Digital Design by AN

In an article published yesterday, December 18. 2017, in a new innovation in the car industry may save thousands of lives. A group of students at the American University of Sharjah have designed a system where the car detects driving activity of the surrounding cars and warns the driver of potential threats. The students decided to create this senior project because of the serious issue car accidents have in the UAE which is the leading cause of death in the country. The actual way this works is by attaching a device and several components that come with it to the car's dashboard. This allows the device to read the data pertaining to the speed, brake, engine, reading and more; subsequently, the device would then share the data to surrounding cars with the same device using a high level communication protocol using radio and not internet. Then if the device notice any unusual behavior such as tailgating, speeding, frequent braking, swerving, and etc, it will notify the driver and th

After today's lesson I have learned that when we use the Internet and social media our information/data is being collected and stored. This can be very concerning for manny people because they would rather keep their personal information private. However, the consequence of using a resource that connects people is that most things if not all is public and can be viewed by others. Although apps use information in order to better improve their app, it is also possible that your information can be leaked. Personally Identifiable Information is the main cause for concern because that is the information that pertains to who you are as an individual and can be harmful if it were to be spread to others. This should not come at a shock because whenever we download an app there is that tab of permissions that pop up which tells you the information that you are giving the app permission to view and collect. I believe if there is any issue it is cause by our ignorance because we do not usuall

In an article published by The New York Times titled, " Tracking Dolphins with Algorithms you Might Find on Facebook, Steph Yin tells the story of Kait Fraiser and her new way of tracking dolphins. This was a big deal because beforehand it was extremely tedious and expensive to track dolphins. Many different factors effects whether a dolphin will be at a specific place in time and using echolocation was even worse. The amount of data collected would cause even the greatest minds to have a headache. However, Fraiser created a machine learning program that is similar to the one used by Facebook to recommend new friends in order to help this dilemma. With the new program huge amounts of data can be analyzed and identified in a short amount of time compared to if it was completed by humans. In fact, the program(algorithm) was able to analyze 52 million dolphin clicks and identify distinct groups of sounds. Also the algorithm was ale to analyze two years worth of data in four days whil

Today, all around the world, the Hour of Code took place for people to learn computer science. My school was no exception and since I already participated in the Hour of Code before this time I mentored freshmen that had yet to experience the Hour of Code. Therefore, to make it more interesting for the freshmen, we allowed them to code different websites  such as creating the solar system or animating their own name. This struck s by surprise because we weren't told that we would mentor until two minutes before the freshmen came in. They came in, watched a video from code.org and afterwards we were to pair up with a freshman and take them to our computers to guide them in their journey. The first freshmen that I was assigned to was actually a sophomore that already took the Hour of Code, so I thought she'd be experienced. I was wrong in my assumption because she forgot all that she did the previous year and was quite lost. She worked on the solar system project and actually fin

In recent article published by The Washington Post titled, " Robots could replace nearly a third of the U.S. workforce by 2030" the author, Danielle Paquette, reveals the imminent problem low skilled jobs have in the future. Robots and AIs have become so advanced that they could replace humans at multiple jobs that do not require advanced skills. By 2030, it is predicted that the U.S. workforce will decrease by 30%.  with about a 20% decrease in support workers ( ex: secretaries; people in charge of administrative tasks), and a 30% decrease in hard labor ( ex: construction workers, dish-washing, and security guards). According to the article, this problem will not only affect the U.S., but countries such as Germany, Japan, and China will suffer similar issues. Worldwide, approximately 375 million employees will be replaced by technology by 2030. It is an indisputable fact that machines can do certain jobs more efficiently than humans and it requires less money; therefore,

This past Saturday, December 2, Queens College hosted a local hackathon on their campus. As a student currently enrolled in a computer science class it was a great opportunity for me and other classmates to learn and showcase our skills. Walking into the hackathon was a little bit daunting because most if not all the participants were college students except for me and the other people from my class that also attended. However, once the actual event began I didn't feel out of place, on the contrary the people where very nice and welcomed me even though I was very young. The first secession/activity was a sort of free learning hour where we had the freedom of doing whatever we wanted. The organizers gave us a link to the MLH website and there were multiple activities that we were able to do, but they all involved programs that I was unfamiliar with and they all were very complex. Therefore, it was basically an hour of just learning what different programs did and the basic commands