mobrec

So
Not one of the stronger PopSci articles I have seen. The 'forensics' consist mainly of 'look closely at the image and think about it'. Em, ok.

Oh, and, warning, there is about 20x more auto-start ads and video on the linked page than there is actual useful content.

So
Really? Someone had to write a 500 word 'article' about what should be common sense?

There's a solution, though: Kill your notifications. Yes, really. Turn them all off. (You can leave on phone calls and text messages, if you must, but nothing else.) You'll discover that you don't miss the stream of cards filling your lockscreen, because they never existed for your benefit. They're for brands and developers, methods by which thirsty growth hackers can grab your attention anytime they want. Allowing an app to send you push notifications is like allowing a store clerk to grab you by the ear and drag you into their store. You're letting someone insert a commercial into your life anytime they want. Time to turn it off.

So
It seems like 'free' access to large datasets is the new giveaway/razor in the hopes that revenue will be generated by usage of the AI/analytics tools/razor blades that are co-hosted with the datasets.

So
This is an interesting overview of a Roomba-style robot that weeds your garden (rather than vacuuming you house) as well as a discussion of the challenges of designing autonomous gadgets for the consumer market.

So
https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/welcome-to-our-startup-where-everyone-is-23-years-old-because-we-believe-old-people-are-visually-displeasing-and-out-of-ideas

This is hilarious because it is true. I've seen so many 'startups' spend a huge amount of money and effort trying to imitate the trappings of a startup rather than having original ideas and actually producing something. Here is a sample (more at the link above):

Hello, and welcome to our startup. We hope you’re enjoying your complimentary snifter of vaporized coconut water. Once you’re done, please place the glass into one of the blue receptacles around the office, which will send the glass to be washed and dried. Do not place it into one of the red receptacles. The red receptacles take whatever you put inside of them and launch it into space.

If you look to your left, you’ll see one of our employees using a state-of-the-art ergonomic sleeping desk. Most startups have standing desks, but we have sleeping desks, dancing desks, and even skateboarding desks. The skateboarding desks are just large skateboards you can use to skate around the office. Be careful while skating, though, because we don’t offer any sort of medical insurance, since our benefits budget all goes toward cool desks.

So
This week, Tesla saw its stock drop by around 13% percent this week. Some were quick to pin this on the Volvo EV announcement, but I think that was a small part of it. I think that the bigger part was the reduced collision rating that the Tesla S received this week as well as the market's seeming need to take down 'tall poppies' like Tesla as any/ever chance they get.

So
Google provides some clear and concise guidance on choosing the best compute platform on the Google Cloud Platform.

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I think that Volvo's announcement regarding electric vehicles (EVs) has been largely misunderstood or mis-reported as them stating that they will only have EVs by 2020. Actually, they stated that they will only design and release NEW EVs after that date. The existing stable of gasoline powered vehicles will continue to live on past 2020.

So
This is an interesting little project that serves two purposes. One is to introduce you to creating 'serverless' applications (in this case using lambda on AWS). The other explores the challenges of adding simple username and password protection to the same serverless project.

So
This is an older story, but it has come around again recently.

Researchers at Israel's Ben Gurion University have created a piece of proof-of-concept code they call “Speake(a)r,” designed to demonstrate how determined hackers could find a way to surreptitiously hijack a computer to record audio even when the device's microphones have been entirely removed or disabled. The experimental malware instead repurposes the speakers in earbuds or headphones to use them as microphones, converting the vibrations in air into electromagnetic signals to clearly capture audio from across a room.

But, as it turns out, this is less of an out-and-out hack, but just simply taking advantage of a somewhat questionable 'feature':

But the Ben Gurion researchers took that hack a step further. Their malware uses a little-known feature of RealTek audio codec chips to silently “retask” the computer's output channel as an input channel, allowing the malware to record audio even when the headphones remain connected into an output-only jack and don't even have a microphone channel on their plug. The researchers say the RealTek chips are so common that the attack works on practically any desktop computer, whether it runs Windows or MacOS, and most laptops, too. RealTek didn't immediately respond to WIRED's request for comment on the Ben Gurion researchers' work. “This is the real vulnerability,” says Guri. “It's what makes almost every computer today vulnerable to this type of attack.”