Brian Gongol
One of the largest Internet vulnerabilities ever
It's been discovered that some 40 to 50 million routers and other Internet-enabled devices are vulnerable to hijacking by crooks because they use code that was never intended to be used online (and thus isn't secured). The official report probably couldn't be more jargon-o-riffic if it tried, but the bottom line is that people can run a quick online test, and if necessary, update the vulnerable program.
What gets measured gets done
Bill Gates is out with a column in the Wall Street Journal and his latest annual report from the Gates Foundation, both of which focus on the importance of measuring progress towards the objectives of foundations like his. It's really quite fascinating to live in a time when one of the two or three richest people in the world is also a person who is also a highly-driven "fieldmarshal" (in the psychological sense) who, with a lot of time left in his life, has decided to put everything he's got into solving the world's biggest problems. And, if the psychological assessment is correct, this brings him vastly greater joy than spending his money like a playboy ever would.
Stock-market "technician" cranks are out in force
One trader writes for Marketwatch with a column asking, "Is this the biggest triple top ever?" The people who think the stock market is a predictable universe of patterns in the price graphs miss the most important fact of all: Shares of stock are just slices of ownership in a business, and it all comes down to how those businesses are performing at making a profit. That's all that truly matters, and it's the only thing that really drives stock prices in the long term.
Is Twitter the "Hotel California" for journalists?
An interesting opinion, at least
If you're in Egypt and you're free to leave, you probably should
Right now.
