Tuesday Sweep: 24 July 2018

Your weekly reminder to back up your data, update software and otherwise pay attention to your digital environment. (Oh, and to head to the CRASH Space meeting…)

• On the blog
• On the repo
• See all the zones

Zone 4 this week. “Leave it Better,” focusing on making sure your own projects are in order, like they’re using HTTPS. I’m adding a task to this zone. “Maintain and clearly communicate healthy boundaries. Don’t allow people to bring poison to your pot luck.”

Why this? Because working on projects and being in communities ideally should be a source of joy not a drain.  Burn out can happens so quickly when we put ourselves constantly on the line for things that don’t feel like they care back. Guido van Rossum, inventor of Python, now sick of the Python community. Game Devs sick of toxic gamers. Conference goers, sick of conferences that give a long leash to toxic personalities, sapping energy away from everyone else. When the horde shows up, not shutting down bad behavior FAST isn’t simply “letting things work out,” it’s a decision to drive away good people who don’t want to be around that level of bullsh*t.

Boundary formation plays an important role in the development of self, and it takes work to get it right. Secure technologies need boundaries, i.e. what kind of data a field accepts, how often a client can ping the server. Individuals need boundaries, too, like what time they stop working on any given day. Communities hopefully form boundaries so that bullies don’t march in and start sucking all the oxygen out of the room. It’s perfectly fine to kick holocaust deniers off your site without hesitation.  It’d be nice if “more speech” was a viable solution to false speech, but unfortunately our minds don’t work that way. It only takes seeing something once, with even the slightest suggestion to change our memories. The Paradox of Tolerance requires us not to allow folks to bring poison to the pot lucks we host. (Link to original Popper)

Jump in Here

• Welcome. If you haven’t been following along, it’s okay. You’re not behind, you’re just where you are.
• Need a instant pick me up? Jump straight to our Easy Wins.
• There are more recommendations under Start Here.
• Feeling more ambitious? Just wait for the Learn section!

Sweep

Weekly Basics

• Check that backup systems are actually running. (more)
• Update main computer(s), phone(s) and tablet(s). (more)
• Clean out and reset wallet/purse/laptop bag/vehicle. (more)
• Spend some time adding passwords to your password manager and updating flagged passwords. (more)
• Wipe down your main devices, physically! (more)
• What neglected inbox will you check today? (more)

This Week’s Focus: Leave it Better

• Survey your domain. Patch ‘em up or shut ‘em down. Better off than a bot. (more)
• Spend some time today learning your industry’s best practices. (more)
• If you found a security problem in one of your projects, tell people. Don’t be embarrassed. Everyone makes mistakes. It’s how they get fixed that matter. (more)
• Maintain and clearly communicate healthy boundaries. Don’t allow poison at your pot luck. (more)
• If you’ve found a security flaw in someone else’s project, speak up safely. (more)
• If you’ve found a security flaw speak up KINDLY and with attention to detail. Community, it can be the best thing and the worst thing. Which one it is, is up to us. (more)

Learn

News and Updates

Where do you scan for news, include a politics update!

• • HTTPS
  • HTTPS
  • Learn about the consequences of CaCPA: Answering this question requires determining if your organization (1) is a “business” that (2) collects or sells (3) “personal information’” from or about (4) “consumers.”
  • Folks using glitch  using the Open States API to make twitter bots (more info) for their own states, including California
  • How eCommerce is Changing rural China – thoughtful long read by Jiayang Fan
  • Kate Crawford talk at the Royal Society on  You and AI – Just An Engineer: The Politics of AI (1 hour), is a nice background to have before reading Why Is Google Translate Spitting Out Sinister Religious Prophecies?
  • The videos form this year aren’t up, but the HOPE conference 2016 videos are.
  • Web-based app provides ‘entry point’ to understand indigenous history of land you’re on via Lakota Law project
  • The Political Education of Silicon Valley. But given that the US has the characteristics of an Oligarchy, I personally give more of a big giant eye roll to the “free-market welfare state” than Johnson does because the mantra “If I throw money at you, will you leave me alone and stop being a buzz kill while I’m diiiiissssssrruuuuuupppptttiinnnggg!!!!” does nothing for me. It sounds an awful lot like “Why should I ask permission to burn down your house and everything in it (including killing your pets, possibly your children) if I’m going to toss you and all your neighbors 50 bucks after?” (And no, there is no amount of money that would make that okay.)
  •  100th anniversary of the symmetry theorems of Emmy Noether. (Related Video) You might also be interested in the work of Sau Lan Wu.
  • Net Neutrality Defense Guide

We are a community. You are a welcome part of it.

• Did you learn something cool in your sweep? Make something? Share it!
• Speak up
• Give
• Like going to conferences? Maybe one is coming up!
• Show up at CRASH Space.

Relax

They’re currently on hiatus, but now’s a good time to catch up on episodes of Gastropod.

Gastropod looks at food through the lens of science and history. Co-hosts Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley serve up a brand new episode every two weeks.

The most recent episode was actually on Pots –  “Out of the Fire, Into the Frying Pan”

In our last episode, we covered one of the most important innovations in human history: cooking food over fire. But, although cooking may have made us human, it is the invention of pots that made us into cooks. As Bee Wilson, author of Consider the Fork [affiliate link from orig quote] and frequent Gastropod guest, explained: “Pots led to cuisine itself. To me, it’s the great beginning of cookery.” Tens of thousands of years ago, the invention of pots brought with it life-changing benefits: prolonged cooking could slowly break down plants like yams and cassava that would have otherwise been inedible; the process releases more starches from foods and therefore more calories; long boiling kills harmful microbes and thus makes food safer; softened food like grains could be fed to babies, allowing children to be weaned earlier and leading to yet more children and early population growth; and finally, the ability to create dishes that were cooked slowly and indirectly, mingling many different ingredients, made the business of eating a lot more delicious.