Another week, another batch of assorted sick kids… I wonder, how do humans survive, as a specie??
Anyway, isn’t this Rubik’s cube solving robot super cool?! It’s trying to get funded now on Kickstarter. It’s not the final assembled robot that I found so cool, but the idea of building one! As far as I understand, this is what the Kickstarter project is about. Coming up with a kit that individuals (or schools) can buy and build and program themselves – that’s really cool!
You probably heard about the crazy Sony hack. I don’t intend to dig into the technicalities of this hack, or the political and business ramifications of it. Others are covering it more than enough. What I found interesting here is how this breach affects regular employees and their families. These employees didn’t expect all of their work and personal email (and more) to be released like that. I believe many of them, like lots of other “regular people” (myself included), “has nothing to hide”. When I use the Internet (in whatever form), I usually don’t worry too much about “privacy” – as I have nothing to hide. This breach makes me think – even though I don’t have anything to hide, how would I feel if my entire online activity is published like that? My personal information? Personal information of unsuspecting friends and family that happened to interact with me online? That’s unsettling…
Speaking of hacks, have you heard of the RevSlider vulnerability that made lots of WordPress sites exposed to attacks (AKA SoakSoak)? Luckily, I don’t use the vulnerable plugin on this site, so I’m good. Do you have a WordPress site? Are you vulnerable?
The Weekly Review is a recurring (so-far-)weekly summary, reviewing highlights from the last week.
Blog posts from the last week
- Some Python fun – manipulating os.walk recursion.
- Back with my SCons series – adding support for arbitrary modules order.
- The previous weekly review.
The best way to keep up with new posts is to follow the feed.
Web selections
Check out this article on how the FBI unmasked Tor users.
Yet another manifestation of the inspiring transparency policy at Buffer. Leo Widrich wrote up a post detailing where your money goes when you buy a $10 plan. I found it interesting to look at profit with respect to team members salaries. According to the numbers published, the monthly profit is about 7% of total monthly salaries cost. This means that the profit will fluctuate wildly upon small changes in the employee count. At $15,666 monthly profit, just two new employees will immediately wipe the entire profit! Is this reasonable? I’m not familiar enough with the subject to judge…
The Pirate Bay took a hit this week, when Swedish police raided it and took it down. I wonder if North Korea is behind it, to make it harder for Sony to leak “The Interview” instead of the original release plans… 🙂
Google put up a call for research proposals to participate in the open web of things expedition (whatever that is, as long as it has something to do with the Internet of Things).
Bitsbox is a service providing monthly code projects for kids. They also run a Kickstarter project. Neat. Here’s what GeekDad had to say about it.
Side project updates
No significant progress with the website project. Just made sure this site is not vulnerable to the SoakSoak threat mentioned in the intro.
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