From Canada: You’re welcome, America.

These are really well done.

[Via Kottke]

After the unprecedented breach of hacking tools and exploits stolen from the US National Security Agency’s elite hacking unit, some privacy advocates see it as clear vindication of Apple in its fight with the FBI earlier this year.

Indeed.

This is such a great story from one of the greatest Canadian bands ever.

Apple held all-hands meetings with retail employees this weekend to introduce major new changes, including new and renamed positions, a new credo, and new store layouts, according to multiple retail sources.

I’m glad to see Apple retail continuing to change as the company changes. For most people the stores are the first contact with Apple and they should reflect what the company is doing.

Apple Music Festival 10 returns to London in September for 10 exhilarating nights of live music. Residents of the UK can win tickets to the gigs. Apple Music members around the world can watch the performances for free. Ticket applications will be opening soon. Follow @AppleMusic on Twitter and Snapchat for up-to-the-minute information and join the #AMF10 conversation.

These festivals are truly special. I’ve attended a number of them in London over the years and loved each one. The Roundhouse is a classic music venue and shows off the best for Apple and the bands performing.

Pad and Quill has partnered with The Loop to offer you a chance to win a $700 Back to Work giveaway. One winner will receive a Luxury Briefcase, Leather Ipad pro case, Woodline case for the Iphone, and a Classic leather band for the Apple Watch.” Sign up for your chance to win!

Zakk is the reason I picked up the guitar again after a few years away from playing. He is an incredible guitarist—acoustic and electric— and having met him a number of times, he is a great person. I learned how to play almost every song he released, just so I could see how he did chord progressions and timing.

LOL!

Pandora will be streaming Metallica’s concert from U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis at 9:00 pm CT time tonight.

P.S. WTF Apple? Time to pay attention to some music other than Pop or Rap.

The launch isn’t until 2018, but it’s good that people are working on a standard now.

On August 2nd, Microsoft released the Anniversary Update for Windows 10 and when the bits arrived on computers around the globe, it brought with it new features and also broke webcams for millions of consumers. If your webcam has stopped functioning since the release of the Anniversary update, you are not alone but the good news is a fix is coming, hopefully in September.

September? WTF?!

I always regretted not getting one of these.

“The need to place cameras on hanging truss over the field of play in venues with no catwalks or roof access led us to working with several companies to find a way hang a camera and then be able to pan, tilt, focus and transmit images in real-time,” said David Phillip, a photographer for The Associated Press who set up the AP’s robotic and remote cameras for the 2016 Olympics. “The process is on-going as we continue to work on improving the performance and design.”

There has been some outstanding images and video from the Olympics.

Pandora has the best music algorithm in the business—the choice of the next song is almost always spot on. The app is easy to use and the service always works. I’m a paying subscriber of Pandora and I can wait for the on-demand service to hit. I’ll definitely be subscribing to that.

More than 30 major technology companies are joining the U.S. government to crack down on automated, prerecorded telephone calls that regulators have labeled a “scourge.”

Yes, please. I don’t know much about the technology with robocalls or how advanced it is. I’m just wondering if this is going to be a whack-a-mole situation.

iOS 10 beta 7 was released today. I haven’t seen any of the other operating system updates yet. If you have a previous beta version installed, just go to Settings > General > Software Update to download the new version.

Thanks to Igloo for sponsoring The Loop this week. Igloo is an intranet you’ll actually like. It’s 100% cloud-based, so you’ll always have the latest version and it can be accessed from any device, anywhere. It’s time to simplify work and keep people more connected than ever before.

Travis Kalanick has to get Uber’s bet on self-driving cars right.

“It starts with understanding that the world is going to go self-driving and autonomous,” he told Business Insider in an interview.

“So if that’s happening, what would happen if we weren’t a part of that future? If we weren’t part of the autonomy thing? Then the future passes us by basically, in a very expeditious and efficient way.”

As much as I may not like autonomous cars, from a business perspective, it’s hard to argue with his reasoning.

The source of the delay is that current cellular chips consume too much battery life, reducing the product’s effectiveness and limiting user appeal, according to three of the people. Apple has begun studying lower-power cellular data chips for future smartwatch generations.

This is an incredibly difficult problem, but anything that negatively affects battery life will be a non-starter for a lot of users. Most days, I have plenty of battery life remaining when I go to bed, but I wouldn’t want to be in a situation where I was running out of power early in the day.

Last year we began testing a quality filter setting and we’re now rolling out a feature for everyone. When turned on, the filter can improve the quality of Tweets you see by using a variety of signals, such as account origin and behavior. Turning it on filters lower-quality content, like duplicate Tweets or content that appears to be automated, from your notifications and other parts of your Twitter experience. It does not filter content from people you follow or accounts you’ve recently interacted with – and depending on your preferences, you can turn it on or off in your notifications settings.

Twitter certainly has a lot of work to do, but anything that can help my feed is welcome.

After nearly fourteen years of operation, Gawker.com will be shutting down next week. The decision to close Gawker comes days after Univision successfully bid $135 million for Gawker Media’s six other websites, and four months after the Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel revealed his clandestine legal campaign against the company.

The partnership will allow the Swedish-based carmaker, owned by China’s Geely, and ride-hailing service Uber to pool resources into initially developing the autonomous driving capabilities of its flagship XC90 SUV model. The investment will be shared roughly equally by the two companies.

I don’t think I’d ever want a fully autonomous car, but if we’re talking about driver-assisted technologies, I trust Volvo and Mercedes.

It’s great they made the video available.

In January, it decided against imposing a five-minute wait time for rides on customers of services such as Uber, which allows customers to book and pay for a taxi on their smartphones, but said that it would bring in measures including compulsory language tests.

This seriously has to be one (or two) of the best photos ever taken. It’s interesting that two professional photographers took basically the same photo within milliseconds of the other.

Gawker owner Nick Denton:

“Gawker Media Group has agreed this evening to sell our business and popular brands to Univision, one of America’s largest media companies that is rapidly assembling the leading digital media group for millennial and multicultural audiences. I am pleased that our employees are protected and will continue their work under new ownership — disentangled from the legal campaign against the company. We could not have picked an acquirer more devoted to vibrant journalism.”

I know a couple of people that signed up for this. I must admit, it’s a fascinating concept and one I think will do well. It’s also funny to read why the founder called it “Foot of the Bed Cellars.”

As discussed last week, something designed minimally doesn’t necessarily mean it is well-designed. As Apple design guru Jonathan Ive aptly notes, “simplicity is not the absence of clutter…simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product.” Following along this train of thought, Core77 reader constellation23 recently brought up a brilliantly simple question with a variety of points to consider. Our reader asks:

“How do you know when something is overdesigned?”

Very good question.

Today, we’re releasing Google Duo — a simple 1-to-1 video calling app available for Android and iOS. Duo takes the complexity out of video calling, so that you can be together in the moment wherever you are.

Not a big surprise that Google has entered this market.