But the most interesting payments news came at a late afternoon session, where executives from Google’s commerce division showed off a prototype of a hands-free feature that will soon be beta testing in San Francisco. Customers can walk into a store, say, “I would like to pay with Google” and walk out without having touched their wallet or phone.We’ve…
Archives for May 2015
Universal Daemonization + Augmented Reality
Suddenly, D Skully spotted a girl’s face illuminated by the light of her phone screen in a small car parked down the street. As she remembers it, he went and knocked on her window to confront her, and as soon as she was caught, the car peeled off.The two of them were playing Ingress, an alternate reality game (or ARG) run…
The Key to Happiness is Being Thankful
The search for happiness has been in progress for millennia, and despite numerous answers being found, the search continues. To complicate the issue, there are many types of happiness. There is being happy with what you have, being happy with what you’ve contributed, and being happy in seeing others be happy—just to give a few of the options.…
The Punt Option for Immortality
Many think the only way to scientifically survive death is to live long enough where we can either keep our physical bodies alive, or long enough to have our consciousness uploaded before we die. But there’s another option. The other option is to punt, as it were, and just live long enough—and have enough money—to have your mind…
The Hierarchy of Citizenship
What the United States—and arguably every country—needs more than anything else is citizens. This should not be confused with people who have citizenship, as in too many cases these have little in common. This short essay will describe the importance of active Citizenship, and how so many fail to achieve it. First we’ll start by talking a bit…
3 Ways the Left is Anti-Science
Being on the progressive side, I hear all the time about how anti-science the right is. They deny evolution! They don’t realize we’re heating up the earth! They teach abstinence over sexual responsibility! These are all fair points, but the right isn’t the only group with ridiculous anti-science beliefs. The left is nearly as heroically stupid on a…
The Answer to Iraq is Iran
“What apparently happened was that the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight,” Carter told CNN’s Barbara Starr. “They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force, and yet they failed to fight, they withdrew from the site, and that says to me, and I think to most of us, that we have an…
How Siri Could Become the Defender of Our Privacy
On the subject of the Internet of Things, I am frequently asked by media what we can do to defend ourselves vs. being watched, listened to, and otherwise monitored wherever we go. It’s a good question, and it keeps getting better with time. Sensors are being added to everything: Doors, locks, furniture, cars, refrigerators, scales—you name it. And…
Coffee Shops and Apple Pay
I just found out the Pete’s Coffee takes Apple Pay, and it’s causing some dissonance in me. I have a particular Starbucks that I frequent, and I generally like Starbucks better than Pete’s, but I dislike the payment process enough for it to be annoying. And so when was in the Pete’s across from the Apple Store in…
The Answer to Why Westerners Keep Getting Recruited Into ISIS
The media is consumed with the question of why so many westerners are being successfully recruited into ISIS. It’s usually framed as: Why are so many of our precious western children being seduced by this evil? Neat question. I have a theory: Their parents aren’t raising them, because they have no time for them after working three jobs…
Hardcore History is How the Subject Should Be Taught
I feel a great disservice was done to me in that history was never taught to me in a way that interested me. It was dry, book-based word collections that seemed to be about a virtual world from a distant planet. Or maybe it was taught perfectly, and I was just closed to it. Who knows. Doesn’t matter.…
How to Check for TLS Vulnerabilities Using Nmap
As you probably know, there’s a new encryption vulnerability called Logjam, which affects the Diffie-Hellman key exchange process. There are number of online tools that can help you check for it, but it’s often not a good idea to ask random people to see if you’re vulnerable to something. They could be making a naughty Christmas list for…
IRC’s /me Syntax Works in Apple Messages
Something I found out recently is that you can use IRC’s syntax of saying /me before an action to make yourself do that thing in Apple’s Messages app. So if you type: /me waves at Craig It’ll display like so in the chat window. Neat. Notes If you send it from your iOS device it’ll show up on…
On the Chris Roberts Plane Hacking Story
Perhaps the biggest lesson to learn from the Chris Roberts plane hacking story is the seemingly ever-present failure of responsible disclosure. I’m not an expert on the story, and I’m not sure anyone is, but we do know that we had a guy talking about this issue since 2011. Vocally. On Twitter. And it appears that the FBI…
On the Chomsky / Harris Non-discussion
If you’re a fan of Sam Harris or Noam Chomsky you might know that they recently had something of an intellectual scuffle. Or they almost did, anyway. Sadly, the conversation never really happened, and I wanted to write about how sad that actually is. Here are the main points of the exchange and my takeaways: Starting at the…
Apple Watch’s Smooth Flow Attention to Detail
Apple is known for attention to detail, and I’ve just found a pleasing example in my Apple Watch. Horologists have long appreciated one particular aesthetic of mechanical movements vs. quartz—the smooth flow of the minute and second hands. Back in the 80’s the sign of a fake Rolex was the lumbering click of a quartz movement, since the…
Clearing Your DNS Cache in OS X Yosemite
There have been various ways of clearing your DNS cache in OS X. It’s changed like three times. Here’s how to do it in Yosemite (written as an alias): alias fd=”sudo discoveryutil udnsflushcaches” Notes I’m hoping the pace of this change will slow down to zero at this point.
Anatomy of an iOS Home Screen
Optimizing my iOS workflow is a yearly activity for me. I’m always trying to extract just a little more efficiency from it, which usually happens on major OS releases and when I get a new device. Here are my current binding concepts: One screen of apps. Not two. Not three. One. For everything else I have the downward…
10 Things You Should be Using Siri For
I realized the other day that I’m not using Siri at anywhere near her potential, so I set out to make a list of her latest capabilities that might help me be more efficient throughout the day. Here’s my takeaway list of 10 practical things she can do for you: Have Siri tell you when someone arrives (or…
Hard Times Create Focus and Happiness
“Future research should investigate whether the decreased rate of depression diagnoses and better mental health among men and women stems from decreased mental healthcare utilization or increased social support and time for recreational activities,” Dr. Dagher said. Source: http://interrete.org/lower-depression-better-mental-health-during-the-great-recession-national-study-finds/ – Lower depression, better mental health during the Great Recession, national study finds | Interrete I have a theory…
Security Fails at the Weakest Link
The app lets consumers pay for drinks and food through their mobile phone. It can also reload Starbucks gift cards by drawing funds from a bank account, credit card or PayPal. Hackers have found a way to get into the app, buy a new gift card and transfer the funds to themselves. Source: Starbucks app used to hack into…
The State of IoT Security (2015)
I just returned from IoT World 2015, which is held at Moscone Center in San Francisco. It’s a decent sized event with a good spread of vendors, speakers, and panels. What I’d like to do here is give some analysis of what the most common IoT conversations seem to be, where the vendors are playing, and what the security landscape looks like. Source:…
Social Micropayments
I’ve liked a company called Flattr for a while now. It’s a platform for paying content publishers (usually bloggers) a very small amount of money, depending on how many people you give to. So if you have a $10/month limit set up, and you Flattr 10 different articles, then each author will receive a dollar. If you only…
Being Right Doesn’t Matter if You Can’t Communicate
So why was I being sidelined? I demanded answers. Dustin did not disappoint.He gave me a single sheet of paper. On it, in a dull monospace font, were anonymous quotes about me from my coworkers.“Boz is one of the better engineers at Facebook” one read, and then the next “I would have a hard time working with him.”…
The Real Internet of Things
These are individually linked chapters from my book titled The Real Internet of Things, released on January 1st, 2017. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Introduction Predictions and Trends Universal Daemonization Realtime Data Frictionless Interaction Digital Assistants Tireless Advocate Augmented Reality Identity and Authentication Reputation as Infrastructure Continuous Customization Algorithmic Experience Extraction Omniscient Defender Human Enhancement Businesses as Daemons The Future of Work…
Plastic Chemicals ‘Feminise Boys’
Now they say certain phthalates also impact on the developing brain, by knocking out the action of the male hormone testosterone.Dr Shanna Swan and her team tested urine samples from mothers over midway through pregnancy for traces of phthalates.The women, who gave birth to 74 boys and 71 girls, were followed up when their children were aged four…
Games Are Becoming Services, But They Need User Content to Advance
This shift, though more dramatic with Activision, follows an industry trend with other large game makers, like Electronic Arts and Take-Two Interactive, which have both seen consistent boosts to sales over the Internet in recent quarters. These companies are beginning to see success in the games industry as less a matter of selling the most units and more…
2 Trends That Will Shape the Real IoT
The Internet of Things is a confusing thing. To some it’s a network like the Internet. To others it’s all about sensors and machines talking to each other to make business more efficient. And many see it as a way to optimize home living, with your watch starting your toaster and coffee maker when you wake up. Those…
The “Resource Exhaustion” AI Problem
Listening to the PEL episode on AI with Nick Bostrom I was introduced to a fascinating threat concept related to Artificial Intelligence. The idea is that there are serious dangers associated with with giving a new AI goals. The example given was telling a new toddler AI that its purpose in life is to make paper clips. Seems…
Internet.org Explained
Internet.org is a new project created by Facebook designed to give access to essential internet resources free of charge to those who need them. These are the core concepts: Net Neutrality—the idea that ISPs and governments should treat all data on the internet equally—is not enough to make the Internet an equal access resource The problem with doing…
The NSA Has a Common InfoSec Problem
According to one whistleblower, the NSA has is being overrun by information. This should sound familiar if you’re part of a corporate information security team. In nearly all corporate infosec scenarios I come across I see two trends: There aren’t nearly enough people to do the work They’re constantly seeking ways to gather more work/data Stop. Gathering. More.…
Why Dennett is Still Wrong About Free Will
I’ve argued against Dennett’s position on free will multiple times in the past. I’ve always thought his argument was a bit squirmish. It was opaque, and it made one argument while appearing to all but a few to mean something else entirely. In short, he was agreeing that the free will what both incompatibilists and regular people believe…
The IoT Security Broker
I’ve written and spoken extensively about Universal Daemonization, which I believe to be the form that the IoT should/will eventually take. The idea is that humans and objects will have bi-directional daemons that broadcast their attributes and interactive capabilities, all built on TCP/IP, HTTP, and RESTFUL web services. Everything will have a daemon. People. Businesses. Restaurants. City park…
Why It Matters That You Could Not Have Done Otherwise
Alessandro Vernet writes about the ability to have done otherwise: “Could you have done otherwise, in exactly the same circumstances?” Some say that the answer to this question sheds some light on whether we have free will. I think it does the opposite: it confounds the issue, creating a false problem. I wrote this response to him, and…