Six Links Worthy of Your Attention #456

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, FWD50, and Scaletechconf; author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation, PressBooks, LibriVox) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see.”

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another: 

• Leaker, Liar, Hacker, Hoaxer: The Russian contractor who infiltrated Anonymous – Emma Best. “Emma Best is a National Security journalist at Gizmodo. I preface this link with that fact, because you might question its veracity. But here’s the thing: There was definitely a hacker named Guccifer 2.0, and he/she/they definitely convinced organizations to take them seriously. Hacktivist communities are notoriously—and rightly—paranoid. So how do you build a reputation if you’re actually an intelligence operative? Boy, I can’t wait for all these to become Netflix specials.” (Alistair for Hugh).
• Sensory deprivation – ‘garbage in, garbage out’ revisited for the IoT era – Diginomica. “As we automate our world, algorithms make decisions about our safety, legality, efficiency, and more. But those machine intelligences rely on their senses just as humans do—and the sensors are often a weak spot. What was behind two recent, tragic airplane crashes? Maybe the algorithm was fine but the data on which it was basing decisions was wrong? Sensors everywhere mean more ways to be horribly, sometimes fatally, wrong.” (Alistair for Mitch).
• World Happiness Report. “Every year the United Nations produces a World Happiness Report, with extensive surveys and analysis of countries across the globe. This year’s report is out. You can find the key table by searching for Figure 2.7 … Finland #1, Canada #9, UK#15, USA#19.” (Hugh for Alistair).
• Successful habits through smoothly ratcheting targets – Andy Matuschak. “Why are bad habits so easy, and good habits so hard?! Here’s an interesting approach to getting some better ones.” (Hugh for Mitch).
• Why big tech should fear Europe – The Economist. “I was once asked my thoughts on moving to Europe (I love many countries there), but my instinct was that these countries were way less entrepreneurial for my tastes. This article may surprise you (and change my mind). Europe has some pretty sound ideas for how we should handle big tech in a world where these companies ‘are accused not just of capturing huge rents and stifling competition, but also of worse sins, such as destabilizing democracy (through misinformation) and abusing individual rights (by invading privacy).’ So, here we are again asking the important questions of who controls the data and how should the profits be distributed.” (Mitch for Alistair).
• Inside The New Google Podcasts Strategy That Could Double Audiences Worldwide – Pacific Content – Medium. “I’ve been hearing murmurs of Google getting super-active in the podcasting space for many years. Most recently, someone with true insider knowledge said that it was, indeed, happening. Taking this article to heart, we could see a very different podcasting landscape if Google is able to make this happen and up their game. The space could use it as well.” (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.