Some cliches, some interesting ones, some short, some long…
The Graduation Advice We Wish We’d Been Given – Gretchen Gavett – Harvard Business Review.
Day: May 23, 2013
FOOF: The stuff of nightmares
Remember the VX nerve gas from the movie The Rock? This is a lot worse:
FOOF is only stable at low temperatures; you’ll never get close to RT with the stuff without it tearing itself to pieces. I’ve seen one reference to storing it as a solid at 90 Kelvin for later use, but that paper, a 1962 effort from A. G. Streng of Temple University, is deeply alarming in several ways. Not only did Streng prepare multiple batches of dioxygen difluoride and keep it around, he was apparently charged with finding out what it did to things.
via xkcd what-if
Mythbusters RFID episode banned
But the people who can exploit the system probably know it already:
In a fit of foot-stomping reminiscent of the recent court-ordered ban on a talk regarding the vulnerabilities in the MiFare Classic-based CharlieCard transport payment system, the Discovery Channel – which owns the show – were told in no uncertain terms that “they were not going to air this episode talking about how hackable this stuff was, and Discovery backed way down, being a large corporation that depends on the revenue of the advertisers.” Savage continues with the explanation that the idea of an RFID-busting show is now “on Discovery’s radar and they won’t let us go near it.”
AB's Reflections 