Lake North Pole

by Christopher Paul on July 25, 2013

Climate change is being blamed for a lake forming on the North Pole. Santa is currently filing for FEMA’s flood assistance program.

Google Reader Died Because No One Would Run It

by Christopher Paul on July 23, 2013

Buzzfeed reports on why Google killed off Reader. You can read the whole thing but I can give you the tl;dr version:

No one wanted to devote the time and energy necessary to keep the project alive because it wasn’t going to get them anywhere with Page.

via Dave Winer

Apple Developer Site Hacked

by Christopher Paul on July 21, 2013

Jim Dalrymple spoke with someone at Apple on their email to developers that the site was hacked:

The only thing that the hacker could have gotten access to was the names, email addresses and mailing addresses of the developers. At this point, Apple doesn’t know if the hacker even managed to see that information. Worse case, that is all the information they would have seen, according to Apple.

Apple has taken the developer site offline and is working to get the site secured before re-launching it. The company had no timetable for when that might happen.

When the site went down and wasn’t restored in two or three days, people suspected a hack. It sucks but if we’re to believe Apple, it doesn’t seem too bad. And as much as I applaud them for waiting to get the system fully secured before bringing this up, it took a while for them to respond.

If a hack happens and you don’t know how or what was accessed, I’d rather you say that than leave people to guess. Hopefully they’ll get it working soon and it won’t impact the Mavericks or iOS 7 beta release schedules too much.

Switching From Gmail To Fastmail

by Christopher Paul on July 20, 2013

If you’re getting a little fed up (or concerned) with Google tracking all your movements and showing you ads like I am, you’re looking for alternatives. Most of their services can be replaced; Duck Duck Go is your search replacement and FastMail just might be a good Gmail alternative.

Max Masnick has good writeup of his experiences in switching.

via The Brooks Review

Meet the Ipsums

by Christopher Paul on July 19, 2013

Meet the Ipsums is a fantastic (and good looking) site with links to great Ipsum generators. All the great ones are there including Bacon, Hipster, Beer, Coffee, and Bluth

via swissmiss