No IT info is airtight

Credit card information stored in any company, big or small, is still very precarious as evident in the cyber-theft from Target late last year. It was done by just a small-time Ukrainian with less-sophisticated malware. The malware was detected 2 days before cyber-thief could transfer 11-GB information out of Target servers. However, due to turf fight, Target did not do anything. Now, you can spend from $6 (for gift card) to $200 (American Express Platinum) for the stolen credit card information inwww.rescator.so (though a login is required) issued in your local area. (So, you can "enjoy" a binge shopping probably within 6 hours before banks raise red flags.)

How Target credit cards were stonlen

Contents drive up hardware revenues

The success of GoPro camera always made me flabbergasted. Even Foxconn(富士康) invested $200M in this company. The soaring revenue of this company is the perfect example of "using content to drive up the sale of hardware" which happens to be the predicament of most of the Taiwan's companies. This video camera can be attached to your body and records all the actions of your surfing, your biking, your flying or any adventures. The video contents can be very gripping and can go viral in YouTube. That is, these popular video contents uploaded by customers are the free advertisements of GoPro cameras. Again, contents drive up the sales of hardware which is the most difficult part for many Taiwan's hardware companies.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-03-13/gopro-nears-ipo-as-hybrid-media-company-videocam-maker

16km telescope

CBS "60 Minutes" had a coverage of ALMA Observatory, a giant array of fifty 12-m antennas which can be reconfigured into an equivalent 16km telescope (Yes, 16km telescope!). This 19-nation joint project costs $1.2B and is located on a plateau at 5km altitude in Chile. It is equipped with a supercomputer at 5km altitude to process stupendous amount of data. It is expected to "see" what happened just after the "Big Bang". Hopefully, this expensive and esoteric science will justify its impact on human beings 50 years from now.  
ALMA

trait of fox or hedgehog

Fox or hedgehog? This is the personality dichotomy found everywhere around you; in workplace, in family, in presidential elections and even in fast food comparisons. I tend to feel I am leaning toward hedgehog but fox, at least semantically, seems to have upper hand since fox represents cunning, versatile and not as button-down as hedgehog. Probably there is no clear winner for either fox or hedgehog and people may need to acclimatize to each event by slightly gravitating toward either fox- or hedgehog-leaning trait.   
Fox or hedgehog

College athletes at elementary school reading levels

It is astonishing that NCAA college football and basketball teams have collectively generated $55B for their schools since year 2000. Since these athletes spent full time to practice, how do they graduate? Recent BusinessWeek has a story about athletes in UNC (1st public university in USA, 2005 and 2009 NCAA basketball champion and No. 30 in college ranking). 10% of the athletes (mostly UNC football and basketball players) are at 3rd grade level of reading comprehension and 60% are between 4th and 8th grade levels. How do they graduate? Believe it or not, even the prestigious school like UNC knows how to cheat! 

drone, job killing machine?

Recent IEEE Spectrum has an article of drone with focus on the company "3D Robotics" It still costs $750 for its drone as in the following video clip. Three months ago, Amazon's Jeff Bezos had a viral video clip in CBS "60 Minutes" for its delivery drones. Probably five years from now after FAA clears the regulatory hurdle for drones, then, most of the UPS/Fedex employees will lose their jobs and even the pizza delivery boys will lose their jobs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QfJAXEjF4c

No managers' gibberish in war room

最新一期時代雜誌封面故事報導去年十一月間，一群高能力高熱忱的矽谷工程師如何日以繼夜地 (每天只睡三到四小時 ，開會時不准坐下，政府不准他們當自願者，但只給他們原來薪水零頭式的補償) 拯救幾乎崩潰的 ObamaCare 網站。讓我眼睛睜大的部分内容是張貼在臨時戰情會議室的三則規定: (1) 此會議室僅作為解决問題用途。如果你想推卸責任，還有很多地方你可以去 (2) 經理階级不可以在此室講一些和解决問題無關的廢話 (3) 這裏的話題僅限於往後 24-48 小時對我們有影響的事件 。怪不得這群工程師能在六個星期内修復這個龐然怪物的政府網站，也拯救了Obama 的政治生命