Categories
News

Shall we play a game?

Never considered that a journalist scraping a website to collect data could be considered a hacker. It all comes down to the meaning of “exceeding authorized access.” What a great way to prevent dissent. Write a terms of service for your website that refuses access to journalists and stories you don’t like can no longer appear.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/12/08/1013440/web-scraping-van-buren-case-supreme-court-opinion/

Hack of the century in Florida. The state admits that all users on the account, “share the same username and password.”

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/08/944200394/florida-agents-raid-home-of-rebekah-jones-former-state-data-scientist

Hacking without programming. Controlling media is still hacking the message.

https://points.datasociety.net/hacking-the-attention-economy-9fa1daca7a37

Old school hacking from long before Neo and the Matrix.

Categories
Music

Wedding Singers

Tim Hawkins has some songs that should not be played at a wedding.

Today’s song cue. Adam Sandler singing Love Stinks by the J. Geils Band in the Wedding Singer.

Categories
Movies

Studio Math

Croods: A New Age beat Tenet at the box office for best opening weekend since theaters reopened. A $14 million Thanksgiving weekend only cost $27 million in TV ads and who knows how much online advertising.

Categories
News

Shades of the Everglades

I’m glad they found a new source of drinkable water for Hawaii, but worry that pumping this water will allow the intrusion of seawater.

A freshwater, saltwater tug-of-war is eating away at the Everglades

Categories
ads

Supply and Demand

Covid must be taking a toll on college applications. Just watched an ad for a college emphasizing the application fee is being waived. While important it’s not the only criteria when applying. Turns out there is a whole bunch of colleges with no application fee as well as a bunch of colleges with application fee waivers.

I suspect the process still has legacies even after the sports admission scandal.

Categories
News

We have a new grinch

$3000 signing bonuses to new workers, but a shiny $10 turkey certificate to existing employees, sounds about right for hyper capitalism.

https://nypost.com/2020/11/24/amazon-staffers-not-happy-with-turkey-vouchers-report/

Steve Jobs felt the same way about the employees who built his company. Refused to give stock to some early employees. Stock options were for new hires, to entice them to join, not people he already owned.

https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-wozniak-gave-early-apple-employees-10-million-in-stock-2014-9

Categories
Uncategorized

Ignorance is Bliss

I’m starting to think we were better off when packages arrived without knowing every detail of the journey. While checking to see where a recent package is, I discovered that the tracking codes were of no help. USPS AWAITS ITEM was chronologically after USPS IN POSSESSION OF ITEM, which doesn’t make sense. And then there are the codes that don’t mean anything to the end user like, PRE-SHIPMENT INFO SENT.

If you want to go down the rabbit hole, here is a guide.

Categories
Movies

Gotta know when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em.

If you think you’re going to use the movies to figure out to beat the house, think again.

Today’s song cue

Categories
Uncategorized

Does anybody really know what time it is?

Every time I think I’m having trouble keeping up with the news I get a sign that someone else is falling further behind. The latest spam that got past the email filters is about how Obama is the anti-christ. If you’re going to warn the world about Barack Obama you’re 12 years too late. I would have expected to see Trump or Biden in a quest for clickbait spam, not Obama who isn’t even running this year.

We’re now three Epic Rap Battles past when this warning would have been in time to save us all.

Chicago sums it up with today’s song cue, “Does anybody really know what time it is?”

Categories
News

How common is this problem?

Novel idea to use light poles in cities to host all sorts of services for the public. One of the proposed use cases is searching for buried bodies. First thought was how often will killers be burying bodies by the light poles unless they didn’t bring a flashlight.

With a reread after the spit take, I realize the intent was after disasters, but in that case won’t the poles near the incident also be affected and unable to be used to search for bodies.

SLaaP—Street Lamps as a Platform

I wish the research team well and hope they “Don’t Stop Believing”