'Commentary'
The Saturday Share – 10/15/16
15 OCT 2016 0
Hey all, this was a busy week around Lifeline (nothing like a relaxing holiday to make the rest of the work week crushing), but we still managed to come across a few interesting tidbits to share with you today.
1. We're living in the future Star Trek always promised and it's... well, it's okay I guess. Check out this list of Star Trek future-tech that we've managed to catch up to (and in many ways surpass).
2. When I wasn't ruminating on Star Trek this week, I was thinking about design. People from hard technical backgrounds often has misconceptions about design like it's some kind of whimsical process. It's not. It's a craft dedicated to solving problems.
3. Action Button is an interesting idea. It's designed to allow users to instantly respond to an article or video in the form of donations to a nonprofit, signing petitions, or mailing local politicians right from the page. It's not perfect, but anything that motivates action and engagement from users so directly is worth paying attention to.
4. Of course, thinking about design can be tricky because we never know what the future holds. As this 99u article eloquently puts it "Quickly-evolving tools like these and a shifting playing field make it almost impossible to predict the future, because the gadget that will drive our lives in 10 years probably hasn’t even been invented yet.” Preach.
5. Samsung is now sending users FIRE PROOF BOXES to return their lit sticks of dynamite Note 7 phones in. Yikes.
6. Always interesting to peek behind the marketing curtain. When you see a car commercial, you're not looking at the actual vehicle speed off the line and swoop around corners, you're watching a weird little robo-car called the Blackbird and copious amounts of CGI. Disclaimer - Do not attempt, performed on a closed road (and private editing desk)
7. Of course, the blurring line between reality and simulation is a popular topic these days, what with Elon Musk apparently on a quest to break humanity out of the Matrix.
8. Welcome once again to Nic's InfoSec corner. Security expert Lesley Carhart takes a deep dive into the weird (and surprisingly complicated) world of creating fake user accounts that will stand up to human scrutiny with 101 Ways I Screwed Up Making a Fake Identity. If you're only interested in how to protect yourself from malicious actors instead of all the details, skip straight to the bottom. But if you ask me, it's all worth a read.
9. Of course, why bother making up a convincing alias when Wells Fargo will open up an account under your name with nothing but a blatantly false license number "issued” on New Years (when the DMV is closed). It's okay, I'm sure it was backed up with a second piece of verification right? Oh, just the statement "known to banker.” Seems legit. Their CEO (finally) resigned this week.
10. I'm not a huge sports guy, but I could watch this video about the worst football game ever over and over again. When a wild dog chasing a player across the field is the least shocking about a game, you know something terrible has happened.