From the pages of the International Herald Tribune comes a glimpse of a world where clandestine communication retains the old and tested methods of hand to hand. When a godfather becomes expendable is a piece by Andrea Camilleri, the author of “The Smell of the Night” and other novels in the Inspector Montalbano series. In … Read more
Google’s new Finance site is worth a look, but it’s only when you look at the graphs do you realise how good it is. Take this snippet from the chart on the Apple page: The overall chart is a great example of beauty and graphical simplicity. The letters correspond to a scrolling column of stories that … Read more
RFID (radio frequency ID) tags are soon going to be in everything. But do we really know what we’re letting ourselves in for? Last month some Dutch researchers said they had created a virus capable of infecting RFID tags, an assertion that was poo-pooed by quite a few security folk. The researchers said the virus … Read more
If you’re going to do a scam, have a good backstory. Here’s how. It’s from a Mrs. Sarah Welsh of 26 Kensington Court, London, W8 5DL, England who says in an unsolicited email that illustrates how best to do the old Nigerian email scam: I am Mrs. Sarah Welsh, an English woman who is suffering … Read more
Here’s a podcast I did for the BBC World Service on the Mitsubish Jet Towel, the only automatic hand dryer I’ve come across that actually dries your hands. Here it is. https://www.loosewireblog.com/files/hand_dryer_with_cue.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | Download