I was recently on my friend Benjamen Walker‘s podcast Theory of Everything, talking about digital security.
Multi-factor authentication for busy people
Multi-factor authentication (aka “two-factor,” or “two-step,” or 2FA) is a really great way to protect yourself (and anyone you’ve ever emailed). There are excellent and detailed guides out there, but the sheer amount of information about how to do things properly can be daunting for someone who has other important things to get done. I’m not saying don’t read all the nuanced details about security, just don’t put off setting it up right now if it seems too complicated.
If you do nothing else to protect your privacy, do this. (If you do two things, start using a password manager.)
Surveillance and inaction
I am awash in thoughts and feelings this week. Donald J. Trump will very likely be our next President. This fact has already emboldened hate groups, leaving us to contemplate what the next four years could mean—especially for friends who will likely become targets of bigotry.
Should we go outside and protest? Should we turn inward and lean on our support networks? Do we start thinking about the 2018 midterms? Yes. Yes to all of it. If you need time away from this divisive election, you’ll be welcome to join us when you’re ready. I completely understand, especially if you worked on a 2016 political campaign.
For my part, I am regrouping, considering how I can do more, do better. Some friends have asked me about strategies for resisting surveillance. Digital privacy will become even more important in the coming years, and we should all collectively get better at protecting ourselves.
A very short answer is: switch your texting over to Signal, use a password manager. Start today.
The first day of Twitter
If you used Twitter today, you’ve probably heard it’s the social network’s 10th birthday. I used their API to recreate what Twitter’s first day looked like, by plugging in a sequence of ID numbers starting at number 20.
I’m curious what happened to those first 19 tweets, and some other subsequent missing ID numbers (e.g., 24, 27, 28). Were they deleted? If so, why? Also notable: missing tweet ID 105 returns “Sorry, you are not authorized to see this status.” instead of the usual “No status found with that ID.”
Scott Carrier in Lesbos
Here’s another podcast episode that’s helpful for countering the mindless demagoguery that seems to dominate American political discussions about the plight of refugees. Scott Carrier has continued his journey to the island of Lesbos to interview refugees. Give it a listen.
See also: On the Border of Greece and Macedonia
The story of #RenunciaYa
The most recent episode of Reply All is a fantastic antidote to recent developments in U.S. politics.
I challenge you to listen to this and feel cynical about politics and activism!
Couchsurfing steals photos
Consider these happy users of couchsurfing.com, the old school zero-cost precursor to Airbnb.
From Adam Greenfield:
A few years ago, I would have had to wonder whether these images did in fact represent happy Couchsurfers; now, of course, we have Google Image Search. It only took me a few seconds’ clicking around to confirm what I had suspected — or actually, something even more troubling.
It’s not merely that are these not at all images of actual Couchsurfers; in itself, that might readily enough be forgiven. It’s that the images appear to have been downloaded, altered and used in a commercial context without their creators’ knowledge or consent — in one case, in fact, in direct contravention of the (very generous) terms of the license under which they were offered. Here, let’s take a look:
– The image labeled “Jason” is one of photographer David Weir’s 100 Strangers, originally labeled with a copyright notice;
– “Dang” is a crop of commercial photographer Anthony Mongiello’s headshot of actor Stanley Wong
Top 25 News Photos of 2015
From Alan Taylor’s In Focus, this year’s top news photos.
See also the three part 2014 year in photos: part 1, part 2, part 3.
Link via Jason Kottke
Three weeks, 2,000 lives lost
From Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed in the New York Times:
For three weeks American politicians have been fulminating about the peril posed by Syrian refugees, even though in the last dozen years no refugee in America has killed a single person in a terror attack.
In the same three weeks as this hysteria about refugees, guns have claimed 2,000 lives in America. The terror attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and at the Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs were the most dramatic, but there’s an unrelenting average of 92 gun deaths every day in America, including suicides, murders and accidents.
See also: Friday’s front-page editorial, “End the Gun Epidemic in America,” the first since 1920. Also: The Guardian’s visualization of mass shootings.
Pluto Flyover
Sometimes, on weeks with lots of bad news, it’s nice to stop and think about how we sent a space probe to Pluto.
This animation, made with the LORRI (Long Range Reconnaissance Imager) images, begins with a low-altitude look at the informally named Norgay Montes, flies northward over the boundary between informally named Sputnik Planum and Cthulhu Regio, turns, and drifts slowly east.
Wait, Cthulhu Regio? From Wikipedia:
NASA initially referred to it as the Whale in reference to its overall shape. By 14 July 2015, the provisional name “Cthulhu” was being used by the New Horizons team. It was named after the fictional deity from the works of H. P. Lovecraft and others.
See also: another longer flyover animation of Pluto, and some new photos just released yesterday.