Geotracking Paranoia

An article repost hit Facebook today about the "new hidden threat" of geotagging to your children, along with a short video segment from NBC on the topic. This "news" is spreading like wildfire, so before it gets out of control, please let me intervene.

The video mentions that this concerns "unwitty" users. If you are, in fact, unwitty, here is a couple of suggestions:

1. Don't have children in the first place. You are endangering their lives every day by being unwitty.
2. Don't use technology. You clearly don't know how it works or what it does.

If you're unsure whether you're unwitty, or if you're unsure whether you should be legitimately paranoid about geotagging, here are a few questions you could ask yourself:

1. Did you know that Twitter is a public broadcast service, not a private photo gallery? If you did, you probably already knew that anyone, literally anyone, can read your posts.
2. Did you know that your photos can be geotagged, and that you can turn that feature on or off at the time of your post?
3. Can you put two and two together, and figure out that if you publicly post geotagged photos, everyone, and I mean everyone, will know exactly when and where the photo was taken?
4. Did you know that even if your posts are completely private, the sites you're posting to still have full access to everything you're posting, and that all of that information can be released if subpoenaed by the government?

If you already knew all of that, there is one more question you need to ask yourself:

1. Does the ability to plot data points on a map scare you?

If yes, you should put at least ten locks on your front door, at least fifteen on the back, board your windows shut, and hire at least two armed bodyguards to stay with you at all times, and also one bodyguard per child to stay with them.

If not, go on about living your life. Your children are safe as long as you're not being a dumbass.

How to prevent your car from catching on fire.

© Jane Tuv

Apparently a van caught on fire this morning in Flatiron, Manhattan. No one seems to have been hurt, thankfully.

This made me recall a few times in my old driving days, when the cars I drove had something seriously wrong with them. So in response, here are a few tips that will keep your car from catching on fire:

1. Watch your temperature gauge. It should hover in the middle once your car is warmed up. If it gets significantly past that, pull over, shut the engine off, open your hood, and let your car cool down before trying anything else.
2. It there's a gas station, an auto parts shop, or any kind of an auto repair shop nearby, consider getting some coolant/antifreeze. Most problems with overheating I have had in the past were from low coolant levels. Your coolant tank will have a max fill line, so top if off if necessary. If there's a coolant leak, you may have to do this several times until you get to a repair shop.
3. If you smell raw gasoline, and you're not near a gas station or a tanker, pull over, shut the engine off, get out of the car, and move away about a hundred feet. Then call a tow truck.
4. If you see black smoke coming out of your engine compartment, do the same thing as in the step above, only faster, and call 911 instead of a tow truck. 

Auto-Installed Malware Hits Macs

Be afraid. Be very afraid. We haven't heard of such things since the good ol' days of Windows 95 and IE6, but now there's an auto-installed trojan on the loose, and millions of Macs are infected.

The malware affects OS X users who use Safari with Java enabled. Follow through here to check whether your machine is infected.

Over 100,000 gather to protest rigged elections.

Moscow, Saharov Avenue, December 24th 2011. The wide city street, wide enough to fit about 20 car lanes, is completely filled with people. So completely filled, in fact, that my blog cannot contain them within bounds! These people are protesting the falsified elections that favored the United Russia party, and the impending indefinite reign of dictator Vladimir Putin.

December 24th Protest in Moscow (Via Yuga)

There seems to be a debate about how many people actually showed up to the protest. The figures in different reports vary between 29,000 and 120,000. I did some approximate head counting and math myself, and I'm estimating that there are about 108,000 people in this picture. Meanwhile, Belorussian TV is reporting that the protest was a total failure, and only hundreds of people showed up instead of thousands.

Newsflash: Putin's party steals votes.

Of course we already knew that, but this time there's paperwork to back it up.

Official ballot count, as indicated in the paperwork:

1. Communist Party of Russian Federation - 285
2. United Russia - 271
3. Just Russia - 218
4. Apple - 167
5. Liberal Democratic Party of Russia - 133
6. Right Cause - 16
7. Patriots of Russia - 15

Numbers reported by the Central Voter Commission:

1. United Russia - 662
2. Communist Party of Russian Federation - 295
3. Liberal Democratic Party of Russia - 133
4. Just Russia - 118
5. Apple - 67
6. Right Cause - 16
7. Patriots of Russia

Vladimir Putin's party, United Russia, clearly stole 391 votes. That's a lot more than they had.

If that's not enough, here's a screen capture from a news program reporting voter turnout, with the total making up 147% of the population!

Pulling the plug on Google Wave.

Google Wave has been in a terminal coma for over a year now, and Google is finally disconnecting the life support:

Dear Wavers,

More than a year ago, we announced that Google Wave would no longer be developed as a separate product. At the time, we committed to maintaining the site at least through to the end of 2010. Today, we are sharing the specific dates for ending this maintenance period and shutting down Wave. As of January 31, 2012, all waves will be read-only, and the Wave service will be turned off on April 30, 2012. You will be able to continue exporting individual waves using the existing PDF export feature until the Google Wave service is turned off. We encourage you to export any important data before April 30, 2012.

If you would like to continue using Wave, there are a number of open source projects, including Apache Wave. There is also an open source project called Walkaround that includes an experimental feature that lets you import all your Waves from Google. This feature will also work until the Wave service is turned off on April 30, 2012.For more details, please see our help center.

Yours sincerely,

The Wave Team

iPhone 4S and International Roaming

If you're the proud owner of an iPhone 4S, and are wondering whether you'll be able to pop in a local wireless carrier's microSIM card when traveling abroad, wonder no more.

The rules are different for the main three wireless carriers in the US. AT&T won't unlock your SIM, no matter how much you beg or threaten them. Verizon will unlock it after 60 days of paid phone bills. Sprint initially shipped their iPhone 4S with the SIM functionality unlocked, but has now changed their policy, and will unlock your phone after 90 days of paid phone bills.

So now, if you're outside of the US, you won't have to pay exorbitant roaming fees to your wireless carrier. Unless your wireless carrier is AT&T.

New kid on the block.

All of the non-iPhone smart phones have so far been slightly above mediocre, at best. Enter the brainchild of a newlywed couple: Nokia and Microsoft.

The Lumia 800's hardware is pretty much the same as the MeeGo-powered N9, which was Nokia's last but noble effort before signing a deal with Microsoft.

It's a very pretty phone, indeed. By the looks of it, you'd think it was the bigger cousin to iPod Nano. I have not seen it person, and chances are – I won't for a while, because rather than competing with the already highly-saturated smart phone market in the US, Nokia is going after the emerging markets of Europe and Asia.

Nevertheless, I'm sure the hardware looks as good in real life as it does in pictures. What concerns me is the operating system. I had a chance to play with some random Windows Phone handsets recently. I was delighted by smooth, hardware-accelerated animations, but appalled by some other things. Mainly, the software keyboard. Some of the keys were placed in the most ridiculous places imaginable. That, and the browser was awful. 

Hopefully, these minor issues will be ironed out in Windows Phone Mango.

Northern Lights for everyone!

Those of us who were fortunate to see a clear sky last night were in for the show of a lifetime; perhaps several.

Yesterday, around 2 PM EST, a coronal mass ejection (CME) slammed into the Earth's magnetosphere, causing magnificent aurorae that were visible across Canada and the United States.

Fanatical People

From the Businessweek interview, Eric Schmidt on Steve Jobs:

He said, “The thing that I have that no one else has is very loyal customers.” He had these fanatical people who would line up all night for a product that wasn’t any good.

Steve Job dies at age 56.

Wow, he really wasn't kidding about his health when he stepped down as CEO. A mere month and a week later, Steve Jobs exhaled his last breath, succumbing to his long and tiresome battle with pancreatic cancer.

Much can be said about his accomplishments in creating and running what is now considered one of the world's biggest and most successful companies. He really was there till the very end. RIP.

iPhone 4S: an amazing upgrade to iPhone 3GS.

That's what it would've been if Apple hadn't released the iPhone 4 about a year and a half ago. Yes, the processors are faster and the camera is better. Yes, Siri is kind of cool, and only available for iPhone 4S.

It's supposedly a world phone, meaning it'll work on both GSM and CDMA networks, but I'm hearing rumors that it'll still be locked to one network. Hope that's not actually true.

That's it, though. Very underwhelming. Gruber, shut up. Just. Shut. Up.

Curious how Steve Jobs was absent from both the 3GS and the 4S releases...

Update: Apparently, iPhones sold in the US have always been locked to the carrier, and 4S will be no exception.

Let's Talk iPhone

Apple will be holding a major press conference today at 1 PM EDT. The highlight of the event is expected to be the unveiling of the new iPhone. Engadget will be covering the event in a live-blog format.

Fool's Gold

The solution to America's economic problems is... oil?

According to Forbes, Ohio is planning an oil-drilling operation. Oh joy!

Just count how many times the word “money” is used in that article. The land owners will be forced to give up their useless farmland and shelter for millions of sweet, sweet money. And jobs! Think of how many (most dangerous in the world) jobs it'll produce. Just think of all that money!

And there can't be a possibility of ecological damage resulting from the operation. No siree. Oil spils? Oil rig explosions? Toxic waste disposal? Air pollution? Never happened.

Google celebrates Bar Mitzvah.

Google turned thirteen years of age today. Happy Birthday, Google!

By John Walker

Facebook's new Timeline.

Just released into field trial is Facebook's new “Timeline” feature. Instead of just seeing one long list of messages and status updates on your profile page, you can now see them on a neat timeline. You can select the year and month that you want, and it will immediately scroll into view. No loger will you be pressing the “Load more...” button a thousand times to find the status update you were looking for.

This is great news for obsessive-compulsive types like me, who like to review their own history in detail. Others will rebel and blame Facebook for exposing their private information. Before you go batshit on Mark Zuckerberg, let me pause you: Facebook had already stored all of this information. Now they're just making it easier to use and more visible to you.

Timeline is not released to the general public yet. If you want to try it out for yourself, you can follow these instructions.

Update: Apparently you can also view other people's timelines, if they chose to publish them.

HP: No, YOU're fired!

After acquiring Autonomy, shutting down WebOS and planning to dump HP's entire PC business, which would result in downsizing more than 500 employees, CEO Léo Apotheker himself gets fired and replaced by Meg Whitman. Oh, the irony!

It's still up in the air what will happen to Apotheker's plans, but a statement of disagreement has clearly been made.

Faster than the speed of light.

I've always said Einstein was full of crap...

According to Reuters, the scientists at CERN have recorded sub-atomic particles traveling faster than the speed of light. No, I still don't believe in time travel.

Blogger gets Lightbox.

As welcome news, much more welcome than the awful iOS app, Google integrated Lightbox into Blogger. Now, when you click on an image (one that doesn't link to an external source), you will see a nice screen overlay with the full-size version of the image neatly centered. No work on the blogger's end is required.

America remembers September 11.

On September 11th 2001, two planes crashed into the Twin Towers in a terrorist attack, killing thousands of people, and destroying the two buildings. Now, a decade later, America gathers to remember the lives lost on that dreadful day.

9/11 Memorial Pool. Click to read the source.

A lot of things changed in the past ten years. New York City has been gradually turning into a police state, and as a result, new yorkers have grown more wary and agitated. I can only hope that the next ten years are spent remembering that we are all human beings, and rebuilding our society – and economy – with generosity and mutual support, rather than greed and contempt.

All we are saying, is give peace a chance.