You probably have an instinct on what makes a ball curve, but there’s more to it than that:
Given an absolutely smooth ball, the direction of the curve may reverse: The same kicking motion will not produce a shot or pass curving in a right-to-left direction, but in a left-to-right direction.
Interesting read.
Reuters:
Apple Inc reached an out-of-court settlement with U.S. states and other complainants in an e-book price-fixing class action lawsuit on Monday, effectively avoiding a trial in which the iPad maker faced more than $800 million in claims.
Apple is currently awaiting the results of its appeal of last July’s finding that Apple was liable for colluding with publishers. Yesterday’s settlement proposal has to be approved by the judge and is contingent on the outcome of the appeal.
Even though Facebook forbids the buying and selling of Facebook pages, there is a thriving black market with a “likes” cartel. There’s a dark side to this, with DDoS attacks part of the cost of doing business. Like so:
“Bro.”
The message had been sent by someone who wasn’t his friend on the social network, someone using the alias “Anthony.*” It was a name Fyk had come to know and dread.
Minutes later, the traffic on his website, FunnierPics.net, nosedived. Google Analytics showed the number of active readers drop from 3,000 to zero instantly.
When Fyk, known online as Jason Michaels, clicked over to his company’s Facebook page, WTF Magazine, he found another message from Anthony.
“Site’s down :(.”
Fyk’s business was under attack, and not for the first time. He’d spent the past few years locked in ferocious virtual combat over his Facebook pages, battling a shadowy group of adversaries that he and his friends call Script Kiddies, on the assumption that they’re young hackers who exploit low-level vulnerabilities on others’ sites.
Fascinating read.
One announcement from WWDC that didn’t get much fanfare was a rule change concerning virtual currencies.
Apps may facilitate transmission of approved virtual currencies provided that they do so in compliance with all state and federal laws for the territories in which the app functions
This allowed the Coin Pocket app in to the App Store.
Dengue is a scourge of a disease. It’s spread by mosquitos and kills more than a million people every year.
The disease is carried by mosquitoes, mostly the Aedes aegypti. Found in urban areas, Ae. aegypti has proven a particularly difficult mosquito species to control—it has developed a resistance to common insecticides and, because it bites during the day, bed nets are no protection against it. But now Brazilian health officials are running a pilot program using genetically modified mosquitoes to breed the population to death. The mosquitoes are the invention of British biotech company Oxitec, and they’ve had a gene inserted into them that kills them. In the lab, the mosquitoes can be fed a sort of antidote: a supplement that keeps them alive until it’s time to release them. Once they’re released, the clock starts ticking.
Oxitec’s mosquito-suppression solution consists of releasing the modified male mosquitoes into the wild—male mosquitoes don’t bite; it’s the females who do. The Oxitec males mate with female mosquitoes and create progeny that also have the lethal gene. Without the supplement, those progeny die. “By applying the Oxitec Control Programme to an area,” the company’s website says, “the mosquito population in that area can be dramatically reduced or eliminated.”
Remarkable. Here’s hoping this works, with no hidden consequences.
If you’ve ever kicked a soccer ball around, hit one with your forehead, you’ll appreciate this animated take on the evolution of soccer ball construction.
I found this profile frustrating, vexing. The tone is objective, but the prose manages to be damning at the same time, working in all the standard, shopworn stereotypes the Apple community has gotten used to having thrown their way.
Read the Only Apple piece by John Gruber instead. Spot on.
Happy Father’s Day from all of us to all of you fathers out there!
Everyone knows about Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe, the former drummer and bass player for The Beatles who missed out on perhaps the biggest opportunity in musical history. But here are some other candidates for the Mount Rushmore of lousy timing.
Who controls the cloud? Interesting article on the companies battling it out for cloud supremacy.
[VIDEO] Kyle Russell writes for Tech Crunch and covers Google Glass, among other things. Worlds collide as Kyle appears on a crushingly satirical Daily Show piece (embedded in the original post) on Glass.
The linked article gives an insider’s view on the making of the video.
Rather than respond to the show’s criticisms of Glass (because, let’s face it, they have a point), I thought it would be fun to shed light on what it’s actually like to film a segment on The Daily Show.
First off, we all knew exactly what we were getting into. I was contacted by a producer of the show who identified himself as such. There were no attempts made to trick any of us with claims that they were a news team from out of town.
An entertaining read. Watch the video first.
I’ve long been a fan of Miles O’Brien. He’s my kind of journalist, always curious and digging for understanding. Though he has covered a wide range of stories in his career, his focus has always been science and technology.
Then he lost his arm. Great read.
Here’s the scoop on what happened. Let’s hope that this adventure is in the past. This business just makes me angry.
The kicker:
More than three years after Google first got serious about tablets with Android 3.0 Honeycomb, it’s not even the league next door to the league inhabited by the iPad, which now has more than a half-million apps designed especially for it.
Why would Google make a deal with Virgin’s space tourism arm?
Google is in talks with Virgin Galactic about a deal that will hand it crucial access to satellite-launch technology and an equity stake in Sir Richard Branson’s $2bn (£1.2bn) space tourism venture.
The key is satellite launch technology, something Google needs.
Apple is offering a free exchange for certain of its European USB power adapters:
Apple has determined that, in rare cases, the Apple 5W European USB power adapter may overheat and pose a safety risk. This adapter came with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S models shipped from October 2009 to September 2012 in the countries listed below. It was also sold as a standalone accessory.
To learn more, visit Apple’s official adapter exchange page.
Fortune:
An entire decade passed before Fadell asked VCs for cash again. But what a decade it was. Fadell abandoned Fuse Systems and joined Apple to lead the team that created the iPod. That singular achievement–the iPod rejuvenated Apple and reordered the music industry–transformed him from a struggling startup guy to an accomplished executive who’d withstood the sound and fury of Steve Jobs. Fadell became known around Silicon Valley as the mercurial “godfather” of the iPod, and he added another dazzling line to his résumé by assisting in the development of the iPhone. When he stepped down from Apple’s management team in 2008, there was much speculation about his next move.
Terrific read.
Elon Musk posted this on the Tesla blog today:
Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters. That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.
Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology.
This is a pretty huge step. Some might see this as self-serving on Musk’s part, but I see this as altruistic, through and through.
Every four years, the world spins off its axis for this spot of fun. Brazil vs. Croatia. Let the games begin.
My favorite line from this article:
For wearing headphones, he would get $11 million more than he makes per year for doing what he does best, playing basketball.
SeekingAlpha (free reg-wall):
Xiaomi, the world’s fastest growing phone vendor, has surpassed Apple (AAPL) in China. Canalys Report puts Xiaomi as the third biggest phone vendor in China in Q1 2014. Copycatting the iPhone has made Xiaomi, a four-year old company, the 6th largest global seller of smartphones.
The rapid rise of Xiaomi is due in part to Apple’s complacent attitude towards it. While Apple took Samsung to court for copying some of the features of the iPhone, Apple allowed Xiaomi to become a $10 billion company by selling iPhone clones using the Android OS. Xiaomi hired Google veteran Hugo Barra last year. Barra is spearheading Xiaomi’s expansion in 10 countries this year.
The linked article makes a pretty solid case comparing Samsung’s co-opting of the iPhone look-and-feel with Xiaomi’s approach. While Apple’s lawsuit against Samsung has made the headlines, there’s been nothing made about Xiaomi’s interface.
Amazon just launched their Prime Music service, promising more than a million songs, all free to members of Amazon Prime. Since I’m an Amazon Prime member, thought I’d take it for a spin.
If you’ve ever spent time in New York City, storefronts like these will ring familiar. Zig Zag Records, Optimo Cigars, Casanova Menswear, all of these ancient places are the old that is being swept away for the new. Take a look at these pictures. To me, they bring a pang of nostalgia.
The survey itself is interesting enough. But what really caught my eye is the interactive nature of the interface.
Try this: Click Country on the left side of the window, then click Describe in the upper left. This gives you a breakdown of survey participants by country. I really liked the ability to play with the survey data. Wish all surveys were built this way.
[VIDEO] Nintendo is doing everything they can to raise awareness and adoption of their stagnant Wii U console. They made inroads this week at E3 with a boatload of new games, led by the latest incarnation of their flagship Zelda series.
The latest Zelda game for Wii U is vast and beautiful, with a huge world for players to explore. Grass shimmers underfoot and everything feels grander in scope. Nintendo says it wants to break its own conventions for the franchise and give players more options for how they tackle challenges and puzzles.
Watch the trailer embedded in the original post to get a sense of things. Sadly, we’ll have to wait until next year to be able to get our hands on the new Zelda game. This is what Nintendo needed to do. Clearly, waiting until 2015 to finally make their platform relevant is not ideal. But Nintendo has the cash to ride this out. The question is, will the Wii U hardware still be competitive in 2015? That’s a long time between hardware revs.
From the Feedly blog:
Criminals are attacking feedly with a distributed denial of service attack (DDoS). The attacker is trying to extort us money to make it stop. We refused to give in and are working with our network providers to mitigate the attack as best as we can.
Forbes:
John Paul DeJoria, the billionaire entrepreneur behind Paul Mitchell shampoo and Patron tequila is jumping into the wireless phone business.
His new company ROK Mobile (cofounded with British entrepreneur Johnathan Kendrick) is offering unlimited talk, text and data with an added sweetener of free music streaming. ROK Mobile is contract free and will cost $49.99 a month. DeJoria has inked music deals with Warner Music, Sony and Universal, giving users more than 20 million songs. Says DeJoria: “Everything you can find on iTunes, we have.”
$49.95 a month for unlimited talk, text, data and music is a price disruption.
I just can’t see this succeeding in the mainstream consumer market. Sony’s brand just doesn’t have the same relevance, same strength as it used to have. I can see Sony getting some traction with console gamers, but they’ll still have to battle Apple, Google, and now Amazon for even that mindshare.
Press the pen’s sensor against an object, the pen’s ink becomes that color. Scan an orange, you are drawing in orange. Scan a blade of grass, you’re drawing in a rich shade of green. Cool idea, but be aware this is a kickstarter. All the usual caveats apply.