In our September issue, senior writer Andy Greenberg shed light on the computer hack that nearly took down a global shipping behemoth. Steven Levy profiled the world’s most audacious flying machine. And Virginia Heffernan cautioned us to slow ourselves down. Readers responded with lessons of life and malware meltdowns.
Re: “385 Feet of Crazy”: Alt-aviation wizard Burt Rutan set out to build a plane that could haul rockets to the edge of space. Then he persuaded Paul Allen to build it.
“Let’s call it a plane when it takes off?”
—Evo Delchev (@evodelchev) on Twitter
“I have a technological crush on Burt Rutan, and this is a beautiful article about his newest creation. That said, a small disappointment: I wish that WIRED had pointed out that the concept of a dual-fuselage plane for transporting spacecraft had already been proposed in the 1970s: the Conroy Virtus, presented to NASA by another great inventor, John Conroy.”
—Matthieu Dugal on Facebook
Re: “The Code That Crashed the World”: The untold story of NotPetya, the most devastating cyberattack in history
“To anyone in IT who’s ever pulled an all-nighter because of a crisis, slept at work because that’s what it took to respond, or flew to Nigeria to retrieve the sole intact instance of your domain controller, RESPECT.”
—John Lambert (@JohnLaTwC) on Twitter
“Great story, but you mention only one nation-state as being guilty. The United States is also guilty, as the NSA created the hacking exploit built into NotPetya (EternalBlue)—the most dangerous cyberweapon the world has seen–and then lost control over it to Russian hackers.”
—Eric Karp via WIRED.com
“In Africa we complain bitterly about things like power outages. Pretty awesome how it saved Maersk’s network. Next time the power’s out, I’ll remember that!”
—Hadassah (@hadassahmyers) on Twitter
Re: “Upper Limits”: The last thing we need is speed
“While I agree with Heffernan about the overprescription of psychostimulants over time, especially the references to wartime use and ’60s diet culture, she misses the point. If you are taking a prescription such as Ritalin or Adderall and you feel jittery, high, or in her case overly industrious, then you probably don’t need it. I do.
I spent more than a decade off these medications, and that time was filled with tremendous struggles for me and inability to focus even on things I wanted in my life. I got back on my medication a year ago, and it has done wonders for me.”
—Chris Hamm via email
This article appears in the November issue. Subscribe now.
