Android flaw allows hackers to surreptitiously modify apps →

Researchers said they've uncovered a security vulnerability that could allow attackers to take full control of smartphones running Google's Android mobile operating system.

This is not even the worst part.

The flaw has existed since at least the release of Android 1.6 almost four years ago.

Reading that makes this next quote even more confusing.

"I imagine that Google would move quickly to add some logic to look for such attacks," Dan Wallach, a professor specializing in Android security in the computer science department of Rice University

I'll grant that no carrier or phone manufacturer issues security fixes for phones that old (not even Apple). The interesting thing about this isn't so much the 4 year old phones, but the 8-18 month old phones. Android phone release cycles are realatively short. From what I've heard, carriers aren't too keen on updating phones outside about 3-6 months of release. The Android model really seems to compound security issues of this sort.

iOS Icon Showdown →

This is a cool poll that allows you pick which iOS icon you prefer over the other.

For me personally, I found that when the iOS 7 icon was matched up against its predecessor, I almost always chose the newer icon. It's hard for me to tell if that's because the icons individually are actually better than pre-iOS 7, or if I just like the new icons because they're new.

Basil of Baker Street

I recently rewatched The Great Mouse Detective after stumbling across it while browsing movies on Apple TV. I remembered this movie fondly from my younger years, and I wanted to introduce my little sister to it. Luckily it wasn't just nostalgia I was recalling. I really enjoyed this classic Disney film.

Turns out, there is some really fantastic stuff on the web about The Great Mouse Detective. I found most of it via its Wikipedia page. After a bit more research I later discovered it has a important role in Disney history:

The first Disney animated feature greenlit for production by the new Disney management team of Michael Eisner, Frank Wells and Jeffrey Katzenberg was not The Little Mermaid, but a charming, often neglected little film titled The Great Mouse Detective. It saved the future of Disney feature animation.

I highly recommend you check out part one & part two of this incredible story. Little did I know this movie is responsible for ushering in the Disney Renaissance. To top it all off, it also received two thumbs up up from Siskel and Ebert.

I highly recommend The Great Mouse Detective.

Designed by Apple in California →

This intriguing new TV spot by Apple acts more like a mission statement than an advertisement.

There is a statement in the middle, articulating how Apple thinks about its products. "Does it deserve to exist?" Left by itself, the question is rather ambiguous. It requires a defnined mission in order to judge the merit of products in development.

This required mission statement is found in the previous line: "Does it make life better?" While also not well defined, it sets a high bar for the products Apple decides to release. It's a blanket refusal of the spaghetti approach to product development.

Apple is not different because of the choices they make. They're different because of the choices they choose to make. Put differently, the way they go about creating products dictates making different choices than other companies. Samsung doesn't really have to decide what screen size they need to make their only phone in. They make hundereds of similar variations on one phone with different sizes.

Apple's approach doesn't garuntee success. I do think it means they have a better opportunity to succeed. This uncommon approach is how they can know a product deserves to exist.

2013 Apple Design Awards →

I wonder if giving Yahoo an award is a consolation prize for Apple using the look and feel of Yahoo Weather in the stock iOS 7 weather app. They're pretty similar.

What's confusing is the weather app in iOS 7 still uses weather data from Yahoo. I thought the reason behind Yahoo releasing their own app was because they were going to get cut from the stock one. Strange.

NSA & the Privacy Prism →

Times like this show the great value, to society as a whole, of widely available cryptography and open-source software. Even people with nothing to hide shouldn’t tolerate or permit overreaching government spying.

It's hard to know what to do about this NSA situation. It's the difference between convenience, and privacy. It's really convenient to put all of my stuff in Dropbox, and have it accessible on any device. But it would also nice to have privacy, and not be concerned with the government having access to all of my stuff (even if they aren't accessing it at this very moment doesn't mean they won't later). It's disconcerting to say the least.

In the natural world, there are protections in the U.S. Constitution for American's stuff to be safe from unreasonable searches and seizures. Because the digital world moves so fast, many of us didn't have time to think - let alone implement - the same protections for our digital lives, many of just assumed that our digital stuff was already protected under the Constitution.

At this point, the government has been getting so much information for so long that I think (as a non-lawyer) it would be difficult to argue to a court that the Constitution protects digital possession because precedence says that the government already can access it under the current Constitution. I think if things continue to get out of hand, the chances of amending the Constitution to speak directly to the issue of digital privacy becomes more, and more of a possibility.

In general, people don't have a problem using the government to do stuff to other people. Whether it's raising someone else's taxes, or reforming broken pensions. However, as soon as the government affects them in an adverse way, people move rather quickly to protect themselves. Digital privacy protections could quickly become broadly popular across party lines.

Someone is Coming to Eat You →

More bad news via metaphors. Your enticing success has your competition chasing you, and that means that, by definition, that they need to run harder and faster than you so they can catch up. Yes, many potential competitors are going to bungle the execution and vanish before they pose a legitimate threat but there’s a chance someone will catch up, and when they do, what’s their velocity? Faster than yours.

Getting too comfortable with success is easy. Continuing to be successful is hard. Making great stuff requires hard work. That's why so many companies and people fail to be great longer than a brief vapor in the wind. It's the constant drive to be great that can lead to repeat success. Now is the time to get stuff done. You can stop processing your inbox when you're dead.

Linked List & Squarespace

As far as I can tell, Squarespace doesn't support doing linked list style posts on iPhone. It can be done - albeit clumsily - in a desktop browser.

If you aren't aware, link list posts are where the title of the post is a link to that item being discussed. The text of the post usually includes one of two things:

1. a blockquote from the link, or
2. a comment on the article and/or blockquote

While it's too bad that Squarespace doesn't support posting them from their iPhone app, it's not completely upsetting. The reason I chose Squarespace over Wordpress was due to Squarespace's reduced complexity, and impressive results. It was simpler for me to understand.

I'm a person who genrally likes to have control over every facet I can have control of in any given situation. If I've learned anything from Apple, it's that sometimes constrains on materials and time can cause one to do his one's best work.

The Squarespace iPhone app situation probably means I have to do more regular writing than link listing while on my iPhone. I can deal with that since the whole point of this website is for the development of my writing skills.

MacBook Air Flash Storage Firmware Update 1.0 →

I have OCD about certain things. App and system updates are one of them. Unless I have a specific reason not to install an update (e.g. the Internet complaining about an update making an app, or OS buggy) then I usually go ahead and install them.

Last week, after attempting to install the MacBook Air Flash Storage Firmware Update 1.0, the update was still available on the App Store after I rebooted. Obviously this bothered me. I attempted the update at a couple of different intervals over the next few days. It still didn't work, and still my OCD was not satisfied. I complained on App.net, and within a few hours I had an answer from David Ross:

@reagan I had to turn off File Vault 2 on my boot drive, then re-encrypt after the upgrade.

If you haven't heard of FileVault before, it's an encryption option in OS X provided by Apple. I've used it for a while, and it works great. Anyway, back to the story.

I'm not exactly sure why this worked, but it did. Keep in mind that you'll need to restart after you disable File Vault 2 in System Prefs, and that after the restart it will take a few minutes for it to decrypt your boot drive. It took my mid 2012 MacBook Air about 15 minutes to decrepit.

Also, don't forget to re-enable FileVault 2 after the update is done. Not that I'm speaking from experience.

Batman Icon →

Jory Raphael over at Sensible World is doing "An icon a day for an entire year." Every day he releases a new icon on his website and does so for free. This Batman icon is particularly wonderful.

However, I have been informed by friends that not everyone likes Batman. Please excuse my disbelief. If you also happen to be of the Marvel persuasion, you'll be glad to know Jory has created an equally fantastic icon of Captain America's Shield.

The Feature Set Trap →

It is a little rich, though, that they repeatedly use the absence of Microsoft apps on the iPad as knocks against the iPad. It’s Microsoft’s choice, not Apple’s, that there is no PowerPoint for iPad.

It's lame, but not surprising. For Microsoft it depends on where you sit. They're not big fans of Apple taking 30% of what they consider to be Microsoft's money. If they add a checkbox for iWork the iPad would be the only one to get a checkmark because Apple only makes iWork for Macs (and only recent Macs at that). The difference is that most people aren't looking for iWork. They're looking for Office.

Part of me thinks it'd be nice if Microsoft brought office to the iPad, but the other part of me thinks it would be about as nice as Office for Mac. It's nice to have around if you need to work with Office files, or Exchange, and looks like an Office monster ate a cabinet full of buttons and then heaved all over the software.

Taking Risks

I don't know how many times I've begun to write this, or how many times I will begin again. It's always been my intention to have my own site. I've done it a couple of times, but it's never felt real. It's always been on a subdomain like .wordpress.com. Which somehow always seemed fake to me. As if it was someone else's website, and I was just borrowing it (which was true to point).

Now I want to do it for real. When I started, I looked to other writers' sites for inspiration. This only caused more confusion. At this point I could launch into a diatribe about the benefits and problems with each various CMS, but I'll save that for another day. This is about something different.

It's about whether or not I will be too afraid to take a chance. Shawn Blanc has been a hero of mine. I enjoy his work, and support him when I can. He said something on his Shawn Today podcast that has stuck with me for a while now.

Before he became a father this last year, he knew he wanted to teach his kids a lesson about courage. He wanted them to have a role model that was willing to take chances, and not always play it safe. To let his kids know that they could take chances and be successful.

I'm beginning to feel that for far too long now I've been playing it safe. I've stayed quiet when I should have spoken up. I've not seized opportunities even though I've been waiting for them. I'm tired of playing it safe. I'm ready to take a risk. It might be the phase of life I'm in causing this, but so be it.

I can't be sure I'll always have something to say here, but If I've learned anything over the past few months, it's that I'll never find out unless I try.