Cracking, hacking, and phishing

"Hacker" is a word with several meanings. In the vernacular, it's taken to mean a tech-savvy bad-actor; "a hacker broke into the bank's database", "the NSA mainframe was hacked", etc. But in the start-up sphere, it just means someone who is creative with technology; "she hacked together her MVP in the garage", "did you see that fantastic hack she made to fix that bug?". This week's issue of Podcasts for Nerds contains both types.

3 great podcast episodes I've listened to this week:

One on One with a Hacker, Shoptalk Show (56mins, 2014-03-24)

After having had his website "hacked", Shoptalk host Chris Coyier was able to actually interview the person who hacked the site. Seriously, folks; be on your guard for Behavioural Engineering. Find it here.

Hacking classic Nintendo guns and going viral, The Creative Coding Podcast (46mins, 2016-09-07)

Seb Lee-Delisle is a digital marker/artist/inventor who's laser events are the stuff of legend. In this episode of Creative Coding (RIP), he does a deep-dive on how he reverse-engineered a Nintendo light-gun for his own creative ends. Find it here

What kind of idiot gets phished? Reply All (30mins, 2017-05-18)

In a break from the show's usual format, one of Reply All's producers takes over and attempts to "phish" her colleagues (and bosses!). A eye-opening look at how subtle some attackers can be; even if you're already on the look out! Find it here

Not a podcast, but...

Jay Forman's eccentric look at the history of London's boroughs is full of great pub-quiz level trivia and also manages to be hilarious (if you like that sort of thing). The two-part series starts with the 11min YouTube video "Why does London have 32 boroughs?", and I recommend you watch them both. Find them here

Thanks again for reading. I'm investigating different ways to manage this list, which is why this issue looks a little more "fancy" than last week's. What do you think? Do you like the new look, or did you prefer the plain-text version?

Cheers, Tom.