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My Phone Knows Everything About Me and I’m Cool With That

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Andrew Hyde gets around. The iPhone Tracker app confirms this.

Andrew Hyde sold all of his worldly possessions last August and began a trip around the world. He makes no secret of this — its detailed on his website. We’re well aware that personal information becomes vulnerable whenever we agree to the terms of service of yet another fun geo-location mobile app as it typically utilizes information from the phone’s positioning to track real-time location. But this week, geodata geek and author Pete Warden released an open-source iPhone application that exploits a file in iPhone 4 (or iPad 3G) containing all recorded geographic data in the phone’s history.

The information is available without a password to anyone with access to a laptop that the iPhone in question has synced with, notes Hyde. iPhones and iPads on iOS 4 record approximate the data based on the devices distance from the cell tower it is connected to at any given time. Is this something to worry about? Not really. Unless you’re a criminal with a bullshit alibi — data from cellphones and other mobile devices have been used by authorities for years.

Thanks to a California Supreme Court decision in January, no warrant is required for authorities in our state to search cell phones or mobile devices of arrestees.

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Amazon Cloud Crash Makes it Harder to Procrastinate

when amazon's cloud goes down As if the traffic situation isn’t about to be a nightmare IRL with President Obama arriving at LAX around 2:30 p.m., an outage affecting web apps and services dependent on Amazon’s EC2 servers has crashed many of our favorite online procrastinatory tools and destinations.

What does this mean? We haven’t been able to monitor our social networks with Hootsuite, check in on Foursquare, ask questions on Quora, or check in on the real news of the day at Reddit for… going on twelve hours!

When can we freely procrastinate again? Amazon’s latest update asks us to give them “a few hours.” But that’s just a “high-level ballpark estimate.”

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Tina Fey and Steve Martin Share Wisdom and Wit at Nokia Theatre

Tina Fey and steve Martin
Tina Fey and Steve Martin yuck it up at a “Live Talks Los Angeles” conversation at Nokia Theatre Tuesday night. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)

Nokia Theatre was packed Tuesday night for a one-off chat and Q&A at which Steve Martin and Tina Fey expanded on highlights from her new book “Bossypants.” What was billed as a summit of two comic writers with recently released books was more of a casual three-way love fest between Martin, Fey and the audience, which laughed and applauded with near-absurd frequency.

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‘Restrepo’ Director Tim Hetherington Killed in Libya

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Academy-Award nominated film director and war photographer Tim Hetherington was killed in Libya Wednesday along with award-winning Getty photographer Chris Hondros, according to Business Insider and ABC News.

UPDATE: Later reports indicated that Hetherington was killed in the attack while Hondros and at least one other journalist were seriously wounded. Hondros later died of his wounds at the hospital.

Hetherington was last heard from via Twitter on Tuesday: “In besieged Libyan city of Misrata. Indiscriminate shelling by Qaddafi forces. No sign of NATO.”

Three other journalists were injured in the mortar attack that killed Hetherington and Hondros in Misrata according to ABC News. The New York Times is only confirming the death of Hetherington, stating that Chris Hondros and one other photographer remain hospitalized in “grave” condition. Photojournalist Guy Martin was also reported to be gravely wounded in the attack.

Hetherington’s acclaimed 2010 documentary on the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan, “Restrepo,” was nominated for an Academy Award. The film was co-directed by Sebastian Junger.

Chris Hondros’ most recent photos from Misrata, dated April 20, can be seen at Getty Images. In recent years Hetherington worked with ABC’s Nightline, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, among other publications. The Liverpool, UK-born photojournalist was 41 years old.

This post was syndicated from LAist.com, where I am Associate Editor. A direct link to my LAist.com post index is at the top of my blog. This post was originally published here on April 20, 2011 at 10:40 a.m.