The Land of Giants – Humanoid Power Pylons

It turned out that they were not the first ones to do this. Bulgarian born artist Elena Paroucheva got there before Choi+Shine with these lovely functional sculptures:

I really like SpiderOak because even if they were forced to, they couldn’t figure out what you’re storing, or even what the files are called. It’s called zero knowledge.

Give SpiderOak a try:

https://spideroak.com/download/referral/9373e49547d7f0f1ae1937e6a9b481e7

It includes this great quote from Murray Rothbard on big business:

“For some time I have come to the conclusion that the grave deficiency in the current output and thinking of our libertarians and ‘classical liberals’ is an enormous blind spot when it comes to big business. There is a tendency to worship Big Business per se… and a corollary tendency to fail to realize that while big business would indeed merit praise if they won that bigness on the purely free market, that in the contemporary world of total neo-mercantilism and what is essentially a neo-fascist ‘corporate state,’ bigness is a priori highly suspect, because Big Business most likely got that way through an intricate and decisive network of subsidies, privileges, and direct and indirect grants of monopoly protection.”

YouTube – How to Reach the Left | Roderick T. Long.

See here for more information, and an application that will show you a map with all the locations you’ve ever visited with your iPhone:

http://petewarden.github.com/iPhoneTracker/

(Note: For a version that works on 32-bit Core Duo Macs, and one that runs on OS X 10.5 Leopard, see further down. For a Windows PC version, see right at the bottom of this post.)

Here’s an example screenshot of the iPhone Tracker application:

Screenshot of the iPhone Tracker app

Apple doesn’t seem to be sending this information anywhere, but really, they shouldn’t be storing this much of this kind of information unencrypted in the first place.

The first thing you should do is enable encrypted iPhone backups so that other users and applications on your computer can’t access this information. I’ve been doing this for a while.

iPhoneTracker for OS X Leopard (10.5) and 32-bit Processors

If you have an older Mac with a 32-bit Intel Core Duo processor which can’t run the 64-bit version of the application on Pete Warden’s site, you will get this message:

"You can't open the application iPhoneTracker because it is not supported on this type of Mac."

If you are running Mac OS X Leopard (10.5) you will see this message:

“You cannot use this version of the application iPhoneTracker with this version of Mac OS X”

You can download and try run this 32-bit version I made for Mac OS X Leopard (10.5):

iPhoneTracker_32bit_leopard.zip

MD5 fingerprint for the zip file is: 3977c24e07019e23c987337f9342e684
SHA: 8757eba4a661e22f8b5b366c2dcd06becd90ea17

And this 32-bit build I made for Snow Leopard (10.6):

iPhoneTracker_32bit.zip

MD5 fingerprint for the zip file is: f8d2b4ccf107198a22aef655765d9654
SHA: cd9fce97c2db24515eaa687335c8e5e103a7eba8

For the geeks, you can get my modified version of Pete Warden’s source at this github repository:

https://github.com/julianpistorius/iPhoneTracker

Update: Combined with the fact that police officers in some areas are copying the content from cellphones of people stopped for traffic offences, it gets scarier:

http://thenextweb.com/us/2011/04/20/us-police-can-copy-your-iphones-contents-in-under-two-minutes/

Update 2: Here’s a Windows application that does the same thing. I can’t vouch for it:

http://huseyint.com/iPhoneTrackerWin/

Update 3: The original version of iPhoneTracker now supports 32-bit and PPC machines, and presumably OS X Leopard. You shouldn’t need my custom build any more.

Update 4: I made a build that increases the time and location accuracy. I’m not sure how useful this is, but here you go: iPhoneTracker_32bit_higher_accuracy.zip

Update 5: Apple heard, and have released a version of iOS that fixes some of the security problems:
http://www.macworld.com/article/159643/2011/05/ios433_location_fixes.html

(Hat tip Andrew Hedges)

You then run Safari to see if anybody else on the Web has experienced the same problem. But no, Safari won’t start at all, and keeps crashing. You try to keep calm.

So you start Software Update, to see if Apple has released a patch to fix the problem… Only… “Software Update quit unexpectedly”… Aaaaaah!

Here’s the obligatory graph:

Interestingly, C# on position #6 is catching up to PHP slowly, and might pass it soon.

Java, C and C++, though still very popular, seem to be declining steadily. Perl and Visual Basic seem doomed to obscurity. Good riddance. Ugh.

And check out how Object-C came out of nowhere, a result of the blossoming of the iPhone market.

Click on the image below to try it out:

Black or White Face Recognition

You can read more about how this was done here:

play.blog2t.net » Machines are looking for Michael Jackson

(Hat tip: David Joffe)

“Inspirationz fine art motivational posters and prints are the perfect gift for anyone with a penchant for profound quotes and powerful art the kind that lifts your spirit and portrays man’s essential nature.”

You can see more here:

http://www.choishine.com/port_projects/landsnet/landsnet.html

This reminded me of a quote from one of my favourite movies, The Castle‘s Darryl Kerrigan: “Dad, he reckons powerlines are a reminder of man’s ability to generate electricity.”

(Hat tip: teh_aimee)

– Cicero, 55 BC

Evidently nothing.

(Hat tip: my dad)

UPDATE: See the comment by Grant. It seems there is some doubt around the origins of this quote. Thanks Grant! I still approve of the sentiment, and wish more modern politicians would too.

To really appreciate it, you’ll probably have to watch original first. If you haven’t seen it yet: Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”

(Hat tip: Noodlefood)

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