America, you’re turning into a parody of yourself.

Irving 9th-grader arrested after taking homemade clock to school.

[…] So the 14-year-old missed the student council meeting and took a trip in handcuffs to juvenile detention. His clock now sits in an evidence room. Police say they may yet charge him with making a hoax bomb — though they acknowledge he told everyone who would listen that it’s a clock.

The number of things in this article, and I do urge you to actually read it, that should jump out and grab you are astounding.

• He’s still suspended
• “School Police”? Is this the new normal now?
• Arrested for a ‘hoax bomb’.
• Handcuffed - “his hands cuffed behind him and an officer on each arm” - is that really needed for a 13 year old?

But he’s a brown kid so it’s all ok right?

Seriously this is messed up. The kid wants to invent stuff, does invent stuff, and because he’s not white (and let’s not fool ourselves that that has nothing to do with it) he’s getting screwed over because of a bunch of stupid scared people. But it’s ok I guess, “He’s vowed never to take an invention to school again” and if the scared people of Texas are lucky he’ll stop inventing things completely, hide any smarts he has and work a nice safe factory job away from any sort of intelligent thinking at all. Cause we wouldn’t want him to be smart and think or anything like that would we?

BBC News - Apology for ‘Muslim Birmingham’ Fox News claim.

I can’t. Just… wow. Make sure you watch the full video of his “apology”. And then head over to #FoxNewsFacts on twitter to see the Internet mocking Fox News.

Then head over to see the original report where the whole thing started, with the bastion of Fair and Balanced says that Birmingham (a lovely English town) is “all Muslim” and how there are “hundreds” of no-go zones where non-muslims don’t go.

Keep an eye on the female anchors face when he talks about how anyone who goes to Birmingham who doesn’t dress according to Muslim law get beaten.

And finally read how traumatizing this ordeal has been on him.

If you told me this was a comedy parody from the Onion I would believe it. Yet some crazy huge percentage of the US population relies on Fox for actual news.

WTF?

Great article: Terrorists don’t have a chance in this country in regards to the Canadian response to the shooting and potential terror attack in Canada’s capital yesterday.

I saw the media report the story with care and restraint. No premature conclusions. No scare talk. The CBC reporters never turned a hair. The unflappable Peter Mansbridge is still the best quarterback in the business. The Globe’s astonishing Josh Wingrove had the fortitude to film the bullets spraying and duck for cover. His electrifying video was shown around the world.

Well worth the read, especially if you’ve seen any of the comparisons between reporting between the US and Canada (though we’re not completely blameless here either.

GamerGate terrorists threaten mass school shooting in Utah

Gaming critic Anita Sarkeesian was scheduled to hold a talk at Utah State University. However, GamerGate terrorists threatened to enact “the largest school shooting in American history” if the talk were to take place. The contents of the terrorist threat are horrific, and fit the general tone of GamerGate terrorism; threats of rape, murder, mutilation, the usual stuff, but now also with mass murder, automatic rifles, and pipe bombs.

Seriously, what the fuck is going on?

I must say that the Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Ferguson is absolutely bloody fantastic, and completely terrifying.

I honestly thought people were overreacting a bit, but after watching this, I must say I have come around in my thinking a bit. What a complete cluster-fuck brought on by a bunch of dickheads (the mayor, police, etc).

Nelson Mandela dies :(

I found out via Facebook. Canadians share their memories of Rita MacNeil. Definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, but Rita was a staple of Canadian culture and I’m very sad to hear of her passing.

Roger Ebert dies at 70 after battle with cancer.

Ebert, 70, who reviewed movies for the Chicago Sun-Times for 46 years and on TV for 31 years, and who was without question the nation’s most prominent and influential film critic, died Thursday in Chicago. He had been in poor health over the past decade, battling cancers of the thyroid and salivary gland.

:(

If you’re interested, the Cardinals just elected a new pope.

Thanks for the Memories over at the memlane blog exlains that they’re shutting down after 2 years.

Today we want to share the exciting news that our team is joining another company that will utilize the Memolane features in an expanded way, adding more value to all the great memories captured on social media.

Unfortunately this also means that we will be shutting down the memolane.com service. Your account with Memolane and all its content will be deleted on Friday Feb. 22th 2013. Please note that Memolane only aggregates content so all of your social media memories will still be available on the existing social media services you use.

A bit sad, and interesting that they didn’t name the company they were purchased by. Still, a cool service and nice guys, thanks for the memories!

I have no idea what to say after watching this. Watch The Most Insane News Story You’ll See Today Video on Break.com, via my boss Chris.

Note: NSFW language.

Dell Enters into Agreement to Be Acquired by Michael Dell and Silver Lake. Short version is that Dell’s going from publicly traded to private.

Dell Inc. today announced it has signed a definitive merger agreement under which Michael Dell, Dell’s Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, in partnership with global technology investment firm Silver Lake, will acquire Dell.

X-Surface: Don’t believe everything you read is the story of how a guy basically just faked a new Microsoft X-Box rumor and how the collective tech press took the bait hook, line, and sinker.

Note that the high journalistic integrity of the UFies.org staff prevented us from putting any such story up.

Course, I’m waiting for the guy pranking the media with a prank about pranking the media.

Prank-prank-prank.

This has been on twitter and in the newsfeed all morning, the story of the horrible tragedy in Newton, Connecticut where Children and adults were gunned down by a crazy nutcase. Horrible. I debated posting this as it’s a terrible thing and I have no desire to do more than bring interesting links and cool sites to people, but this news affected me more than usual, and I felt I had to post it.

This isn’t a time to debate gun control or do anything but hug your children tight and pray (or whatever you do) for those who were needlessly killed this morning.

Saw via Daring Fireball that The Daily is set to Close.

The Daily’s editor in chief Jesse Angelo and publisher Greg Clayman will meet with staff today at 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. to discuss details of the iPad-only newspaper’s closure later this month. Below is the full memo from Angelo and Clayman, obtained by TPM:

It’s a bit of a shame, The Daily was my first experience with an iPad news source, but I can see how with free programs like Flipboard it’s hard to justify the costs of producing a full on magazine, daily.

As a Canadian, I heard something about a WoW “controversy” today but basically ignored it, until a friend posted this link from the BBC: World of Warcraft hobby sparks US political row.

As part of its campaign efforts, the Republican party in the state created “Colleen’s World” - a website that compiles information about Ms Lachowicz’s orc rogue Santiaga. An orc is a mythical human-like creature, generally described as fierce and combative.

In a statement that accompanies the webpage, Maine Republicans said playing the game led Ms Lachowicz to live a “bizarre double life” that raised questions about her ability to represent the state.

The page also detailed some of the comments Ms Lachowicz has made while talking about her orc rogue, in particular it highlights her affection for Santiaga’s ability to stab things and kill people without suffering a jail sentence.

Seriously… this is the crap that America is concerned with right now? Please start working the fuck about things like educating children, feeding and housing your homeless, getting medical care to the sick, and being better people, not what people do in video games. I’ve killed tens of thousands of people in video games and I’m pretty sure that my joy at getting a gauntlet kill after a rocket jump playing CTF is not a reflection of anything other than playing a video game.

End Rant.

I head that GoDaddy was down today and figured it was just another blip, but after reading the article on TechCrunch that GoDaddy Outage Takes Down Millions Of Sites, Anonymous Member Claims Responsibility my response is now “ouch”. Their twitter @godaddy indicates the level of panic going on over there right now. Really interesting to find the story behind this.

Hows this for starting the news cyle for the new school year with a bang? Ok, so what seems like has happened. FBI has a huge list of Apple iPhone UDID (unique phone identifiers) along with names, device types, and other personal identifiable information. FBI has this on a laptop. Hacker hacks into laptop and retrieves said information. Anonymous then leaks this information to the web.

Hacker news has the story: AntiSec leaks 1,000,001 Apple UDIDs, Device Names/Types, along with others.

During the second week of March 2012, a Dell Vostro notebook, used by Supervisor Special Agent Christopher K. Stangl from FBI Regional Cyber Action Team and New York FBI Office Evidence Response Team was breached using the AtomicReferenceArray vulnerability on Java, during the shell session some files were downloaded from his Desktop folder one of them with the name of “NCFTAiOSdevices_intel.csv” turned to be a list of 12,367,232 Apple iOS devices including Unique Device Identifiers (UDID), user names, name of device, type of device, Apple Push Notification Service tokens, zipcodes, cellphone numbers, addresses, etc. the personal details fields referring to people appears many times empty leaving the whole list incompleted on many parts. no other file on the same folder makes mention about this list or its purpose.

Obviously a few questions come up. Why does the FBI have this information? Where did it come from? What (if any) connection does Apple have? Is it legit? Does this mean that the FBI is actively tracking users, or just gathering device information? Are these American citizens, non-Americans, or maybe just racially profiled iPhone users?

It’ll be interesting for sure.

Update: Marco links to more information including a potential cause for the leak.

The story is that some scum sucking dirtbags who deserve more than a few swift kicks to the nuts stole the iPad of woman with cerebral palsy. The happy follow up is that not only is one of them under arrest, but also Vancouver is full of awesome people looking to help after seeing the story.

Then someone showed up at our Burnaby studios and dropped off $450 in cash - no questions asked. They did not wait around to identify themselves. A short time later they came back with another $50, fearing the original $450 would not be enough.

In yet another twist to the story, the same person came back again, this time with a brand new iPad and case. However, when reporter Aaron Mcarthur went to give Cassie her new iPad, she had already received one.

CBC also has a take on the story, with more details. Careful watching the second video though, it may cause you to roll a tear (a big manly tear in my case, least anyone wonder) or two.

Did I mention fuck the scumbag cowards who did this? If not, I will again.

Todays The Joy of Tech comic pretty much perfectly sums up my thoughts on the Apple is avoiding paying billions in taxes story that “broke” this weekend. Seriously, I’m pretty sure that every big company (Microsoft, Google, et all) all do exactly this, but somehow putting “Apple” in the headline makes it something that lasted for more than a day on the internet.

The Apple response is a good read.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t like that companies making BILLIONS of dollars every quarter avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes, but I make deductions on my taxes, and do my best to avoid paying anything extra, so why shouldn’t they? The argument of “if Apple had to pay an extra 40 billion in taxes, they wouldn’t be able to employ the 50,000 people that they do now”. I think it’s fine to get all high and mighty, but until you go to the CRA or IRS or whatever and say “no sir, please let me pay the maximum taxes possible” and not “can I deduct my cat as a dependant”, you can’t complain too much, as this is just a difference in scale (and that companies with a lot of money can afford to hire accountants who know all the tricks).

It’s Official: Facebook has filed for a $5 Billion IPO.

In a move that has been hotly anticipated, Facebook has filed with the SEC to raise $5 billion in an initial public offering of stock in the United States. The company will trade with the stock symbol of “FB”.

That’s a lot of facebook bucks.

Today Stop SOPA day all around the net, with major websites blocking their content in protest of a (quite frankly) ridiculous bill that the US is trying to pass which, in addition to being completely stupid from the technical perspective (ie: wouldn't do anything) does have the potential to really mess things up on the Internet. Moreso for "normal" people than techies, who (as usual) will have no problems circumventing any of the blocking systems put in place. Not only that but the US government doesn't exactly have a good record in terms of regulation and getting their paws in the Internet's business.

TorrentFreak has a good wrapup of what's going on, and what the sites that are blacked out look like.

Apparently Best Buy isn't able to deliver on all those "we'll get your stuff by Christmas" promises they made. Seems like something you'd want to check before making the promise....

Best Buy started reaching out to customers earlier this week -- you know, mere days before Christmas -- that the retailer was unable to fulfill orders placed as far back as November. Big Blue was sorry but they were canceling the affected orders. Happy holidays! Signed, your merry friends at Best Buy!

If you didn't hate them enough as it is, GoDaddy Faces boycott over SOPA support. From the Ars article:

We contacted GoDaddy for comment. A spokesman declined to comment on the boycott specifically, but reiterated the firm's support for the legislation. She sent us a link to the company's written testimony to the House Judiciary Committee last month.

"This debate is about preserving, protecting, and creating American jobs, and protecting American consumers from the dangers that they face on-line," the statement reads. "US businesses are getting robbed and US consumers are getting duped."

I'm sure that some of the Black Friday madness was just a one off (don't we say that every year?) but some of the stuff in this story.... wow.... I agree with 512 pixels - America, bitch you be craaaaazy....

A woman at a Southern California Wal-Mart allegedly used pepper spray to get first crack at the Nintendo Wii games and Microsoft Xboxes that had just gone on sale. About 20 people were treated by paramedics for minor injuries. The Los Angeles Times said one police lieutenant described it as "customer-versus-customer shopping rage." Police are still searching for the spray-wielding competitive shopper.

Sad news :( Dennis Ritchie, Creator of UNIX and C, Dead at 70.

If you're on the internet tonight at all you will see hundreds if not thousands of posts about Steve Jobs and his passing most of them remembering him, thanking him, and honoring him. Even the people who are not "apple people" are saying that he will be missed and had an immense impact on technology and the world in general. Instead of flooding the site with a ton of Steve Jobs posts I figured I'd simply post something from someone who I respect i the tech industry, and who I listen to every week through various podcasts. Here's what Andy Ihnatko has to say about Steve Jobs, and in this case, an Apple store.

[...] Steve Jobs was correctly known as the most productively hands-on CEO in technology or maybe even any other industry. The Apple Stores were a particular obsession. If you walked in and discovered that the table of hard drives had become a table of headphones and the hard drives were now on the third shelf of the first bank of product shelves, it was probably because of something Steve decided earlier in the week.

Steve is dead. But you walk into an Apple Store and you see all the reasons why he was such a phenomenal CEO, and why so many people feel the way I do tonight.
[...]

Engadget has the scoop that the Amazon Kindle Fire has been revealed, and it's an Android-based, 7-inch display, $199 media consumption device.

The price is great, and based on the liveblog the prices for the whole lineup have changed:

10:53AM So, it's Fire for $199, Touch 3G for $149, Touch for $99, and Kindle for $79.

Definitely interesting, not the $99 for a sony touchpad though (now up to $499 bwahahah).

Anyway, hit the engadget link or hell, just open your browser, I'm sure the news will be all over. I estimate about 3 hours before a "full android on kindle fire" project is started and possibly finished for people not wanting to be restricted to the Amazon version of the OS.

Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda Resigns From Slashdot

Wow, a midst the other resignation news this was almost a shock. Thanks @dkubb for passing it along.

I remember back in the day working at the Fraser Valley Real Estate board and watching Malda's personal site change to "Chips & Dips", and then turn into slashdot.org, possibly the first high profile geek news site. Slashdot grew from a perl cgi-bin script to mod_perl to a far more sophisticated system, amidst the rest of the tech industry and techology exploding in the era of the original dot com boom. Hell, I recall myself and a coworker sent Rob a box including dead hard drives and ketchup packets at some point as well (no, I have no recollection of why). I remember hanging out in the "open source" area of at least 2 years of Linux World Expo in the '97-98 era and having great chats with Malda and the others in that world, back in the days when Userfriendly was at the height of success.

The link contains where you can follow Rob to cyber-stalk him in the future.

My buddy Len alerted me to the fact that Jeffrey Chapman posted that Vancouver photographer David duChemin took a nasty fall in Italy on his round-the-world photography trip. Ironically David just wrote about risk on his blog. According to Jeffrey David took a bad fall onto concrete and is lucky to be alive and recovering.

David is in a lot of pain, but he hasn't lost his winning spirit, optimism and grace. When called by a friend who asked how he was doing, he mustered the strength to respond "living the dream man; living the dream." Soon enough I suspect that he will be. And I can't wait!

Cool video put together about the Egyptian Revolution that's going on right now. Pretty freaky stuff.

Great news, after 68 days, the First Chilean Miners are free. Awesome news, and an amazing story. Of course, the Internet has weighed in with typical hero :)

Damn, just got into work and saw that Corey Haim was Found Dead of an apparent overdose :( That sucks, I watched him in a ton of great 80's movies... curse of the child stars maybe. RIP Corey.

Wow, Vancouver 2010 looks awesome over at Boston.com's "The Big Picture" photo set. I love the Norwegian curling team's pants (image #10).

Some crazy real world news about bomb detectors that don't work from forgetfoo. Excerpt:

Jim McCormick promised his ADE-651 wand could identify anything, including bombs, simply by waving it around with the right RFID card inside. Yeah, totally fake, and now he's in prison. Too bad Iraq already spent $85 million on them.

Speaking of google, there is now New imagery of Port-au-Prince in Haiti to see some of the extent of the destruction. Sobering stuff :(

Everyone knows how much of a duchebag Kanye West is for stealing the moment from Taylor Swift at the VMAs. Here's my conspiracy theory:

It was a setup, or at least pre-planned on some level, maybe not by Swift, but look at the results of it all:

• Taylor Swift is getting huge kudos and sympathy (probably resulting in more sales and attention)
  
• Beyonce is getting huge kudos for being such a class act. Also I'm sure her video is getting huge "heat" and attention after it is proclaimed as "the best ever".
  
• Kanye gets huge media attention and just has to fake a few tears and say I'm sorry a bunch. Who was thinking about him before a couple of days ago? Also I understand he does this sort of thing a lot, so it's not like it's out of character for him or a big change from the status quo....
  

From the AllFacebook blog: Facebook Announces FriendFeed Acquisition

Facebook has announced this afternoon the acquisition of FriendFeed. For those unaware of the FriendFeed service, it enables users to publish stories just as Facebook does with feeds imported from around the web and open APIs for all information passing through the system. One interesting note about FriendFeed is the team's remarkable ability to scale their application effectively without error.

Interesting, I'm wondering how this is going to affect either company. Personally I don't use or grok friendfeed all that much, but I do like the idea that it's a separate entity that others can glom onto. I hope being absorbed into the 800lb gorilla that is Facebook doesn't affect it's (perceived) independent 3rd party standing.