Friday, November 30, 2012

Weekend Reading: Science and Tech Edition

We were supposed to go to a hay ride through a display of holiday lights tonight, but it was rained out. So we're having a "special night in" instead- a dinner picnic (with chocolate milk!) in the living room while we watch some Christmas shows via Amazon Prime... We're even skipping bath. That I came up with this idea is a bit of a miracle, given how beaten I've been feeling by work and parenting and just life in general this week. Of course, I did have a 45 minute drive from day care to Pumpkin's school in which to think about ideas....

So, given the aforementioned feeling of being beaten, it probably isn't surprising that I don't have many insightful comments to go with my links tonight. But I've gathered up some science and tech links for you over the last few weeks.

First up: the story of an epic hacking that is a cautionary tale about how intertwined our online accounts are, how much damage a determined hacker can do, and how scarily easy it is to put together the info a hacker needs to take over your online life. Also, the ultimate motivation for the hacking is a sad statement on the worst of human nature.

Next, Rands had an interesting post about how tech companies succeed and fail. There are some interesting perspectives in the comments, too.

Bad Mom, Good Mom wrote a really interesting summary of an important paper about ship tracks, with implications for the weather here in Southern California.

Finally, an article about the limits of automation in information organization.  I found this link via a site called PaidContent.org. With a tag line of "the economics of digital content," I suspect I might find a lot of interesting things on that site in the future- or at least interesting to me, with my odd interest in how people who create things online might make money from their efforts.

And now I need to go help Petunia say Good Night to the moon, and get her into bed. This weekend we're getting our tree, and starting our holiday shopping, and all that good stuff. I hope you have fun plans, too!

2 comments:

  1. We have fun plans for the next 2 weekends. We're seeing Everything Goes this week and Gatz next weekend. Bad Dad was disappointed that Gatz was sold out for days he could go but I told him to get 'House Seats'. He'd never heard of them b/c he worked in a movie theater in HS/college and I had worked in a live theater.

    Sure enough, a friend in the cast was able to refer us to the theater manager and we got fantastic 'House Seats' for the price of regular ones!

    Bad Dad knows all the right people. Last month, he got us an invite to an intimate poetry reading w/ the director of the NEA! And then signed his book of poetry and gave me a private reading of my favorite poem in the collection.

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  2. That hacking story is really worrisome - like he mentioned in the article, we're moving more and more toward "cloud" computing, and security needs to catch up.

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