Four short links: 31 August 2017
The API Line, Pacemaker Upgrades, AR HIG, and Door Upgrades
- Premium Mediocre (Venkatesh Rao) — Today, you’re either above the API or below the API. You either tell robots what to do, or are told by robots what to do.
- 465K Patients Must Visit Doctor for Pacemaker Firmware Upgrade (Ars Technica) — this vulnerability was exposed by a margin trading firm (Muddy Waters) that bet against the manufacturer (St Jude). We are living in Peak Gibson days.
- Apple’s AR Human Interface Guidelines — Scaling is not a remedy for adjusting the distance of an object—making an object larger to make it appear closer, for example, just results in a larger object that’s still far away. I picture junior deities, in their Elemental Schools, being taught lessons like this.
- The Hotel Hacker — a reminder that, as software eats the world, everything becomes a service. You don’t buy a pacemaker or a door and never think about it again. If your heart or your door has software, you’ll need to upgrade it and probably more than once.
