In This Episode: Mr. Pick’s operating system. Gary builds his own course site and gets an Apple card. Ask Leo! turns 16. The origins of “Upper Case”. Ransomware strikes digital cameras? A simple cable that can hack your computer. Alan Turing gets more long overdue recognition. Windows is boring. A DMV prank backfires. “Do not swat.”
Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:03:26 — 29.1MB)
This Week’s Hosts
- 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
- We started with recent activity including’s Kevin’s lastest newsletter scans, one for the Pick operating system that none of us had heard of, and another for the Semaphoe Signal for Apple Lisa and Mac users. Gary’s building out his own course delivery platform on courses.macmost.com/; he also got one of the first Apple charge cards within seconds of application. Leo spaced and announced the 16th anniversary of Ask Leo! as the fifteenth (how time flies!), and shared an interesting item from the Now I Know newsletter on the origins of the term “upper case.”
- The Hacker News, among others, is reporting a newly discovered vulnerability in some models of Canon cameras: ransomware! Apparently it can even be done wirelessly.
- Speaking of unexpected hacks, Gary shared an item from MacRumors on fake, or modified original, lightning cables that look just fine but can actually also independently do nasty things to the computer to which they’re connected.
- Alan Turing is slated to appear on the UK’s 50 pound note. (Via the BBC, of course.) A pioneer in our industry getting more long overdue recognition.
- According to PC World the next “feature update” to Windows 10 will be less feature and more stability and improvement changes — meaning it’ll be boring, which many will appreciate.
- Via Mashable, don’t get “NULL” a personalized license plate, you may regret it – one person did. (In that same vein, Keven reminded us of the XKCD comic Exploits of a Mom.)
- If you’re at risk, apparently there’s something close to a do not swat registry. Really? Really.
The historical tidbit regarding “upper case”, brings to mind (my mind, at least) the reason the US Senate is the “upper house.” When the Senate met in NYC prior to the move to DC, it did so in the upper floor of the Federal Building there. The house met on the lower floor.
Pretty boring, huh?
email notices do not seem to be working on this one (at least to my gmail account). Thankfully the RSS side is.
Thanks … we’ll look into it!
Thanks for the mention of a “USB Condom”. I never knew there was such a device. Every time I have rented a car recently without asking the car will automatically upload all my contacts into the car system when all I wanted was to charge the phone.