Starship Blogbook

Another year, another Superbowl Alexa commercial. This one isn’t as funny as 2018’s, but at least it has Harrison Ford and a cute dog. Via Digital Trends:

Amazon’s having fun with Alexa with this year’s Super Bowl Sunday TV commercial. The online retail giant is set to run at least one television commercial for the Amazon Beta Testing Program during Super Bowl 53 this Sunday, February 3. After seeing Amazon’s earlier teaser videos we guessed that the program has something to do with Amazon’s Alexa digital voice assistant, and we were right. Check out the video at the top of this article.

To spark interest in the so-far-under-wraps announcement, Amazon enlisted actors, comedians, and astronauts in short teaser ads. In the ads, actors Harrison Ford and Forest Whitaker, Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer from Broad City, and NASA astronauts and twin brothers Mark and Scott Kelly all react to That-Which-Is-Still-Secret.

In each video, the actor slides open a two-section horizontal shutter or door, looks at what’s inside, and utters a short reaction. What each clip has in common is that the contents emit or reflect blue Amazon Echo light that illuminates the character’s face. The inside surface looks like egg-crate acoustic soundproofing, but no further details are visible. All that Amazon mentions in conjunction with the teasers is “Amazon recruited some famous friends to test new Alexa technologies. To see what happened, tune into the big game on 2.3.19.”

Here’s what happened when we acted on the suggestion to ask Alexa:

DT: “Alexa, what is the Amazon Beta Testing Program?”

Alexa: “I’m not supposed to talk about the confidential Amazon Beta Testing Program until the big game on February 3. However, I think you can keep a secret. Just say this access code: Blue 126. Again that’s Blue 126.”

A Day in the Life of a Sushi Master — as can be seen through films like Jiro Dreams of Sushi, it’s a lot more work than you’d think. Via High Snobriety:

We’ve shown you how to make your favorite sneakers out of sushi, but you probably don’t realize what it takes to become a sushi master. Chef Nozomu Abe, owner of New York’s Sushi Noz, has been mastering the art of making sushi for 20 years. In an effort to go behind the scenes to see what it really takes to be a true master, food network Tasty spent a day with Abe to share what his day-to-day schedule is like.

His work day starts at 9 a.m. when he arrives at the restaurant, however, his employees are already hard at work. Abe then inspects the quality of the day’s fish, all while mulling over the courses. After the menu has been finalized, the chef and his team then begin to prepare the items. Abe states that 90 percent of his work is taken care of before his customers even arrive.

Prior to seating his guests, Abe meticulously decorates the restaurant, ultimately aiming to transport each customer to Japan. When they arrive, it’s all about bringing out the energy of the food as he makes each dish in front of his guests.

The DeLorean Paradox — once, thanks to Back to the Future, this car was supposed to be the car of the future. What went wrong? Via Vox:

The video above explores the past and present of the DeLorean Motor Company, which made the infamous DMC-12. Though many today know the car through the movie Back to the Future, DeLorean has its own incredible story to tell (and one that’s almost harder to believe than a story about time travel).

John Z. DeLorean is at its center as the founder and namesake of the company. His path through the upper echelon of General Motors seemed to set him on course for that company’s presidency — but he dreamed of starting his own company. The result was the DeLorean Motor Company, which was established in America and eventually planted a factory in Dunmurry, Ireland, near Belfast and during the Irish sectarian civil war known as the Troubles.

For this video, we interviewed Barrie Wills about his experience working at the company — but we also talked to DeLorean owners about the ways the car has endured, thanks to the movie Back to the Future and, more importantly, their own ingenuity and creativity. A DeLorean community has kept the car going. And despite the fact that the car’s production ended in the early ’80s, it continues to inspire new fans even today.

If you’re still interested in this iconic car, you can check out the motor company’s website here. Yes, the gull wings are still a thing, and you can get parts, but it’s no longer making new cars — instead the website links you to pre-owned.

Animal Planet’s Puppybowl and Kittenbowl is back for another year, following the Superbowl! It encourages adoption of rescue cats and dogs. And, it’s adorable. Adoption is for US only, but in case you were curious, Bustle has the low down:

Whether you love the Super Bowl or hate it, pretty much everyone can agree that the Puppy Bowl is a glorious occasion. Just as in past years, you can adopt the puppies in the 2019 Puppy Bowl, though according to USA Today, most of the furry friends you’ll see on-screen found homes last fall, when the Puppy Bowl XV was filmed. Still, there are many more puppies available for adoption from the featured shelters. So while your potential new dog might not be a Puppy Bowl MVP, they still could very well be the MVP of your heart.

For its 15th year, Puppy Bowl worked with 51 animal shelters and rescue organizations from more than 20 states, the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, and Costa Rica, per USA. There will be a grand total of 93 puppies featured and there are 36 puppies in the starting lineup from 27 different shelters. Some of the standouts are Gallagher, the Saint Bernard from AHeinz57 Pet Rescue & Transport in Iowa; Melody, the Maltese and Yorkshire terrier mix from Memphis Humane Society in Tennessee; and Will, the three-legged Old English sheepdog from Doodle Rock Rescue in Texas. (Will is one of three dogs with special needs who will be competing.) But there are so many dogs that everyone watching the Puppy Bowl can have their favorite — and it may lead you to look into how you can get a dog like these adorable competitors from Team Fluff and Team Ruff.

Are you browsing a website on Chrome? Head to your website and check out the address bar. If you’re a business, ideally your IT people have already switched over your site from HTTP to HTTPS, given you the nice green lock icon and a ‘Secure’ statement. If they haven’t, or if you have no IT people, chances are your website either has a “!” mark or it’s already been marked “Not Secure”. Once Chrome version 68 comes online, all non-HTTPS sites will be marked “Not Secure”. The Register has already called it the “looming Google Chrome HTTPS certificate apocalypse”:

Tens of thousands of websites are going to find themselves labeled as unsafe unless they switch out their HTTPS certificate in the next two months.

Thanks to a decision by Google to stop trusting Symantec-issued SSL/TLS certs, Chrome browser users visiting websites using a certificate from the security biz issued before June 1, 2016 or after December 1, 2017 may be warned that their connection is not private and someone may be trying to steal their information. They will have to click past the warning to get to the website.

But wait, you might say. I don’t use Syman-whatsits. I don’t even use Chrome, I’m a diehard Mozilla/Internet Explorer/Safari user. If you’re using Firefox/Mozilla, good for you, it’s apparently faster and more secure than Chrome, but its low integration with Tweetdeck tanked it for us. Like Google, Mozilla has already been pushing people towards HTTPS for a while: all new Firefox features in 2018 will only work with HTTPS. If you’re using IE or Safari… eh… sure… but HTTPS websites are also visibly marked secure on those address bars. Inaction will still hurt your website even if you can’t see its immediate effect. It will affect your SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) — you will rank lower on search engines and receive fewer visitors to your website.

Hang On, Slow Down, What Even Is All This?

HTTP stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol, and the ‘S’ at the end of HTTPS just stands for Secure. It means all communications between the site and the browser are encrypted, protecting sensitive data such as online banking and forms. Initiating a HTTPS connection to the website gets the website to send you its SSL certificate, a public key that allows you to begin a secure session with the website. Think of it as heading into a bank to talk to a banker. Instead of talking to the banker out in the lobby of the bank, you get a key for a secure meeting room where you can talk about your financial matters/health issues/your dog in relative security.

Benefits of having HTTPS certification include:

• Customer info is encrypted and can’t be intercepted (between the browser and the website).
• Visitors can see that you’re a registered business and own the domain.
• Visitors are more likely to feel that you’re a trustworthy business.
• It’s good for the health of the internet in general.

Visiting only HTTPS websites does NOT mean that people can’t get scammed online:

• Yes, nefarious websites can also acquire a HTTPS certificate. In the words of the Mozilla blog, the job of HTTPS is to provide you with a secure line. It doesn’t ensure that you’re not talking to crooks with the line. As a business, this means having to be actively conscious of the possibility that people might be using phishing to mimic your site to trick your customers.
• HTTPS certification helps prevent people from seeing what info you submit to a website. There are other ways that attackers can use to gain private information: keyloggers, for example, are malicious software that log every key that you make on a keyboard, then email that information to a hacker. And of course, hackers routinely hack customer databases such as Sony’s and Adobe’s to acquire data like passwords and credit card details.

So What’s Happening?

Many sites have been migrating to HTTPS over time. Chrome’s deadline came about because they think that by July, a sufficient majority of websites would have moved over, enough that they can brand all remaining HTTP sites.

Google and Mozilla have already been trying to nudge people from unencrypted sites for years. Remember clicking through to a site and then running head-first into a “You’re About to Enter a Not Secure Website Error Error Are You Seriously Going to Do This” kind of page? Scary, right? I’ve left sites before instead of heading through. That happened because of the stoush between Google and Symantec (check out the Register’s article above if you’re curious) which resulted in Symantec selling off their SSL certificate business.

Let’s Encrypt and Other Solutions

Your hosting provider might already have an inbuilt solution on hand — contact them if you have any questions. If they don’t, you’d have to get a SSL certificate from an authority. You can get ones for free from Let’s Encrypt. There are instructions for installation in that link, as well as a list of hosting providers which are Let’s Encrypt compatible. For those that aren’t, you could either choose to live with HTTP or try to do it manually. Need to know more? We’re happy to chat.