Russel Brand: Wow.

People all over my social media feeds have been posting this Russel Brand interview all day long. I ignored it for a while, because I've always been generally quite dismissive of Russel Brand. After the first three minutes, my perspective changed.

First, I wish I was that articulate and passionate about anything.  Second, he's right about voting - what is the point?

Undercover and Espionage: Peace of Mind For the Tinfoil-Hat Set

Since security and privacy are on everyone's mind these days, I thought I'd share a couple of security-related products for the (justifiably) paranoid and tinfoil-hatted amongst you.

First, Undercover is a tiny, ingenious app by software maker Orbicule which runs innocuosuly in the background of your computer until you report it stolen via your online dashboard. At this point, Undercover kicks into gear, watching for your computer to connect to the Internet by any means, including ethernet, wi-fi or even Bluetooth. It then begins reporting your computer's location, its IP address, screenshots and keylogs in a comprehensive theft report that John Q. Law can use to recover your Precioussss for you. Particularly for laptop users, it's sneaky little supplement to Find My Mac that can give you an extra layer of peace of mind. It's $50, but if you use the link above to let 'em know I sent you, you'll get 25% off.

Next up is Espionage, by Tao Effect. This little gem encrypts files, folders, email - whatever - allowing you to use multiple master passwords to keep your files secure. Plus, they insist they haven't given those nosey Parkers over at the NSA any back doors into their encryption software, so you can be confident your data is safe from prying eyes. Espionage is $29.99, but you can save 10% by using the code UNDERCOVER10 until October 31st.

A Serious Imaging Company →

From Dave Caolo on TUAW:

Finally, the message delivered by the iPhone 5s camera is clear: Apple is becoming a serious imaging company. They spent a lot of time on that camera. You don't need a point-and-shoot camera anymore. There's no need to find a cable or a memory card reader. This is your camera.

This is why it's so frustrating to serious photographers that on the other side of the serious imaging equation -- ie. serious image processing -- all we're getting from Apple is crickets.

I remember being all excited and diving in to the Aperture 3.0 update just as my wife and I were leaving for a vacation in Paris. We took that vacation in February 2010. The current version of Aperture is 3.4.5. In contrast, Adobe Lightroom version 3.0 was released in June of 2010. Lightroom 5.2 release candidate is available now on Adobe Labs.

On the other hand, during the keynote, Phil Schiller did say that the new camera system is "for the rest of us", though - for the folks that just want to get take a picture, and let their cameraphone do the work.

Let Me Explain Why Miley Cyrus’ VMA Performance Was Our Top Story This Morning | The Onion →

So, as managing editor of CNN.com, I want our readers to know this: All you are to us, and all you will ever be to us, are eyeballs. The more eyeballs on our content, the more cash we can ask for. Period. And if we’re able to get more eyeballs, that means I’ve done my job, which gets me congratulations from my bosses, which encourages me to put up even more stupid bullshit on the homepage.

I don’t hesitate to call it stupid bullshit because we all know it’s stupid bullshit. We know it and you know it. We also know that you are probably dumb enough, or bored enough, or both, to click on the stupid bullshit anyway, and that you will continue to do so as long as we keep putting it in front of your big, idiot faces.

So good. And by the way, I'm excited to see what my pageviews look like, just for linking to a story mocking CNN for putting Miley Cyrus in the spot usually reserved for the most important news in the world.

If Politicians Had to Debug Laws Like Software, They'd Fix the Bugs | Wired Opinion | Wired.com →

In the spring, members of Congress set off to fly home for a holiday—and ran into mammoth lines at the airports. Why were things so bad? Because of airport furloughs caused by the “sequester.”

Critics warned that the sequester would cause hardship throughout the country, but congress-folk didn’t care — until they had to share in the pain. When they discovered that the sequester was eating into their vacation time, they rushed back to the Capitol and passed a law restoring funding to airports, working so fast that part of the bill was handwritten.

In short, when congress has to eat their own dogfood, they get shit done.

I like the idea from the comments, that the laws should be commented, just as code is commented.