Odds and ends

Odds and ends from the past week:

• If you're the kind of person who turns off WiFi SSID broadcast because you think it makes your network more secure, don't bother.

• Once in a while, I write an exam question which compares the data rate of an internet connection with, e.g., physically carrying a hard drive from place to place. Turns out somebody did this in real life using carrier pigeons. Result: in rural England, pigeons with microSD cards beat the internet by a wide margin. (via)

• Good news: Edward Burtynsky was hard at work this summer in the Gulf of Mexico. (via)