In This Episode: The “Sonic Attacks” on U.S. diplomats in Cuba may be solved — and if they’re right, could we be seeing more of the problem? Will a “doorbell camera” help solve the package theft problem? What’s behind the revocation of tens of thousands of SSL (web site security) certificates. Nerd cruises. And WordPress dominates.
This Week’s Hosts
- Randy Cassingham, founder of This is True and the Internet Spam Primer.
- Leo Notenboom, “Chief Question Answerer” at tech education site Ask Leo!
- Gary Rosenzweig host and producer of MacMost, and mobile game developer at Clever Media.
- Kevin Savetz, web site publisher and Computer Historian at Atari Podcast.
- Longer Bios on the Hosts page.
Show Notes
- Randy mentioned his “other” site, the offline/online viral GetOutOfHellFree.com, and Leo later brought up the Internet Spam Primer.
- Leo mentioned his “other” sites, Not All News Is Bad and HeroicStories.
- Kevin mentioned his “other” podcasts, ANTIC: The Atari 8-bit Podcast and Eaten by a Grue podcast about Infocom games.
- Randy talked about the “Sonic Attacks” in Cuba: there just might be a simpler explanation (aka Occam’s Razor) or incompetence (Hanlon’s Razor). The full story about the possible explanation is on Gizmodo.
- Gary ranted a little bit about “doorbell cameras” spurred by the recent purchase of Ring by Amazon …for a reported $1 billion. Leo pointed out that at least one porch package raider has been caught thanks to such a camera (KING-TV).
- Leo talked about the SSL certificate company that foolishly compromised the security of tens of thousands of its customers. ZDNet has that story.
- Kevin talked about his experiences on the recent JoCo Cruise — “a whole cruise ship (Holland America’s ms Oosterdam) full of music, comedy, and general nerdery” which originally started for fans of musician Jonathan Coulton.
- Randy talked about the interesting statistics from W3Techs that shows how WordPress is dominating the Content Management Systems of web sites: all four of the hosts have used it. Randy and Leo used to use Moveable Type, but that’s hardly a blip on the radar anymore.
- Also mentioned in passing: the Good News Podcast that is sponsored by Cards Against Humanity, and the Do By Friday “challenge” podcast.
- Leo brought up the books Bill Gates recently recommended. Gates says: “There are two amazing books” he has read recently. “One is Enlightenment Now by Pinker and another is Factfulness by Rosling. They are both very readable and explain that the world is getting better.”
Eh, I think Occam”s Razor applies here. As follows: It”s completely plausible that the driver had so many photo violations and zero human-ticketed violations simply because so few violations are issued by officers compared to the deluge of violations out there.”