The Desert Computer Tutor

Category: Smart Home Devices

  • Happy New Decade!

    image with Happy New Year 2020 with clock
    Image by Jeff Jacobs from Pixabay

    As the decade draws to a close, have you taken time to look back on your life for the past 10 years?  It’s an interesting exercise.  We can feel proud of ourselves for the challenges we’ve overcome (or at least survived) and the progress we’ve made toward goals and get inspired to set new goals for the new year.

    Can you believe how fast the decade has flown by? Everyone marvels at how quickly time passes and it’s not just older folks. Young people notice it too. Ask some young adults and see what they say.

    I think it’s due to the fact that everything around us is changing and evolving so quickly. That’s especially true with technology.  Not only does it change rapidly, but it often radically changes the way we live our lives.  What was life like before email, cell phones and Facebook?  And now Uber, streaming video, Echo and Google Home?

    I really enjoyed this article by PC Magazine and I think you will too.  
    You may not have heard of some of them but that’s fine.  Enjoy the ones you do know, like iPads, smart watches, Windows 10 and Chromebooks.

    The Most Iconic Tech Innovations of the 2010s  “As the decade winds down, we round up the most important and innovative products, trends, and breakthroughs that have shaped how we use technology.”

    And this brings up the issue of feeling stupid…
    So many clients tell me they are stupid when it comes to technology and I always tell them, “That’s not true! You just feel stupid because there is so much new information and vocabulary to learn at one time.”

    “It’s not even a matter of not having learned computers in school.  Things wouldn’t be the same now anyway.  I can barely keep up!  If I were off the grid for 6 months or more, I’d probably feel stupid too.”

    Here’s an inspiring quote from Seth Godin that speaks to this…

    From What to Do When it’s Your Turn (and it’s Always Your Turn)

    The Fear of Stupidity
    “Stupid is not uncommon. Stupid is the way we feel when working on a difficult problem. Stupid is the emotion associated with learning—we are stupid and then we are not. The pre-learning state is stupidity. A scientist might work ten years on solving a problem of math or logic or biology. Or a lifetime. And until the problem is solved, she’s stupid. And then she isn’t. Which is all fine, actually. The problem comes with the emotion that we’re supposed to feel when we feel stupid: Fear. We are supposed to be afraid of stupid, to get stupid over with as soon as we can. Change, of course, makes everyone feel stupid, because change breaks all the old rules, inventing new ones, rules we don’t know (yet). And so the equation is obvious: Change —> Stupid —> Afraid. One way to avoid this is to avoid change. One way to avoid this is to avoid freedom. The best way to avoid this is to embrace stupid and skip the last part. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Nothing except avoiding the feeling of stupid. And stupid is a good thing.”

    May you embrace “stupid,” embrace change, embrace continuing education and have an amazing 2020!

    Enjoy!
    Mardi

    What do you think about the changes in the past decade and are you over feeling stupid for feeling stupid sometimes?  I’d love to see your thoughts in the comments sections below…

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  • Alexa and Google Home Can Eavesdrop

    Alexa and Google Home Can Eavesdrop

    photo of woman speaking to an Alexa Device
    Photo from article on ZDNet website

    Oh, dear…the challenges of being on the Leading Edge of technology!

    If you are going to play, you need to be educated about how things work and what to look out for.  Hope this helps.  Enjoy!

    If you have any questions or comments, please share them in the comments section at the bottom and I’ll be happy to reply.

    From ZDNet: Hackers can abuse Amazon Alexa and Google Home smart assistants to eavesdrop on user conversations without users’ knowledge, or trick users into handing over sensitive information.

    The attacks aren’t technically new. Security researchers have previously found similar phishing and eavesdropping vectors impacting Amazon Alexa in April 2018; Alexa and Google Home devices in May 2018; and again Alexa devices in August 2018.

    Both Amazon and Google have deployed countermeasures every time, yet newer ways to exploit smart assistants have continued to surface.

    The latest ones were disclosed today, after being identified earlier this year by Luise Frerichs and Fabian Bräunlein, two security researchers at Security Research Labs (SRLabs), who shared their findings with ZDNet last week.

    Both of these attacks exploit the fact that while Amazon and Google verify and vet Alexa and Google Home apps when they are submitted, they do not do the same for subsequent app updates.

    In an email to ZDNet, the SRLabs team said they reported the issue to both vendors earlier this year, yet the companies have failed to address the issue.

    “Finding and banning unexpected behavior such as long pauses should be relatively straight-forward,” the SRLabs team told ZDNet. “We are surprised that this hasn’t happened since reporting the vulnerabilities several months ago.”

    Amazon did not respond to a request for comment from ZDNet prior to this article’s publication.

    A Google spokesperson provided the following message:

    “All Actions on Google are required to follow our developer policies, and we prohibit and remove any Action that violates these policies. We have review processes to detect the type of behavior described in this report, and we removed the Actions that we found from these researchers. We are putting additional mechanisms in place to prevent these issues from occurring in the future.”

    Google also wanted Home assistant owners to know that their device will never ask them for the account password, and that Google staff are currently reviewing actions from all third-party apps.