For Zuck's sake

Dave the Dealer gives his take on Mark Zuckerberg getting hacked and the latest worrying signal that humans will soon be subservient to robots

You may have seen news recently which demonstrated that even having infinity gazillion dollars in the bank and the acumen to have created a global social media business empire doesn't necessarily mean you have any sense when it comes securing your online accounts.

At least not if you're Mark Zuckerberg, who suffered the ignominy of having his Twitter and Pinterest accounts hacked by crooks who sent updates from his accounts, before posting his login deets online. Worse still, his password was not only used across multiple sites but was also complete pants: ‘dadada'.

This eminently guessable keyword would appear to be a quite clear contravention of the kind of stern advice - propagated by Facebook et al - that encourages users to concoct completely off-the-wall logins. I sincerely hope the Facebook chief has installed new passwords containing at least one uppercase letter, lowercase letter, number, punctuation mark, hieroglyph, monkey-based emoji, and a picture of Graeme Le Saux.

Flagging badly

There were more unwelcome headlines for the globe's premier social network when it accidentally declared that the Philippines was at war. As you do.
Facebook's intention was to provide citizens of the western Pacific island nation with an uplifting post wishing them a happy Independence Day - a national holiday celebrated on 12 June. But the site dropped a clanger by rendering the country's flag the wrong way around - with a red block of colour sitting atop a blue one, both to the right of a white triangle.

As I'm sure I don't have to inform a readership as vexillologically clued up as CRN's, the flag in question actually has the blue bar above the red, obvs. A little spot of ensign colour inversion is an unfortunate gaffe, to be sure - but hardly a major diplomatic incident.

Unless, that is, a country's tradition dictates that it reverses the hues of its national emblem only when it is at war - as is the case with the Philippines. The social network was quick to issue an apology. Meanwhile in Manila, reports that senior military officials were planning to invade Facebook's Silicon Valley HQ and plant the Filipino flag in the nearest giant beanbag were completely made up as we went to press.

A cold reception

In recent years this column has kept you informed of all the latest developments as robots have begun to spread across the workforce.

Among the specialised workbots to have been introduced are roboconcierges, robobutlers, and robowaiters. But a recent development in Belgium could mark the first time automatons have been introduced into a life-and-death working environment.Hospitals in Ostend and Liege have both recently taken on a robot model named

Pepper to work on their reception. In the latter case the 4ft 7in metallic meet-and-greeter will remain behind the desk. But in the Ostend facility Pepper will also be able to accompany patients to the department they require.

As someone who's spent decades warning of humankind's imminent enslavement by shiny steel overlords, I wouldn't be surprised to see this latest infiltrator direct a surprisingly high percentage of visitors towards the lobotomy ward, followed by the Clockwork Orange-style aversion-therapy suite...

Repeat business

For anyone worried that Twitter was losing ground to the likes of Instagram in social media's key narcissist demographic, the microblogging service has hit back with an innovation sure to appeal to rampant self-lovers: the site now allows users to retweet themselves.

Announcing the move, Twitter encouraged users to "pick an old favourite and give it a try!". But for anyone worried about their timeline being flooded with the same deeply underwhelming utterance over and over, relax: you're only allowed to retweet yourself once per post.

It has also made it easier for users to turn their previous updates into a so-called ‘quote tweet'. Quite right too - I've never subscribed to the theory that someone else has always said it better then you.

As I told the Dodgi sales kick-off last year: "There's only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that's not being talked about."