Op-Ed: Tech Tuesdays

The following Op-Ed was submitted by Bryan Carter as part of a “Tech Tuesday” weekly submission. Note: Op-eds do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Idaho Dispatch.

Welcome to the first of hopefully many Tech Tuesdays articles exclusively on Idaho Dispatch!

Tech Tuesdays will seek to highlight a recent product or service, or something which may have been around a while.  A good emphasis will be on Idaho companies which have a strong presence in the tech world. We don’t want the articles getting all “techie” and deep.  Simple and informational is the objective.

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And, just as is the mission within Idaho Dispatch, the same is also sought within Tech Tuesdays >> maintain an unbiased focus.  This is important, even in today’s tech world, as as many conclude the tech industry and tech social media companies seem to have an “agenda”.  Depending upon one’s political or values perspective, that ‘agenda’ may either be preferred or disdained upon. Thus, the commitment toward unbiased articles.

We’ll begin each article with “Tip of the Week”, and then move onto our Spotlight.  So, let’s get started!

Tip of the Week ~ For Windows 10 or later, to see a list of emojis to choose from, hold down the Windows key and type “.” (Period, no quotes). You can invoke this emoji set within most applications when you are typing text (email, browsers for when you are in social media, etc).  For the workplace, do be minded as to cultural impacts and/or not using the kissy-kiss emoji for presentations to customers.

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Spotlight | User Privacy Online ~ With the release of Apple’s new iOS 15 for its iPhones and iPads, one feature drew some considerable and deep privacy concerns amongst both Apple users and large privacy advocacy groups around the world.

The “good news”, according to Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a global privacy advocacy group, is that a certain feature, per a press release from Apple, has been “indefinitely postponed” and will not be deployed with iOS 15.  That feature was going to auto-scan all private pictures stored in Apple’s iCloud services for potential child pornography.

While such imagery is wholly unwanted and entirely unlikely to be within pictures of 97% of most iCloud user’s photo galleries, that their private picts would be scanned without their consent and also could not be deactivated was of the more disconcerting focus. The public spoke and Apple seems to have “listened”, at least for now, and has noted they will not ‘invoke’ this scanning technology at this time.

Wrap-Up ~ Well, that’s it for this inaugural installment of Tech Tuesdays. Thank you for joining this little section of Idaho Dispatch, as we hope you will find it beneficial in the coming weeks ahead.