chrishitchcock.com

"But the problem runs even deeper: people don't like to be stopped in their ways. They will devise workarounds, concoct bizarre machinations to just get it running. People who don't know anything about cryptography. Normal people. Why not patching out the call to random()? Why not having some guy in a web forum tell you how to use some strange ioctl to increase the entropy counter? Why not switch off ssl altogether? In the end you just educate your users to do foolish things that compromise your system's security without you ever knowing about it."

A great podcast on the excellent The Long Winters song.

littleBits puts the power of electronics in the hands of everyone. Make your own electronic creations with no soldering, wiring, or programming required.

I've never heard of this company before, but I saw a promoted tweet for their brick adaptor that allows you to connect their electronic building blocks onto regular lego bricks. Very cool.

For most of us, Siri is merely a momentary diversion. But for some, it’s more. My son’s practice conversation with Siri is translating into more facility with actual humans. Yesterday I had the longest conversation with him that I’ve ever had. Admittedly, it was about different species of turtles and whether I preferred the red-eared slider to the diamond-backed terrapin. This might not have been my choice of topic, but it was back and forth, and it followed a logical trajectory. I can promise you that for most of my beautiful son’s 13 years of existence, that has not been the case.

Mr. Mark said he envisions assistants whose help is also visual. “For example, the assistant would be able to track eye movements and help the autistic learn to look you in the eye when talking,” he said. “See, that’s the wonderful thing about technology being able to help with some of these behaviors,” he added. “Getting results requires a lot of repetition. Humans are not patient. Machines are very, very patient.”

Robert Frost, Two Tramps in Mud

I bought my son this Bruder Schaeff HR16 Excavator when I was in Germany back in 2012. He loves it and plays with it often. Yesterday he was using it to dig in what was left of the snow in our front yard. A small part of it broke in the arm. I was able to superglue it back together and it seems to be holding, but it is only a matter of time before it fails again.

I noticed that the small part that broke seemed to be replaceable. I decided to google around and found that it was a replaceable part. They even have new track treads and a whole arm assembly replacement. I found this really impressive, even though I should have known there would be something like this since it is a German toy.