Via BBC News: Google’s Project Zero seeks to find bugs in popular software and then give the manufacturers responsible 90 days to fix the problem. This bug, which affects Windows 8.1, was revealed by Google to Microsoft on 13 October 2014. On 11 January, Google publicised the flaw. Microsoft said it had requested that Google wait until it released a patch on 13 January. Read Chris...
Oh the lols, as reported by the New York Times on a comment by UK Prime Minister David Cameron: Mr. Cameron, who has started to campaign ahead of a national election in Britain in May, said his government, if elected, would ban encrypted online communication tools that could potentially be used by terrorists if the country’s intelligence agencies were not given increased access. and “Are we...
Just spout bullshit: Be a multi-disciplinary, insatiably curious person who knows how to use the tools to model ideas and create prototypes. Possessed of an open mind and few fixed ideas about how things should be done, you nonetheless have a strong conscience and can operate outside of your comfort zone to achieve win-win outcomes. You are known for your integrity and resilience. (via: The...
While the usual caveats about a post with the opinions of one person (a teenager), that aims to provide insight into a group (US teenagers) apply of course, it’s still really interesting. These points jumped out at me: Facebook: In short, many have nailed this on the head. It’s dead to us. then this: Messaging on Facebook is also extremely popular among our age group, mainly because...
An illuminating article about Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Fire Phone fiasco. Well worth a read. Will be interesting to see how this pans out over the next 5 years. If Amazon do get a future version of the phone right (and all indications are that they are continuing to invest heavily in R&D for it), then this period will be looked back on as being valuable learning, and a tribute to...
Marco’s post is getting a lot of attention at the moment, and for good reason – it eloquently summarises the frustration a lot of Apple users are currently experiencing: We now need to treat Apple’s OS and application releases with the same extreme skepticism and trepidation that conservative Windows IT departments employ. He’s not mentioning anything new of course – the...
When running a business there’s always tension between what’s best for your business versus what’s best for your customer. Dan Counsell’s post on providing access to Mac Apps outside the App Store is a good example of that tension (emphasis mine): Lets take a look at three of the reasons why not limiting the availability of your software to just the Mac App Store is a...
Hindsight is always easy, which makes the first part of this post pretty lame. But the forward-looking predictions are pretty spot on I think. The closing remarks about the impending crash are what resonate most though: And now the stock market is hitting all-time highs, and Facebook is trading at 72 times earnings, and Twitter has a $20 billion market cap even though it is losing huge amounts...
As part of an art exhibition in Zurich, an automated online shopping bot is tasked with buying a random item each week on the deep web to the value of $100 in bitcoins. Along the way it purchases ecstasy pills and a fake passport. If this bot was shipping to the U.S., asks Forbes contributor and University of Washington law professor contributor Ryan Calo, who would be legally responsible for...
From Mark Zuckerberg’s status update: My challenge for 2015 is to read a new book every other week — with an emphasis on learning about different cultures, beliefs, histories and technologies. It’s a good challenge, and he has started a page for it here. I’ve joined but I’ve set myself a much more appropriate target – I’m aiming to read one book from his...