Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams - it's a book from the early 90s and Douglas Adams travels the world to see the world’s most endangered and exotic creatures. It's heart breaking and at the same time written with such a delight that it is fun to read. I cannot explain it better but highly recommended.
Just started "Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence" after the whole controversy about the book (see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39099914) - enjoyable read so far, but can still go both ways.
The IMHO gold standard book to get an understanding of the history of non-invasive glucose monitoring and the different technological approaches is "The Pursuit of Noninvasive Glucose: Hunting the Deceitful Turkey" by John Smith: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John-Smith-241/publicat...
We - at DiaMonTech - working on a solution with mid-infrared spectroscopy and showed good accuracy in a published paper in the "Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology". We plan another clinical trial this year, but yes, this took some time. We started in 2015 and still have some work to do.
The Billion Dollar Code tells the story about an artist and a hacker who build Google Maps before Google Maps. It plays in Berlin, Germany in the 90ies and I really liked the vibe of the whole mini-series. Also the combination of Art and Technology and getting the most out of current technology makes it a good "hacker" series.
we are working on it (www.diamontech.de) but our device has still the size of a shoebox. I don't think there is a device in a smaller form factor out there that can measure glucose non-invasively (at least with a decent accuracy).
Kim used to brag about snooping on the documents he hosted for people and ratting people out to authorities and/or blackmailing them.
The trail of bridges burned is quite long and starts in the mid-90s. His early handle was Kimble and he used to hack companies and sell their secrets for money (like PBX access) and did typical war dialer/phreaker/credit fraud scams you'd expect from '90s blackhats.
He came into some money thanks to some German friends of his, one who worked at Lufthansa, and exploited that to "go legit" even though it mostly wasn't his own skills that he was trading on. He still ended up perpetrating a few frauds afterwards that cost friends and investors a lot of money. Look into Monkey AG and Monkeybank.
Why anyone trusts him with their data or investments has always puzzled the hell out of me.
I think people, especially "hackers", just have short memories. It's similar to how like Kirtaner is getting a lot of press right now for going after QAnon (he just had a Reddit AMA), even though the 420chan he hosted in its early years was a hot bed for child abuse imagery and even had a secret /pedo/ board. He also lies about founding Anonymous, which is kind of funny because of what I just said and the whole "we do not forgive, we do not forget" thing.
Jax also finally got called out on her scumbag past recently (although not all of it...) and I'm surprised how rarely this happens...given how much dirty laundry is out in the open...
I think he built a lot of good will among the broader internet community with his general nose-thumbing towards the US government and MPAA/RIAA. for most people, the history of kim dotcom begins and ends with megaupload. besides that, how much do you really need (or expect) to trust a host for your infringing files?
He's also (or, at least, was at one point) roughly the size of a mountain. Well, The Mountain, specifically. That is to say that he's larger than life. I think some people just find his antics entertaining (as long as they're not on the receiving end).
> I think people, especially "hackers", just have short memories.
Given the lifelong stigma related to being a felon I would say society does not have a short memory.
In the case of Kim, he got away by leaving Germany, and by using the Internet as an international tool (ie. used Mega to do business world-wide, including in Germany).
If you (reader) are interested in learning more about Kim, last time I checked his Wikipedia page is a solid start.
With DiaMonTech (www.diamontech.com) we are also working on a non-invasive blood sugar monitor. Google lens was always a discussion with the interested parties (e.g. investors). Our take was that it is hard to detect the small concentration of glucose in tear fluids but even if you manage to do that, the real problem would be that there is always a delay (between 30 and 100 minutes) until changes in the blood sugar level are seen in tear fluid. So for people with fast changing blood sugar levels (i.e. diabetics) the needed information comes too late.
