Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

I’ve encountered the site before, but somehow I missed out on it’s geeky awesomeness. And from that site, I’ve hit a few others that give me that tingly, geeky feeling of wanting to build stuff–like finally build that cool workshop in the back yard in which I will build other, smaller cool stuff.

Thanks to that site, I’ve also encountered other cool sites that are new to me via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. Like

• NYCResistor (co-founded by uber-geek-stud and my hero, Bre Pettis)
• SparkFun Electronics

There are more, and as soon as I organize all the bookmarks I’ve saved just by hitting the EMSL links, I’ll post them here.

Seriously, what rock has this Republi-tard been for the last 8 years? This is not new news, folks!

ScooopThis.Org: NSA has ability to collect and read domestic emails!

Do you guys not recall all the news about the Bush Administration protecting AT&T and other phone carriers if they handed over call records to the government, and about that call center where the asshats where listening in on people (Americans, at that!) having phone sex?

Here’s a small sampling of old news to refresh you retards that haven’t been paying attention to for the last 8 years:

• Spy Agency Sought U.S. Call Records Before 9/11, Lawyers Say
• NSA Call Database
• Is the NSA Reading Your Email?
• Bush Authorized Domestic Spying

Haven’t blogged it yet, but looks like Google got their stuff together and fixed realtime traffic. Atlanta traffic no longer has gaps and looks like it used to.

This makes me wonder, since it took a few weeks to fix, is the data accurate, or did they just merge the gaps, so to speak? So far it looks right, and the usual slow-downs I encounter on the way home are as indicated, within reason and within what seems to be the update frequency of the map.

Thanks Google Map Guys!

Apple Insider reports that security expert and former OLPC guy Ivan Krstić has taken a position at Apple, Inc. Part of his body of work is Bitfrost, which is OLPC’s security model. Awesome! I can’t wait to see what he does at that “fruit vendor!”

So 10.5.7 came out yesterday, and being the Mac geek that I am, I immediately fired up Software Update at bedtime and updated the iMac at home. Went without a hitch, and this morning it was running smoothly.

“So,” I thought, “that went well. I’ll start updating the Mac minis at work.”

(more…)

Last month I noticed Atlanta area live traffic suddenly started showing large gaps on my iPhone. Before, the I-85 south of Atlanta would be all green most of the time, or there would be gray areas which I presumed to mean there was no data available. It was easy to pick out slow areas because they would appear yellow as usual.

Now, Atlanta live traffic is almost totally small sections of green with large areas of nothing at all. This display problem is occurring on both my iPhone and on my desktop, so it seems to be a problem with Google Maps. For interstates, this is really a problem because it’s difficult to tell if it’s the yellow color of the interstate, or a slow area.

Here are two images taken at nearly the same time of approximately the same area. First is the iPhone version, second is the desktop version. Check the gaps, especially in the desktop version:

Atlanta’s not the only area. I noticed the same problem in NYC and Miami.

Here’s a pic of Atlanta from last year, courtesy DigitalEarthBlog. Notice the non-gappiness!

I posted this on Google’s forum (which somehow looks very derelict), and did get a response from another user. He says that Apple has confirmed it’s a problem with Google data.

Come on Google, people use this daily on their commute! Please don’t suck!

One of the most striking and beautiful cars I have ever seen.

Do want. Now.