Poor wheelbarrow. (Screenshot: Facebook)

When was the last time you finished a game of Monopoly--like actually finished it, didn't get bored in the middle, get up to grab a drink and then just never return? We assume it's been quite some time, as Monopoly is basically the jury duty of board games: lots of sitting around, not much action, maybe getting into a tussle with a weird old guy over ethics, etc.

Now, Monopoly maker Hasbro has resorted to a viral stunt in order to detract from the fact that the game is absolutely interminable, and it's taken to Facebook to play out its hostage situation in real time.

"Save Your Token!" cries the Facebook voting app, where users can vote to save one of eight existing game pieces. So far the dog and the car--a.k.a. the pieces you and your brother always fought over--are safe, but wheelbarrow lovers are bound to be devastated. The poor ’barrow has received only 3 percent of the vote and is in danger of disappearing from the game forever in a cruel display of corporate bravado.

Hasbro intends to replace the losing piece with a new one, but the choices are sure to divide avid Internet users, who must choose between a cat, diamond ring, guitar, helicopter or toy robot.

As we all know, having to choose between a cat and a robot is basically Sophie's choice. Not cool, Hasbro.

REMAIN CALM. (Photo: Flickr.com/dpstyles)

Parts of New York and New Jersey are still without power from the last major news event and yet here we are, in the throes of election day. And with cleanup efforts still ongoing, there's really no excuse for anyone who forgets one of the lessons we just learned about the rapid speed at which misinformation courses through social media in general and Twitter in particular.

For the love of God, as you go about your day for the next several hours, please take almost everything you read on Twitter with a grain of salt. No, a barrel. Maybe an entire salt lick.

At the height of the hurricane hysteria, mixed in with the wisecracks and genuinely useful information were outright, bald-faced lies (meet @comfortablysmug, everybody). But perhaps even more pernicious were the rumors and false reports. Remember the Coney Island hospital fire that wasn't? The Con Ed workers supposedly trapped? The system-wide subway shutdown that would last through the end of the week? The Fire Department turning to Twitter, as an alternative to an overburdened 911 system?

Not a one of them was true, but you're not alone if you feel for at least one of them. Gawker's conclusion: Twitter is one big old lie generator. A dynamo of bullshit, if you will.

The next few hours are going to be, if anything, more insane. This is a nationwide event, of global interest, one that most people are constitutionally incapable of shutting up about. This is also a nation where, after four years,  there are a few holdouts who still don't believe President Obama was born in America.

So when videos like this start bubbling up from Reddit and onto your Twitter feed, please remember to take a deep breath and do a little Googling around before you conclude a voter fraud conspiracy is afoot.

Unfortunately, however, it appears that at least a few of these "vote white" tweets are for real.

Don't do this. (screengrab)

The Argonne National Laboratory's Vulnerability Assessment Team specializes in assessing security weaknesses. They examine physical devices like locks, seals, security tags--and voting machines. How easy is it to hack certain brands of voting machine? Turns out Argonne's Roger Johnston discovered it was way too easy to hack the touchscreen Diebold Accuvote-TSX. That’s a little alarming, since versions of this machine will be used to cast up to 9 million votes on Tuesday, November 6th. (You know, tomorrow.)

In an article in Popular Science magazine, Mr. Johnston explained that he used a "man-in-the-middle" hack on one of the Diebold machines, simply attaching a small microprocessor that allowed him to essentially interfere with whatever the voter intended to do. Worse still, Mr. Johnston says you can do this with pretty much any voting machine, because as far as he knows, most of them are not encrypted. One thing, however, works against any would-be voting machine hacker's malevolent, vote-stealing intentions:

The attacks require physical access. This is easy for insiders, who program the machines for an election or install them. And we would argue it’s typically not that hard for outsiders. A lot of voting machines are sitting around in the church basement, the elementary school gymnasium or hallway, unattended for a week or two before the election. Usually they have really cheap cabinet locks anyone can pick; sometimes they don’t even have locks on them. No one signs for the machines when they show up. No one’s responsible for watching them. Seals on them aren’t much different from the anti-tamper packaging found on food and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals. Think about tampering with a food or drug product: You think that’s challenging? It’s really not. And a lot of our election judges are little old ladies who are retired, and God bless them, they’re what makes the elections work, but they’re not necessarily a fabulous workforce for detecting subtle security attacks.

Mr. Johnston also said anyone with a little money and know-how could take over a machine with a $10 remote-controlled device, writing, "I want to move it to the point where grandma can't hack elections. We're not there."

For such a serious subject, the video below has a ridiculously incongruous soundtrack. But it illustrates exactly how a voting machine hack might work.