This phone booth, outside a National Park I recently visited, was as big a photo opportunity for the tourists as the Park itself was. One Australian girl cried, “Oh, look! A Phone Booth!”
Great List of Workflows for Alfred 2
Someone who works under the handle "@hzlzh" has put together a really handy database of Alfred 2 workflows. It’s well worth a look if you’re an Alfred nerd.
One Way The NSA Skirts That Pesky 4th Amendment
According to this recent piece from InformationWeek, attempts to hide your online activities from the NSA will (predictably) make you a target:
When encryption is encountered […] the gloves can come off, with analysts being allowed to retain "communications that are enciphered or reasonably believed to contain secret meaning" for any period of time. […] Since the NSA guidelines say that a person "will not be treated as a United States person" without a positive identification based on name, address, electronic communication addresses or geographic location, encryption users may because classified – at least temporarily – as non-U.S. residents by NSA analysts.
So if they can’t tell where you are, you lose your already dubious "rights." If you close a door behind you, there’s a 100% chance that you’re doing something very, very bad.
Tile Helps You Find Lost Belongings Over Bluetooth
Cody Fink, Macstories:
On your keyring, in your backpack or travel luggage, or attached to your laptop, Tile keeps track of your valuables so you can easily find them wherever they may go. Tile resembles a small white square that’s only a few millimeters thick, making it both pocketable and small enough to be conveniently attached to gadgets or personal belongings. It’s small enough that you can slip it into a wallet’s pocket, or you can simply adhere it to the surface of a MacBook.
This seems like a pretty cool way to keep track of often-lost objects. I’m constantly losing everything I touch. I’ll take fifty of these.
The U.S Government Is Shooting Itself In The Foot Over Snowden
Alex Berenson, in an op-ed piece for the New York Times:
We have treated a whistle-blower like a traitor — and thus made him a traitor. Great job. Did anyone in the White House or the N.S.A or the C.I.A. consider flying to Hong Kong and treating Mr. Snowden like a human being, offering him a chance to testify before Congress and a fair trial? Maybe he would have gone with President Vladimir V. Putin anyway, but at least he would have had another option. The secret keepers would have won too: a Congressional hearing would have been a small price to bring Mr. Snowden and those precious hard drives back to American soil.
It’s hard to argue otherwise; of course, Americans are cowboys, and don’t care much for due process any longer.
Tumblr for iOS Supports x-callback-url
It turns out that the Tumblr app for iOS now has a set of URL schemes which support the x-callback-url specification. Tumblr-using nerds will find this to be a useful means of posting to their blogs with Drafts, to give one example.
Apparently this was news back in April, but I never heard about it and so I assume there are others in the same boat. Check it out.
Ignorant Rednecks Selling Pork-Coated Bullets, For Muslim-Killin’
From the company’s own Web site:
A natural deterrent that prevents violence just by owning it but will strike fear into the hearts of those bent upon hate, violence and murder. Jihawg Ammo is certified "Haraam" or unclean. According to the belief system of the radical Islamist becoming "unclean" during Jihad will prevent their attaining entrance into heaven. Jihawg Ammo is a natural deterrent to radical and suicidal acts of violence. [emphasis mine]
Did you catch that? These bullets are for sending Muslims to hell. I think I’d like to design some bullets that send moronic racist hicks to hell, too. What could I coat them with? Hmmm. Sixth-Grade Diplomas? Shoes? Shirts With Intact Sleeves? Soap?
Google Wants To Sell Your Desires
Maybe there’s some aspect of your life and/or mind that you haven’t given to Google (for free!) yet. Alex Chitu at the Google Operating System blog writes:
Google prepares a new service that’s called Google Mine. It’s integrated with Google+ and it’s a way to keep track of the items you own or you’d like to have and share some of them with your circles. Right now, the service is tested internally at Google.
They want to know what you want, and it isn’t even a little bit creepy. Oh, and also, if you could give them a list of everything you own, that would be pretty great, too. It will help them put ads inside your cornea. In addition, you’ll be helping in the fight against terrorism. It feels good to be a good American.
Fargo.io Is Getting To Be Pretty Cool
Dave Weiner’s fargo.io Web-based outliner app is really turning into something quite useful. It hasn’t even officially reached Version 1.0, and already it’s pretty much just as functional as any native application I’ve seen. All of the usual outliner tricks are possible, but it also allows for other cool things like posting directly to WordPress sites (this post was itself written on fargo.io). Furthermore, it uses Dropbox to save files and settings, so your data and setup will travel with you from one system to another.
more »
Ellen Page Sues Over Non-Resemblance To Cartoon
Erik Kain for Forbes:
To be honest, I don’t think Ellie from Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us looks all that much like actress Ellen Page.
I’m going to sue them too. There’s a character that has a nose. I have a nose! It looks just like me!