techrage

Unicorn hunting

It’s become a trope: the super-smart hacker, faced with a highly secure system, frantically hammers on the keyboard for a few seconds (if it’s a really tough job, with a few pauses to show a thoughtful face) then another burst of activity, and they’re in.…

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Uber-dumb

I’m working on a novel with self-driving cars, privacy compromises, a persecuted journalist, and chock full of human failure. So this week’s Uber news couldn’t be more relevant.

Uber is a pretty good approximation the infrastructure basis of how self-driving vehicle travel might operate one day.…

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Heartbleed and the new reality

A few months ago a bug that came to be known as Heartbleed made the rounds. This is a serious bug that affects the most sensitive parts of the public internet, making it possible under the right conditions for almost anything that’s supposed to remain secret to be available for the asking.…

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Ebola outbreak as a technology failure

I’m not sure which is more horrifying: that tens of thousands are dead and dying from Ebola in Africa, or or that it appears that it was largely preventable with basic medical technology.

William Gibson’s quip about the future not yet being evenly distributed takes on a much darker undertone in this light.…

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Micah Joel

Purveyor of things geeky