Feb 2025 TEC News & Events
TEC at CactusCon Events - and we'll buy your ticket! | HAM Radio Meetup & Study Group | Join our Iron Mountain Data Center Tour | New TEC Talks | Privacy PIE: More Relevant Than Ever (and we tell you why)
Are you going to CactucCon 13? So are we! This amazing conference brings together Arizona's local tech community and is one of the most anticipated cyber events of the year for good reason. The useful talks, engaging speakers and awesome villages never disappoint.
TEC will sponsor two tickets as part of our mission to support the hyperlocal tech community. Email us at contact@techedcollab.org with "CactusCon" in the subject line to get your ticket and support this incredible event. As a reminder to our Gateway Community College friends, students can attend for free (but you still need to go to the website and buy tickets).
We've also got plenty of events and meetups scheduled for after CactusCon. Join our Iron Mountain Data Center field trip. If you miss the HAM Radio village at CactusCon you can always join our HAM Radio Meetup & Study Group. And of course we have our monthly Privacy PIE meetup and a new TEC Talks podcast episode. Scroll for the details!
Going to the after party on Friday, February 14 at the Level 1 Arcade Bar? TEC is excited to be a Sober in Cyber sponsor helping them bring delicious, custom mocktails to the after party at Level 1 Arcade Bar on Friday, February 14 at 5:30 p.m.
AFTER CactusCon, we've got plenty of cool events and meetups at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab.
We're still accepting signups for our TEC Trip to Iron Mountain data center though spots are filling quickly so smash that button soon. Join us for lunch at the ACSL after the tour and see for yourself everything the lab has to offer (it's a lot, trust us).
Finally, listen to our latest TEC Talks podcast in which Patrick Smith tells us about being
Join the TEC HAM Radio Meetup & Study Group
Interested in getting your HAM operators' license and/or leveling up to Extra? Keep "meaning to" study for the test? Join us for some external accountability (and fun!).
We'll meet twice a month for two-hour dedicated study sessions at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab, located at Gateway Community College. The first cohort will work towards its FCC's Amateur Radio Service Technician Class license exam.
We'll be using HamStudy as our general guide. This will be fun, but it's not purely social - the goal is to be ready to sit for the exam!
Amateur radio licensing is managed by the Federal Communications Commision (FCC). Being licensed means that your name is listed in the FCC Universal Licensing System with an associated ham radio callsign.
February 2025 Privacy PIE
YES, this talk has been updated to include nonpolitical, nonpartisan information about the potential and actual impacts of the current Administration's actions. TEC is a nonprofit and legally prohibited from electioneering. We can, however, inform, and we do that as neutrally as we can.
Three Cheers for the Privacy Protecting FCC!
Join us at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab on Tuesday, February 18 at 6 p.m. to learn about the best privacy-protecting friend you never knew you had!
Just like Clark Kent, the Federal Communications Commission hides behind its painfully boring, stodgy and bureaucratic exterior whilst valiantly fighting (and winning!) raging privacy battles against massive anti-privacy foes.
The FCC's PRIVACY & DATA PROTECTION TASK FORCE is basically the Avengers of Privacy. The court filings, administrative notices and procedures are boring, but the stories behind taking on anti-privacy corporate interests is exciting (no, but really, though!).
NEW TEC TALKS EPISODE
In our What Does a [Technologist] Do? segments we ask a professional technologist with real life experience five questions about what their actual day-to-day looks like. The questions stay the same but the answers are almost always wildly different than what we expect.
What Does a Technical Support Engineer Do? Featuring Patrick Smith
Patrick Smith tells us what it’s like to be a Technical Support Engineer for a major credit card company. He also offers some great tips on how not to annoy your company’s IT staff. :)
ICYMI TEC Talks Episodes
Our longform podcasts examine issues where technology and society intersect.
A surprising headline from the StackOverflow 2024 Developer Survey said 80 percent of programmers are not happy.
To be more specific - only 20percent of programmers explicitly stated they were actually happy, while the rest indicated complacency or unhappiness.
We asked our own devs for their thoughts.
Be on the show!
If you're an experienced technologist (or a tech-adjacent SME) and would like to be on the show, contact us or email contact@techedcollab.org. Interviews for day-in-the-life segments can be done remotely and generally take about 30 minutes. Longform interviews and discussion topics are also welcome.
TOUR THE IRON MOUNTAIN DATA CENTER WITH TEC!
💾 Ever wonder what goes on behind-the-scenes at a data center?
Want a chance to ask the experts the *really* technical questions?
Join TEC for a TEC TRIP to Iron Mountain Data Centers! Children 8-year-old and older are welcome but must be accompanied by an adult. You will need to have your own transportation as we will meet at Iron Mountain.
After the tour, if you'd like you can join TEC for lunch at the Advanced Cyber Systems Lab.
Sign up by smashing the button!
Want to come but don't want to use Google? We get it; we're a privacy conscious org, too. Just email Contact@techedcollab.org with your full name.
TEC Article Club
The Technology for Autonomous Weapons Exists. What Now?
In a phenomenal piece for Undark, reporter Sarah Scoles deep dives into the technological advancements and ethical and human implications of autonomous weaponry. Combining meticulous, deeply researched reporting with unparalleled narrative nonfiction skillz, Scoles examines both the technological challenges and triumphs of modern weaponry while giving every argument about its use and plausibility fair due.
As both proxy and direct wars continue rage at the dawn of 2025 with very little sign of abating, the technical, political, ethical and human implications of AI weaponry is no longer a theoretical dorm-room debate; it's the world we live in now. That's worth learning about and you can't get much of a better guide than Scoles. If you've been waiting for piece to talk about, this one is it.
Author: Sarah Scoles
Date Published: November 26, 2024
Publication: Undark
Undark is a nonprofit, editorially independent digital magazine exploring the intersection of science and society.
Long and Ugly Link:
https://undark.org/2024/11/26/unleashed-autonomous-weapons/?src=longreads
Length: 4,857 words
To participate in this discussion, just join the async discussion on the TEC Reads channel on our Discord server.
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