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The Unknown-Links Edition Sunday, March 5, 2017

National 911 Cyber Attack Was First Detected In Tarrant County, by Bill Hanna, Star-Telegram

McCarley said individuals need to be just as cautious with their phones as they are with their computers. Don’t click on any unknown links.

“I think you have to realize there are security issues with mobile phones,” McCarley said. “This time, it was an iPhone. The next time, it could be some other type of mobile phone.”

‘Artificial Intelligence’ Has Become Meaningless, by Ian Bogost, The Atlantic

In science fiction, the promise or threat of artificial intelligence is tied to humans’ relationship to conscious machines. Whether it’s Terminators or Cylons or servants like the “Star Trek” computer or the Star Wars droids, machines warrant the name AI when they become sentient—or at least self-aware enough to act with expertise, not to mention volition and surprise.

What to make, then, of the explosion of supposed-AI in media, industry, and technology? In some cases, the AI designation might be warranted, even if with some aspiration. Autonomous vehicles, for example, don’t quite measure up to R2D2 (or Hal), but they do deploy a combination of sensors, data, and computation to perform the complex work of driving. But in most cases, the systems making claims to artificial intelligence aren’t sentient, self-aware, volitional, or even surprising. They’re just software.

Stuff

How I Discovered My Left AirPod Was Bad, by Jeff Geerling

So after doing all that, and considering asking my Dad (who's an awesome electrical engineer and well versed in RF as he works in radio) to bring over a spectrum analyzer, I finally found a neat utility from Apple, 'Bluetooth Explorer'. This handy app lets you monitor many aspects of Bluetooth connections in real time. This was extremely helpful in finding the culprit.

Notes

The Story Of Firefox OS, by Ben Francis, Medium

As an engineer on the project I don’t quite have the full picture when it comes to the high level decision making, financials and business partnerships. But I was involved in the project for a long period of time, longer in fact than any of its co-founders, and gained quite a lot of insight at the engineering, design and product levels.

So I’d like to tell you my version of the story of Firefox OS, from the birth of the Boot to Gecko open source software project as a mailing list post and an empty GitHub repository in 2011, through its commercial launch as the Firefox OS mobile operating system, right up until the “transition” of millions of lines of code to the community in 2016.

Why Newspaper Subscriptions Are On The Rise, by Tien Tzuo, TechCrunch

Why are readers and publishers alike embracing paid subscriptions for content services over ad-based business models? There are several reasons, but the dismal state of online advertising is a big one.

Bottom of the Page

I need to be super-aware of not letting myself spent the bulk of my time 'managing' my To-do list than actually doing my To=do list.

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Thanks for reading.