Sponsored by Squarespace (use code FREQUENCY3 for 10% off).

Paste the code above into your page.

• Evernote resets all passwords after user information stolen in security breach | The Verge
  Popular note-taking service Evernote has reset all user passwords after information including usernames, email addresses, and encrypted passwords was stolen in a security breach. A warning on the service's official blog — which experienced loading problems soon after being posted — emphasises that no content was either "accessed, changed, or lost," but advises users that they will be prompted to choose a new password next time they log in, and provides advice on selecting a secure word or phrase. The passwords taken in the breach were both hashed and salted, meaning that they should be protected from all but the most dedicated cracking attempts, but the blog post does not explain which encryption algorithm was used. According to an email from Evernote, "unusual and potentially malicious activity" was first detected by the company's security team on February 28th. Evernote plans to release updates to its native apps for various platforms "over the next several hours" in an attempt to smooth out the password reset process for all users.
• For First Time, Baby Is Cured of H.I.V., Doctors Say - NYTimes.com
  Doctors announced on Sunday that a baby had been cured of an H.I.V. infection for the first time, a startling development that could change how infected newborns are treated and sharply reduce the number of children living with the virus that causes AIDS. The baby, born in rural Mississippi, was treated aggressively with antiretroviral drugs starting around 30 hours after birth, something that is not usually done. If further study shows this works in other babies, it will almost certainly be recommended globally. The United Nations estimates that 330,000 babies were newly infected in 2011, the most recent year for which there is data, and that more than three million children globally are living with H.I.V. If the report is confirmed, the child born in Mississippi would be only the second well-documented case of a cure in the world. That could give a lift to research aimed at a cure, something that only a few years ago was thought to be virtually impossible, though some experts said the findings in the baby would probably not be relevant to adults. Some outside experts, who have not yet heard all the details, said they needed convincing that the baby had truly been infected. If not, this would be a case of prevention, something already done for babies born to infected mothers.
• Sorry, Nerds, But Obama Was Right About The Jedi Meld (And Metaphysics) | MIT Center for Civic Media
  During a heated discussion on the sequester, a frustrated President Barack Obama made the following statement to the press corps as they challenged him to show more leadership in negotiations: "I'm presenting a fair deal, the fact that they don’t take it means that I should somehow, you know, do a Jedi mind meld with these folks and convince them to do what’s right." Not only is the Jedi Meld, through general acceptance and uncontroversial use, authoritatively established within the official Star Wars universe: it was the right reference for Obama to make. Jedi Mind Tricks, according to Wookieepedia, "refer to a spectrum of Force powers which influenced the thoughts of sentient creatures"; the Vulcan Mind-meld, according to Wikipedia, "is a technique for sharing thoughts, experiences, memories, and knowledge with another individual." Both are powerful methods of influence, to be sure, but neither fully captures what Obama was suggesting when he said he could not "do a Jedi mind meld with these folks and convince them to do what’s right." (emphasis added) Rather, the most appropriate method for Obama would be a Jedi Meld. For it is the Jedi Meld, rather than its more familiar cousins, which would allow Obama to be as effective as he suggested he would like to be, and arguably the only one which allows him to be effective in the particular way he describes.
• Einhorn's Greenlight Drops "Silly" Apple Suit - John Paczkowski - News - AllThingsD
  Einhorn’s Greenlight Capital on Friday withdrew the suit it brought against Apple over a proxy proposal that would have allowed shareholders to vote on eliminating preferred stock from the company charter. Last week, Apple yanked that proposal from its shareholder meeting, after a federal judge ruled it had been “impermissibly bundled” with other matters requiring shareholder consideration, and issued an injunction preliminarily blocking a vote on it. Apple CEO Tim Cook had characterized Greenlight’s suit as a “silly sideshow.”
• Apple Stock - Business Insider
  It was an up day for the market and most technology stocks, but not for Apple. Apple stock fell another 2.5% to close at $430--its lowest closing price since the stock's slide began last September. Apple is now down almost 40% from its peak. And for the first time in forever, anyone who has bought Apple in the past year and held it has lost money on it.
• Evernote Saw First Signs Of Hacking On Feb. 28: Emails, Passwords And Usernames Accessed But Not Your Data Or Payment Details | TechCrunch
  Phil Libin, Evernote’s CEO and founder, told TechCrunch in an email everything is running, although if you try to access the site things may not work as normal at the moment: “We just pushed out a password reset, so the servers are going to be saturated for a bit,” he wrote. “Everything is up, although response is choppy. There’s no threat to user data that we’re aware of.”
• How an algorithm came up with Amazon's KEEP CALM AND RAPE A LOT t-shirt
  You may have heard that Amazon is selling a "KEEP CALM AND RAPE A LOT" t-shirt. How did such a thing come to pass? Well, as Pete Ashton explains, this is a weird outcome of an automated algorithm that just tries random variations on "KEEP CALM AND," offering them for sale in Amazon's third-party marketplace and printing them on demand if any of them manage to find a buyer. The t-shirts are created by an algorithm. The word “algorithm” is a little scary to some people because they don’t know what it means. It’s basically a process automated by a computer programme, sometimes simple, sometimes complex as hell. Amazon’s recommendations are powered by an algorithm. They look at what you’ve been browsing and buying, find patterns in that behaviour and show you things the algorithm things you might like to buy. Amazons algorithms are very complex and powerful, which is why they work. The algorithm that creates these t-shirts is not complex or powerful.
• CloudFlare Was Down Due To Edge Routers Crashing, Taking Down 785,000 Websites Including 4chan, Wikileaks, Metallica.com | TechCrunch
  Security and caching service CloudFlare was down for close to an hour due to an issue with its edge routers. It’s now all back up and running. As the service adds a layer between 785,000 websites and their users in order to speed up traffic and prevent DDoS attacks and other security issues, all of those websites were affected — 4chan was one of them.“At around 9:47 UTC (1:47 AM in California), a change got pushed out. It caused the edge routers in our network to crash,” co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince told us over the phone. “I don’t want to throw the routers’ vendor under the bus, but it caused them to crash. If you sent a packet to one of our IP addresses, you would get back a response that there was no router,” he continued.
• Apple finally catching up with new iMac demand, now shipping both sizes in 1-3 days | 9to5Mac
  Apple seems to have finally caught up with demand for its latest iMac models. Both the new 21.5-inch and 27-inch iMacs are now shipping from Apple’s online store in 1-3 business days. Up until earlier today, Apple’s new iMacs were quoted as having a shipping time of 2-3 weeks for the 21.5-inch model and 3-4 weeks for the larger 27-inch configurations. Apple’s redesigned iMacs models have been supply constrained since their November and December launches. Apple CEO Tim Cook noted multiple times during earnings calls and other public appearances that the iMacs are seeing significant shortages. During an internal “Town Hall” meeting with employees, Cook blamed low Q1 Mac sales on low supply of Apple’s newest Mac lines.
• AnandTech - Seagate to Discontinue 7200rpm 2.5" Drives Later This Year
  Earlier today X-bit Labs reported that Seagate will stop the production of their 7200RPM 2.5" drives by the end of this year. Anandtech just got a confirmation from Seagate that this is really the case. Seagate currently offers four 7200RPM 2.5" lineups: Momentus 7200.4, 7200.2, Momentus Thin 7200, and Momentus XT. The latter is Seagate's hybrid drive, which couples the spinning platters with 8GB of SLC NAND for caching purposes. The move makes sense when looking at the market's state. 7200RPM mobile hard drives have always been a premium product and are mostly found in high-end laptops or built-to-order configurations. Due to the decline in SSD prices over the last few years, the market for faster hard drives has quickly faded away because users seeking for performance have opted for SSDs instead of 7200RPM hard drives. While 7200RPM 2.5" hard drives are still significantly cheaper per GB than SSDs, even a small (32-128GB) SSD will provide better overall performance when used as an OS and applications drive, and high-end laptops can often be configured with dual-drives to overcome the capacity issue (especially with mSATA around or by removing the optical drive).
• Polaroid to make Socialmatic Camera a reality for fans of Instagram, recursion
  Instagram owes its distinctive identity to Polaroid's OneStep cameras; it's now time to return the favor. Socialmatic has signed a deal for a production, Polaroid-branded version of its 2012 Socialmatic Camera concept you see above, which translates the mobile app's retro icon to a real-world, instant-print shooter. While technical details are scarce, the agreement will see accessory maker C&A Marketing build and sell the design sometime in the first quarter of 2014. If the finished Polaroid work is anything like the concept, it could be more than a novelty with its interchangeable lens system, 4.3-inch touchscreen, Bluetooth, WiFi and 16GB of storage. We don't know if the camera will ship with Android, but we hope it does -- there would be an appropriately Xzibit-like aspect to running Instagram on top of an Instagram-shaped camera.
• Panic Blog » The Lightning Digital AV Adapter Surprise
  There’s a lot more going on in this adapter than we expected: indeed, we think the Lightning Digital AV Adapter outputs video by using AirPlay (or similar MPEG streaming).
• Typedia: Blog: Type News: Nuclear Device
  Rian Hughes tries to “manage one major release of new fonts per year”, but admits to a “slip” in 2012. The latest batch of faces for his Device Collection more than makes up for the unintended hiatus — with plenty of the distinctive, neo-retro display type we’ve come to expect from Hughes.
• The Perfect Cup of Tea
  Making a perfect cuppa every time is easy.
• "All You Zombies-": Robert A. Heinlein: Amazon.com: Kindle Store
  A young man walks into a bar and meets a time-traveling bartender whose origins -- and relation to the young man -- are more convoluted and stranger than the snake-swallowing-his-tail ring on the barkeep's finger.
• iTunes - Movies - 12 Monkeys
  Cole (Bruce Willis) is sent back in time to save the human race from a deadly virus that has forced mankind into dank underground communities in the future. Along his travels, he encounters a psychiatrist (Madeleine Stowe) and a mental patient, brilliantly portrayed by Brad Pitt, who may hold the key to the mysterious rogue group, the Army of the 12 Monkeys, thought to be responsible for unleashing the killer disease. Believing he can obtain a pure virus sample in order to find a cure in the future, he is met with one riddle after another that puts him in a race with time. This sci-fi masterpiece from the genius mind of Terry Gilliam is a modern-day classic.
• 5by5
  Use the form below to subscribe to The Frequency Newsletter. Sent only when we release an episode, the newsletter contains the latest episode's details, description, notes, and links, delivered right to your inbox.