We engineered a wearable microphone jammer that is capable of disabling microphones in its user’s surroundings, including hidden microphones. Our device is based on a recent exploit that leverages the fact that when exposed to ultrasonic noise, commodity microphones will leak the noise into the audible range.
I love this project so much—the research & concept, the 3D printed parts, the off-the-shelf components, and that it’s open sourced on GitHub.
The idea behind Solid is both simple and extraordinarily powerful. Your data lives in a pod that is controlled by you. Data generated by your things – your computer, your phone, your IoT whatever – is written to your pod. You authorize granular access to that pod to whoever you want for whatever reason you want. Your data is no longer in a bazillion places on the Internet, controlled by you-have-no-idea-who. It’s yours. If you want your insurance company to have access to your fitness data, you grant it through your pod. If you want your friends to have access to your vacation photos, you grant it through your pod. If you want your thermostat to share data with your air conditioner, you give both of them access through your pod.
This sounds awesome, but it’s both a technical challenge and a business/political one. Then again, that’s right where Bruce sits. I’ll be watching this with great interest.
Bitwise manipulation is important in most every field of computer programming, and as I said, you should really understand it. But as I also said, once you’ve understood it, you should probably strive to never use bitwise operators again. At least not directly.
One of my biggest takeaways from the course was the balance between actively focusing and letting your mind wander, or the focused and diffuse modes of thinking. The focused mode is for filling your mind with information, and the diffuse mode is great at processing that information, forming connections between existing concepts, and developing new ideas.
The rapid advances of Germany in 1939 is largely attributable to the decentralized command structure that enabled leaders on the front to respond flexibly based on mission-driven instructions rather than bureaucracy. However, as early as Dunkirk (when Hitler himself held back his tank forces out of fear), the command structure had already shifted toward top-down bureaucracy that drummed out gifted commanders and made disastrous blunders through plodding focuses on besieging Sevastopol and Stalingrad rather than chasing the reeling Soviets.
My standard advice for those few younger people who ask me for it is simply to produce a lot of external value. Don’t worry about being compensated for it right away. If you succeed in producing things that are of value to others, they will want you around, and you will have plenty of rewarding opportunities you would not have had otherwise.
I’ve heard many fair complaints that companies are asking candidates to complete massive projects that may take 20-30-40 hours of work, which is all unpaid, and which might be difficult for candidates to fit in with their existing job and life. Yeah, don’t do that. Asking someone for forty hours of work product, without pay, which might well go nowhere, is not what we do or advocate at Basecamp.
On the design side, we have asked candidates to complete more substantial projects, perhaps asking 10-20 hours of work, but then we pay them for the work. It’s like getting hired for a small freelance gig, even if you don’t get the job, and even if we’re never going to use the work.
We did this sort of thing early on at Mapbox, first unpaid, then eventually tending a bit shorter and paid. I think we did a pretty good job of taking some of the bias out over time.