Secret codes. Legal threats. Betrayal. How one couple built a device to fix McDonald’s notoriously broken soft-serve machines—and how the fast-food giant froze them out.
https://www.wired.com/story/they-hacked-mcdonalds-ice-cream-makers-started-cold-war/
Article by Andy Greenberg. Published April 20, 2021 on wired.com
‘I Forgot My PIN’: An Epic Tale of Losing $30,000 in Bitcoin ◇ ~6,300 words ◇ A veteran tech journalist tries everything, including hypnosis, to recover a small fortune from a locked bitcoin device.
Mark Frauenfelder ※ Wired ※ wired.com ※ October 19, 2017
How a Dorm Room Minecraft Scam Brought Down the Internet ◇ ~5,800 words ◇ The most dramatic cybersecurity story of 2016 came to a quiet conclusion Friday in an Anchorage courtroom, as three young American computer savants pleaded guilty to masterminding an unprecedented botnet—powered by unsecured internet-of-things devices like security cameras and wireless routers—that unleashed sweeping attacks on key internet services around the globe last fall. What drove them wasn’t anarchist politics or shadowy ties to a nation-state. It was Minecraft.
Garrett M. Graff ※ Wired ※ wired.com ※ December 13, 2017
Millions Are Hounded for Debt They Don’t Owe. One Victim Fought Back, With a Vengeance ◇ ~4,100 words ◇ Andrew Therrien wanted payback. He got it—and uncovered a conspiracy.
On the morning a debt collector threatened to rape his wife, Andrew Therrien was working from home, in a house with green shutters on a cul-de-sac in a small Rhode Island town.
Somewhere—at the top of a ladder of dirty debt collectors that Therrien would spend the next two years relentlessly climbing—a man named Joel Tucker had no idea what was coming.
Zeke Faux ※ Bloomberg Businessweek ※ bloomberg.com ※ December 6, 2017
I Threw Away $7.6 Million In Bitcoin ◇ ~1500 words ◇ Five years ago, I threw away a hard drive. An utterly generic 250GB portable hard drive, already a few years old… It had a data file containing 1400 Bitcoin on it. No big deal, at the time. Today, those few kilobytes are worth more than four million seven million dollars.
AU Editor’s Note, 2017-Aug-15: So, the price of Bitcoin smashed through the $US4000 barrier yesterday. I just did the maths, and instead of $4.2 million, my 1400BTC would now be worth $7.6 million. It seemed like the right time to share this with you all again. C’est la vie, I guess. — Cam
Campbell Simpson ※ Gizmodo Australia ※ www.gizmodo.com.au ※ May 28, 2017
The High Price of a Free College Education in Sweden ◇ ~1,300 words ◇ Here’s why Swedish college students still graduate with a ton of debt.
Matt Phillips ※ The Atlantic ※ theatlantic.com ※ May 31, 2013
How Smartphones Hijack Our Minds $🔒 ◇ ~3,000 words ◇ Research suggests that as the brain grows dependent on phone technology, the intellect weakens.
Interesting points:
Nicholas Carr ※ The Wall Street Journal ※ wsj.com ※ October 6, 2017
Should the US Put Power Lines Underground? ◇ ~1,050 words ◇ UF’s director of energy studies observes that installing power lines underground to prevent outages during hurricanes may not be the magic bullet many are seeking.
Director of Energy Studies, University of Florida ※ The Conversation ※ theconversation.com/us ※ September 12, 2017
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