Tag: white elephant

Hacking Social Media

November, 2016

I was at a high falutin meeting a few weeks ago. The speaker was trying to sell the Cardiology department a “cloud based” addition to the electronic medical record that would help in one of their protocols. The patient data would be kept on an Amazon server.

Being the little shit that I am, I asked, “Is that the same server that shut down last week because of a DDoS ?” A DDoS is a hacker tool causing a denial of service by flooding the server with requests.

There was a pregnant pause and the speaker said, “No, these are special servers and they have never been hacked.”

I let my shitty mood ride that one and got to thinking, never? So I googled hacks of Amazon and yes Amazon has been hacked. I remembered seeing a Fox News article on the recent hack that I’d mentioned in the meeting and tried to find it. Wow, it was buried. It is still out there but not so easy to find.

Then I figured, Amazon is this huge enterprise balancing on one thing. Security of it’s internet services. Should that come into question their existence would be in dire straights.

Then I started looking at other hack stats.

Yahoo lost personal data on 500 million users, Linkedin lost 167 million passwords to hackers, Heartland lost 130 million credit and debit card numbers, and Dropbox lost 68 million user names and passwords. That’s not all, and just this year. Well in 2012 and 2014.

Then I got to thinking, why did it take 2-4 years to find these humongous hacks? Did the hackers sit on their pot of gold under the rainbow for all that time? Unlikely. Most likely, the enterprises that were hacked sat on the knowledge until they absolutely had to publicly announce their misfortune. Well, their customer’s misfortune. They didn’t want the knowledge to get out to potential customers. Oh, and it’s not just the customer’s data that is lost in these hacks. If the customer has information about, say a family member or friend, that data is lost too.

There ought to be truth in social media laws.

I hope they don’t hack YouTube, I don’t know what I’d do if I couldn’t watch YouTube.

Your old grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary

Hunting Fentanyl

August, 2016

I saw a patient tonight that was about 40 years old. He came in for other reasons, but in the interview, he said he was on a Fentanyl patch for chronic back pain. My patient commented that he went out in the woods this morning to put up his deer stand.

Fentanyl is a synthetic form of morphine. It is a mind altering substance, meaning that it clouds judgement, alters reaction time and just plain messes with the mind. Yeah, just like alcohol.

I can see it now. Come November my patient will come in from a hunting accident;

“I fell out of my deer stand and broke my neck.” or,

“I thought he looked like a deer so I shot him. I didn’t realize that it was my Brother-in-law.”

or some other ridiculous story.

So, these Doctors (this is not an unusual occurrence) are sending him out to work as a welder and hunt while this trans-dermal patch makes sure he has sufficient narcotic in his body to relieve his pain 24/7

I’m often embarrassed by my colleagues.

Your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary

The Cost of Doing Business

January, 2015

I was very lucky when I started medical school. At that time, Baylor offered it’s Texas-resident medical students the same tuition as the Texas state schools. Baylor was a private Medical school and charged much more for out of state and much, much more for out of country tuition (I think I remember it was $10,000 per semester for foreign students). I paid $500 per semester for the first 2 years. Then the state legislature upped the ante to $2000 per semester. A 4 fold increase hit hard but was nothing compared to today’s rates.

But tuition doesn’t pay the bills. There are billions of dollars from private and government sources that make up the difference in what it costs to put a student through 4 years of medical school. The figures below reflect the dollars at that time.

1979-1983 Medical School $3 million
1983-1987 Residency $6 million
2015 Diagnosing an aphous ulcer (fever blister) in the ED at     12:15 am,  Priceless!

 

Musings from your Grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary

Window to Your Soul

October, 2016

OK, I admit that I am a social recluse. I spell that “curmudgeon”. I’ve already caught hell for what I’m about to write here, but go ahead and vent because what you say is just a window to your soul.

Lancet Psychiatry has published a study that states that posts to social media offer a chance to diagnose your psychiatric disorder. The study reports that posts to these social media sites are more revealing and accurate than face-to-face encounters in the psychiatrists office. Humm, that is interesting.

So the argument goes that an interactive media in/outlet that was designed so that social geeks could meet up with hot chicks in the college environment, that is based on friending/unfriending on the narcissistic whim of emotion a la 3’d grade and that is the safe haven for every mass murder since it’s inception is probably not the social status badge that the country club membership of the 1960s was. I’ll let you draw your own personal conclusion, but in my humble opinion, the first thing you should do after you log on to social media (if you must log on to begin with) is to log off.

I have to be somewhat fluent in social media because about 2/3s of our suicidal ideation cases brought to the ED for medical clearance before psychiatric admission were found out through their social media account postings. Its an obvious choice, posting a notice to all your friends. Doesn’t Anthony Weiner use a social media account to post pictures of his, uh, weiner?

In the hacker community dark web, the prime targets are social media and public wifi (the heart throb of social media). OK, if you insist, so is e-mail. But honestly, in my defense, e-mail is so old schoo, it is more attractive to Russia, the NSA and FBI hackers than the psychiatric watch dogs of society now days.

Well I’m here to tell you that Becky (the author of the Lancet piece) just skimmed the surface in her study of Facebook attendees. People that use social media by definition , are crazy. Yes I know that everyone I send this to is an avid user of social media. There you go! I don’t need no stinkin studies.

Finally, if not fully, appreciated. Your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

http://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanpsy/PIIS2215-0366(16)30041-4.pdf

https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/25/politics/anthony-weiner-sentencing/index.html

Weary

Defending GM?

May, 2014

The April 14, 2014 issue of Time magazine has a brief note about GM and faulty ignition switches. CEO Mary Barra stated in a Congressional hearing, “We will hold ourselves fully accountable.” This was about faulty ignition switches that “caused” 13 deaths. With a great deal if imagination I guess I could figure a way an ignition switch could cause death, but it would take some time.

In 2010, GM sold (not made) 8,389,769 vehicles representing a 2% increase from 2009. We will assume that sales continued to rise, but at a slightly more conservative rate (although there is evidence that the rate of sales increased during this time period). Progression analysis at a rate of 10% per year yields 2013 sales at 8,643,986 vehicles.

Given 13 deaths out of 8,643,986 possible ignition switch failures, the rate of failure is 1.5 x 10 -6. That is 1 in 664,922 vehicles.

For those not remembering their high school algebra, that is a .0000015% chance to have a failure of the ignition switch that would cause death.

Those are pretty fine tolerances to hold some one accountable for, in any industry. I never thought I’d be defending GM after the bailout fiasco, but daymnnn!

Sure am glad Congress is keeping a lid on transportation safety!

From your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary