Tuesday Sweep: 22 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?
- So… the eclipse was awesome! Go Science! Being all predictive and unifying and poetic… <3
- Article in the New York Times Young Digital Artists, Anxious About … Technology has a shout out to LACMA’s Art + Technology Lab, and all th pieces are provocative and lovely.
- A reminder to tech companies, ” Nazis, white supremacists, and other political groups are not a protected class of people covered under state and federal accommodation laws.” (via ArsTechnica) (Periodic posting of xkcd explaining free speech.) All this should provoke interesting questions about Who Owns the Internet, though.
- I might suggest “Why Your Black Friend Is Tired.” Racial justice is a big topic, but I’m personally focusing on two aspects of it: Supporting better representation in my own field, fighting voter suppression. My list –
- TODO: Read some of what the Brennan Center & Think Progress, and TeenVogue have to say on voter suppression
- TODO: As sighted in article, watch 13th again (released felons not allowed to vote)
- TODO: Donate to “Black Girls Code“
- TODO: So the ACLU has some issues, but they do have great voting rights efforts, as does the Southern Poverty Law Center
- TODO: Follow the actions re: Voting Rights on Showing Up for Racial Justice
- Provocation: What would an LA Chapter of TechEquity look like?
- Tales of an IT professional sailing around the Antarctic loop – a lovely read about IT infrastructure in the harshest of conditions!
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.
