[09/25/23]
Katie joins DayStarr as the newest member of our Customer Experience team. When asked what she likes most about her work here, Katie expressed her love for the culture at DayStarr. She enjoys being able to help the community through communications and being a part of a great local business!
Here’s a bit about Katie as a person: Katie grew up in Owosso and graduated from OHS. Her favorite activities outside of work include riding her bike, and finding a good place to set up her hammock to read a good book.
[09/25/23]
If you’re like me, you’re very familiar with the struggles associated with a messy desktop. Your entire screen is a chaotic jumble of files – videos, homework assignments, random pictures, and folders with obscure names. You can’t remember where anything is supposed to be, and it becomes a massive pain to deal with. Luckily for you, I have some tips for cleaning your desktop and keeping it that way!
First, move everything into a folder.
When I clean my desktop, I usually begin by moving everything on the screen into a single folder, probably labeled “Desktop” or something similar. This immediately cleans up the look and puts everything into one spot where you can easily sort and organize it.
Next, make folders to keep things organized.
Second, I make folders for each category in which I might want to store my files. I might have one for work or school, one for pictures, one for videos, and one for those miscellaneous files that don’t fit anywhere.
Start organizing!
Now for the hardest part, assuming your desktop is as messy as mine was. Time to start organizing! You can approach this however you like, but I usually sort the files by file type and move them into their respective folders. Then I go through deleting everything I don’t need anymore. Don’t forget to empty your trash bin afterward – this will clear up space on your hard drive!
Other folders.
You may also want to investigate cleaning out other folders, such as your downloads and documents. These can hold a surprising amount of data in them, especially the downloads folder.
If your computer is running low on space, you can also uninstall old programs or games that you don’t use anymore.
Keeping things clean.
Now that your computer is all nice and organized, you should ensure it doesn’t revert to where it was!
Storing files in their proper locations (instead of dumping them on the desktop) goes a long way to keeping them neat. You can also clear your downloads folder whenever you download something from the internet and empty your computer’s trash bin every week or so.
[09/25/23]
If you’ve been paying attention to social media lately, you’ve noticed that everyone is talking about AI – or artificial intelligence. While these AI programs have been around for a while, their development speeds and capabilities are skyrocketing. What seemed impossible yesterday is possible today.
Why did AI become so popular?
Explaining AI’s popularity spike is easy. The buzz started with the release of DALLE-mini (or Craiyon), an AI model which generates low-quality images based on short text prompts. Due to the humorous nature of these images and the free, accessible online interface, everyone started to experiment and share memes.
DALLE-2 was the next evolution, a model developed by Open-AI, which is several times larger than Craiyon and can generate more realistic, detailed images. Many others, such as Midjourney and StableDiffusion, are available either for free or through payment. Each has its own vibe and niche.
Text generation snuck up on a lot of us. When ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot, was released in November of 2022, the detail and consistency of its responses astonished the internet. It can write articles or stories, answer factual or philosophical questions, and even write computer code! It’s also free, which means anyone can use it.
How does AI work?
These artificial intelligence programs work somewhat like our brains, utilizing a “neural network.” The neural network takes in information from the outside and searches for patterns, bouncing it back and forth between different “neurons.” It gets better at the specific task every time it does it, becoming faster and more accurate.
But how does this turn into text or image generation? Text generation models predict the next word in a sentence based on what came before it. The AI is trained on massive amounts of text from the internet, so it has a pretty good idea of how people write. Image generation is similar – the AI is trained on extensive datasets of images from all over the internet and can predict where pixels should go based on the prompt it receives from the user.
What are the ethical concerns with AI?
Many people have raised ethical concerns with these programs.
The visual art community is understandably skeptical about AI art, arguing that it isn’t real and detracts from art created by real people. They’re also angry that art is often included in training datasets without the artists’ knowledge or consent.
Teachers and professors are facing an entirely different problem – cheating. Since ChatGPT is adept at answering questions and writing essays, students have been making it complete their homework.
There are also concerns from writers that AI will take over their jobs.
What do you think? Are the risks worth the benefits of using AI?
[09/25/23]
Protecting your identity online is incredibly important in today’s day and age. Countless hackers and opportunists are constantly scouring the internet for vulnerable users, waiting to seize their personal information – including usernames, passwords, addresses, and full names.
Thankfully, it is easy to protect yourself from these attackers. They’re looking for weak targets, so strengthening your online security will make it much less likely that something terrible happens to your online identity.
Use strong passwords.
This one seems obvious, but you might be surprised how many people use flimsy passwords to protect their online accounts. Including varied capitalization, numbers, and symbols will make your passwords tougher to crack. Avoid using important places or dates, and definitely avoid using the same password to protect multiple important accounts!
Don’t sign into suspicious websites.
Unless you are 100% certain you’re signing into a legitimate organization’s website, don’t enter your personal information! Secure websites will usually have “https” in front of the URL, as opposed to unsecured sites that may say “http” or “unsecured.”
Hackers will also create mock login pages for popular sites like Facebook or Google to trick you into inputting your account names and passwords. If you aren’t sure, look at the URL and verify that it’s correct. Sometimes there may only be a letter or two changed from the original site’s address, so watch out!
Look out for phishing emails.
Suspicious emails might show up in your inbox now and again. They will often include links to those sketchy login pages discussed earlier or attempt to install malware on your device. If an email looks weird, do not even open it!
Protect your credit card number.
It is wise to be careful where you use your credit card online. While large stores like Amazon are usually secure, examine smaller sites carefully before you input your card number. It is also good practice to avoid letting these websites keep your number on file, to minimize the chances that it is stolen in a security breach.
Never give out your personal information on the internet.
Finally, if a stranger on the internet asks for your full real name, birthday, password, or social security number, never give it to them – even if it’s someone you’ve talked to online many times. You never know who could be trying to trick you out of your personal information!
Hopefully, this helped educate you on the dangers of risky internet behavior! Are there any other tips you know for internet protection?