Tuesday Sweep: 15 August 2017
Your weekly reminder to back up your data, update software and otherwise pay attention to your digital environment. (Oh, and to go to the CRASH Space meeting…)
Jump in Here
- Welcome. If you haven’t been following along, it’s okay. You’re not behind, you’re just where you are.
- I highly recommend the coach tool at the Crash Override Network has a great step by step break down for many of the same introductory steps we did here.
- Feeling more ambitious? Review the list of OneThing articles and pick one to catch up on.
Sweep
The basics.
- Updated software recently? Pick a new device to check on today.
- Backups still up and running? When was the last time you made a clean disk image? Here’s a new great article on how to design a backup system.
- App and Password Gardening: Delete a low quality app from your phone or delete an account that you don’t need that doesn’t make you happy. Digital cruft builds up. Delete it. If you’re keeping it, can you move the password to your password manager (delete it from everywhere else) and add two factor authentication?
- Move to offline archive & delete your histories where you can find them.
- Double check privacy settings on your phone, social media accounts. The folks running the companies can change the TOS and add “features” before you notice them.
Learn
Where do you scan for news?
- In tech companies doin’ right in this week of so much wrong:
- Twillo will be adding a specific prohibition agains hate speech in their “Acceptable Use Policy” (tweet by Jeff Lawson)
- Go Daddy & Google have banned neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer (via Washington Post)
- Google Did the Right Thing. (TL;DR memo writer used logical fallacies up the wazoo to scotch tape and chewing gum up an abhorrent (wrong) thesis.)
- Intel CEO Brian Krzanich quits Trump manufacturing council
- Tech companies, law profs agree: The Fourth Amendment should protect data
- EDITED: GoFundMe shuts down multiple campaigns for Charlottesville murder suspect (via Blavity)
- EDITED: Airbnb boots white nationalists headed to ‘Unite the Right’ rally in Charlottesville (via WaPo)
- And it can keep doing the right thing:
- Tech Has the Tools To Fight Hate. It Just Needs to Use Them (wired)
- If you work for a tech company and need some canon fodder to convince folks that hate speech is a problem some videos shared by Walter D. Greason provide some seriously graphic reality for those too young to remember how really really bad this can get. Linked to from this thread. Every trigger there is warning, traumatic, use with care. Twitter Thread via Michele Norris.
- Nerd moment of the day: “Today’s date is 8/15/17 or 8² + 15²=17². The next Pythagorean Day isn’t until 12/16/20!” via MIT Open Courseware. (More on Pythagorean Theory)
Reflect
Feeling dumb or stupid about how not-l33t you are? Angsting over some silly thing you “know better than to do.” Stop. That isn’t useful. Regret is only of use if it prompts an actual change in behavior. Maybe it’s NOT you that sucks. Could be it’s the technology and you could come up with a fix that would help lots of people. Look forward and make a plan.
Engage
We are a community. You are a welcome part of it.
