Dropbox and Microsoft announce partnership focusing on Office integration. Big news, and surprising since Microsoft’s cloud service OneDrive will definitely take a hit from this. The new Microsoft definitely is more agile in their decisions. All that said, I can’t help but wonder if this is all about getting a Dropbox app for Windows Phone, a possible deal-breaker for some potential customers. Because yes, that’s part of the deal.
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A.D.H.D. and the natural fix
From A natural fix for A.D.H.D.:
One of my patients, a young woman in her early 20s, is prototypical. “I’ve been on Adderall for years to help me focus,” she told me at our first meeting. Before taking Adderall, she found sitting in lectures unendurable and would lose her concentration within minutes. Like many people with A.D.H.D., she hankered for exciting and varied experiences and also resorted to alcohol to relieve boredom. But when something was new and stimulating, she had laserlike focus. I knew that she loved painting and asked her how long she could maintain her interest in her art. “No problem. I can paint for hours at a stretch.”
Great piece by Richard A. Friedman.
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OneDrive and NSA
Do you think your OneDrive files are safe from NSA and Prism? Think again. Scary stuff if true, and hopefully something Microsoft will address in the future, although I’m not holding my breath. It seems like Apple is the only cloud player that’s taking a firm stand against these sort of things.
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Facebook's Tor onion
Facebook’s got a special URL for Tor browsers:
Considerations like these have not always been reflected in Facebook’s security infrastructure, which has sometimes led to unnecessary hurdles for people who connect to Facebook using Tor. To make their experience more consistent with our goals of accessibility and security, we have begun an experiment which makes Facebook available directly over Tor network at the following URL:
https://facebookcorewwwi.onion/
[ NOTE: link will only work in Tor-enabled browsers ]
Facebook’s onion address provides a way to access Facebook through Tor without losing the cryptographic protections provided by the Tor cloud.
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The details of colonizing space
From a Vice piece asking when we’ll live on Mars:
It’s an impressive vision on its own, as cutting out Earth-to-orbit shipping is a major step towards cutting costs for space travel. But if you put their visions together, Moon Express and Made in Space shed light on the steps we need to take to actually build Moon factories and Mars bases. Moon Express hopes to be able to process resources on site (on whatever planet that might be), while Made in Space hopes to develop and ship entire automated manufacturing facilities to foreign worlds. Oh, and they’ll ideally self-replicate, too.
The two companies remain independent in their goals, other startups might find more success, and yes, we’re still a couple decades out for the grand concept here. But the two are illustrative of just how the future may play out: Companies mining the Moon for resources will deliver those goods to off-world manufacturers to build the basic infrastructure for incoming space colonists. It’s indicative of just how compelling the space startup world is right now, and the even crazier thing is that, for as out there as the vision is, there’s no shortage of entrepreneurs and investors who believe that it can all actually happen.
I can’t even begin to comprehend all the details that needs to be sorted out before Mars, or any other planetary body of rock, is within our reach for colonization. Such attention to detail is needed here that it’s staggering, and yet we’re getting closer every day. I just hope I’ll live to see it.
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The Tim Cook moment
Otherwise, he eschewed the limelight during his first years, seeming to prefer to keep up that behind-the-scenes persona intact, despite the fact that he held the most high-profile job in Silicon Valley. This is in drastic contrast to everyone else in tech, who share — with great calculation, of course — quite a bit about their personal lives for the media.
Google’s Sergey Brin kite-surfs! Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is a space nut! SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk wants to die on Mars! Twitter’s Dick Costolo was once a stand-up comic! Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is taking Chinese lessons! Box’s Aaron Levie sure is a funny tweeter!
About Cook, nothing.
Great piece, sparked by Tim Cook’s extraordinary essay where he officially tells the world he’s gay.
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DN belyser sårbarheter i WordPress
DN kör just nu en artikelserie, “Det sårbara digitala samhället”, och ger sig på WordPress i sin senaste del. Artikeln bygger på att DN har hittat dryga tio tusen svenska WordPress-installationer som
de bedömer som osäkra, för att de inte är uppdaterade på två och ett halvt år.De 10.228 sajterna som DN exemplifierar har särskilt kritiska säkerhetsbrister. Därutöver finns en stor mängd sajter som har allvarliga säkerhetsbrister, men som är lite svårare att utnyttja. Även flera tidningsredaktioner använder sig av WordPress. DN har hittat minst fem tidningssajter i Sverige som har säkerhetsbrister.
Dessa installationer kör alltså WordPress 3.3.1 eller tidigare. Nuvarande version är 4.0, för dig som inte har koll.
Två saker rimmar illa med den här artikeln.
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NaNoWriMo 2014
November is, as usual, National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. The concept is simple: Write a novel in a month. Or part of one, whatever’s your goal. I guess “beating” NaNoWriMo means that you wrote a novel during the month of November, but there’s a big difference between 60,000 words and 240,000 words, in case you hadn’t noticed.
It matters little, because NaNoWriMo brings writers, prospective ones in particular, together. There’s cheering and helpful pats on the back, because everyone’s suffering. Some are giving this organized and disciplined novel writing thing a go for the first time, and they realize how hard it is. Others are seasoned, with several drafts or even published books behind them, and they know how hard it is.
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#GamerGate tries to bring Gawker Media out of business
I’m surprised this hasn’t happened before: GamerGaters going after publications, Gawker Media in particular. From a Vox piece:
How will Operation Baby Seal manage this trick? It’s not particularly clear (and, I should say here, the operation seems unlikely to succeed for sheer logistical reasons), but it mostly involves having aggrieved gamers send bunches and bunches of complaint emails about Gawker Media sites violating Google and Amazon’s terms of service. (Yes, the #GamerGate folks read the terms of service.) The examples are to be drawn from this wiki, which collects a bunch for easy collation into form letters.
KotakuInAction began as a way to mock Kotaku, Gawker Media’s video game publication, for its aspirations toward discussion political aspects of video games, so the grudge between #GamerGate and the company runs deep. But Operation Baby Seal is truly a new level of loathing. The movement seems less to want to expose ethical lapses at this point and more to drive sites it doesn’t agree with from the face of the Earth.
So I guess Vox is up next? These tactics hit on the publications themselves, but as long as they’re complying with their ad terms, they should be just fine. And if they’re not, if Amazon or Google kicks them out because there’s validity to the claims of the GamerGaters, then what’s the problem? This stunt might even bring something good with it, despite the intentions.
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Tim Cook
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple (for those of you living under a rock), is gay:
For years, I’ve been open with many people about my sexual orientation. Plenty of colleagues at Apple know I’m gay, and it doesn’t seem to make a difference in the way they treat me. Of course, I’ve had the good fortune to work at a company that loves creativity and innovation and knows it can only flourish when you embrace people’s differences. Not everyone is so lucky.
While I have never denied my sexuality, I haven’t publicly acknowledged it either, until now. So let me be clear: I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.
Two things:
- This is a strong piece. Tim Cook tells it like it is, in his point of view obviously, bit by bit. It means a lot, more to some, no doubt, but still a lot.
- Trying to brush this under the carpet, to be flippant about this piece, or say that it shouldn’t be necessary to say these things is belittling the struggle of minorities. There’s no doubt in my mind that these things need to be said, over and over again, eapecially by celebrities and powerful people like Mr. Cook.
Publishing this shows great integrity. It’s not chance that this is the man that gets to lead Apple. Well done.
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Arbetsförmedlingen och Sveriges bästa chef
Arbetsförmedlingen satsar genom att stängs hundra kontor. Etjänster är svaret, bland annat, men hoppas inte för mycket. Generaldirektör Mikael Sjöberg i en intervju med SR:
Ja vi förändrar oss hela tiden, vi börjar att säga upp kontor nu, så fort förhandlingarna om de enskilda kontoren är klara. Och vi börjar rekrytera människor så snabbt som möjligt. Men ingen kan förvänta sig att arbetsförmedlingen är en riktigt bra och modern myndighet förrän om flera år. Men varje halvår ska vi ta steg framåt.
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The Hemingwrite
One of the most searched upon posts here on TDH.me is my e-ink typewriter piece. There are people visiting it every day, which speaks volumes about what weird creatures writers are. Yes, I think they’re writers, who else would find use of a typewriter in this day and age?
These people would probably like the Hemingwrite, a typewriter for the, well, I’m not sure what century. First things first: This is a prototype, you can’t buy it. The images seen in this post are renders, aside from the one where the prototype’s actually being used. Despite this, and the lack of the inevitable Kickstarter campaign, the tech press has been all over the Hemingwrite.
So what is it? Well, it’s a typewriter, so to speak. The 6″ e-ink screen is almost exactly what I asked for in my e-ink typewriter piece, and the mechanical keyboard, with Cherry MX switches, is promising to say the least. There’s also wifi in this thing, so that you can sync your writing to Evernote and Google Drive. Personally, I hope for Dropbox and other services, but hey, let’s not get picky. The device is instant on, and there’s low-energy bluetooth too, which could prove useful, although for what is somewhat unclear at this time. Add some six weeks of battery life, and storage for over a million pages, and you’ve got yourself a dedicated writing machine worth coveting. And, despite the somewhat corny name, I think the Hemingwrite is a beauty.
(more…)
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Serious Drupal 7 vulnerability
There’s a nasty Drupal security issue that, well, this is how bad it is:
Automated attacks began compromising Drupal 7 websites that were not patched or updated to Drupal 7.32 within hours of the announcement of SA-CORE–2014–005 – Drupal core – SQL injection. You should proceed under the assumption that every Drupal 7 website was compromised unless updated or patched before Oct 15th, 11pm UTC, that is 7 hours after the announcement.
If you’re running a Drupal 7 based website, you need to read this now, and take this seriously.
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Tidningen Skriva och iPaden som den nya skrivmaskinen
Skriva är en tidning för dig som gillar att skriva. I det senaste numret, #6 2014, är temat dina karaktärers drivkraft och hur du håller dem intressanta hela vägen igenom. Förutom det handlar Skriva #6 2014 även om följande:Vi bjuder också på stort tema kring autofiktion: Varför börjar så många författare hos sig själva? Hur gör man litteratur av sitt eget liv? Sören Bondeson, Morgan Larsson, Susanna Alakoski och Tomas Bannerhed delar med sig av sina erfarenheter.
Dessutom Håkan Nesser, Sigrid Combüchen, Daniel Sjölin, lite NaNoWriMo, tävlingar, prylar, seriemördare 2.0, debutanter, lektören läser, svar från Författarförbundets jurist. Och så berättar vi varför iPaden är den nya skrivmaskinen.
Den där sista grejen, varför iPaden är den nya skrivmaskinen, är undertecknad skyldig till. Köp Skriva #16 2014 i butik, eller varför inte teckna en prenumeration direkt, för läsning på papper eller padda.
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Nintendo finally turns a profit again
Would you look at that, some positive news from camp Nintendo! The Verge:
Nintendo’s financial situation hasn’t improved dramatically, however the growing sales numbers have helped the company break even in terms of operating income and report a net profit of 14.3 billion yen (roughly $130 million) once foreign exchange gains are factored in as well. What’s more, Nintendo forecasts having a profitable year overall with further improvements in sales anticipated as the holiday season ramps up.
The reason is the excellent Mario Kart 8 for Wii U, moving a lot of consoles. This is well deserved, because if you’re into traditional video games, the Wii U is a great choice. I’m not so sure where the (equally excellent, albeit painfully low-res) Nintendo 3DS fits in, despite the new version. Nintendo’s not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot.