The killswitch future; synthetic biology cribsheet; the google/scientific method argument; Storm worm making up stories …

• 1 – Security Matters: I’ve Seen the Future, and It Has a Kill Switch
  “Once we go down this path — giving one device authority over other devices — the security problems start piling up. Who has the authority to limit functionality of my devices, and how do they get that authority?” Schneier FTW.
  (tags: privacy paranoia jamming hardware freedom DRM technology security)
• 2 – Robots ready to support soldiers on the battlefield
  “The Mule can fire Javelin anti-tank missiles and has a turret-mounted machine gun, in addition to a digital “eyeball” with laser and heat-recognising target acquisition systems for aiming its weaponry.” Mil SF was right.
  (tags: technology war hardware systems battle robot)
• 3 – Cribsheet #16: Synthetic Biology
  “… summarizes the basics of biotechnology and explains how to assemble and program strands of DNA. It also charts the progress of synthetic biology toward a future of cheap, powerful, easy-to-use biotechnology tools that may be difficult to regulate or
  (tags: guide facts basic synthetic biology science)
• 4 – Why the cloud cannot obscure the scientific method
  “Where Anderson stumbles is in his conclusions about what this means for science. The fact is that we couldn’t have even reached this Google-level understanding without the models and mechanisms that he suggests are doomed to irrelevance.”
  (tags: debunk thinking statistics google method scientific computing petabyte cloud)
• 5 – The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete
  “We can stop looking for models. We can analyze the data without hypotheses about what it might show. We can throw the numbers into computing clusters [...] and let statistical algorithms find patterns where science cannot.” Er, hang on …
  (tags: epistemology futurism semantics computing cluster petabyte google models method scientific)
• 6 – Storm worm turns to fake news stories
  “Researchers have reported a new round of spam tied to the Storm network which alludes to fake news stories. The emails contain such headlines as ‘Eiffel Tower damaged by massive earthquake’ and ‘Donald Trump missing, feared kidnapped.’”
  (tags: news fake worm email spam virus botnet Storm)