Future Tense

Future Tense Newsletter: This Week in Weak Cybersecurity

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Lock it down.

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Greetings, Future Tensers,

It’s been a scary week for cybersecurity. First we learned that spyware was targeting iPhones, and then we heard warnings from the FBI about hackers targeting state voter registration systems. Meanwhile, malicious abusers vandalized actress Leslie Jones’ website by posting deeply personal information about her on it. One way to ward off such woes may be to maintain your own email server, though that will probably do more to protect you from legal interference than it will from illegal intrusions. In any case, frustrations can keep coming after a hack, since, Helaine Olen explains, identification protections services are often inadequate at responding to real needs.

This week, Future Tense also explored the language and culture of the internet more generally, with articles from Katy Waldman discussing the epidemic of emphatic capitalization, as well as the way that olds use (and arguably misuse) emoji. Along similar lines, Matthew S. Schwartz sought a word for the emotional ambivalence we feel when we contemplate our friends’ seemingly blessed lives on Facebook. And I explored Wasting Time on the Internet, a book that suggests there’s no such thing.

Here are some of the other articles we read while waiting for pizza delivery by drone:

  • Climate change: Our energy grid is vulnerable, and ongoing environmental degradation is only making things worse.
  • Algorithms: Facebook fired the journalist-curators of its controversial “trending” news section, leaving the section messier than ever before.
  • Digital divide: Sarah Morris argues that the next president must continue the Obama administration’s efforts to make broadband more accessible.
  • Antarctica: A group of artists will soon be sailing south to create work on the frozen continent, and naturalist Noah Strycker thinks that might actually be a good thing.

Double checking my data,

Jacob Brogan

for Future Tense