And vermouth. And cava. At the awesome bar and restaurant called El Xampanyet.
We got our covid test done for entry into France tomorrow. Now it’s tapa time.
We never fail to chillax at Granja M. Viader, a very old-school place that specializes in delicious churros and chocolate, every time we visit Barcelona. They’ve been around since the 1870s, and they haven’t so much as moved a chair since we came here decades ago. Love. This. Place.
Today was the first day that Spain allowed people from some countries who have been vaccinated to enter the without needing to enter on important business.
The Spanish consulate website said you need two things to enter the country now. First, proof of vaccination. Second, to complete a form on the website for health and travel published by the Spanish government. The form asks all the standard Covid related health questions (have you been in contact with some poor bastard dying of COVID?, etc.), asked if you were vaccinated and also if you had a negative Covid test in the 72 hours before arrival.
But when I actually entered the country, they didn’t ask to see proof of vaccination They only scanned the QR code on the app, then waved me in.
We’ve all heard dire predictions about the future of cybersecurity trends, especially cloud security. IoT environments will expand the attack surface beyond control and encourage breaches. Hybrid offices will always pose a greater risk as cyber criminals exploit flex and remote work. Insecure APIs will open the door to attacks. Attackers will hijack employee accounts. Cloud resources will lack visibility.
But what if these threats and risks are overblown? Here’s why all these dire predictions about cloud security might never come to pass.
Among the many important aspects of IoT security, live cameras are one of the most open to misuse. People have been video snooping, watching private cameras and doing other sketchy things around connected cameras for many years. But in recent months, the intensity and risk around video have risen.
Video has breached privacy, or even security, in recent months in three main ways:
- Cyber criminals place hidden cameras in hotel rooms or home bedrooms. From there, they sell video clips or even live streams from those cameras online at scale.
- Attackers digitally break into a company that provides security video services. From there they gain admin access to the companies’ servers. They can snoop on the live feeds of schools, hospitals and even cybersecurity companies using their products and services.
- Threat actors exploit connected video cameras using insecure default configurations and other flaws.
It’s time to explore the potential for abuse (social engineering, blackmail, intelligence for sale and more).
Here's how you can protect yourself against this new wave of video attacks!
Cloud security and web application security demand technology and practices that protect applications and data hosted remotely. Good old-fashioned data encryption is chief among these. The reasons for encrypting cloud data, of course, are privacy, security and regulatory compliance — all standard for any successful enterprise. At the bottom of all this is the idea of being intentional about encryption, knowing the standards you need to meet and the specifics of your group’s needs. Make sure you’re seeing the whole picture with our guide.
We’ve got a 7-hour layover, so we’re camping out.
My wonderful friend Julia Weber is the implementation director at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Here she is on Democracy Now to explain the link between mass shootings and domestic violence, and offers some very sensible solutions to address the crisis.
That Remote Life podcaster Mitko Karshovski was kind enough to host me on his podcast, where we talked about how the world has changed in favor of new business opportunities for digital nomads who specialize in hybrid and remote work. Listen now!
(She hasn't been able to play with other children much since the pandemic began, so she's really looking forward to the end of the pandemic!)
My son, Kevin, bought a hydrogen fuel cell electric Toyota Mirai, recently. He absolutely loves it. As a bonus, he found out that the one of the best hydrogen stations around is right around the corner from his house.
Here's what it looks like to get gas at a hydrogen station:
The food industry faces an uncertain future. Restaurants and prepared-food companies, food manufacturers, farmers and producers that survived the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 are heading into a new world. Some of the competition has been removed, new players are entering the market and both tastes and consumer habits have changed. Take a look at our recipe for how food manufacturers can boost their internet of things (IoT) security in the midst of all those changes.
One problem with Twitter is the existence of a blue-check aristocracy. Now Twitter plans to further separate users into paid and not paid social media classes. What the company really needs is a verification system that democratizes Twitter.
Plus, the Russian smartphone customizing company Caviar is releasing a custom Huawei Mate 40 Pro and an iPhone 12 Limited Edition smartphone to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party of China. Workers of the world, unite behind this $25,000 gadget!
The clothing company Le Je is selling pants that look like a glitch in the Matrix.
Rolls-Royce has come out with a car that is more than just a car — it's also a picnic basket.
And DARPA, the US military research arm that brought us GPS, the graphical interface and the internet, is finally funding something useful — a sarcasm detector!
Read all about it in the latest edition of Mike's List!
Health care data security has always been a concern. But in the last year, health care and digital safety have become even more urgent topics in government, business and in the public at large. The reason is the sudden and enormous rise in attacks, both in number and impact. Where are those health care cyberattacks coming from? And, how can cybersecurity teams protect health care data? Here's what you need to know.
Any discussion about how technology is changing entertainment should include 5G. The new wireless networking standard could completely transform the entertainment landscape—and with it media and entertainment cyber security.
And it's no mystery why: 5G can offer radically faster download speeds, vastly reduced latency, much higher network capacity and other benefits that could fuel an explosion in new applications, platforms, devices and possibilities for entertainment.
Don't even THINK about missing this super special episode of This Week in Tech!! Leo Laporte hosts guests Iain Thomson, Jason Howell and me in the first post-pandemic show where we're all in studio for the first time since the pandemic began. (The gathering for the show followed both CDC advisories and also California state law; there was no studio audience.)
In this fantastic episode, we drink some of the world's finest mezcal as we solve the problems of Google's new talking AI (LaMDA), Google's problem with AI bias, DeepMind, Project Starline, Android 12, the future of Wear OS, the end of Tizen, Google's new RSS reader, new Google Workspace updates, Google's quantum computer plans, one Googler in government, Bill Gates' divorce, Andy Weir (interviewed by Leo on Triangulation), the abortion of Microsoft Windows 10x, the assisted suicide of Windows Explorer, Microsoft Teams, Snap's sucking up to Apple, Tim Cook's testimony in the Epic v. Apple case, MacOS takes one for the team in that trial, Apple's lossless music update, Amazon's response, the Citizen crime app's new rent-a-cop service, Jeff Bezos' space program, Twitter verification, raising the dead with AR, the Bitcoin plunge, Netflix's gaming plans and so much more!!
Go here to watch the show!
Go here to subscribe to TWiT shows!
Go here to join Club TWiT!
WE’LL DO IT LIVE!!!
Mezcal is a distilled beverage made from cooked and fermented agave juice. But that definition barely scratches the surface of this incredibly complex spirit.
Most people outside Mexico are more familiar with tequila, which is in fact one kind of mezcal. All tequila is made from agave tequilana Weber, or Weber blue agave and cooked in steam ovens, usually in the state of Jalisco.
Mezcal, on the other hand, can be made from any of roughly 50 species of agave, and each brings a different taste to the final product.
Most people outside Mexico are more familiar with tequila, which is in fact one kind of mezcal. All tequila is made from agave tequilana Weber, or Weber blue agave and cooked in steam ovens, usually in the state of Jalisco.
Mezcal, on the other hand, can be made from any of roughly 50 species of agave, and each brings a different taste to the final product.
Here's everything you need to know about the magical world of mezcal.
The restrictions enforced to stem the spread of the pandemic accelerated several trends, including the mass migration to flexible, remote work and hybrid work environments. Where and how we work are changing—and so are our communication styles in the workplace.
As businesses continue to navigate the new frontier of remote work, new communication pathways in the workplace are coming into focus. And with these new ways of communicating comes an imperative for new management and technology solutions to help employees work together.
So amazing.
And I will be clinging to her for the rest of my life, obviously.
In its endless, glorious variety.
Modern industrial food is literally killing us.
In the United States, 42.5% of the adult population suffers from obesity. Nearly three-quarters (73.6%) is overweight. Six out of the top seven leading causes of death are diet-related.
Our food is ruining our lives, and then ending our lives early. But why?
The catastrophic decline in food quality began more than 200 years ago with breathtaking improvement.
The Industrial Revolution, which would transform the lives of billions, was really a series of smaller, mutually reinforcing revolutions: The industrial energy revolution, the industrial transportation revolution, the industrial chemicals revolution, and so on. One of these was the industrial food revolution.
From around 1800 to about 1950, all of the major food problems that had plagued mankind for centuries were largely solved by industrialization, at least for people in the minority of countries that industrialized during this period. Famine, food-borne illness, lack of food variety, basic nutritional deficiencies among the poor and other problems were largely eliminated for millions.
Agriculture machinery, chemicals, railroads and trucks, factory assembly lines, refrigeration, pasteurization, homogenization, sterilization and other industrial-revolution innovations drove down the cost of food, and increased nutritional safety and variety. Lower food costs, plus supermarkets and household appliances meant people no longer had to spend most of their time paying for, acquiring or preparing food. Combined with advances in medicine, lives became longer, healthier and better.
And then, roughly in the 1950s, the industrial food revolution started harming human health on a massive scale. Here's what went wrong.
In the United States, 42.5% of the adult population suffers from obesity. Nearly three-quarters (73.6%) is overweight. Six out of the top seven leading causes of death are diet-related.
Our food is ruining our lives, and then ending our lives early. But why?
The catastrophic decline in food quality began more than 200 years ago with breathtaking improvement.
The Industrial Revolution, which would transform the lives of billions, was really a series of smaller, mutually reinforcing revolutions: The industrial energy revolution, the industrial transportation revolution, the industrial chemicals revolution, and so on. One of these was the industrial food revolution.
From around 1800 to about 1950, all of the major food problems that had plagued mankind for centuries were largely solved by industrialization, at least for people in the minority of countries that industrialized during this period. Famine, food-borne illness, lack of food variety, basic nutritional deficiencies among the poor and other problems were largely eliminated for millions.
Agriculture machinery, chemicals, railroads and trucks, factory assembly lines, refrigeration, pasteurization, homogenization, sterilization and other industrial-revolution innovations drove down the cost of food, and increased nutritional safety and variety. Lower food costs, plus supermarkets and household appliances meant people no longer had to spend most of their time paying for, acquiring or preparing food. Combined with advances in medicine, lives became longer, healthier and better.
And then, roughly in the 1950s, the industrial food revolution started harming human health on a massive scale. Here's what went wrong.
This mole, which is called mole chichilo, is the speciality of a tiny town called Tlalixtac de Cabrera where I had this. That thing in the middle is tamal. So good.
This was super delicious, and reminded me of the kind of horchata they make in El Salvador, which is made with roasted morro.