After a long while of not doing these kind of posts on this blog I have decided to bring these back in an endeavour to write blog posts more often and also as a way to actually read more writing on the web. For a while now, my unread queue on Pinboard has been an article graveyard where I add a post and then weeks go by before I just mark it as read instead of actually reading the post. Obviously, this is a terrible habit so I am going to break it by doing these posts. Fingers crossed this will be something I stick with going forward.
So without further ado, these are the things I’ve read this week:
- ‘Clipping Silver Sparrow’s wings: Outing macOS malware before it takes flight’ written by Tony Lambert for the Red Canary blog
- ‘Report: Techland Is Bleeding Talent Due To Autocratic Management, Bad Feedback, And Lack Of Direction’ written by Kirk McKeand for TheGamer
- ‘How does a TCP Reset Attack work?’ written by Robert Heaton for his blog
- ‘Google’s Stadia Problem? A Video Game Unit That’s Not Googley Enough’ written by Jason Schreier for Bloomberg
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A retrospective look at Mac OS X Snow Leopard written by Riccardo Mori for his blog
- ‘The UX on this Small Child Is Terrible’ written by Leslie Ylinen for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency
Something for everyone this week!
If you are a infosec person, you will find the post by Tony Lambert very interesting. It is a look at a new kind of macOS malware that is particularly interesting because it has a native build for the new M1 Macs.
Investigative journalism and video game fans, for y’all I would suggest reading the post by Kirk McKeand, it is a rather depressing look at what looks like a very toxic work environment at Polish game developer Techland. I’m honestly surprised that this developer actually manages to ship games. I also like how Kirk intersperses the responses by the CEO after a particular complaint is made.
The post by Robert Heaton is a lovely little explainer on how TCP reset attacks work. If you are unfamiliar with the basics of how TCP works, Robert helpfully explains before getting into the intricacies of this particular attack.
A trip down memory lane with Riccardo’s retrospective look at Snow Leopard. Snow Leopard was on the first Mac I used so it was cool to see screenshots from that era of Apple design again. I do think that the current iteration of the macOS design has regressed in some key ways and Riccardo’s post shines a light on these regressions.
Google Stadia’s failures as a product and a concept keep coming after Google announced that it would be killing its first party game development studios. Can we get some thoughts and prayers for the Stadia Stans among us?
Lastly, some satire from McSweeney’s to end things with. I think the UX professionals among us will get a giggle out of this.
That’s all from me for this week, I will (hopefully) see y’all next week with another post like this.