Mike McBride on Tech, eDiscovery and Mental Health - Issue #20
Happy Friday! Would you do me a favor? If you see something interesting in this newsletter, pass it on to someone. Knowledge is better when it's shared. Thanks and have a great weekend!
Technology and Cyber Security
RedLine malware shows why passwords shouldn't be saved in browsers — www.bleepingcomputer.com The RedLine information-stealing malware targets popular web browsers such as Chrome, Edge, and Opera, demonstrating why storing your passwords in browsers is a bad idea.
Norton 360 Now Comes With Crypto Mining Capabilities And Sketchy Removal Process | Techdirt — www.techdirt.com If you're in the IT industry, as I am, and you come across someone talking about using Norton or Symantec antivirus software, as I occasionally do, it typically sends you diving for your calendar to check what year we're in. The a/v...
This New Year, why not resolve to ditch your dodgy old passwords? | Mirage News — www.miragenews.com Most of the classic New Year resolutions revolve around improving your health and lifestyle. But this year, why not consider cleaning up your
CIOs and other IT leaders share predictions and tech trends for 2022 - TechRepublic — www.techrepublic.com Not surprisingly, the list includes IT talent retention, AI, cloud, changes to the CIO role and intelligent use of analytics.
eDiscovery and Legal Tech
Increasing Your Technological Competence, Part 2 - CloudNine — cloudnine.com Collaboration apps, forensic tools, and discovery software are just a few technologies that an attorney must juggle regularly. As old technologies update and new ones emerge, will you adapt or fall behind? At first, keeping up with these changes may seem impossible, but there are multiple steps you can take. Brush up on your knowledge …
A Dozen Nips and Tucks for E-Discovery | Ball in your Court — craigball.net Annually, I contribute to an E-Discovery Update presentation for top tier trial lawyers and annually I struggle to offer a handout that will be short enough for attendees to read and sufficiently pointed to prompt action. Ironically, predictably, the more successful the lawyers in attendance, the less moved they are to seek fresh approaches to…
December’s Notable Cases and Events in E-Discovery | Insights | Sidley Austin LLP 1. A ruling from the Northern District of Indiana granting the defendants’ motion for sanctions against the plaintiff for failure to preserve data from his Snapchat account, imposing monetary sanctions and permitting the admission of evidence regarding the relevance of the deleted data.
The Workplace
We Should Stop Equating Being Busy With Being Important — www.mikemcbrideonline.com It grabbed my attention because it's something I hear quite often, often in combination with the other, more obvious, "complaint" about working long hours. And yes, the word complaint is in quotes because we all know that when we mention the hours or the back-to-back meetings, we complain about it, but we are really bragging about how busy we are for one simple reason. Busy people are in demand, they are important. But, are they really?
What's Your Definition of What a Job Should Be? — www.mikemcbrideonline.com That's it. I know there are some who will tell you that they are passionate about their work, and they "never work a day in my life". Good for them, but we have to start admitting that is a very small, select, group of people in a very small, select number of jobs. There are not billions of jobs out there like that for everyone to just go get. There are not even millions of them. Maybe I'm not going to change the world by doing just interesting work with people I don't hate. That's OK because I have the time to change the world in my own little way when I'm not working instead.
Linked: Making workplaces better for people struggling with mental health will make work better for everyone — www.mikemcbrideonline.com The reality is if you allow people to be flexible and get their work done in the way that makes the most sense for them, individually, they will all benefit from that decision. There won't be a fairness issue because of some accommodation because everyone is getting the accommodation they need to do their best work. What's wrong with that? Isn't that what management says they want?
Linked - Why Employers Must Stop Requiring College Degrees For Middle-Skill Jobs — www.mikemcbrideonline.com In certain circles, this sounds a lot like a "bubble", and we all know that bubbles eventually pop, right? "At the same time, college graduates filling
Social Media
NY Senator Proposes Ridiculously Unconstitutional Social Media Law That Is The Mirror Opposite Of Equally Unconstitutional Laws In Florida & Texas | Techdirt — www.techdirt.com We've joked in the past about how Republicans hate Section 230 for letting websites moderate too much content, while Democrats hate it for letting websites not moderate enough content. Of course, the reality is they both are mad about content...
Social Media Has Everyone Using Fear and Outrage to Get Attention, even the NY Times — www.mikemcbrideonline.com I'm making an example of the Times because they like to consider themselves America's "Paper of Record", and even they are now using fear and outrage to gain attention, no better than a Twitter or Facebook troll, but it's happening everywhere. It's also no surprise that it's becoming popular among all media outlets because it works. If we've learned anything from fake news sites, biased cable channels, YouTube "experts" and social media influencers it's that you will never lose an audience by making people afraid. You will get their attention, you will stimulate a fear-based response that causes their brain to kick into survival mode and become hyperalert to dangers, which you are happy to continue to feed them.
Mental Health
Getting Better at Talking About Mental Health at Work | Bridgespan — www.bridgespan.org In their recent study, Mind Share Partners’ 2021 Mental Health at Work Report in partnership with Qualtrics and ServiceNow, the authors found that mental health concerns, not surprisingly, increased over the prior two years. “Obviously mental health challenges were more prevalent in US workers in 2021. They reported longer durations of [mental health] symptoms across all levels of seniority,” Greenwood said. In the inaugural 2019 study, 59 percent of respondents reported at least one symptom of a mental health condition over the previous year. In 2021, that number went up to 76 percent.
Linked: Battling Depression in a Burnout Culture — www.mikemcbrideonline.com Parker's story isn't about the legal industry, but I think we could easily recognize ourselves in this statement, couldn't we? "The modern work culture’s