In This Episode: The incredible advances in LED lighting. Come to a MeetUp with us! How to lose $137 million in cryptocurrency. Can electric airplanes help fix pilot shortages? Lookaline URLs, AI-generated spices, and Apple slaps Facebook.
This Week’s Hosts
- Randy Cassingham, founder of This is True.
- 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
- Whoops! This is our first episode that’s exactly an hour! We’ll try to not let that happen again.
- In the warmup, Randy talked about putting new LED light fixtures in his kitchen (these), which are so bright (with lower wattage: the three only take 105W), he now needs to get a dimmer — but the package even says which dimmers are compatible. That led to a lengthy ad-hoc discussion on how good LED lighting has gotten in just the past few years. Meanwhile, Gary saw They Shall Not Grow Old, a WWI documentary where old footage was enhanced with color, 3D and sound, which Randy dubbed “colorization and soundization”). And Kevin also watched a couple of documentaries, on the flubbed Fyre Festival.
- Randy announced we are hosting a MeetUp in Denver on April 2, and listeners are welcome! It’s centered on online entrepreneurs, so come and hang out with geeks like us.
- Leo says a cryptocurrency company lost $137 million(!!) when Gerald Cotten, its founder, took his passwords to the grave (ARS Technica, and the fascinating difference between hot and cold wallets — and a lesson we all need to take away.
- Gary found an article on a Colorado company making electric planes to help with the commercial pilot shortage.
- Leo says the Chrome browser will display warnings about “Lookalike URLs” (Bleeping Computer). Is that a) good, b) should have happened long ago, or c) should registrars disallow these domains to begin with?
- Randy says Facebook has been slapped by Apple for using internal certificates to create sideloaded apps for employees to make apps to spy on children in exchange for cash (TechCrunch). Yes they got permission (and paid the kids), but can kids legally give such permission?
- And Kevin feels spicy: the world’s biggest spice company is using AI to invent new flavors (Phys.org and CNN). That led to a discussion of weird KitKat candy flavors you can find in Japan, like Green Tea, Apple Vinegar, Sweet Potato, and Wasabi.