The Connection, Inc Blog

Did you know that over 2,000 Domino’s Pizza franchises in Australia, New Zealand, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Japan, and Germany feature delivery by robot? Starship Technologies, a self-driving robotics company, announced on March 29th that they would be partnering with Domino’s to revolutionize the way the delivery process works.

It’s also worth mentioning that this development comes on the heels of the company’s projected growth estimates for the next five-to-ten years, predicting a worker shortage that the delivery robots can hopefully remedy in the long term. It’s just one way that modern enterprises are using technology to improve the way they run their organizations.

Domino’s Group CEO and Managing Director, Don Meji, states: “Robotic delivery units will complement our existing delivery methods, including cars, scooters, and e-bikes, ensuring our customers can get the hottest, freshest-made pizza delivered directly to them, wherever they are.”

Just think, maybe someday you can have a way to get fresh, delicious pizza delivered right to your front door via autonomous robot. Unfortunately, this does have some limitations. These robots can only deliver to customers within a one-mile radius of their designated Domino’s store, and that’s only in specific cities in Germany and the Netherlands. Also of note is that these battery-powered robots can only move along sidewalks at a speed of no more that four miles per hour, and can only carry a maximum of twenty pounds of food at a time.

The United States, among others, have also been looking into food delivery robots as valid opportunities over the past year. Some examples are U.S.-based companies Postmates and DoorDash. These companies have started to test Starship Technologies’ robots in multiple cities, but that doesn’t mean that you should expect to see robots at your door anytime soon, as only two states currently have legislation passed to make it legal for automated, ground-based robots to deliver food. The two states, Virginia and Idaho, may be joined shortly by other states that have pending legislation on the matter: Florida and Wisconsin.

In Idaho’s case, the state law lets local jurisdictions adopt their own regulations. This gives local governments authority to limit any delivery robot’s speed, and which location within the municipality they are allowed to be in use. If this technology takes hold in these places, many other states will almost certainly follow suit, even though there still is, admittedly, plenty of issues to square away, such as the cost of maintenance and security for these devices.

What are your thoughts about robots delivering pizza? Is it another marketing ploy by a company that is known for their outside-the-box thinking, or is it a viable (meaning cost-effective) alteration in Domino’s current business model? We’d love to read your thoughts in the comments section below.

In October of 2016, the Federal Communications Commission designed a set of rules known as the Broadband Consumer Privacy Proposal. These rules had intended to flip the status quo and require Internet service providers (ISPs) to gain their customers’ permission before they harvested their browsing histories to sell to advertisers. This proposal is now moot with the establishment of a new law that passed through Congress and was signed by President Trump in April 2017.

The huge levels of dissent surrounding this issue boil down to concerns over privacy. While the proposed rules didn’t necessarily prevent ISPs from selling your data for monetary gain, they would have required the ISP to secure permissions from you before they did so. The relationship between ISPs, the Federal Communications Commission (the FCC), and the Federal Trade Commission (the FTC) also played a major role. Many politicians who were opposed to these new rules felt that the FCC had no business determining rules for ISPs, as they felt that responsibility for that was better managed by the FTC.

This opinion was shared by the current chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai. However, while the FCC no longer has the authority to forbid ISPs from selling their user’s browsing data to advertisers, no power has been given to the FTC to prevent such activity, either.

The government’s actions have provided ISPs with the same abilities as search engines and social media sites, with a few changes. First of all, search engines and social media do not require any sort of purchase, which leads to an implied agreement that in exchange for their free services, they may use your browsing data to personalize the results they show you (although this personalization does allow marketers to target specific demographics of users, which is a very powerful tool for businesses that many users feel is invasive). ISPs, on the other hand, do charge for their services, meaning that this ruling effectively allows ISPs from making twice the profit from you. Furthermore, instead of just tracking your history on select sites and services, an ISP has access to analyze your entire surfing history and profit off of it.

So what does this all mean to you?
Well, that depends. It is possible that ISPs will target online advertisements based on your individual browsing history, emphasizing products and services that you have shown some interest in before. This isn’t new. Amazon, for example, has mastered this through the use of remarketing. While this could presumably lead to an improved browsing experience for many, there is considerable pushback coming from many advocates for privacy.

This is largely due to the fact that your ISP could harvest this data from almost anywhere, including your personal email accounts and any other online activity, in order to sell it, or at least allow marketers to capitalize on it. Depending on the data collected, this could potentially include personally identifiable information or sensitive account credentials--which could then be up for sale to whomever wanted to buy them from the ISP. Even if we weren’t worried about ISPs selling this type of sensitive data, it opens up another potential way for hackers to gather that data, if the ISP is lax on security.

This isn’t the only advantage the ISP gains, either. Under the rules that were scrapped, an ISP would have been required to alert their customers of a data breach. Arguing that this would only lead to ‘notification fatigue,’ the ISPs were also able to remove these rules, meaning that they are no longer obligated to inform you should your data be at risk.

So, how can you prevent your sensitive information from being collected?
Unfortunately, that may be easier said than done. While ISPs still have free reign to collect your browsing data as they please, they are not able to do so if you opt out. This is not to say that all ISPs have made opting out easy, so you may have to make a phone call, and you have to take them at their word that they are no longer tracking you.

There are also some ISPs who are opposed to the privacy repeal, but around 80 percent of Americans have only one or two options for broadband in their area.

Utilizing a virtual private network is another option available to you, but this approach isn’t without its drawbacks, either. Just as an ISP can, a third-party VPN can access and sell your browsing data, if they so choose. For a personal user, a VPN can be costly and cumbersome, however businesses do benefit from them every day. Tor browsing is another option, although it is more complicated, slower, and can potentially be unsecure.

In short, there really isn’t an easy, guaranteed way to secure your browsing history against the peeping eyes of your ISP. All you can do is implement some of these methods to defend yourself to the best of your ability.

Let’s say you’ve got an email that you really need to crank out from home, and pronto. So, you whip out your laptop to get started, and that’s when you spot the menacing eyes of a toddler from across the room. What do you do? Is it even possible to use a mobile device once a toddler has it in their greedy little sights? For this week’s tip, we’ll explore your options.

The Internet of Things may have just entered social consciousness, but people have been trying to add Internet functionality to devices for quite some time. One instance of this is the development and manufacture of smart car technology. In the same way as our services are designed to proactively monitor and maintain your business’ network, a smart car has been developed largely as an completely connected automobile that allows car owners to worry less about their car and to get the most out of their investment and driving experiences.

One of the most high-profile hacking attacks in the United States struck last year when the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was breached. 464,000 Social Security numbers were swiped; enough to file 101,000 tax returns using false personal identification numbers. Every organization can learn how to better protect themselves during tax return season, especially since you have so much on the line every year.

In response to the aforementioned threat, the IRS has made several improvements that allow the organization to (hopefully) better protect taxpayers as they perform their financial obligations. Specifically, these improvements are effective “before, during, and after a tax return is filed.” On the IRS’s official website, “This is highlighted by the number of new people reporting stolen identities on federal tax returns falling by more than 50 percent, with nearly 275,000 fewer victims compared to a year ago.”

One of the best tools that the IRS has used to cut down on these concerning identity theft numbers is an annual security summit. In part, the following results have been attributed to the summit:

• Fraudulent returns are being stopped more frequently before processing: The IRS accounted for almost 50 percent fewer fraudulent returns, which amounts to about 787,000 identity theft returns from January 2016 to September 2016. These returns would have totaled well over $4 billion.
• A significant decrease in fraudulent refunds: 106 new institutions became bank partners since 2015, and this played a role in cutting fraudulent refunds. The number of refunds that seemed questionable and were stopped by banks increased by more than 50 percent, and these suspect refunds were brought back to the IRS for further examination.
• A sharp decrease in identity theft affidavits: Throughout the first nine months of 2016, the number of identity theft affidavits was cut in half.
• New data on tax returns: With more data required to properly fill out a tax return, the IRS has managed to keep over 74,000 suspicious returns from processing, which in turn kept $372 million out of the pockets of identity thieves.
• Shared information stopped false returns: The sharing of data was instrumental in preventing 57,000 fraudulent tax returns, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the cooperation of various industry and state partners.

While these improvements are quite a start, any business owner who is also a taxpayer will want to know that the IRS still needs to improve the way that they handle sensitive data. This is only one reason why you need to take the matters of your own identity security into your own hands. For your review, the IRS has created a list of steps that should be taken in order to protect your organization and all of those that your business engages with from identity theft. You can find a list of these steps on the IRS’s website.

To learn more about how you can keep better track of sensitive information, reach out to The Connection, Inc at (732) 291-5938.

Let’s say that you're on a business trip. As you travel, you decide you may as well get a bit of work done. You pull out your laptop and are pecking away, and that’s when you notice a growing feeling of nausea rising in your stomach. It gets so bad that you finally have to put the laptop away, having accomplished relatively little, before you are sick.

This very common sensation is motion sickness and it plagues travelers trying to maintain their productivity every single day. It really makes one wonder (usually in frustration as they experience it personally), why does this happen?

Science provides the answer to this question by telling us that it's all in our head.

This conclusion isn’t nearly as cheeky as it sounds. The fault lies in the thalamus, the part of your brain that processes sensory input and translates the signals into recognizable messages. Under normal conditions, the messages complement each other nicely; your eyes see movement, you feel yourself moving forward, etc. However, if you’re in motion but are focused on a seemingly stationary object (such as the device you are working on), these messages go awry.

The brain, appropriately enough, gets confused. While focused visually on a stationary object, and so receiving a “stationary” verdict from part of the thalamus, the brain is also contending with the messages the other senses are sending indicating movement. Unfortunately, since the human brain was not future-proofed when it initially developed eons ago, it can only come up with one rationale for this discrepancy of signals: poison.

So the nausea that is synonymous with motion sickness is simply the body’s natural, better-safe-than-sorry response to the imaginary poison your brain thinks is causing things to seem stationary and in motion at the same time. Neurological differences contribute to making the experience different between individuals, which is why some people are more sensitive than others. Here are a few things a worker-on-the-go can do to resolve these issues:

• Stay hydrated
• Crack a window and get some fresh air
• Utilize high-contrast or nighttime mode on your device to prevent eye strain. Need help setting this up? Contact The Connection, Inc.
• Take some Dramamine
• Utilize text-to-voice (as long as it doesn’t bother other travelers)

If you are one of the many sensitive folks, your time in transit may be better spent resting up for your responsibilities at your destination, or perhaps focusing on your responsibilities while there. If you’re one of those fortunate resilient people, feel free to continue pecking away at your devices while you have the opportunity. Just remember to take a break from your extra work time now and then.

How do you combat motion sickness? Let us know in the comments.

It can be easy to underestimate the importance of maintaining permissions on your network. In fact, sometimes it takes a good dose of misfortune to present the consequences of unchecked access to your network. This time, the misfortune befell PA Online, an Internet service provider located in Pennsylvania.

A former system administrator for the ISP was recently handed down a prison sentence of two years and a fine of $26,000 for his activities on the company network--activities that ultimately caused the network to crash, plunging thousands of residents and businesses into an Internet blackout in 2010. The perpetrator, Dariusz J. Prugar, had been fired days before by PA Online, but his credentials were still valid.

With these credentials, Prugar attempted to steal software he believed to belong to him by planting backdoor access points into the network. In an attempt to hide his theft, Prugar also enabled scripts that were intended to delete access log files

What happened was somewhat more extreme. In reaction to those scripts, the entire system crashed, plunging thousands of users into Internet darkness. Prugar was called in to help, but aroused suspicion by demanding that the rights to the stolen software be renegotiated. PA Online called in the FBI on their suspicions, and the rest is history.

At the end of it all, PA Online’s customers spent a week waiting for the network to be rebuilt, and the company eventually had to close its doors--and all because a former employee could still access the company network.

The lesson here is clear: if an individual doesn’t need access to your infrastructure, they should not be able to access it. Enforcing this in your business could be the difference between a secure and successful business, and what happened to PA Online.

The Connection, Inc can help you manage your solutions to make sure that those who shouldn’t be able to get in, don’t. In fact, a managed IT service provider like The Connection, Inc can manage employee permissions for you, meaning that all you have to do is contact us about who needs to be removed from your systems and we’ll remote into your network and take care of the rest. For more information, give us a call at (732) 291-5938.

The busy business owner rarely has time to indulge in extracurricular activities, but there are still ways that you can make progress--even when you’re not actually in the office or working on important plans, there’s still the opportunity for self-improvement. One way that you can do this is by being well-read. In fact, science has practically proven that reading literary fiction is just as beneficial for your professional development as other seemingly more practical works.

Having a workflow that works for you is the key to being successful. Sometimes, finding such a routine requires taking some rather extraordinary measures. If you’re looking for ways to tweak your workflow to be more productive, then consider these outside-the-box productivity tips from some of history’s very successful people.

Work Allegro - Ludwig van Beethoven
There are those who rely on a cup or two of coffee each day in order to be productive, and then there’s Beethoven. History records that the famous composer required his morning cup of coffee to consist of 60 beans. Suffice to say, if you’re able to accomplish work at the pace of 60 coffee beans, you’re going to get a whole lotta work done, and in a very short period of time.

Although, what goes up must come down, so the side effects of such an extreme productivity measure might have actually led to the deterioration of Beethoven’s health. Plus, seeking the aid of drugs to enhance one’s productivity is never recommended. However, a cup of joe here and an energy drink there might be just enough to provide the occasional productivity boost you need to see a project through.

The Freedom of Air Baths - Benjamin Franklin
It turns out that Benjamin Franklin was a big fan of nudity, so much so that he would spend the first hour of his morning reading and writing, whilst in the buff. It’s humorous to picture the founding father naked and at his desk, putting his notes together for what would become the Declaration of Independence, and it’s easy to see the genius of such a move when you consider how much precious time and mental energy is taken up by selecting outfits and putting on clothes. Just ask Mark Zuckerberg, who wears the same sweatshirt every day.

By the way, Benjamin Franklin was also an early proponent of the standing desk--something to think about.

The Case of the Missing Desk - Agatha Christie
Fact: Successful author of beloved mystery novels Agatha Christie never owned a desk. While a deskless workflow today is tangible thanks to mobile devices and cloud computing, keep in mind that Agatha wrote her most famous stories at a time when computers were still a novelty. This means using a pen and paper or borrowing typewriters, and keeping notes and manuscripts stored in some kind of a carriable case.

In your own office, it’s important to keep in mind that there may be workers like Agatha that aren’t necessarily “desk people.” Workers like these may otherwise flourish if given the chance to go mobile. Plus, unlike Agatha Christie’s situation, it’s much easier to go deskless today, thanks to the help of dynamic mobile solutions.

Scary Discipline - Stephen King
Famous author Stephen King once said, “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.” When it comes to his line of work, writing spooky stories, Stephen King is a workhorse, writing 2,000 words every single day. This kind of commitment to his craft is one big reason why he’s able to consistently churn out one hit book after another.

Therefore, ask yourself what 2,000 words per day would look like in your line of work. Is it writing 25 emails each day? Reading one book every week? Making ten sales calls each business day? However you define success, there’s no denying that a consistent and disciplined approach of chipping away at your goal will eventually pay off.

Mobility, consistency, coffee, nudity; do any of these extreme productivity tips sound appealing to you? Does your own workflow include anything out of the ordinary? If so, then share your thoughts (and your secrets) in the comments.

Do you loan out your Netflix password to friends so that they can catch up on their favorite shows? If so, you’re in violation of a recent federal court ruling, which declares that sharing a password of any kind is now a federal offense. So, if you plan on watching the new Netflix original series Stranger Things, you may want to reconsider how you plan to do so.

Cyber security professionals and Internet users rejoice, for the “Spam King,” Sanford Wallace, has finally been sentenced for his longtime use of stolen Facebook credentials to spam other users. Between 2008 and 2009, he had stolen credentials for Facebook accounts, and then used the accounts to send credential-stealing web links. Now, he gets to spend the next two and a half years in prison, and pay an oddly-specific fine of $310,629.

Upgrading technology is a sure way to improve the efficiency, security, and productivity of your company’s operations, but is there a point when upgrading one’s tech can go too far? As much as you hear us sing the praises of upgrading, we have to admit that there’s a point when you can have too much of a good thing.