UFies.org

Apostrophes Needed?

Apostrophes and when to use them over on Slate says that they arent needed anymore.

One hundred and eighteen miles north of London, in the town of Boston, England, there lives a retired newspaperman named John Richards who is experiencing an unusually rotten spring. Richards is the founder and chairman of something called the Apostrophe Protection Society. His world, at least as related to the tiny mark that denotes possessives and the omission of letters from certain words, appears to be crashing down around him.

Total apostrophes count in the article on how they arent needed anymore? 45
Total apostrophes in this article: 0

Via Staticred.

Big X.Org Security Advisory

A big X.Org Security Advisory yesterday:

Ilja van Sprundel, a security researcher with IOActive, has discovered a large number of issues in the way various X client libraries handle the responses they receive from servers, and has worked with X.Org’s security team to analyze, confirm, and fix these issues.

Fixes are underway already, and it sounds like (to someone not hugely versed in deep x.org code) the issues aren’t going to affect the normal linux user running behind a firewall, but if you run unchecked code from untrusted sources locally (or allow other users to connect to the X.org port remotely), be careful. Keep up to date with updates and make sure your system is patched over the next week or two.

Digg's Google Reader Replacement In Beta In June

Remember the coming apocalypse? No, not the 2012 thing, the even worse one, with Google Reader being phased out? Good to see that Digg’s Google Reader replacement to launch as beta in June according to The Verge.

Personally I’m still holding out hope that Google will come to their senses and not kill Google Reader :(

Wonderful Colorful House iPad app [Plug]

Just a quick plug for my buddy John who just launched his Wonderful Colorful House iPad app.

The trip started about 15 years ago when I made up a bed-time story for my daughter, Gabrielle. It was about a kid in the great white North, Tullik, who hated cold and hated white, and who was looking for a better — more wonderful — home. She loved the story, and asked me for it repeatedly, and suggested that I write it down.

Launching an app is hard, and huge kudos go to him for the launch!

Of course, he never reads ufies and eshews it as a source of news and breaking stories, so realistically, he’ll never see this :P

Full Scale Lego X-Wing Is the Largest Model In History

From my buddy @jtstrocel comes this amazing story on Gizmodo of an Incredible Full Scale Lego X-Wing Is the Largest Model In History.

Seriously, how cool is this.

Arrested Development Ubercut: 18 running gags

Getting ready for the new season? Check out the Arrested Development ubercut: 18 running gags.

BBC: Coffee Addiction

BBC News - Coffee addiction: Do people consume too much caffeine?

I’d read this but I’ve only had one and a half cups since I got into the office an hour ago.

(I really wish I was just joking about that)

Evernote Reminders Are Here on Mac, iOS and Web

Really happy to see this morning that Evernote Reminders Are Here on Mac, iOS and Web, fixing one of the biggest missing bits from my ability to use Evernote for everything I do all the time. The reminders UI isn’t bad, in my opinion of a user, but still might need some tweaking.

Still, the ability to hit a button on a new or existing note and set a date to be reminded by push notification is pretty damn cool. Congrats to the Evernote team on a nice update and I can’t wait to use this more!

There’s a tutorial on reminders as well as the video linked in the main article.

Doctor Who Recap and Preparation Trailer

Are you a Whovian? Or even a fan of Doctor Who? You’ll want to make sure you watch the recap and prep trailer, featuring all your favorite Doctors.

Chris Hadfield's Post-landing Interview With NASA

Speaking of awesome people, check out Chris Hadfield’s Post-landing Interview With NASA.

Awesome Animals (Video

Via Break.com: People Aren’t the Only Awesome People Video. A great spoof on the ‘People are Awesome’ Videos.

Next Generation Xbox One Detailed

Next Generation Xbox One Unveiled, Everything You Need To Know | Macgasm over at Macgasm.

The biggest oddities for me are that it’s not going to be backwards compatible with XBox 360 games, and the DRM will prevent used games (as the game serial # is now tied to your account).

The latter I see as a natural evolution to the similar system as Apple has for tying iOS apps to your user account. It makes sense, but the side effect of killing the used game market (if it’s true) is a bad one, especially when you’re talking about $60 games instead of $1.99 apps.

The former I honestly don’t believe it’s true. MS is the king of backwards compatibility, and making it so that a hardcore games (no doubt considerable) library of XBox360 games is useless (unless they now have two XBoxes hooked up at all times) just seems ridiculous. I know the new XBox One is more than just gaming, but really, I don’t believe that’ll happen. Guess we’ll see on launch day (no idea other than “later this year”) when you can buy it (no idea for how much).

Flickr Makes Big Site Changes

Flickr’s new stuff:

A terabyte of storage
A new look

Looks very pinterest-y, with a look similar to google+ and the “masonary” photo layout. Looks good so far, hopefully it’s more than a coat of paint and they’re going to really drive Flickr to be a great site.

Google Devs Install Ubuntu on Google Glass

In today’s version of “completely pointless but epically awesome hacking news”: Google Devs Install Ubuntu on Google Glass | OMG! Ubuntu!

In a session at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco, cheekily titled “Voiding your warranty”, developers shared how to root Google Glass and install an alternative operating system on it. OS of choice for the demo being Ubuntu.

That’s pretty damn cool :)

Star Trek: Science mistakes

Celebrating the fact that the new Star Trek movie is out this weekend, here’s a list of Star Trek Science mistakes from Slate.com.

The problem is distance. Unless Delta Vega were a moon of Vulcan (and in the original series Spock says his planet has no moon), the planet would be way, way too far away to see as anything but a point of light in the sky. And that’s if it’s in the same star system; from another star, even Vulcan’s star might be too far away to see (also, Delta Vega is established in the original series as a remote planet, the location of a dilithium mining station).