Mike's List 242
Mike's List 242
Industrial espionage; tortilla chip beer; doin' it for the 'gram; shitty patents; confusing CAPTCHAS; rotary smartphones; and more!
3 ways industrial espionage is different than you think it is
Tesla claims in a lawsuit that a software engineer employee named Alex Khatilov stole more than 6,000 scripts (which automated business functions) during his first two weeks on the job. The engineer’s defense is that he wanted only to use them while working at home, and didn’t 1) think the scripts had any business value; and 2) didn’t know using Dropbox to transfer the files was wrong.
If Tesla is right and Khatilov is lying, then he’s using the “George Costanza” defense of pretending that he didn’t know it was wrong to do what he did.
But I think there’s a reasonable likelihood that Khatilov is telling the truth.
The reason is that beliefs about how industrial espionage works differs between security experts and everybody else.
Here are the three ways industrial espionage is different than everybody thinks it is. (Link for paid subscribers)
Mike’s List of brilliantly bad ideas
1. Tortilla chip beer
Tortilla chips are great with beer. But not IN beer. Are you out of your mind California companies Taco Works and the Tio Rodrigo brewery are conspiring to make tortilla flavored beer. They flavor it by actually dumping tortilla chips in with the barley.
2. Instagram
3. Bathroom-related patents
4. Overthinking CAPTCHAS
5. A rotary mobile phone
Inventor Justine Haupt’s Rotary Un-Smartphone Kit, which I told you about last year, is now open for pre-order at $390. She’s expecting to ship by summer. The open source, build-it-yourself 4G phone has a full-size rotary dial and a few buttons, as well as a physical bell ringer, “pager” display for showing incoming SMS messages and phone numbers. No more smartphone addiction! Amaze your friends! Make sense to your grandparents!
Mike’s List of shameless self-promotion
How to assess business collaboration technology:the data you need
AI will understand the world (so you don't have to!)
It's time to ban news-choosing algorithms
The future of the VoIP industry is clear
Intersection safety and the technology that will bring it to your town