Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
Steve Jobs
Trident Exploit Chain
Twitter is lighting up on reports of a triple iOS 0-day exploit chain dubbed “Trident” that silently gives total control of the iPhone to the attacker. The eye-popping part is that at least one cyber arms dealer has likely been peddling software exploiting this particular nastiness since iOS7.
Apple has patched in iOS 9.3.5 so do run along and update as soon as possible.
The article above breaks everything down if you are interested in the gory details so I’ll just close with this blurb from the Vice write-up:
“The people that we see being targeted by these texts today—dissidents, activists—these are kind of the people on the frontlines of what is to come for all of us tomorrow, these guys are sort of the canaries in the coal mine… The threats that they are facing today are threats that perhaps ordinary users will face tomorrow.”
Twitter Is For Tweeters
Derek Thompson writes in The Atlantic that “Twitter is worthless for the limited purpose of driving traffic to your website”.
…Twitter is sending less than 2 percent of its overall engagement back to the web.
(Lucky you, I’m going to push this post to Twitter.)
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Dylan Thomas, “Do not go gentle into that good night” (opening stanza)
Austin Recap
We spent just shy of two months in Austin, TX. We split the time between a condo in the new Mueller development and a house in Zilker. The separate rentals actually ended up being pretty cool as between the two of them we were able to get a good sense of the city as a whole.
The fam and I learned new things:
- Service roads. The layouts along interstates change from the typical perpendicular exit to parallel service ways. You notice immediately after crossing the LA/TX border.
- Dry heat is a thing.
- Damn good tacos.
Also, this city had a respectable contingent of Automatticians. We laughed, we cried, we coworked. Good times.
