We are catching up on some very important cuddling:

After a few more days of this it may be that she has gotten her fill and moves to lounge not all over me, but perhaps merely beside me, or nearby.

Until then, however, she’s read as much of these links as I have.

Things to read … because there is no kitty literature here.

Ex-NSA director: China has hacked ‘every major corporation’ in U.S.:

McConnell’s assertion is different. It would mean that no large company can escape the massive theft of American entrepreneurial ideas.

In his speech, McConnell also said that during the final years of the Bush administration, the Chinese government employed a jaw-dropping 100,000 hackers dedicated solely to breaking into computers.

By comparison, he said the United States had that many spies — total.

McConnell listed what the Chinese are stealing: “planning information for advanced concepts, windmills, automobiles, airplanes, space ships, manufacturing design, software.”

“If they can take that, before we can take it to market – for free – and it’s unchecked for 15, 20 years, I would say that has strategic consequences for the United States,” he said.

Makes you wonder what he’s not been cleared to say out loud, doesn’t it?

Don’t worry, if the Chinese aren’t snooping enough for you, the local police may have you covered. A Police Gadget Tracks Phones? Shhh! It’s Secret:

A powerful new surveillance tool being adopted by police departments across the country comes with an unusual requirement: To buy it, law enforcement officials must sign a nondisclosure agreement preventing them from saying almost anything about the technology.

Any disclosure about the technology, which tracks cellphones and is often called StingRay, could allow criminals and terrorists to circumvent it, the F.B.I. has said in an affidavit. But the tool is adopted in such secrecy that communities are not always sure what they are buying or whether the technology could raise serious privacy concerns.

[…]

“So, just to be clear,” Joe Simitian, a county supervisor, said, “we are being asked to spend $500,000 of taxpayers’ money and $42,000 a year thereafter for a product for the name brand which we are not sure of, a product we have not seen, a demonstration we don’t have, and we have a nondisclosure requirement as a precondition. You want us to vote and spend money,” he continued, but “you can’t tell us more about it.”

Please, tell us again the one about how if you aren’t doing anything wrong you don’t have anything to worry about.

Meerkat became very popular as a live streaming platform very quickly. And so we knew this day would come as Twitter readies their new acquisition, Periscope, but did it come fast enough? Twitter Chokes Off Meerkat’s Access To Its Social Network:

Friday evening, BuzzFeed News learned from a source familiar with the matter that Twitter was taking steps to break Meerkat’s ability to access its social graph. When we tried adding other accounts, such as the BuzzFeed SF and BuzzFeed FWD Twitter accounts, we noticed lots of inconsistencies with the follower graph numbers.

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed that Meerkat had been cut off.

“We are limiting their access to Twitter’s social graph, consistent with our internal policy,” the spoeksperson said. “Their users will still be able to distribute videos on Twitter and log in with their Twitter credentials.”

This won’t totally kill Meerkat — people will still be able to use it to announce on Twitter that they are streaming — but it will seriously kneecap it.

Time will tell.

I link to this story because it is a good one. It speaks to the power of the Internet, personal networking and just good old fashioned human kindness. I also link to it for one quote, which parallels something I used to say when speaking at leadership workshops.

First off, this is a story about a reunion of a young patient given a kindness by a young nurse. His tale, discussed in the story above, is a hard one to imagine any kid going through. Her story is not that uncommon. Nurses are generally remarkable people. You can see it in that one comment, too, “I wish I would have known. I wish that I would have known more. I wish I could have done more.”

We seldom do know the impact we have on others, I’d tell young high school and college leaders. And even if we do find out, it is usually well after the fact. But what you do, what you say, how we all act, means something to someone. That’s just one of those stories that reminds us of the truism.

Sometimes the headline in no way captures the story. This is one of those times: Chris Koch to speak in Auburn in April.

Got 15 minutes? Here’s a guide. How I Got 6.2 Million Pageviews and 144,920 Followers