S-STEM Scholar Chris Gonzalez's Blog

We made it, everyone! Week 14! The end of the semester, and the end of my first chapter with the S-STEM/TRAIN program (with more to come if all goes well). The entirety of this week was spent prepping a presentation of the research project. I like to think I did a decent job on it - I'm typically a PowerPoint perfectionist and I will  spend multiple hours trying to come up with a perfect font/layout/color/line animation combo - but I told myself to hold off on all of that and stick to something simple, which ultimately benefitted the presentation itself. No flashy graphics, just simple and clean data (which is something I probably should've told myself before I picked a gaudy late 90s Web 1.0 aesthetic for this blog). It still took me an embarrassingly long time to settle on this presentation design. It did its job, though! The presentation itself went off without a hitch! Although, I'll admit that I did occasionally suffer from that lifelong problem of mine where I tend ...

Week 13 now! It's been great posting here this semester. I love having a little place to write down my thoughts, even if it is  homework. I took a break last week, but I'm back before we wrap up here for this semester. Work was considerably slowing down on my project, and my rough draft feedback was initially very discouraging - or at least that's how I perceived it when I read it at 2 in the morning. I thought there was no way out and I'd have to scrap all of my research and scramble last-minute to come up with something. I was convinced  the final paper wasn't due until right before school ends for the holidays, so you can imagine my surprise when I checked Canvas this morning and saw that the paper was due by 11:59 PM tonight . Naturally, I panicked. But then I re-read my rough draft feedback, and all I needed to do was actually cite my resources and include in-text citations; the project itself was fine! I ended up spending all day finishing up that paper (which...

I know I say this every time I post something, but…time IS passing by quickly and I don’t even realize it. Wow. I’m panicking a little bit, to be honest. Anyways, let’s get to this week’s update! As far as the project goes, I’m still working on it somewhat on and off as the weeks go by. Occasionally I’ll try to find a new source I can use, but I haven’t had too much luck. It’s not that sources don’t exist – plenty of them do – but the problem is that most of them aren’t scholarly  sources (articles, journals, books, etc) that I can use for this project, and I’m assuming that the only reason why is because this is a relatively new topic. I won’t give up though! In a few days I’ll be going out of town for a week, but I’ll do my best to keep working when I have some spare time. On a related note to the project, I’ll be using a VPN – Apple’s iCloud Private Relay service, which is still in beta – while I’m out and about, both for privacy and just to see how well it works! Pretty neat, r...

Hey there! Week 10 now! This is passing by way quicker than I expected it to – I’m feeling good about it. This week, I’ve finally managed to get an early version of my survey done, but after speaking with Josh, I was made aware of a small caveat I didn’t know about: my survey has to be approved by PC’s HSR board before I’m allowed to distribute it and share the results. It’s a bit of a setback, but it can actually be a good thing in this case! The heading of my rough draft - it’s finally coming together! During that meeting with Josh, I also found out I can spread out this research project across this semester and next semester! So this semester, I’ll be presenting my paper on what I think  the results of the survey will be; next semester, I’ll be comparing my predictions with the actual results of the survey, which should hopefully be approved and completed by then. Pushing the survey results until spring will actually allow me to collect more data on it, as I’ll have a much later...

Week 9 now. This is kind of starting to get to me! So much to do, so little time, so much...procrastination.  In all honesty, there's really not much of an update for this week. I'm still in a bit of the same rut as I was in last week. Admittedly I find myself working on this project whenever I have spare time rather than dedicating time just for getting work done on it. It's that point in the semester where everything magically begins to pile up - midterms, increased homework, the occasional family event; I'm doing my best to roll with the punches, though! I have enough faith in myself that I'll get everything done on time, albeit a little last-minute, as is typical for me (which is also when my best work happens, to be honest). Never before have I seen an image that so eloquently captures my current mental state. I'm still looking forward to Halloween though! I don't have any plans this year (yet) but it's one of my favorite holidays regardless. I gues...

Hey everyone who reads this, all 2 of you. This is week 8 now! I went on a detour out of state for my sister's wedding (and a pretty sweet trip to Disneyland; we miraculously got into Club 33!) and, quite frankly, it goes without saying that I didn't get as much work done as I had hoped. Lately I've just been trying to find good sources for my project – it's a fairly new topic, which makes scholarly resources and journals hard to come by – as well as narrowing down the questions on the survey I'll be doing soon. I'd really love to keep it multiple choice, as I know people tend to skip over forms or find them intimidating, so I'm trying my best to word the questions in a way that would allow that. Aside from that, there's not much else to report on this week. On a somewhat relevant note to my project, during that trip my brother and my mom both received suspicious text messages, both claiming that their credit card information had been stolen and containi...

Hello there! It was nice to have taken a break for a week, but now we must get back to business, beginning with a little background on this research project. My research project seeks to determine how people truly feel regarding the privacy of their personal data, particularly that of which is stored in the cloud. Data privacy, although a relatively new concept as computers and internet-connected devices are much more prevalent nowadays than they were even a decade ago, is usually well documented for cloud services. For example, Apple openly states that your photos, documents, health, home, and contact data (among other things) are sent to their servers on a regular basis, not requiring any user interaction – as long as you are using their iCloud service, that is; Apple heavily encourages you to log in to your Apple ID and utilize iCloud services when first setting up a new device, so it is safe to assume the vast majority of Apple products utilize iCloud to some extent. However, they ...

Alrighty, week 5 now. Don't stress out! I submitted my research proposal last week - which also doubled as my blog post - but I'm beginning to have some second thoughts on it. Well, sort of. You see, originally I was planning on doing a small experiment to figure out what parts of the face and fingers Face ID and Touch ID look for, respectively. I had this chart set up: This is the process I was going to use to conduct some experiments. However, immediately after I submitted the proposal and got the blog post done, I realized something: the scanning experiment wouldn't contribute much, if anything, to the main theme of my research, which I also realized is mainly about privacy concerns in the cloud, as that's where the vast majority of our data is stored nowadays. Biometric verification, at least on Apple devices, is done entirely on-device and thus has nothing to do with the cloud at all. You don't need the internet for your phone to scan your face or one of your f...

My research subject is a bit of a work in progress still – it’s a little broad and may require further narrowing down – but now I have a main topic in what I’d like to do: I’d like to conduct research on Apple’s bio-authentication methods, specifically Face ID and Touch ID. Although I’m focusing on Apple’s technologies (mostly because it’s what I have access to and am familiar with), the fact that bio-authentication is present on essentially every single modern smartphone of any platform made in the past few years is a testament to its significance as a topic. Additionally, I’d also like to touch on public perception of trust in these authentication methods and conduct a survey – do we truly trust biometrics, or are we trading privacy for convenience? In a nutshell: How do Apple’s bio-authentication methods work, and why do we rely on them? I’ll be conducting my research by experimenting and surveying people. As for the experiments, they’ll primarily be on the criteria necessary for a ...

Week 3 now – almost a month already! Time’s been passing by really quick.  This week has definitely been something. I unfortunately haven’t made much progress on my research due to an emergency wisdom tooth removal, which was quite the adventure in of itself. However, my face is currently somewhat swollen on one side from the trauma (I swear this is relevant), and it made me wonder: how does Face ID on my iPhone still recognize me? Are there specific facial features it looks for? Or does it make a scan of your entire face? Above: Face ID infrared dot projectors of the iPhone X (2017) in action - a newer version of which is still in use by current iPhones and some Android phones.  Source: iPhone X Review  from The Verge and Nilay Patel New immediate goal: do some tests with Face ID-equipped devices and figure out exactly what  it’s looking for. Although there’s nothing particularly scientific about this just yet, I’ll be documenting my findings as extensively as ...

It's week 2 now! It feels like ages ago when I first applied to be a TRAIN scholar, but here we are! So originally, I was going to do my research on Apple's controversial CSAM detection system in iCloud Photos (and why it was a bad idea) they were planning on implementing with the release of iOS 15, but then I checked my phone one morning, and I awoke to the beautiful sight of this headline: Why'd you have to mess up my research, Tim?! I don't mean to be selfish – this is great news, actually; there's now less worry of even more surveillance on our devices, and in the future they may cancel the feature entirely. I admire Apple for the sentiment behind this, I truly do, but no matter how many failsafes a backdoor may have, a backdoor is still a backdoor, and there will always be potential for exploitation by a government, whether it's that of the United States or elsewhere. This news made me rethink my research a little more, not to mention the fact that finding ...

Hey everyone, welcome to my blog! I’m Chris, and I’m a S-STEM/TRAIN scholar. If you’d like to know more about me, feel free to check out my bio . Now let’s get started! This is a whole new major for me that I’ve always wanted to pursue, but never did until now. This week’s been quite the eventful one.  I’ve made three or so trips to the main campus to speak with an advisor about my degree appearing to be incorrect. Originally, I was an Information Technology major, and I applied for an ASU transfer in Applied Computing, but it kept changing my major to an Associates in Arts for some reason. Multiple advisor visits and phone calls and messages later, it turns out that it’s….correct? An Associates in Arts is required to go into their Applied Computing program. Let that sink in for a second. Weird, right? At least everything’s correct. Aside from that, I’ve been getting settled into my new classes and attempting to learn the basics of Java. Work on the research project is going well...