Fortune:

Do you like the idea of an internet without advertising? You can join the soaring ranks of people who install ad blocking software to scrub out banners, pop-ups, and more. But not everyone will be happy about that.

A report this week by media analyst Frederic Filloux warned that web publishers face a crisis as ad block rates shoot up, and consequently block an important means of revenue for online publishers. Between 15 to 17% of the U.S. population reportedly use ad blockers, and the number is double that for millennials. The numbers are even higher in Europe, and up to 80-90% in the case of specialty tech and gaming sites.

The popularity of ad blockers is understandable: For consumers they make web pages look nicer, and they can improve browser speed and screen for malware too.

Of course they should be legal. What should be illegal is poorly coded sites and ads that encourage so many people to use ad blockers.

Don’t get me wrong – as a content producer myself, I hate ad blockers. But I’ve been to countless web sites that have various forms of ads pushed at us, blocking content I came for, autoplaying ads, using Flash and other cruft that slow down and, in some cases, cause havoc with my computer, that I completely understand the people who use this software to prevent those things.

What publishers should be looking at is not trying to make ad blocking software illegal but their own practices that make such software so popular.

Nextshark:

Documentary photographer Doug Menuez was given the rare opportunity by Steve Jobs himself to document what was happening inside NeXT, the computer platform development company Jobs created after being ousted from Apple in 1985. From there, Doug spent the next three years observing Jobs build a company from the ground up.

“He wasn’t a positive manager a lot of the times, but he was a great teacher.”

Leaving aside my issues with the poorly written headline, this is the guy who shot some of the most iconic images of Steve Jobs. His comments in general and on Jobs in particular are very interesting and well worth the read.

Consumer Reports:

If you want an army of geeks you can count on to tame an unruly computer, you’d better buy a Macintosh: Apple tech support is by far the most effective of any computer brand’s. With most Windows PCs, there’s only a 50-50 chance that a manufacturer’s tech support will do the trick.

It’s no surprise that Apple had the highest score for overall user satisfaction. In fact, the company has been top-rated every year since we first asked consumers about tech support back in 2007—even though Apple provides just 90 days of free phone and online tech support, compared with one year for most Windows PC companies.

If you’ve been around for any length of time, it’s easy to find/tell horror stories about poor Apple tech support but, at least in the past ten years, my experience with them, whether online, on the phone or in the Apple Stores, has been uniformly positive. I used to work in tech support and it’s a thankless, hard job. But Apple doesn’t treat it as a profit centre like so many other companies do. Apple recognizes that it is an integral part of the company’s success.

ZDNet:

Apple has acknowledge the existence of a bug which can crash the Messages applications on iPhones and has issued a set of instructions as a temporary workaround.

Apple will likely have a more permanent fix for this weird issue inside five days.

io9:

My colleagues and I recruited actual human subjects in Germany. We ran an actual clinical trial, with subjects randomly assigned to different diet regimes. And the statistically significant benefits of chocolate that we reported are based on the actual data. It was, in fact, a fairly typical study for the field of diet research. Which is to say: It was terrible science. The results are meaningless, and the health claims that the media blasted out to millions of people around the world are utterly unfounded.

Here’s how we did it.

A great dissection of how easy it is to fool the media. Keep this story in mind the next time you read breathless news about miracle cures.

Techcrunch:

Jeff Williams, Apple’s senior vice president of operations, said that there are over 4,000 apps now available for Apple Watch, a number we’ve previously heard. Williams also discussed the upcoming native SDK for the Apple Watch. Williams spoke in an interview today at the Code conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.

“A week from Monday at our developer conference we’ll release a preview so that developers will be able to write code natively and have access to sensors, and we’re really excited about that.”

When asked by TechCrunch about the possibility of future Apple Watches giving more transparency to overall health, Williams declined to say anything specific but did acknowledge that Apple was considering adding more sensors.

In three to six months, things are going to start getting even more interesting with the Apple Watch.

Apple:

Make the most of the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference with the WWDC app. Even if you can’t join us in San Francisco, you can still follow along each day — session videos are just a tap away. And because the WWDC app experience now extends to Apple Watch, conference information is available right from your wrist.

Along with the media invites Apple sent out this morning, they have updated the official WWDC app to include the keynote session, likely emceed by CEO Tim Cook and including the usual cast of characters and announcements.

Atlas Obscura:

The hunt for treasure on Oak Island has been going on for over two hundred years.

Without a single return, and conflicting theories of what hunters are actually looking for, the so-called Money Pit in Nova Scotia is one of the most incredible self-perpetuating goose chases in the world. Errol Flynn, John Wayne, and Franklin Roosevelt were at one point each involved in the hunt and held their own theories as to the pit’s contents.

Some believed pirate treasure lay just below the next layer of soil. Others believed Marie Antoinette’s lost jewels were surely buried there right after the French Revolution. Another theory even posited that Francis Bacon had stored documents in the pit proving himself as the author of Shakespeare’s plays. There are many other theories one big one is that “The Arc Of the Covenant” lies at the bottom.

Having grown up in the area, we were regaled with ghost stories about the island as kids. It’s a fascinating story, not of treasure found, but of man’s desire to find it. The best legend of the treasure is that seven men must die before it will be found. Six already have while searching for whatever is in that pit.

Re/code:

We are thrilled to announce that Re/code’s parent company, Revere Digital, is being wholly acquired by the highly respected digital-native media company Vox Media. This is the next big step in our mission to bring you quality tech journalism, because our work will now be amplified and enhanced by Vox Media’s deep and broad skill set.

This doesn’t feel like a good thing. It certainly won’t be the last merger or acquisition in the “new media journalism” space, either.

Wired:

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, founded in 1909, is the world’s oldest permanent motorsport facility. It’s changed a lot since the early days—pavement instead of bricks for a racing surface, new stands and administration buildings—but the track is essentially the same. It still has corners banked at 9 degrees, 12 minutes, and those corners are the same radius they were a century ago.

More than that, the track is still a magical, ghostly place, eerily alive with death and life. Stand on the front straight and stare into Turn 1—it looks like a tunnel, or maybe a wall of asphalt—and you feel the echo of death and time in your bones.

I’ve watched this race every year since I was eight years old and I was lucky enough to drive my motorcycle on it for a charity event. It really is a amazing place.

Mashable:

There’s a building in China that looks almost exactly like the USS Enterprise from Star Trek. Drone footage shows how a relatively conventional-looking building from the ground dramatically transforms into a regal starship when viewed from the air.

Lest you think this is visual trickery done via Holodeck or CGI, the starship/building is clearly visible on Google Maps.

Don’t lie – a bunch of you saw that video and thought to yourself how much you’d like to work there, didn’t you? It looks like Nerd Valhalla.

CNET:

There’s no doubt that the Apple Watch can do a lot of things. It can be used to communicate with others, view notifications from an iPhone and even pay for items with Apple Pay. It’s also a dedicated activity tracker that can measure active calories burned, active minutes, the number of times you stand throughout the day, your daily step count and distance traveled.

We’ve been testing the Apple Watch over the past few weeks, and focused on those final two metrics — steps taken and distance traveled — to see how it stacks up against the competition.

This is an important question for those who want or need to have accurate tracking. Good to see the Apple Watch scored so highly and that Apple has done a good job in making sure the Watch works as advertised.

The Wall Street Journal:

Phone cameras have made photography everyone’s hobby. But even owners of the fanciest smartphones would recognize the many genres of disappointing phone-ography: The blurry runaway toddler. The lifeless landscape. The grainy candlelit dinner. The ghoulish flash portrait.

We need to save personal tech’s most endangered species, the stand-alone camera.

There’s no doubt that camera phones in general and the iPhone in particular are really good cameras – for phones. And while we’ve all seen or taken great shots with our iPhones, it’s definitely a “jack of all trades, master of none”.

A good camera provides a wider range of possibilities – from zoom to control over depth of field to capturing low light and a higher dynamic range. If you’re not satisfied with the shots coming out of your iPhone, I’d encourage you to learn more about photography in general by taking a class or reading books and web sites on it but don’t neglect the thing that actually takes the shot – the camera itself.

As an example, over the weekend, I went to a local track to take pics of one of my favourite subjects – motorcycles. Of the 15 shots, only two would have been possible with the iPhone.

Wired:

As it turns 40 this year, ILM can claim to have played a defining role making effects for 317 movies. But that’s only part of the story: Pixar began, essentially, as an ILM internal investigation. Photoshop was invented, in part, by an ILM employee tinkering with programming in his time away from work. Billions of lines of code have been formulated there. Along the way ILM has put tentacles into pirate beards, turned a man into mercury, and dominated box office charts with computer-generated dinosaurs and superheroes.

What defines ILM, however, isn’t a signature look, feel, or tone—those change project by project. Rather, it’s the indefatigable spirit of innovation that each of the 43 subjects interviewed for this oral history mentioned time and again. It is the Force that sustains the place.

I can’t think of another person, organization, studio or company that has had a hand in as many of the movies I love as ILM. They have been an integral part of my movie enjoying experience.

British Pathé:

Follow us through the 20th Century and dive into the good and the bad times of the past. Feel free to explore more than 80,000 videos of filmed history and maybe you’ll find stuff no one else has ever seen.

Do not go to this site if you want to get any work done today. Thanks to my friend Antonio Rosario for the huge time suck.

I had the good fortune to be around for the dawn of some of the most significant technological developments in human history: the arrival of personal computers, the emergence of the Internet and the World Wide Web, and the current dominance of social media and mobile devices. These and other technological advances continue to alter our world at an ever accelerating pace. One day Apple is on the verge of bankruptcy. The next day (or so it sometimes seems), it is the largest most profitable company on earth. Who’d have guessed?

There are a lot of people I wish would retire from writing about Apple – Ted Landau is not one of those people. Many of us owe a great debt of thanks to Ted for all of his many years of service to the Mac Community. For me personally, I was a fan of his writing at MacFixIt and he was always extraordinary helpful whenever I emailed him. As a podcaster, I interviewed him several times and, as a speaker at Macworld Expos, I was lucky enough to sit and chat with him on many occasions. Quiet, soft-spoken, gracious, kind, knowledgeable, Ted is all that and more. We wish him all the best in his retirement!

The Wall Street Journal:

Investor Carl Icahn said he expects Apple Inc. to introduce an ultra-high-definition television in 2016. But after nearly a decade of research, Apple quietly shelved plans to make such a set more than a year ago, according to people familiar with the matter.

Apple had searched for breakthrough features to justify building an Apple-branded television set, those people said. In addition to an ultra-high-definition display, Apple considered adding sensor-equipped cameras so viewers could make video calls through the set, they said.

Ultimately, though, Apple executives didn’t consider any of those features compelling enough to enter the highly competitive television market, led by Samsung Electronics Co.

It’s been an open secret for years that Apple has tested many variations of television sets but just couldn’t find a way to include features compelling enough to bring it to market. Regardless of what Icahn wants or believes, Apple will do what’s right for Apple. And, as many of us have argued for many years, an Apple-branded television set isn’t going to happen.

Universal pictures has unveiled the “first look” clip from the upcoming movie about Steve Jobs. It’s just a teaser but it looks interesting. Fassbinder was an odd choice to portray jobs but he is a very good actor and the rest of the cast is equally accomplished.

One of the odd things about getting older is movies are being made about the times I’ve lived in and, in the case of parts of this movie, events and presentations I was at and tangentially involved in. It’s kind of a weird feeling and I don’t know how unbiased I’m going to be watching this film. But I am looking forward to seeing it.

Tim Cook was George Washington University’s Commencement Speaker for Spring 2015. He goofs around a bit, gives some of the usual graduate advice and talks about his early years at Apple.

The New York Times:

For many of the largest Silicon Valley technology companies, mapping software undergirds numerous software applications and features in their products. For Apple, it is little different. To that end, Apple confirmed in an email on Sunday that it had bought Coherent Navigation, a Bay Area navigation company, further bolstering Apple’s mapping technology and services.

This is obviously a move by Apple to continue to improve its Maps app. The Sunday confirmation from Apple is interesting too. Another sign of its softening of its former hard line position with regards to PR.

If given the chance, I couldn’t strap one of these things on my back fast enough. I’d give up body parts to be able to fly one of those things.

DC Rainmaker:

This past week I’ve been slowly plotting a series of tests to batter the Apple Watch and see exactly how well it’d hold up to a variety of aquatic adventures. No doubt I’ve been showering with it twice-daily since it arrived…but that’s kinda lame in the grand scheme of waterproof tests. So while a few people have casually doggy-paddled around their backyard pool with the watch, I wanted to kick it up a notch…or, rather, a lot of notches.

Interesting that Apple seems to have seriously under promised on the waterproofing of the Apple Watch.

AV Club:

In 1980, a trio of gentlemen from Wisconsin – Jim Abrahams and brothers David and Jerry Zucker – took a cast of predominantly non-comedic actors, put a parodic spin on the disaster-film genre, and created a film which not only made moviegoers howl with laughter but also earned critical acclaim.

While it may not be the greatest movie ever made, it probably ranks in the top five of the silliest movies ever made. I loved it as a kid and love it even more as adult. Every time you watch it, you see and hear more gags and funny bits. To this day, if I ever hear someone say, “Surely, you can’t be…” I immediately flashback to the line in the movie.

Petapixel:

Today Flickr launched a number of new improvements to their service. In my mind, the most significant change is that Flickr is introducing the ability for you to bulk download your photos from their site.

Now you can fill up that free 1 terabyte (or unlimited terabytes if you’ve got a grandfathered Pro account) with confidence knowing that if you ever want/need those photos back from Flickr you’ll be able to get them back much more easily.

One of my knocks on Flickr (a site I’ve used for years) is now moot with this new feature. Really good news for those of us who want additional backups of our photos.

Mobile Forward:

The Apple Watch is out, and we’re seeing the first analyst estimates of some of its key costs. The variation in these early estimate is huge. It’s so big that, even if some estimates aren’t perfect, others are, to use a Tim Cook phrase, “in another universe”.

From my experience working with product and cost experts at a well-known mobile device company, I can tell you: Apple Watch does not cost $84 in hardware and manufacturing. It costs meaningfully more. Probably more than 2X that. And I’ll tell you why. Maybe I’ll even give you my estimate.

Every time one of these “this is what Product X actually costs to make!” articles comes out, I get pissed at the tech media for being so stupid as to believe and parrot the numbers without having any grounds to do so. This article, spelling/grammar issues aside, does a good job of explaining why these estimates aren’t worth the time it takes to type them out.

The New York Times:

Once an indulgence reserved for special occasions, manicures have become a grooming staple for women across the economic spectrum. There are now more than 17,000 nail salons in the United States, according to census data. The number of salons in New York City alone has more than tripled over a decade and a half to nearly 2,000 in 2012.

But largely overlooked is the rampant exploitation of those who toil in the industry. The New York Times interviewed more than 150 nail salon workers and owners, in four languages, and found that a vast majority of workers are paid below minimum wage; sometimes they are not even paid. Workers endure all manner of humiliation, including having their tips docked as punishment for minor transgressions, constant video monitoring by owners, even physical abuse. Employers are rarely punished for labor and other violations.

Awful story of the treatment of these women. Pass this along to anyone you know who is “going to get my nails done”.

Macworld:

Released in 2010, MacKeeper has been dogged by accusations that it exaggerates security threats in order to convince customers to buy. Its aggressive marketing has splashed MacKeeper pop-up ads all over the web.

These days, MacKeeper has gone to a subscription-based pricing model rather than a $39.95 one-off payment. It costs $7.95 a month in the U.S. for the premium, year-long plan. Its latest feature is offering phone support from Apple-certified technicians, which it calls Human Inside.

But many of the tools in the software bundle, which includes an antivirus (AV) scanner and 15 other utilities, are already in OS X or available for free.

Macworld takes a light touch on the tsunami of criticism about the software and the various companies that have and do own it but it’s fairly common knowledge that, at the very least, you really don’t need to waste money on MacKeeper. MacKeeper has been known to be, at minimum, almost useless and, at its worse, to cause actual problems with your Mac.

Longreads:

“I must admit that it was intended consciously as a social document. … [but] the storyteller’s first duty is to the story.”

Not a “long read” but a 90 minute documentary on the making of what many, myself included, consider the greatest film of all time. If you get a chance to grab a DVD of it, make sure you get the one with the commentary tracks – one by Roger Ebert and the other with Peter Bogdanovich. It will give you a new and greater appreciation of this magnificent film.

Vinepair:

In America Cinco de Mayo has evolved to become one of the country’s largest drinking holidays. In 2013, over $600 million dollars worth of beer was sold, according to Nielsen data, which is more beer than is sold for St. Patrick’s Day or the Super Bowl, two holidays where beer consumption is the primary focal point. And most of that beer is Mexican in origin, which has also meant that the Mexican beer sector, thanks to Cinco de Mayo, has continued to grow and thrive north of the border, experiencing the best sector growth in the American market according to EuroMonitor data, second only to the rapid growth of American craft beer.

Suffice it to say, Cinco de Mayo is a behemoth when it comes to selling booze, but how did a holiday that isn’t really even celebrated in Mexico – Mother’s Day, which occurs around the same time, is a much bigger deal – become not only the most powerful U.S. holiday when it comes to selling alcohol, but also the only connection most Americans have to our largest immigrant group? You can thank Texas distributors of Corona in the 1980s.

Yet another completely made up “holiday” created in the service of marketing.

CBC News:

It was a busy weekend in Torbay, as the first iceberg of the season arrived in eastern Newfoundland just off the coastline near Tapper’s Cove.People flocked to the area over the weekend to take advantage of the site.

The Canadian Coast Guard says there’s currently more than 100 icebergs off the province’s coastlines, so it’s just the beginning of iceberg season in Newfoundland and Labrador.

This is how cool Canada is – we have icebergs, baby! By the way, if you ever want a fun vacation, visit Newfoundland. Starkly beautiful province and wonderful people.