Enough already you angry social media warriors: Your outrage is outrageous
Come on people. Can we please start using social media for good instead of for judging, hateful, angry ranting? Now’s a great time as we look at the crisis happening down in Florida. Over the weekend, social media was abuzz about the choice of Halloween decorations made by a Homewood family. A charred-body was hung in their front yard and you would have thought they had actually lynched someone. AL.Com covered the story and described the homeowners response as, “stunned to find out people were upset about their decorations. Each October, they “go all- out” with their Halloween decorations, something they said their 11-year-old son loves as does all of his friends and the neighborhood trick-or-treaters.” Images were shared with *Trigger warning* messages. Seriously, people trigger warnings for Halloween decorations? Are there actually people in the world so sensitive that that’s necessary? The family was gracious in their response noting they didn’t realize that they were inadvertently showing what appeared to some to be a lynching. They saw the doll as a white figure burned to a charred state (which is what I see). I feel terrible for them. This wasn’t enough for the angry mob of outraged and inflamed who continued to share the images and criticize complete strangers assigning all sorts of negative assumptions to them. To these people all I have to say is: You’ve got a lot of time, energy and passion. How about you use it for good instead of spreading hate and division? How about you stop and consider that most people are inherently good and that even if they weren’t, your energy spent on Facebook having fits wouldn’t change their mind. Thankfully we live in a city where philanthropy and volunteerism opportunities abound. If you’re unsure what to do with your free time and your interest in a better community how about you look for ways you can actually help because your social media outrage isn’t cutting it. I feel bad for this family. I feel worse for those who needed “trigger warnings.” I feel bad for those actually facing oppression and discrimination that their cause is done no favors by those who cry wolf and call something as innocent as a simple Halloween decorating mistake a travesty against humanity. So to bottom line it: Get a grip people. Use your energy for good. Show a little grace and stop with the outrageous use of outrage at every single human error as if you have never made a mistake.
Blake Dowling: This Halloween, tech can be really scary
Technology can be scary. That said, my Halloween column focuses on some frightening examples of tech gone awry; some you might find scarier (dumb scary) than an Ernest movie. Who remembers those? AWFUL. Others are disturbing in a more realistic way. I recently noticed an email alert about a fake “blue screen of death.” An email comes in looking like it’s from Microsoft. You click on the icon that looks very close to the Microsoft Security Essentials Icon. It immediately runs malware that takes over your computer, complete with a blue screen and a phone number at the bottom to call for support. If you call the number, they remote access into your machine to “fix” the issue. But in fact, they are just liberating your data as fast as they can. Self-driving cars can certainly be scary. Imagine an automated car rolling down the highway at 85 miles per hour. And it gets hacked; a luxury item instantly weaponized. Russians and other nation-states are constantly looking for weaknesses in our technical infrastructure; this could certainly be a natural space to target once (if) this tech becomes mainstream. Opportunities to wreak havoc are endless. Ever hear of Shodan? Shodan is a search engine that allows a user — through a variety of filters — to find specific types of computers (webcams, routers, servers, etc.) connected to the internet. Scary enough. Shodan also can identify devices with weak security settings, the perfect target for criminals. It could show the user, webcams, routers, air conditioning units (as in last year’s Target hack), or any other nontraditional network entry point. Granted, Shodan was not designed as a tool for criminals, but neither was the computer. By identifying vulnerabilities, a hacker knows where to get in — the next step is how. A complex password is a move in the right direction. There are a dozen solid password management and creation tools, which can make this task easier and more secure. Check out LastPass; it is robust and very cool. What is scarier than killer robots? Nothing really. The military and police use robots for bomb disposal to avoid putting our brave men and women who serve in danger. This summer, at a peaceful demonstration in Dallas, a sniper appeared (seemingly out of nowhere) and began shooting police officers. After a long standoff, a police robot was dispatched to “terminate” the shooter. It did so with extreme force. In fact, that was done by delivering a large payload of explosives to end the situation. I am glad this happened: it ended the standoff with no additional lives lost. However, what if such a robot — with that kind of skill set — was hacked? In a more day-to-day fight; how about your phone blowing up in your pocket? Welcome to the short-lived world of the Samsung Note 7 smartphone. In the wake of multiple cases of a Note 7 emitting smoke, exploding, etc., a flight was canceled, and the plane evacuated, because of one of these bad boys. Long story short, Samsung no longer makes them anymore. Know what’s scary … really scary? Samsung has no clue what caused this to happen. It’s a frightening world out there, full of hackers, drones, AI, robots, Ernest movies, exploding phones, and all sorts of other shenanigans. I leave you with two pieces of Halloween advice: update/change/enhance your password, and don’t dress like a scary clown — you could get shot. Thankfully, I believe the world responded accordingly, and is over the spooky clown craze. Happy Halloween. ___ Blake Dowling is CEO at Aegis Business Technologies. His technology columns are published by several organizations. Contact him at dowlingb@aegisbiztech.com or at aegisbiztech.com.
