Linked List: April 26, 2015

Sunday, 26 April 2015

Todoist 

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Google Engineer Dies on Mt. Everest 

Conor Dougherty, reporting for the NYT:

On Saturday, Dan Fredinburg was at a base camp on Mount Everest when a powerful earthquake in Nepal set off an avalanche. Mr. Fredinburg was killed, Google said in a statement posted on its website.

“Sadly, we lost one of our own in this tragedy,” the statement said. “Dan Fredinburg, a longtime member of the Privacy organization in Mountain View, was in Nepal with three other Googlers, hiking Mount Everest. He has passed away. The other three Googlers with him are safe, and we are working to get them home quickly.”

Shortly before, an Instagram post on Mr. Fredinburg’s account went up: “This is Dan’s little sister Megan,” the message began. “I regret to inform all who loved him that during the avalanche on Everest early this morning our Dan suffered from a major head injury and didn’t make it.”

Kind of surreal perusing his Instagram account — he was posting from the expedition.

White House Email System Was Compromised by Russians 

Michael S. Schmidt and David E. Sanger, reporting for the NYT:

Some of President Obama’s email correspondence was swept up by Russian hackers last year in a breach of the White House’s unclassified computer system that was far more intrusive and worrisome than has been publicly acknowledged, according to senior American officials briefed on the investigation.

The hackers, who also got deeply into the State Department’s unclassified system, do not appear to have penetrated closely guarded servers that control the message traffic from Mr. Obama’s BlackBerry, which he or an aide carries constantly.

In 2009 it seemed forward-thinking that the president carried a BlackBerry. Now, it feels preposterously behind the times.