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Posts tagged as “Yahoo”

All Star Code Founder Christina Lewis Halpern Exposes Boys of Color to STEM Opportunities

All Star Code founder Christina Lewis Halpern with All Star students (photo via allstarcode.org)

via blavity.com
“We all want and need a seat at the table, and then we want to run the table and then we want to have our own table. Coding is the ticket to that,” says Christina Lewis Halpern, the founder of All Star Code, a six-week initiative for high school boys of color to discover innovative career opportunities through a computer science based curriculum.
According to Atlanta Black Star, the New York activist is the daughter of the late Reginald F. Lewis, a Wall Street attorney who became the first African-American to build a billion-dollar company. Her father, a Harvard graduate before dying of brain cancer in 1993, operated TLC Beatrice International, a grocery, beverage and household products distributor.
The month before he passed, Lewis named Halpern, who was only 12-years-old at the time, to the board of his foundation. “My family foundation is committed to social justice and believes in the power of entrepreneurship and investing in our community,” Halpern said. Two decades into the future and Halpern, a professional business journalist, created the All Star Code program “to help the next generation of youth catch the next wave of opportunity.”
So how did she do it? “We seeded this initiative and provided an anchor grant. About 20 percent of the money invested in All Star Code last year was from the Reginald F. Lewis Foundation, or Lewis family personal funds,” Halpern explained. Other donors included Bond Collective, Cisco, Comcast, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Chase, MLB Advanced Media and Yahoo!. These corporations in addition to operational support gave $350,000 in funding.
Because of the lack of opportunities in STEM for men and women of color, Halpern’s All Star Code is designed to change that. The nonprofit raised more than $740,000 in 2016 at the annual All Star Code fundraiser in the Hamptons. Due to the generous contributions of the donors, the organization, which started in New York City and has stretched to Pittsburgh, has expanded and continues to grow rapidly.
The number of boys that participated in the Summer initiative skyrocketed from only 20 in 2014 to 160 this year. Halpern says that their goal is to have at least 1,000 high schoolers in 2020.
To read full article, go to: Daughter Of The First African-American To Build A Billion-Dollar Company Exposes Boys Of Color To STEM Opportunities | BLAVITY

TECH: Seven Alternative Search Sites To Yahoo, Bing and Google That Respect Your Privacy

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Just recently, Google updated its terms of use and privacy policy. The goal was to allow Google to use your name and public photo in “Shared Endorsements.” In plain English, it wants to use you in ads.  So, if you like or “+1” something on Google+, for example, Google can show your friends that you recommend it if it pops up their searches. I’m sure Google can expand that in the future to the channels you subscribe to on YouTube or music and apps you buy in Google Play.
To Google’s credit, you can opt out — if you know where to look. Head over to the Shared Endorsements page, sign in with your Google account and make sure the option at the bottom is not checked.  Still, it’s a reminder where Google’s focus is. It’s keeping track of what you do so it can use that information in advertising. And don’t forget that your information is one subpoena away from ending up in a government database.
But it’s not like there’s a better alternative for search, right? Bing and Yahoo do the same thing.  That’s true, but those aren’t the only alternative search sites around. Here are some that do the job and take your privacy seriously.  Take a look at DuckDuckGo. Though it’s similar to Google, it doesn’t collect any information about you when you search.  It matches Google Search in features and performance with a similar simple layout. Its “Goodies” features offer geographic search, calculators and more. You could literally spend hours checking out DuckDuckGo’s cool features.  
Maybe there’s just one feature about Google’s search you really can’t live without, though. In most cases, you can find search sites tailored to that feature.  Wolfram Alpha, for example, runs circles around Google when it comes to research and calculations. Just type in a question and it can usually figure out what you mean. You can even upload images to get more information about them.