the French military’s cyber defense program. According to Arbor Networks, in the past 24 hours alone, there has been almost 1,100 attacks. These attacks have been ‘denial of service’, meaning the website simply doesn’t function. It’s frustrating for the customer and could possibly be crippling for a business, especially one like a pizzeria.
Personally, I think only a minority of these attacks are done by radical Islamist. They want to do far more damage. But when I say this tragedy leaves France exposed because it exposed the racism, Antisemitism , and ethnic tensions that has plagued France for many years. In fact, it’s gotten so bad that many Jewish people in France are leaving and moving to Israel. Is this tension spilling out into the cyber world? I know the media has portrayed togetherness since this attack has happened. But crises can also bring out a lot of ugliness that’s been seeping in the human spirit waiting to spill out. Is it spilling out into the French cyber world? Millions of people are already on edge. Are they taking it out by causing these minor cyber attacks? Or is something more sinister going on here?
I was not able to go to this year?s CES but I have been following it with much anticipation and I have found one thing that I wanted to blog about today. There have been many different news sources covering CES and tons of great information. One thing that stood out to me that I have been very interested in is 3D printing. Awhile back I saw a program about 3D printing foods.
Well at CES 2015 the XYZprinting Company which was founded only in 2013 is bringing the future of food to us now! The food printer which is actually set to release in 2015 for around $2000-$3000 is able to print all types of food and even in different shapes!
From the reports I have seen the printer made candy and cookies made in shapes of dinosaurs. Even pizza made in the shape of a heart! Now all of these items will still need to be cooked but the fact that it can make this is amazing.
The printer has 3 chambers for the printing. They have an extensive amount of items that can be put into the chamber to create some awesome items. From the looks of it now however only baked goods will be able to be created on this device. So cookies, cake decorations and pizza are the biggest items that were shown off at the printing booth. They also showed printing designs on items like cakes and even toast with the chocolate dispenser cartridge in the printer.
With cars that will be powered by hydrogen and drive themselves it is not a surprise that we would be able to print our own food. I am just excited to see what these printers will mean for the food industry most of all bakeries. To be able to take something could take days to craft and sculpture for a cake could not just take hours with these printers. I look forward to see them on the market at the end of this year who is purchasing them. Enjoy the clip below as it will give you some more insight on how the 3D printer was shown off at the CES 2015 booth.
