Welcome to my weekly letter, where I share a few noteworthy articles and my own commentary. Without further ado…
Weekly Read
- As schools experiment to close the homework gap, will new E-rate funding help? (protocol) – $7.1 billion to help schools close the digital gap and enable all students with technology needs from broadband access to laptops and tablets. While it is a good start, it will require a revolving program to continue sustaining equipment renewals every few years. (laptops are probably good for 3-4 years nowadays, depends on the manufacturers)
- Exploiting vulnerabilities in Cellebrite UFED and Physical Analyzer from an app’s perspective (Signal blog) – a funny piece that poke fun on Cellebrite and how its product (which is used to extract data from people’s mobile devices) appears to run on some vastly outdated software bundles, allowing the hackers to exploit this tool of exploitation.
- They Hacked McDonald’s Ice Cream Machines—and Started a Cold War (Wired) – the story of two entrepreneurs, the creators of ‘Frobot’, and their failed attempt to disrupt the ‘dark pattern’ between McDonald’s and Taylor, the maker of the only ice cream machine standardized for all McDonald’s franchisees.
- 35 Years Later, Studies Show a Silver Lining From Chernobyl (Wired) – recent discoveries in genomics and epigenetics finally helped shed light on the actual impact to human bodies by this type of incident. Wait, this might have just moved a ton of comic/sci-fi stories from canon to the ‘legacy’ area! Dr. Manhattan? DaredevilIn? Fantastic Four? 🙂
- TikTok Started With a Tech Guy From China Who Decoded America’s Teens (Bloomberg) – the incredible story of how Tiktok came to be. Created as music.ly and absorbed into ByteDance’s Tiktok in 2017 (with a $1B USD price tag!), it is now poised to commend the music industry starting with Gen Z.
Have a nice weekend!
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