Month / December 2015

by tjkuhn

The Holidays New Electronic Toys…

Update those new devices right away lest you get hacked!

~TJK

Naked Security – Advent tip #22: Got a new gadget for Christmas? Stop. Think. Connect.

by Paul Ducklin

We’ve already reminded you about the importance of updates, back in Advent tip #10.

But it’s easy to forget that even new devices typically need updates right away, because they’re not really new as in “manufactured this morning and patched immediately” but new as in “packaged ready for first use by the customer, then shipped, stored and sold.”

For example, I recently bought a current-model MacBook which was shipped to the store before OS X El Capitan 10.11 came out, but was purchased by me just afterwards.…

 

 

by tjkuhn

Computer Glitch frees WA Felons Early

Computer glitches have consequences….like letting felons out of jail early….

 

More than 3,000 Washington prisoners mistakenly freed early

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — More than 3,000 prisoners in Washington have been mistakenly released early since 2002 because of an error by the state’s Department of Corrections that resulted in wrongly calculated sentences for about 3 percent of the prison population…..

 

by tjkuhn

Sorting email is a waste of time

I like to follow The Unclutterer….to me uncluttering is akin to process development. Last week, David Caolo on the Unclutterer ask whether organizing email is a waste of time…..The answer is “yes”. My personal email system is an inbox, a processed box, a hold box (for emails in immediate use), and occasionally a backlog box (typically I put everything that comes in over a vacation or while I’m traveling into the backlog to clear out the inbox).

 

unclutterer.

Is organizing email into folders a waste of time?

by on December 15, 2015

Recent research conducted by IBM Research [PDF] suggests that people who searched their inboxes found emails slightly faster than those who had filed them by folder. Email management is something I struggle with every day, so this study grabbed my attention. Even after reading it, I don’t know how to feel.

Many years ago I was meeting with a supervisor who wanted me to see an email she had received. “Just a minute,” she said, and opened up her email software. For the next few minutes, I watched as she scrolled through thousands of messages, looking for the one I needed to see. It was frustrating for both of us, and at that moment I swore I’d never be in that position. In the very first post I ever wrote for Unclutterer, I described my reasoning for never storing messages in my email software. But was that the right move?……

~TJK