The “USB Killer” device does what it says on the tin, permanently damaging the USB port or entire device in many pieces of hardware. Have $55? This tool will destroy many devices just by plugging it in. “Smart Contracts” are neither? This post from Ed Felten’s Freedom to Tinker explains how smart contracts, as used in some blockchain-based systems, aren’t really smart and aren’t really contracts.
Here’s a great overview that explains what all the fields, graphs, and related stuff means. htop is a powerful process monitor that reveals much more data about a machine’s performance than regular top. If you don’t know why that matters, “the 8008 is historically important because it essentially started the microprocessor revolution and is the ancestor of the x86 processor family that you are probably using right now.” This post from Ken Shirriff explains how the ALU worked in Intel’s first 8-bit microprocessor, the 8008.
The flaws in smart contracts and the security corner round out the news.
