Smaller states seem to do the best at providing fast Internet but the Internet connections in these states pale in comparison to the speeds in other countries, particularly South Korea.

The latest Akami State of the Internet report ranked states by their average Internet connection speed, which suggested that smaller states seem to do the best at providing fast Internet to residents. However, the Internet connections in these states pale in comparison to the speeds in other countries, particularly South Korea.

First up in top average speed came the state of Vermont, with 12.7 Mbps of speed as the average of the state’s speed. It was followed by New Hampshire, Delaware, the District of Columbia (a state for the sake of the study), and Utah, all resting above 11 Mbps. The latter five states, Massachusetts, Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey and Connecticut coming in slightly above 10 Mbps.

On the other hand, South Korean Internet averages a connection speed of 14.2 Mbps.

The thing to note about the faster states, before comparing them to Korea, is that most of them are small in size, aside from Utah. Utah, on the other hand is home to the new NSA data center, which might skew the data.  With a lot less physical land to connect, it is likely that the small size of these states, and their level of urbanization, is responsible for these higher speeds. Rural regions may have much more dispersed populations, and less incentive to build larger infrastructure there.

A second thing of note is that the Internet may have a bigger emphasis in Korean society – and thus an expectation of higher speeds and more power than we expect in the United States. Competitive gaming for instance is huge in Korea, to the point that some games are almost entirely dominated by Korean players. Online gaming, of course, is taxing on bandwidth. It is a world where a slower connection can cost points, and cash prizes.

David Belson, the editor of the report suggests that it may not just be physiography or population, or anything like gamers that drive up the demand for high speed net. He suggests that competition between providers has helped raise Internet speeds, at least on a more local level.

“At least on a community level, if there’s only one provider, the chances of getting very high-speed services for reasonable prices is low. But when you put Verizon FiOS and Comcast and RCN and others in the same neighborhood, there’s more contention for the customer dollar. So you’ll see them start getting more competitive for speed and pricing,” he wrote.

Consumers seem to agree with him.

A survey from California by the PPIC (Public Policy Institute of California) focused on that state’s use of the Internet showed that a majority of the population, particularly Latinos and blacks, felt that high-speed Internet should be a public utility. Over 50% of Latinos, and almost 60% of blacks surveyed in this also felt that children without broadband access were at a disadvantage – with 67% of voters favoring a government program to provide broadband Internet to lower-income and rural residents of the state.

High connection speed could finally provide areas with a single provider an alternative, and competition for cheaper rates and faster Internet. However, for some, it may be a while until they get access to Internet services near the power of the South Korea.

[Image Via NASA]

The video version of Craigslist allows users to either upload, or view, videos when trying to sell or buy online.

What if you could make your own commercial for the stuff you wanted to sell online? The DIME is an app created by Latinos that does exactly that. The app allows smartphone users to create their own commercials for cars, apartments, jobs, roommates, puppies, tickets or anything else you want to sell or buy online.

We were lucky enough to nab an interview with Isaac Cuchilla, CEO of The DIME. The 26 year-old LA native is Nicaraguan and Salvadoran and found himself working with technology early in in elementary school; later when he became interested in journalism and worked at La Opinión, he found a way to fuse these two interests.

MW: Tell me about The DIME and how you all came up with the idea.

IC: During a brainstorming session with Erik Caballero, we were thinking about ways to bolster the newspaper industry’s revenue, and we started talking about its advertising revenue, in particular the classifieds section. We got to evaluating how Craigslist came in to poach the newspapers classifieds revenue and did it to the extent that newspapers were left scrambling. We wanted to create a product that made the overall local buying/selling experience safer and more interactive.

MW: What are 3 lessons you have learned and would like to share with other entrepreneurs?

IC: It takes a lot of work to get it from idea to execution. Then it takes an inhumane amount of work to make a company out of it. Be ready.

There will be plenty of “no” before you get a “yes” when it comes to people believing in the product and raising capital for it. So just keep at it and don’t stop.

Persevere. You can’t score if you don’t shoot.

MW: Where are you with DIME right now?

IC: We’re in the Apple App Store with our first version. Pretty much a Beta that has taught us a lot about where to improve and focus our future versioning goals. It’s a listening period where we improve upon the user experience. We’re working on our next versions and look forward to doing a full public launch.

MW: Where do you see the company going in the next 2-5 years?

IC: Providing our users the safest and most interactive experience in local buying, selling and promotion. Basically, the go-to platform for local content and goods— all in real-time video and everywhere you like to consume it.

You can download The DIME here.

In the days and weeks leading up to the death of Leonard Nimoy, the actor and director most known for playing the gravel-voiced Vulcan Mr Spock in Star Trek, knew he was dying. He used Twitter as a means to make peace with this fact, and to say goodbye to his friends, family and fans around the world with sayings, poetry, and wise words.

So is a new ars moriendi, or a new craft of dying, emerging in the digital age? Historians have argued that dying was a more public affair before the 20th century, when most people were cramped together in one room hovels. Even the rich in their grand houses lived more public-facing lives than we might tolerate today.

Improved housing offers greater privacy for living, including that provided by hospital or residential care, which is where our dying takes place – removed from most people’s sight. The result is not that death is taboo, but it has certainly become hidden – what historian Philippe Ariès called “unfamiliar”.

But that has been changing for a while now. The past 30 years have witnessed an explosion of auto-pathography: published autobiographies about the writer’s own dying, almost always of cancer. Art photographers also have got in on the act, documenting the withering bodies of people dying of cancer or AIDS, or portraits taken before and after death.

Nobody was obliged to read or view these offerings, but in the UK that changed in 2009. Jade Goody, who had come to fame as a contestant on Big Brother, did a deal with the tabloids and OK Magazine to cover her death from cancer, day-by-day, week-by-week. She wanted to die as she lived, in the full glare of the media. For several weeks it was impossible to go into any newsagent without being confronted with front-page images of a bald-headed Goody on her final and very public journey.

These days, the pervasive nature of social media can carry this several steps further. Anybody can now blog or tweet about their own dying – which can be remarkably educational for the doctors who read their patients’ blogs. Online mutual help groups of those with a fatal condition also enables them to communicate, anywhere, any time. Online, they can find emotional and practical support from one other.

After death, social media enable grief to become more shared, more public, than it generally was in the 20th century. Sufferers can express their suffering. And in so doing, they educate others about dying and mourning.

A mixed blessing

All this is not without its problems. In the 20th century, many people actually valued the privacy that removed their dying or grieving from the sight of others. Visibility, offline or online, creates the possibility of support, but it also requires the sufferer to put on a public face which may not mirror their internal torment.

Visibility also increases the chances of unhelpful comments and even censure. This is apparent in grieving, where mourners may be criticised for grieving too much or too little, too long or not long enough, for being too stoical or too expressive. Facebook, with its upbeat ethos, may not be where young people dying of cancer want to share their worst fears and deepest anxieties.

In the US, split between religious conservatism and liberal humanism, people’s very different ways of dealing with suffering and finding hope in mortality might once have stayed within their communities. But in the borderless online world they bang up against each other, often adding to the suffering. Fundamentalist sites discussing euthanasia or post-abortion grief can be profoundly unhelpful to those seeking advice and counsel. Liberal humanist sites may not be welcomed by some who are religious and after pastoral help.

This is why online groups restricted to particular age groups with particular conditions or particular religious beliefs, can be valuable. But online sites run by people living with certain life-threatening conditions – notably depression and anorexia – can disturb friends and family. Such sites may even embrace suicide pacts or a pro-anorexia ethos, and may get shut down, adding to their members’ feeling not being understood.

The one certainty

Humans have always been mortal, but cultures and subcultures around dying have never been static. The internet and new ways of communicating offer new ways of familiarising ourselves and others with death: printing, photography, sound recording, television, email, Facebook, Twitter, and so on. Each new technology impacts existing tensions such as privacy versus sharing, freedom to die or grieve one’s own way versus surveillance and censure by others, power versus resistance to power.

We can all be certain we will die. But we cannot be at all certain, when our time comes, how technology and society will offer to accompany us on that final journey.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
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Technology is often maligned for having a negative influence on young people, particularly on their ability to develop healthy social relations and a sense of identity. But technology can also be a force for good.

For some people, such as those on the higher-functioning end of the autism spectrum, technology can be a vehicle for personal and social growth.

Many young people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are drawn to computers. That’s not surprising given technology’s potential for exploring the deep, intense interests that many ASD kids have.

What is surprising, though, is how little we know about the ways in which ASD kids use technology to navigate the pitfalls of a world that, more often than not, doesn’t understand them.

Social challenges

Young people on the autism spectrum find it hard to navigate social norms, often with costly consequences. So there’s much to be learnt from how they use technology to foster self-worth and establish contact with others.

Many of them yearn for social connection, but find it difficult to initiate. So they seek it in settings such as online communities, where there’s less pressure to respond in ways that “neurotypical” peers find acceptable and where they’re more likely to find like-minded people with similar interests.

Through our involvement with The Lab – a network of “technology clubs” connecting school-age ASD kids with IT mentors and each other in after-school spaces – we’re beginning to see just how complex and creative ASD kids’ networked lives can be.

At The Lab, online and offline spaces are deployed in rich combinations that help young people with ASD retain control over how they are perceived, demonstrate their skills and celebrate, rather than hide, their unique qualities. We see these spaces as “differentiated” – created or appropriated by ASD kids, for ASD kids.

Lab members bring their own laptops. They decide where and with whom they sit, and the terms under which they share what they do. The setting is designed to be unlike the typical school classroom, with its rigid expectations and arrangement of space.

Third places

The differentiated space of The Lab evokes the playful, non-judgemental “third places” observed by Ray Oldenburg in the 1980s: communal hangouts like cafés and social clubs where people turn up because they feel valued for who they are and what they can bring.

An internet-era version is LAN cafés, which perform a similar function for school-age gamers, including, no doubt, many people with ASD.

At The Lab, interactions happen both in person and through technology, sometimes at the same time. This is where Homi Bhabha’s concept of the “third space” comes in.

The idea of third space can be understood in many ways, but we use it to describe a transitional state where ideas and thoughts meet to produce new knowledge. The environments created by “third places” enable “third space” states to emerge.

Third space knowledge incorporates tacit understandings about oneself and one’s relationship to others. But in everyday life, kids with ASD don’t always learn the unwritten rules because they process the world differently to neurotypicals.

It’s like asking an international visitor to understand Australian slang on her first day in the country. Over time, she may understand and even use this slang, but it doesn’t happen naturally.

There is, then, a need for forms of interaction that help young people with ASD develop the everyday social skills others take for granted, and which matter for future employment. But these settings also need to value ASD kids for who they already are, so they can see their own strengths and build on them.

So far, The Lab does seem to be making a difference to the lives of participants. Much of this seems to flow from the combination of non-judgement, social connection and skills sharing. From here, participants forge their own learning paths based on their interests.

Life’s a game

Computer games have played a large part in this process. There’s been much debate lately on the pros and cons of games use, with claims of increased aggression and anti-social behaviour countered by other views that see games as useful tools for improving socialisation.

We’ve seen schools banning computer games that aren’t defined by teachers as “educational”, ignoring the sophisticated forms of informal learning and socialisation that occur during “screen time”.

We’ve also seen student-led proposals for lunchtime technology groups rejected by school councils. While not dismissing issues connected with too much gaming, we do worry that some children – especially those who, like kids with ASD, don’t “fit in” – are unnecessarily missing out on unique opportunities to learn and belong.

One such child joined The Lab at age 12. Lonely and isolated at school, and obsessed with Super Mario Brothers, he quickly progressed from playing Super Mario games to programming his own. Then he learnt to make his own Super Mario music tracks, teaching himself violin in the process.

From there, he learnt animation and video making from a new Lab friend and soon created his own popular YouTube channel on how to draw Mario characters. Since then he’s expanded his interests, but his sense of competence, self-worth and agency has stayed with him.

Given the woefully low employment rate of people with autism, and the stories we continually hear about self-harm and depression by young people with ASD, we think it’s worth some schools rethinking their approach to technology usage, and considering the creation of informal social settings where ASD kids’ IT interests can be harnessed to improve their quality of life, as well as their future prospects.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
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By Arun Vishwanath, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

The theft of 80 million customer records from health insurance company Anthem earlier this month would be more shocking if it were not part of a larger trend. In 2013, the Department of Defense and some US states were receiving 10–20 million cyberattacks per day. By 2014, there was a 27% increase in successful attacks, culminating with the infamous hack of Sony Pictures.

Much of the media focus is on the losses rather than the process by which such breaches take place. Consequently, instead of talking about how we could stop the next attack, people and policymakers are discussing punitive actions. But not enough attention is given to the actions of individual end users in these cyberattacks.

We are the unintentional insiders

Many of these hacking attacks employ simple phishing schemes, such as an e-card on Valentine’s Day or a notice from the IRS about your tax refund. They look innocuous but when clicked, they open virtual back doors into our organizations.

It is you and I who click on these links and become the “unintentional insiders” giving the hackers access and helping spread the infection. Such attacks are hard to detect using existing anti-virus programs that, like vaccines, are good at protecting systems from known external threats — not threats from within.

Clearly, this virtual battle cannot be won using software alone. In the same way personal hygiene stymies the spread of infectious disease, fixing this cyber quandary will require all of us to develop better cyberhygiene. We need to begin by considering the cyberbehaviors that lead to breaches.

My research on phishing points to three. Firstly, most of us pay limited attention to email content, focusing instead on quick clues that help expedite judgment. A picture of an inexpensive heart-shaped valentine gift gets attention, oftentimes at the cost of looking at the sender’s email address.

This is coupled by our ritualized media habits that our always-on and accessible smartphones and tablets enable. Many of us check emails throughout the day whenever an opportunity or notification arises, even when we know it is dangerous to do so, such as while driving. Such habitual usage significantly increases the likelihood of someone opening an email as matter of routine.

And finally, many of us just aren’t knowledgeable about online risks. We tend to hold what I call “cyber risk beliefs” about the security of an operating system, the safety of a program, or the vulnerability of an online action, most of which are flawed.

Cleaning up our cyberhygiene act

Developing cyberhygiene requires all of us — netizens, educators, local government, and federal policymakers — to actively engage in creating it.

To begin, we must focus on educating everyone about the risks of online actions. Most children don’t learn about cybersafety until they reach high school; many until college. More troublingly, some learn through risky trials or the reports of someone else’s errors.

In an age where online data remain on servers perpetually, the consequences of a privacy breach could haunt a victim forever. Expanding federal programs such as the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education, which presently aims to inspire students to pursue cybersecurity careers, could help achieve universal cybersecurity education.

Second, we must train people to become better at detecting online fraud. At the very least, all of us must be made aware of online security protocols, safe browsing practices, secure password creation and storage, and on procedures for sequestering or reporting suspicious activity. Flawed cyber-risk beliefs must be replaced with objective knowledge through training.

Although some training programs address these issues, most target businesses that can pay for training. Left out are households and other vulnerable groups, which, given the recent “bring your own device to work” (BYOD) trend, increases the chances that a compromised personal device brings a virus into the workplace. Initiatives such as the Federal Cybersecurity Training Events that presently offer free workshops to IT professionals are steps in this direction, but the emphasis must move beyond training specialists to training the average netizen.

Finally, we must centralize the reporting of cyber breaches. The President’s proposed Personal Data Notification and Protection Act would make it mandatory for companies to report data breaches within 30 days. But it still doesn’t address who within the vast network of enforcement agencies is responsible for resolution. Having a single clearing house that centralizes and tracks breaches, just like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks disease outbreaks across the nation, would make remediation and resource allocation easier.

Across the Atlantic, the City of London Police created a system called Action Fraud, which serves as a single site for reporting all types of cyberattacks, along with a specialized team called FALCON to quickly respond to and even address impending cyberattacks. Our city and state police forces could do likewise by channeling some resource away from fighting offline crime. After all, real world crime is at a historically low rate while cybercrimes have grown exponentially.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
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