Every week, the tech-minded and culture-focused team at Newmind shares many interesting articles internally. Every so often, we like to share that value with you. Let the faves begin!
Robert Greene talks “mastery” at Google
James shared this video recently, and it started some great conversations in the office about the subject of creativity and productivity. Author Robert Greene discusses the process of determining one’s professional field, and plotting the course to mastery in that field. It’s a long one, but it’s worth it.
Why I Just Asked My Students To Put Their Laptops Away
“Lids down” is the Clay Shirky’s mantra in this blog post, where he describes his struggle as a professor competing against laptops and other devices for his students’ attention during classtime. Dan Proczko shared this article, and will soon come into contact with this issue as well—he begins teaching his first college course this month at WMU!
Leap second: French timelord adds one second to 2015
The headline caught the attention of the many Dr. Who fans at the office, but it’s an actual concern for scientists and officials. Long story short: “Atomic time is constant, but the Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing down by around two thousandths of a second per day.” This is also pertinent to the developer community, as software designers try to adjust internal clocks to accommodate for the “leap-second” occurring in 2015. Where’s a sonic screwdriver when you need one?
Chromebooks can now run Linux in a Chrome OS window
While this option may be a little more renegade than we’d recommend for Chromebooks users in schools, there’s a new, potentially game-changing extension now in Chrome OS, allowing users to run Linux within a single window, rather than dual booting off of an external device. This could be huge for the Linux-savvy, multitasking Chromebook users among us. Thanks, Luke Reynolds, for the share!
PoC hack on data sent between phones and smartwatches
Were you lucky enough to find a smartwatch under the Christmas tree this year? Be careful—Heath shared out this article detailing new security issues regarding unprotected data traveling between the watch and your phone. Per the article: “Using readily available hacking tools, they found that the PIN obfuscating the Bluetooth connection between the two devices was easily brute forced. From that point on, they were able to monitor the information passing between the watch and the phone.”
Do you have any memorable news, articles, or other links that you think Newmind followers would be interested in?