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Uhm… WTF?

Review & Outlook: Apple's Star Chamber:

Judge Cote's injunction gave Apple until January 14, 2014 to overhaul its antitrust compliance and training procedures, a process that is underway. But in late October Mr. Bromwich began an open-ended, roving investigation of Apple. He demanded immediate interviews starting in November with every top Apple executive and board member, including CEO Tim Cook, lead designer Jony Ive and Al Gore. Does he want to disinter Steve Jobs too?

Apple suggested that he speak with its employees who actually have something to do with antitrust, such as its general counsel or chief compliance officer, whereupon Mr. Bromwich had a tantrum. He made blanket requests for proprietary documents well beyond his mandate and bypassed Apple's in-house counsel by sending letters directly to board members and executives ordering them to meet with him without their lawyers present, accusing the company of "a surprising and disappointing lack of cooperation."

Then, shortly before Thanksgiving and out of the blue, Judge Cote proposed to amend her injunction to grant Mr. Bromwich even greater powers than he already claimed and also to make monthly briefings to her on what he finds—without Apple present. She denied any previous ex parte contact, but Apple's lawyers say Mr. Bromwich told them that he doesn't need to wait for the January deadline because Judge Cote privately instructed him during the interview process for the position to get off to a "fast start."

Wired has a nice piece on Square's new card reader: How Apple's Lightning-Plug Guru Reinvented Square's Card Reader.

I don't understand the "I'm not vaccinating my child" position.

I'm considering picking up Hatching Twitter for my Kindle but I wonder if it's worth $12.

Or, to put it more accurately, is it worth my time? I have a bunch of books on my Kindle that I'm actively in the middle of reading… if we extend "actively" to mean "for an hour every few weeks."

So is this book - about which I've heard good things - something that I should go out of my way to buy and read? Because it's not about the $12… it's just about whether that $12 would be wasted because I buy something and don't read it for a year.

Though I have a reminder set to go off every December 10th, I often hit "close" and then forget about it.

My blog turned 11 on December 10, 2013. Yeesh. It's less than one month younger than my daughter.

The ABRMS license at GitHub will be popular with a few software developers. 🙂

The NSA: An Inside View reminds me of the conversations I've had with my wife about liberties, storing emails, etc.

She has said "They can keep and read all my emails, I don't care. I'm not doing anything wrong and I'm boring." I'm more on the side of don't talk to the police (though not to AJM's level in the comments). I'm more on the side of NOT having my privacy and liberties "softened" over time, because the more things erode, the more the eroded state becomes the new starting point for further erosion of rights and liberties.

But this all exists on some large greyscale slider of sorts. I'm obviously fine with some enforcement of scans at airports, but think that the TSA has gone way too far in several instances. Others would put the point at which they think they've had enough at a different point than me.

Is the government going to find anything even if they - on the incredibly rare chance that they do - look at my emails and stuff? No. But do they deserve to be given the chance? I'm still leaning towards "no."

How I introduced a 27-year-old computer to the Web.

It looks like nobody at Drobo anticipated (or cares about) the change to labels in Mac OS X 10.9 (Mavericks).

This is the installer disk image for Drobo Dashboard. 😛

If you get the chance, please check out my project on Indiegogo. "Lowest Score Wins" is… well, I may as well just copy what it says:

"Lowest Score Wins" (or "LSW") is a first-of-its kind book that will lower your score the very next time you play.

Lots of books promise to make you better… What makes LSW different?

Golf books have traditionally fallen into one of several categories: some purport to help you with the mental game, some will try to assist you with your golf swing, or your short game. These books, though helpful, often fail to help you lower your score… not today, not tomorrow, not next year.

By combining our rich statistical analysis, simple techniques, and gameplan building blocks, LSW will help you build your own Lowest Score Gameplan to shave strokes off your score quickly. We will show you specifically what to do and what pitfalls to avoid every time you play golf. We will show you techniques to quickly improve your game without overhauling your swing. We'll examine statistics - of the game's best, average, and poorest players - and show you how to take advantage of the skills you already possess.

12/14/13 1:47:37.026 PM mDNSResponder[38]: mDNSPlatformTCPSocket: socket error 0 errno 49 (Can't assign requested address)
12/14/13 1:47:37.026 PM mDNSResponder[38]: MakeTCPConn: unable to create TCP socket

And in CURL:

curl: (7) Failed to connect to 17.172.224.47: Can't assign requested address

Essentially all HTTP requests fail (pings still work).

The solution seems to be a variant of:

sudo ifconfig en0 down
sudo route flush
sudo ifconfig en0 up

Saves me from having to reboot, at least.

P.S. I have no idea what causes this issue. It's occurred twice in the last few months, though.

Touch ID:

I've been using Touch ID since I got an iPhone 5s in mid-October. Generally speaking, I like it, and I find it faster than the old swipe-and-passcode method, but I've felt compelled to reteach it my fingerprints twice already. I know this sounds impossible, but its recognition of my prints seems to decay with time.

When I first started using TouchID, I was annoyed as heck with it. I re-programmed my thumb about six times over the first month.

Then I realized that I was probably just not programming the right part of my thumb. The next time I re-programmed my phone, I set it down and picked it up quickly. I pulled it from my pocket. I programmed TouchID the same way I use TouchID. I found that I typically touch far closer to my first knuckle when I use my phone than the first six times I programmed TouchID.

I've noticed no "decay" since this sixth time. I noticed decay the first six times because, gradually, I'd revert to the way I grab my phone and move away from remembering how I'd programmed it.

Behind Apple's mutiny against its court-ordered ebooks monitor - Fortune Features

Not in the way that you might think, either:

The more eye-catching of Apple's claims were its accusations that Bromwich was already insisting on meeting every member of Apple's executive team and board, including former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, Jr., and the company's legendary product designer, Sir Jonathan Ive -- neither of whom had anything to do with antitrust compliance issues, according to Apple (AAPL). In addition, the papers noted, Bromwich was demanding that Apple pay a 15% "administrative fee" to his consulting firm on top of his $1,100 hourly rate and the $1,025 hourly fee of antitrust lawyer Bernard Nigro, who was appointed to assist him because of Bromwich's lack of antitrust experience. (Nigro heads the antitrust group at the law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, where Bromwich was a partner from 1999 to 2010.)

It was, rather, Apple's last claim -- accusing Bromwich of simultaneously playing a quasi-prosecutorial role and yet answering directly to the judge -- which may be the most significant. It signals that Apple is taking aim not just at Bromwich, but also at U.S. District Judge Denise Cote herself.

Android may have the market share lead, but iOS is still where it's at:

iOS-based devices drove more than $543 million dollars in online sales, with iPad taking a 77 percent share. Android-based devices were responsible for $148 million in online sales, a 4.9 percent share of mobile driven online sales.