Fox News and women

This was hard to watch but kind of important.  I know too many women who are -- in an ongoing way -- catching this same crap on a daily basis in areas where you'd expect professionalism.

If I were one of the (as of today) 23 women running Fortune 500 companies, I definitely wouldn't think this was funny.

Quitting Facebook

Although I'd backed down to essentially just listing my name on the service, I finally took the lat step and deleted my account.  Recognizing that the privacy situation is only going to get worse and never better, it was time.

(Note that I couldn't find another article that I wanted to add to this post on the astonishing amount of data Facebook kept on a single user.)

Anyway, it's been a few months now and I haven't regretted it at all. 

The catch here of course is that I'm still using a lot of free services that trade on user data (including blogger where this is posted, owned by Google) but the sort of see/speak/hear-no-evil approach that Facebook carries in an ongoing way just seemed like a recipe for disaster.

User disagreement

I really wasn't much for reading user agreements, but I've been paying more attention to things like "mandatory arbitration" and "class action waiver".  I get why an Internet company that's a "Freemium" service like Meetup would put this in their user agreement, but our increasing reliance on Internet services suggests these restrictions are going to hit everyone sooner or later.  As a result, it will get harder and harder to have your "day in court" for companies who legitimately screw up.

More politics with bite

An article from the L.A. Times on the train wreck presidency and another one from Bill Maher

On a lighter note, an analysis of the growing importance of clear satire in a culture of political obfuscation.

Making better passwords: length vs. complexity

A really great idea on handling good passwords.  They take longer to type in but it doesn't mean much if you're forgetting them.