Tuesday Sweep: 2017 November 7
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.
- Have you frozen your credit yet?
Learn
Where do you scan for news?
- Treat yourself to some laid back groovy coding with this Crash Course on P5.js via Kadenze an online learning platform that focuses on art and creative technology. I like this post because it reiterates doing what is common in the fine arts, learning by copying. In technology we can get so involved in doing novel, New™ work, that we forget or dismiss this valuable educational tool.
- KPCC’s Take Two covered self-driving cars this morning. Specifically how RAND thinks that even imperfect self driving cars still dive more safely than human drivers today. I am pro autonomous vehicles, but I get frustrated by news coverage that doesn’t include the millions and millions of people who will be put out of work or the impact on public transportation and sprawl. No conversation, or legislation, about automation should be uncoupled from how to mitigate the very real social impacts that will arrive faster than we think.
- David Roberts wrote a thoughtful piece on Vox about America’s epistemic crisis and how it relates to politics and news. Minutes later I check Schneier and his leading story is on email fraud. When perfect imposters can be created with a few clicks and crypto broken faster than ever, do we revert to a time when only formal introductions with eye contact will do? Of course, like every other hard problem, someone thinks blockchain will fix it. For myself, I keep bouncing around a talk on Victorian Manners for IoT in my head.
- Good video on Simpson’s Paradox, or why having data alone doesn’t answer every question. via Laughing Squid (Also, Part. 2)
- Mozilla has come through with a pro-consumer privacy change. Canvas fingerprinting, i.e. browser profiles that eliminate the need for cookies to identify visitors to a site, will be off by default. Smart defaults… one of the best things a UX can do (from 2005). via SANS Newsbites
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.
