Kickstarter backers in line for an Android or touchscreen Windows 8 port of Björk’s app/album Biophilia are going to be be disappointed: the project has been put on hold indefinitely, reports Pitchfork. In a letter to the project’s contributors, the Biophilia team explains that “the costs were too gigantic and we were too optimistic,” deciding that it would be better to stop the project than let it drag on, although it didn’t rule out coming back to it in the future.

People are finally beginning to understand the issues I’ve been tightening my tinfoil hat over for years now. Refreshing. Where we go from here, is a choice I leave to you. Google’s customers should be free to vote with their feet (or their data), and to use services that offer them the greatest degree of privacy protection, both via technology and the law. Google’s total failure to be transparent on this issue robs its customers of the ability to take reasonable steps to protect their own communications from warrantless government surveillance.

It’s taken longer than expected but it has finally happened: unsigned desktop applications run on Windows RT. Ironically, a vulnerability in the Windows kernel that has existed for some time and got ported to ARM just like the rest of Windows made this possible. MSFT’s artificial incompatibility does not work because Windows RT is not in any way reduced in functionality. It’s a clean port, and a good one. But deep in the kernel, in a hashed and signed data section protected by UEFI’s Secure Boot, lies a byte that represents the minimum signing level.

I’m quite glad Google maps is back on the iPhone. I find its accuracy and ability to give me transit directions most useful. Here are a couple of screenshots of Google doing what it does best. God, why won’t you just sign in already? We’ve creeped on you as much as we can from the outside, now we want to be inside. Come on. Let us in. We’re you’re friends! We won’t hurt you.

(CNN) - In kindergarten, Owen Kellogg came home sobbing one day because another boy at school had told him that he had a peanut, and that he was going to force Owen to eat it. CNN was never a good news source - but the combination of Piers Morgan pontificating on the superiority of the British system of non-freedom and now this? Yep, CNN is down the shitter. Read more: http://www.

“[The agreement] recognizes the shift to mobility,” said David G. Simpson, DISA’s vice director and senior procurement executive. “Microsoft is committed to making sure that the technology within the agreement has a mobile-first focus, and we expect to begin to take advantage of Microsoft’s mobile offerings as part of our enterprise mobility ecosystem.” Make no mistake - there can be no shift to mobility. You cannot productively work with a computer unless you are sitting down and focusing on the task at hand.

Striking piece by Michael Moore on the hypocrisy of saying “I support our troops”. I don’t yet know what the stats are for Canadian troops, though it’s common knowledge that we participate in the same cash/land/resource grabbing operations to our own ethical detriment. I don’t “support the troops” or any of those other hollow and hypocritical platitudes uttered by Republicans and frightened Democrats. Here’s what I do support: I support them coming home.

When consumers buy a smartphone they expect that there will be a suite of online services run by its vendor - they’ll be told to use these services, and they’ll happily obey. If you ask people to buy a phone and choose their own services and products they’ll freak. No one likes freedom - when they’re beset by it they throw off its shackles with all due haste. Linux also lacks any semblance of a good CalDAV/CardDAV or ActiveSync implementation, which is the foundation of a smartphone’s usefulness as a synchronized e-mail, calendar and contact manager.

The main contention with the deal, the activists say, is that Microsoft products bought by the government are imported, expensive and their code source is usually closed and protected by rigid copyright rules which do not allow for knowledge sharing and generation. Meanwhile, an alternative lies with locally conceived, less expensive software, whose open code source enables copying, sharing and building more software. I spent a good deal of my time off trying to generate some enthusiasm and appreciation for Windows 8 - surely there had to be wisdom of some kind behind its radical, schizoid redesign.

OH: “No, I’m not a pessimist. The world shits on everybody. Pretending it ain’t shit makes you an idiot, not an optimist.”