The term Genetically Modified Food (or GMO) often produces a knee-jerk reaction in people. There are certainly causes for concern about the impact the foods have on our systems and on the farming ecosystem. But this article from MiT Technology Review focuses on the need for GMOs to feed the coming generations. Fascinating article.

Infographics are all the rage these days. If you’re looking for a great way to go viral through social media, you can’t do much better than an entertaining infographic. Our friends at MightyDeals are having an awesome deal for 35 infographic templates which you can download and customize as needed. Discounted over 50% for a limited time only. See the templates here.

Dylan Seeger put more into rethinking BlackBerry than the company has. This is certainly worth a read.

A directory of direct links to delete your account from web services.

Great idea.

Monday Note:

Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s CEO, predicts the end of subsidies because “wireless operators can no longer afford to suck up the costs of customers’ devices”.

I don’t know if Stephenson is speaking out of cultural deafness or cynicism, but he’s obscuring the point: There is no subsidy. Carriers extend a loan that users pay back as part of the monthly service payment. Like any loan shark, the carrier likes its subscriber to stay indefinitely in debt, to always come back for more, for a new phone and its ever-revolving payments stream.

Lots of interesting tidbits in this piece and it’s interesting to see how many media outlets unquestioningly repeated Stephenson stupid “end of subsidies” comment.

Boston Bruins’ Milan Lucic attacked in his hometown of Vancouver:

“That’s one of the worst parts, it’s in my hometown,” he said. “Going back to the spray painting of the church and my grandparents and parents and family getting harassed during the [Stanley Cup] finals against the Canucks in 2011, and now it’s escalated to a point where I get attacked for just minding my own business. I have no reason left to defend my city and then the people of my city. I’m just disgusted and outraged that it had to come to something like that. As far as that goes, other than being at Rogers Arena, no one will ever see me in downtown Vancouver ever again.”

Vancouver is just crazy. They riot when they lose the Stanley Cup and now they attack one of their hometown hockey players. The city is an embarrassment.

Update: I mistakenly said that the city rioted after the Olympics, but they didn’t.

Mental Floss:

“Yes, Sir, this is Colonel Shoup,” he barked.

Nothing but silence in response.

“Sir? This is Colonel Shoup,” he said.

Silence again.

“Sir? Can you read me alright?”

Finally, a soft voice on the other end.

“Are you really Santa Claus?” a little girl asked.

I love this story and delighted in telling it to my “new” 12 year old. She knew NORAD tracked Santa but she didn’t know why.

Macworld:

I left Facebook nearly four years ago because of its casual attitude toward its users’ privacy and nothing I’ve seen since has convinced me that this was a mistake. So, I sympathise. Fortunately, it’s easy to leave.

How much you want to bet we find out at some point in the future Facebook hasn’t actually deleted your account – they’ve just made it so you can’t see it any more?

There’s no guarantee this will work, but sometimes it’s the last thing you think of that works.

If you ever wanted to know how to do something with Safari on iOS, you should read Rene Ritchie’s guide.

I’ll admit, I haven’t even heard of some of these.

An interesting path to low cost housing. Only question that leaps to mind is, where would we build them? Still, an idea worth exploring.

This is comedy gold. A telemarketer called a Times reported trying to get him to sign up for health insurance. He sniffs out that she appears to be software driven (as opposed to a human reading from a complex script) and sets out to prove this.

I do find this incredibly funny but, at the same time, I can see this as the future of telemarketing. This “Samantha West” implementation is flawed and a bit slow on the uptake, but I can see this approach getting much better. To the point where most folks won’t be able to tell the difference between a robotic telepresence and a real human being.

The robots are coming.

Last week, I linked to a tweet that showed a picture of a double-wrapped MacBook power brick. This tweet (and others like it) spawned a ton of discussion, both pro and con, on wrapping your brick this way.

The article linked by the headline is Wired’s take on the issue. After reading all the pro and con, I’m going back to my old way, which was softly winding the thinner cord without bending the attachment closest to the brick, then very loosely winding the power cord, with the last wind going over and under to keep the winds together.

Pacific Standard:

If you were a fan watching at home, here’s what you saw:

After a 52-yard drive in the fourth quarter, Army quarterback Carl “Rollie” Stichweh faked a handoff and raced into the end zone at Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia. Army fans erupted with cheers. The Midshipmen hung their heads. Then, seconds later, bewildered fans at home watched as Stichweh did exactly the same thing. Again, the cheers. Again, the downtrodden Midshipmen.

“This is not live! Ladies and gentlemen, Army did not score again!” CBS announcer Lindsay Hunter hollered to television audiences as the handoff replayed. But still, confused viewers called stations to ask whether Army just tied the game.

Imagine you were watching the 1963 Army vs Navy game. Imagine how confusing instant replay would have been. All sports fans owe a huge debt of gratitude to Tony Verna.

Montessori schools are an important, widespread alternative to early education for children. Rather than the traditional teacher-centric model, Montessori places the child at the center of their educational experience. Each child makes their way through a set of Montessori designed activities, each with a very specific interface, evolved over the years.

The linked article talks about the impact that Jony Ive’s decision to scrub skeuomorphism from iOS has had on the Montessori experience. Very thoughtful piece.

I love hockey, and this is a big part why. Especially #20. Heh.

I went to update some apps on my iPad. But instead of being greeted on the update screen with the normal buttons with ‘update’ written on them, they had ‘free’ on them instead. Everything exactly the same, just the wording was different.

It certainly would be interesting if they did allow developers to start charging for updates.

Impressive achievement.

China landed an unmanned spacecraft on the moon on Saturday, state media reported, in the first such “soft-landing” since 1976, joining the United States and the former Soviet Union in managing to accomplish such a feat.

The Chang’e 3, a probe named after a lunar goddess in traditional Chinese mythology, is carrying the solar-powered Yutu, or Jade Rabbit buggy, which will dig and conduct geological surveys.

Wonder if this will trigger more funding for NASA, more contracts for SpaceX, and the beginning of a new space race.

Boston Dynamics was founded in 1992 by former MIT professor Marc Raibert. They’ve got deep expertise, especially in walking and running robots. This is a huge acquisition for Google, giving them a distinct edge in this space. It’ll be interesting to see what they have in mind.

Here’s a link to the Boston Dynamics YouTube channel. Don’t be surprised if one of these comes knocking on your door one day. Gulp.

Serenity Caldwell has a good article with some tips on getting Touch ID to work better and some things that may cause it to fail intermittently.

Google Inc has removed an experimental privacy feature from its Android mobile software that had allowed users to block apps from collecting personal information such as address book data and a user’s location.

[…]

A company spokesman said the feature had been included by accident in Android 4.3, the version released last summer.

So a feature to help users keep their info private was included by accident. Makes sense considering it comes from a company that makes its money on knowing every little thing about what you do.

“We are suspicious of this explanation, and do not think that it in any way justifies removing the feature rather than improving it,” said Peter Eckersley, technology projects director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The digital rights website first publicized the change in a blog post on Friday.

Android users who wish to retain the privacy controls by not upgrading to Android 4.4.2 could be vulnerable to security risks, Eckersley said. “For the time being, users will need to chose between either privacy or security on the Android devices, but not both.”

So, what’s it gonna be Android users? Fucked by Google or fucked by hackers?