Why privacy matters

We missed out. This iPhone app, Girls Around Me, has been yanked from the Apple store. It was a geolocation based mapping application that created a google map of your current location, and then checked in with facebook to find all the women who had done any social networking in that area. Then it tracked through their data to post pictures of them on the map.

Isn’t that sweet? All you women were made public targets for a kind of weird hunting game. I presume you are all now logging into facebook and trying to sort through the arcane tangle of options to limit access.

In case you’re thinking this was an app designed for creepy stalkers, though, you’ve got it all wrong. It’s the opposite of stalking. The designer has said that the purpose of the app was to allow his bros to avoid the ugly girls.

Doesn’t that make you feel so much better now?

Anti-caturday post

Honestly, cat people, wouldn’t you rather have a colony of fire ants than one of those furry beasts? You know that all that matters is survival of the fittest, and if you pitted the two against each other, it would end with a small pile of clean, polished bones on the floor…and remember, ants don’t have bones.

Also, cats hate water, so when your house floods, the cats will be in a panic…but the ants will just calmly assemble a raft from their bodies and float to safety. I think it’s clear which pet is more fit.

This one reminded me of the “Black Freighter” story within Watchmen.

Oh, no, the hipsters shall be even more insufferable!

I rather like the idea of this next generation of networking technology, Google's Goggles of the Future, but why did they have to cast this video with a couple of extras from Portlandia?

Give me a better demo. Let’s see people using them for something other than showing off their amateur ukulele playing, ’cause that crap will just scare me away. I’m in Minnesota. I’d have nightmares about my glasses going bleep-bloop, and then someone starts broadcasting their accordion practice at me.

This link is not safe for work

No no no. It is not. If you’re home alone, in a shuttered room, with a taser to use on any one who crashes in through the window to catch you looking…maybe not even then. Behold…The Squildo. I think just the name ought to give you enough of a hint of what’s on the other side.

OMG, it’s only $15. Why am I tempted? Why?

Oh, wait, no. That’s the shipping cost. It’s $138; suddenly, much, much less tempted.