Weekend Reads 7/22/17

Too Many Churches, Not Enough Christians

That organized religion is responding to their departure by trying to figure out how to keep them in is proof of the basic problem: a focus on the prosperity (and now survival) of the organization at the expense of strengthening the practitioners of the faith.

Watch Hackers Take Over a Segway with Someone On It

The app already has fairly potent capabilities as designed. You can use it to remote control your scooter or shut it off when no one's on it, and you could even use its social GPS tracking feature to show all Segway MiniPros in an area in real-time. But when Kilbride investigated the security behind those features, he found vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit to bypass the hoverboard's safety protections from afar, and take control of the device.

NYC to DC in 30 Minutes? Elon Musk Claims Verbal OK for Hyperloop

The extremely rapid transit he's envisioning will stop in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., Musk said in a Twitter post, adding that each of these stops would be at the city center, with about a dozen entry and exit elevators for each city.

A Brief but Deep Thought on Defending the Christian Faith (or not)

The notion of “Christian apologetics” presumes that the intellect—weighing evidence, sifting through pros and cons, rigorous analysis—is the primary arena for engaging the truth of Christianity.

I don’t think it is. At least it hasn’t worked very well. If it works, it works among those already convinced. At its worst, it simply props up the apologist’s insecurities.