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Stuart Freeborn, the makeup artist behind the designs of Star Wars’ Yoda and Chewbacca, passed away at age 98.

Mike Isaac and John Paczkowski wrote an article about how Apple forced Vine to have a 17+. The reason for the rating is because it could show the user porn.

In other words, think of yourself as a teenager to Apple’s repressed mother — you hide your porn under your mattress. You don’t leave it out on the coffee table.

I don’t get the reason for the article. Besides taking an unnecessary swipe at Apple — actually several swipes — I don’t understand what their problem is.

Mental Floss:

Every country has place names that make you scratch your head and say, “What were they thinking?” So I looked up what they may have been thinking when these places in Canada got their names.

“What would I do? I’d shut it [Apple] down and give the money back to the shareholders,”

Asked about Dell’s comments 16 years later in the context of Dell’s privatization effort, a Dell spokesperson gave TPM the following statement:

“That comment has been taken out of context and is not relevant.”

Well now, that’s convenient.

Om Malik looks at Michael Dell buying back his company.

eWorld was introduced by Apple in June of 1994 as an online service exclusively for Macintoshes.

This article takes me back. The Internet was very different back then.

McSweeney’s recent “I am a social media community manager” had us chuckling.

It’s a parody of Microsoft’s “Child of the 90s” video.

Shawn Blanc outlines how he setup his media server and what he’s using it for. I love that he puts “nerd scores” in too.

Wired:

In 1947, Chuck Yeager strapped himself into the experimental Bell X-1 “bullet with wings” and broke the sound barrier 8 miles above the Mojave Desert in Southern California. Paul Larsen sees himself as following squarely in Yeager’s footsteps. To become the fastest sailor in the world, he’s going to have to break through the nautical equivalent of the sound barrier—the so-called 50-knot barrier (about 57 miles per hour).

“(The SailRocket Mark 2) is 50 percent plane, 50 percent boat,” Larsen explains. “If for some reason she lost the keel at speed,” Larsen explains, “than she really would be a plane, wouldn’t she?” The prototype version of SailRocket, Mark 1, actually did take off into the air, and Larsen survived what may be the most spectacular crash in sailing history.

I love sailing and sailboats but I don’t think there’s enough money in the world to get me into this fragile looking thing as it does 60 knots.

Help grow the list.

This is such a wonderfully weird video. It’s a pretty common thing to see on DVD – a blooper reel of actors messing up. What’s weird about it is that the bloopers are from the video game, L.A. Noire, and are motion captured.

Lifehacker:

For the extremely willpower-impaired (or the super-serious about exercise), this hack uses a FitBit activity tracker and a Belkin WeMo internet-controlled power outlet to make sure you exercise every day. If you don’t meet your daily activity goals, the system cuts the power to anything plugged into it, offering some serious incentive to get off the couch.

Charalampos, writing at Building Internet of Things came up with this idea as a way to combine the activity tracking capabilities of the FitBit with an severe punishment for not exercising. He chose his fridge as his “workout hostage,” so if he didn’t exercise, his food might spoil.

This is brilliant. We could hook it up to The Publisher’s Heineken fridge – he’d dropped 50lbs in 6 months.

A New Jersey Superior Court judge recently ordered a blogger to defend her status as a journalist and explain why the state’s shield law applies to her in order to avoid revealing the names of government officials she accused of wrongdoing.

The never ending debate.

Good selection of pre-built players and do-it-yourself pointers.

What an incredible story told by Lex Friedman. Especially this part when Lex was asking the guy at the booth some questions:

“I’m done talking to you,” he said, as he moved to position himself directly in front of my face. His expression had gone from brusque to combative. “Did you hear me? I’m done talking to you.”

I’ll tell you what — that wouldn’t have ended the way he anticipated if he did that to me.

I still want a shoe phone.

Dell is going private in a $24 billion deal leveraged by the company’s founder and investment firm Silver Lake.

Rian van der Merwe:

Executive buy-in is a prerequisite for success, so make sure that it’s well understood that even though everyone gets a voice, not everyone gets to decide.

That may very well be the most difficult part for a lot of PMs.

There are all kinds of app goodies for that special someone in your life.

Seth Godin:

The best way to honor someone who has said something smart and useful is to say something back that is smart and useful. The other way to honor them is to go do something with what you learned.

Great advice.

Wired:

If you’re not a hockey fan, you may not know the red light’s iconic flashing, spinning glow and horn sound that accompany every goal.

The Budweiser Red Light works by connecting to your Wi-Fi network. After configuring the device with an Android or iPhone app to tell it what teams you are rooting for, it sits sleeping in your rec room. When a game is on, it wakes up and starts listening over the network for a score. When the puck goes in the net, the light goes crazy.

“We are not joking: It’s real, it works and you can buy it,” says the Budweiser Canada homepage.

Yes, it’s real – and every Canadian wants one!

My latest chunk of open-source code is very simple: MGWordCounter provides live word-counting for NSTextViews on OS X and UITextViews on iOS.

Another useful bit of code from Matt Gemmell.

Normann Szkop:

The tulip has come to be a loved symbol of the Netherlands. Many tourists visit the country just to see the bright coloured flower and the astonishing view over the bulb fields. The season begins in March with crocuses, followed by the daffodil and the yellow narcissi.

This is a great photographic example of the idea of taking something we are familiar with and looking at it from different angle.

Monoprice is expanding its market from just cables and accessories to devices like monitors and action cams.

There are just so many good ones in here. [Via DF]

Om Malik gives us some valuable lessons that he’s learned over the years.

Now apps found on Google Play can infect your computer. Brilliant strategy Google.