David Lidsky's Blog, page 2920
August 11, 2015
Researchers Hacked The Brakes Of A Corvette With Text Messages
Internet-enabled dongles could give hackers access to a car's brakes.
Security researchers have discovered a way to cut the brakes of a car by hacking into it through an Internet-enabled dongle. A team from the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) gained access to the onboard computer of a 2013 Corvette by sending text messages to a plugged-in gadget that measures a car's location and speed for insurance companies.
Rite Aid Will Now Support Apple Pay And Google Wallet
One of America's largest drugstore chains is reversing its decision regarding Apple Pay starting this week.
Rite Aid, which incurred considerable customer wrath last year when it nixed support for Apple Pay at checkout, has backpedaled. The drugstore announced that, as of next Saturday, it will again accept Apple Pay and Google Wallet. Rite Aid's decision is bad news for CurrentC, a clunky retailer-backed rival to Apple Pay and Google Wallet that has yet to launch.
This "Climate Portal" Lets You Experience Desert Heat And Arctic Winds
Want to get in the mood for your trip? Sample the weather at your destination inside these weather-simulating chambers at Stockholm's Arlanda Airport.
International airports aren't known for their atmosphere, but in Stockholm's Arlanda Airport, you can experience the climates of far-away places just by walking into a room.
StumbleUpon Fails To Secure New Funding, Lays Off "Dozens Of Employees"
The social media site is cutting its staff down to about 30 people.
StumbleUpon, the once-popular discovery engine that lets users "stumble" onto new web content, has hit another road bump. According to VentureBeat, the company is now downsizing even further following a number of layoffs issued in 2013.
China Has Already Blocked The Website For Alphabet, Google's New Parent Company
The Chinese firewall blocked the site less than 24 hours after Alphabet was unveiled.
Well, that was fast: Less than a day after Google revealed its newly created parent company, Alphabet, its website has been barred in China.
This Collapsible Bike Helmet Doesn't Welch On Safety To Save Space
It not only collapses down to fit in a bag or a purse—it's stylish, too.
We can debate all day whether or not, given proper infrastructure, bike helmets are necessary. Regardless, in America, the infrastructure isn't there, which makes helmets something everyone should wear. But we don't, for a variety of reasons: because they're bulky to lug around all day, because bike sharing programs like CitiBike don't offer them, or because we're thoughtless assholes with a god complex.
How A Toilet Franchise Business Is Cleaning Up Kenya's Slums
When the government isn't providing clean sanitation, Sanergy is showing that there's an opportunity for local entrepreneurs to step in.
Sanergy is a social enterprise that's building out a sanitation network in Nairobi, Kenya. It designs its own toilets, franchises them out to entrepreneurs (who charge people to use them), then converts the waste into fertilizer that it sells to farmers. Started by MIT graduates, Sanergy takes a business approach, based on the premise that people will pay to use toilets if you make them clean and sturdy enough.
How An Analog Photo Company Can Thrive In An Instagram Age
Lomography's story is one of Austrian art students, millennial hipsters, and, of course, Vladimir Putin.
At one point, they almost built their own mobile photography app. But instead, Matthias Fiegl and Sally Bibawy decided to stick to their company's old-school roots. Lomography, a 23-year-old camera company headquartered in Austria, has remained loyal to the art of analog and experimental photography since the beginning, when it first discovered—and then helped popularize—the quirky Lomo LC-A film camera in a shop in Prague. After weathering the onslaught of both digital cameras and the smartphone explosion, Lomography has managed to carve out a durable—and profitable—niche doing things the old-school way: hashtag, no filter.
This App Uses Kids' Own Unintelligible Texts To Teach Them Grammar
iCorrect brings the grammar police to your teens' phones, and they won't be LOLing.
Children write more these days than ever before, thanks to texting, Facebook, Tumblr, and whatever else they're using that we haven't even heard of yet. iCorrect is an add-on for Apple's iMessage app that uses this fact to teach them better spelling and grammar. It works by not letting kids send a message until they've got everything right: no LOLs allowed.
Revisiting The Architectural Landmarks Of Past World's Fairs
Some aged gracefully. Others not so much.
We owe a handful of some of the most iconic works of architecture to World's Fairs, like the Eiffel Tower, the Space Needle, and Habitat '67. Today the structures might be a photo-op for design-savvy tourists, but they're also relics that reflect aspirations of generations past. After photographer Jade Doskow visited one of the sites on a family vacation, she was hooked on documenting their present-day conditions.
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