Blog Posts

Amazon reminds me of Raiders of the Lost Ark

The only difference is that Amazon seems to know exactly every little item is in this crazy warehouse. Look here for a bunch more amazing pictures! 

Bizarro News from Fox

Fox News debuts bizarre, giant tablets in its outrageous new newsroom | The Verge: > Fox News has just unveiled a breathtakingly ridiculous newsroom, complete with novelty-sized Windows-based touchscreens, a Twitter wall, and a wannabe Minority Report-style display, which it hopes will connect it with generations of viewers who use smartphones and apps.

Scary Tongue

[](Y.Squarespace.Utils.lightboxAsset()Here’s how folks in Canada are convinced not to buy cigarettes. This is a box of cigarettes that I happened across in an airport in Canada. Pretty gross. yes, I am convinced!

Fascinating article about the technology behind Healthcare.gov

Pretty amazing that the govt is actually placing all the code for healthcare.gov on github for all of us to inspect. There’s only one commit, and it’s 3 months old. Also there’s a [reasonable amount of developer information available.](https://www.healthc...

Interesting behind-the-scenes look at NSA

Zegart joins scholars at NSA for rare briefing on spy agency’s woes – CISAC: > CISAC Co-Director Amy Zegart and nine other national security and intelligence scholars were recently invited to the headquarters of the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Md., for unprecedented talks with high-ranking officials. They discussed cybersecurity, the plummeting public trust in the agency, its relationship with Congress and how to rebuild the agency’s reputation and rethink its program operations.

I wouldn’t put it past them

How much do you want to bet that somewhere someone in this country a malware or other attack is being launched against the new “Obamacare” Web site?  I have great sympathy for the team(s) that put up that web site, back end and other support infrastructure for this site...

[security] Fascinating ID Theft saga

It is quite amazing (but not surprising) the degree of sophistication, care, and patience these hackers apply. Their engineering and business savvy are at the same level as the best of Google and Amazon. Data Broker Giants Hacked by ID Theft Service — Krebs on Security: > An identity theft service that sells Social Security numbers, birth records, credit and background reports on millions of Americans has infiltrated computers at some of America’s largest consumer and business data aggregators, according to a seven-month investigation by KrebsOnSecurity.

[teaching] A student’s perspective on course selection

I stumbled across this article while waiting for a meeting to start. It is a bit “inside baseball”, in this case “inside brandeis” but it was revealing to me at least. Students can “shop” for courses for the first two weeks of the term, attending classes and adding and dropping at will during that t...

30 Year TV Show

I just saw that the final “Season” of Mad Men will be delivered in two mini-seasons, 7 episdodes in 2014 and 7 more in 2015. I had this idea for a TV show that has not been done yet. Just like the contrivance of 24 hours is that it occurred over a 24 hour period, in real time, my show, called 30 Ye...

Engraving an iPhone knocks $25 off resale value

Good news: I looked up what the trade-in value is for my iPhone 4S 32Gig. Much to my pleasant surprise, it’s $195. Almost enough to pay for my new iPhone 5S! Bad news: If I hadn’t stupidly engraved it, the trade-in price would be $220. Word to the wise: Don’t engrave.

Theory and Practice

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. – Yogi Berra at BrainyQuote: > In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. Yogi Berra

Looks like a fun book: “Cockpit Confidential”

The Many Mysteries of Air Travel – NYTimes.com: > If you’d like the answers, I highly recommend Patrick Smith’s new book, “Cockpit Confidential.” Mr. Smith is a pilot and blogger; much of the book’s format and contents are on display at his Web site, AskThePilot.com, or in the archives of the “Ask the Pilot” column he wrote for Salon.com for years.

Gender Equity at Harvard: great article

Harvard Business School Case Study – Gender Equity – NYTimes.com: > The administrators and the class of 2013 were parting ways, their experiment continuing. The deans vowed to carry on but could not say how aggressively: whether they were willing to revise the tenure process to attract more female contenders, or allow only firms that hired and promoted female candidates to recruit on campus. “We made progress on the first-level things, but what it’s permitting us to do is see, holy cow, how deep-seated the rest of this is,” Ms. Frei said.

Confessions of an economic hit man

You should read this book: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.  It’...

The other side of the Snowden story

What Did Edward Snowden Get Wrong? Everything | RAND: > Incidents like the Snowden affair put my former colleagues in the intelligence community in an impossible position. Yes, the official explanations about the virtues of data-collection efforts...

[edtech] Who knew there was “university in a box” software!

I stumbled across this web site. I can’t say anything about their status or quality but I was suprised that someone developed what looks like a complete “university admin in a box” cloud based software. Maybe I can use it for Bootup Academy! [Get a Feature tour of Fedena – Management Information Sy...

Free Kindle book about Identity Theft

[GEEKY] Using bundler to create and publish a gem

A really useful link. For Ruby programmers only.  Jorge Coca | [HOW-TO] Build a Rails gem with Bundler – Gumby Framework: > Since I’m building a new Rails website, and I wanted to use Gumby as a part of my Gemfile, and I couldn’t find a gem with the newest version of the framework, I decided to write my first Rails gem and publish it to the community.

Double Agent?

I am reading a really cool book right now: GARBO: The Spy Who Saved D-Day![](http://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=blogbridge-20&l=as2&o=1&a=15500...

Trouble in password land, again?

I was rather pleased with myself! I have been changing all my passwords to easier to remember but supposedly harder to crack passwords. I had read, on good authority, that making a password longer was a better protection that using lots of funky characters. So for example, I set my gmail password t...