Quote I’ve been pondering:
“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.” – Jean-Paul Sartre
Do you ever get to the grocery store and forget all of items you came to get, or miss a step in something you’re doing, or do repetitive work and sometimes lose your place? The results are inconvenient, but not catastrophic. It’s a far different story when you’re test piloting a brand new state-of-the-art airplane or landing on the moon. The Simple Genius of Checklists, from B-17 to the Apollo Missions provides a brilliant articulation of the importance of checklists. If even surgeons (who are pretty smart) can use a checklist to help improve patient safety, why would anyone think them a waste of time?
Have you read the privacy policies behind your favourite websites like Facebook, Google and the like? Me neither. And you know what… we’d probably struggle to read them even if we tried. In We Read 150 Privacy Policies. They Were an Incomprehensible Disaster, Kevin Litman-Navarro from the New York Times provides some great visuals to help articulate the readability of the privacy policies from 150 major tech and media companies. Not surprisingly, the bulk of these privacy policies are a mess that only a PhD could understand. Welcome the a world in which everyone needs to CYA.
Oops for this week: Hacked forensic firm pays ransom after malware attack. As The Guardian and BBC report, “Britain’s largest private forensics provider [Eurofins] has paid a ransom to hackers after its IT systems were brought to a standstill by a cyber-attack.” Eurofin “carries out DNA testing, toxicology analysis, firearms testing and computer forensics for police forces across the UK.” It’s probably bad for business when a company who does work for the police gets hacked and held for ransom. On the other hand, if companies associated with law enforcement can get hacked, what chance do people like my mom have?
Enjoy the heatwave and have a great weekend!
Todd
Todd H Dow 