Macworld:

Go is about slowly-evolving strategies to surround the largest territory on the board. Each player, black and white, alternates placing stones on a board with a 19-by-19 grid. Building up territory, where the opposing player cannot get a foothold, each player attempts to enlarge his or her territory, and thwart advances and invasions by the opponent.

It’s easy to learn the rules of Go; it’s hard to become really good at the game.

Go is a fascinating game I’ve played (poorly) for years. If you’re looking for something different in your gameplay, check out the apps recommended in the article.

Vox:

Super Bowl commercials are a big deal.

At a cost of about $4.5 million for a 30 second spot that’s often filled with celebrities, pop music, and special effects, advertisers are clearly willing to pay a premium to be a part of the big game.

Here are the 2015 Super Bowl commercials, listed alphabetically by advertiser. We will update this post throughout the weekend, as new ads are posted online.

I love the game and will watch it (GO HAWKS!) but also admit to enjoying the commercials, too.

Atlas Obscura:

Around the world, there are trees that have been growing for a much longer period of time than famed arbors like Methuselah or General Sherman. Some of these beautiful ancients may not look like much — some appear to be mere saplings, compared to the gigantic redwoods.

Trees have always fascinated me. As a kid, I would climb the oaks in our neighbourhood and sit up there for hours. I still love walking among them and feeling their presence.

Jim, Shawn and our Special Guest, Dave Mark, talk Apple earnings, Swift programming, NAMM and “digital music”.

Associated Press:

A law enforcement campaign to compel Google Inc. to disable a feature in its popular Waze traffic app that lets drivers warn others about nearby police activity shifted Wednesday when a sheriffs’ organization openly complained that the app not only puts officers’ lives at risk, it also interferes with the ability to write speeding tickets.

So it’s OK for government officials and corporations to track us but not OK for us to track them?

Vox:

There are huge benefits to salting the roads. One 1992 study found that spreading salt can reduce accidents by 87 percent during and after a snowstorm.But road salt also comes with major downsides: Salt is corrosive, chewing through cars, trucks, concrete, and steel bridges. Worse still, when all that salt dissolves and washes away, it steadily accumulates in rivers and streams. Other times, moose and elk get attracted to the salt and wander onto roads, raising the risk of crashes.

We have similar issues here in Canada with road salt and its affect on cars and the environment. That last sentence came to light for me while riding my motorcycle in the Banff National Park. I came around a corner and there was a herd of massive elk in the middle of the road, licking the salt off the pavement. It created a very high Pucker Factor, to say the least.

The Verge:

Plenty of amateur films have been shot using iPhones, but by all reports, this is the first movie at the Sundance Film Festival to be shot almost entirely on an Apple device. It was a decision that indie writer and director Sean Baker made to accommodate the film’s small budget. But you’d never guess the camera, to look at it: Tangerine was shot in a widescreen, 2:35:1 aspect ratio, and its camera zooms through the streets of LA with a fluidity you’d never expect from a handheld device. And yet despite his camera of choice, Baker says the iPhone made for a good partner. “It was surprisingly easy,” Baker says. “We never lost any footage.”

Another interesting story about the functionality and versatility of the iPhone.

OK, now I want to test drive a Tesla.

Mic:

The league, in partnership with the anti-domestic violence organization NO MORE, recently released an ad that will air live Sunday during the Super Bowl. Based on a real 911 call, the ad pans over the wreckage of a domestic dispute while the audio of a chilling emergency call plays in the background.

Powerful and chilling. Thanks to my friend JennS for the link.

Medium:

The whole Tsukiji experience is comparable to strolling through the fish section of Whole Foods early one morning when the LSD kicks in and the store suddenly turns into JFK Airport and a monster bike rally is starting and a marathon walk is ending and all the cars have Jersey plates and valet service is provided by Hell’s Angels. You are the outsider at the fish anarchist’s ball.

One of my Bucket List items was/is to visit this market. Looks like I’ll have to hurry.

Techcrunch:

Until today, Russia’s Gazprom (the largest natural gas extractor in the world) held the record at $16.2 billion in a quarter.

Apple now holds the record: $18.04 billion in profit, fiscal Q1 of 2015.

For reference, that means Apple makes around $8.3 million dollars per hour in profit (24 hours a day).

This was a company written off as all but dead less than 20 years ago.

Ars Technica:

Apple CEO Tim Cook dropped a rare bit of product news on the company’s Q1 2015 earnings call: the Apple Watch begins shipping in April.The Apple Watch will start at $349 for the aluminum Apple Watch Sport model, though starting prices for the more expensive stainless steel and gold models haven’t yet been revealed.

About the time frame we expected. As we get closer to a sales date, I find it interesting how many people I hear are at least interested in seeing the Apple Watch with an eye towards buying it.

TUAW:

The free iFixit app is a handy little app that gives your Do-It-Yourself repairs a big boost. This app comes from the teardown experts at iFixit, who delight in exploring the inner secrets of your favorite tech (or not-so-techie) hardware. The iFixit app helps you repair just about anything from toilets to garage door openers, cameras, cars, and of course, PCs and Macs.

As dumb as some of their whining about “repairability” is, their repair and upgrade guides are second to none.

iMore:

Password manager 1Password has been updated, for the Mac as well as the iPhone and iPad. The iOS update focuses on making 1Password more powerful with tools like a new login creator and one-time passwords, while 1Password for Mac receives a lot of important updates to syncing, as well as other additions.

My favourite password manager keeps getting better.

MacObserver:

Right now…companies like Neil Young’s Pono are telling people that audio files encoded at a bit-depth of 24-bits or a sample rate of 192kHz sound better than the 16-bit, 44.1kHz versions of the same audio on playback.

This difference between 16-bit/44.1kHz audio and anything greater than that has been tested (a lot… in double-blind tests) and we have yet to find any human that can reliably notice that difference.

Now just sit back and wait for the audio geeks to refute this article.

Backblaze:

It was one year ago that I first blogged about the failure rates of specific models of hard drives, so now is a good time for an update.

At Backblaze, as of December 31, 2014, we had 41,213 disk drives spinning in our data center, storing all of the data for our unlimited backup service. That is up from 27,134 at the end of 2013. This year, most of the new drives are 4 TB drives, and a few are the new 6 TB drives.

Wow. That does not look good for Seagate.

Vox:

The death of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has brought considerable debate over whether he should be remembered as a “reformer” or the very opposite of one; whether his legacy will be that he preserved Saudi Arabia’s future or limited its present.But as this story from a former British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia makes clear, there is one thing he will never be: as much of a stone-cold badass as Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

My Queen is definitely a bad ass.

TSA:

2,212 firearms were discovered in carry-on bags at checkpoints across the country, averaging more than six firearms per day. Of those, 2,212 (83 percent) were loaded. Firearms were intercepted at a total of 224 airports; 19 more airports than last year.

There was a 22 percent increase in firearm discoveries from last year’s total of 1,813.

The TSA has often been rightly derided as “security theater” but this catalog of various weapons confiscated from traveler’s carry on luggage is a little bit terrifying. And I will likely read too much into the fact that, out of the top ten airports for gun catches, eight of them were in the South.

The video is kind of stilted but his archery skills are pretty incredible.

The Daily Dot:

Terrible news for anyone who has ever been bored on an airplane: the company behind SkyMall, that in-flight catalog you disdainfully flip through after you’ve suffered through all the available episodes of The Big Bang Theory, has announced its inevitable bankruptcy filing.

Why do we say “inevitable”? Because SkyMall is packed full of actually useless garbage that no human being would conceivably buy, even in a late-capitalist boom cycle. Thankfully, a legion of loyal Internet fans has done the noble work of archiving these inexplicable items:

Proof that air travel makes you crazy – I read that catalog many a time and thought, “Hey – I should buy that!” only to get on the ground, regain consciousness and never buy a damn thing from their catalog.

Tomorrow, Apple opens another store in China and they have posted this video explaining the Chinese poem on the outside of it.

VanCity Buzz:

In her attempt to pursue the Universe’s crown, Miss Universe Canada Chanel Beckenlehner of Caledon, Ontario has certainly captured the world’s attention as her flamboyant, hockey-inspired costume has gone completely viral.

The 26-year-old strutted out on the stage Wednesday night wearing a costume that may have very well been designed by Lady Gaga, Hudson’s Bay Company and Roots. Altogether, the costume is said to have a weight of 25 pounds.

This is how much Canadians love hockey.

iMore:

Apple detailed the earnings of its top executives in the filing. Apple CEO Tim Cook – $9.2 million. Eddy Cue and Jeff Williams – $24 million each. Angela Ahrendts – $73 million.

Apple also announced board member Millard Drexler will be retiring after the company’s annual shareholder meeting on March 10 and that it managed to generate a staggering $182.8 billion in sales over the course of 2014.

Nice gig if you can get it.

Contrary to legend, it didn’t play just once. It is still considered by many as “the greatest television commercial ever” and is the genesis of all the “Super Bowl Event Advertising” we see today.

BlackBerry:

neutrality must be mandated at the application and content layer if we truly want a free, open and non-discriminatory internet. All wireless broadband customers must have the ability to access any lawful applications and content they choose, and applications/content providers must be prohibited from discriminating based on the customer’s mobile operating system.

What BlackBerry’s CEO is talking about is forcing companies like Apple to make their software available on BlackBerry’s devices and OS.

The CEO of BlackBerry has lost his mind.

iMore:

NBC will stream 11 continuous hours of live content on Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 1 to desktops and iPads. The “Super Stream Sunday” event will run from noon EST and to around 10 p.m. and include NBC’s pre-game coverage, Super Bowl XLIX itself, the halftime show, and the post-game show, and the episode of The Blacklist that will air following the game. The stream will take place through the NBC Sports Live Extra app.

That’s a lot of talking about football.

Jim and Shawn talk about quoting Steve Jobs, Google Glass, Mac magazines and NAMM!

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The Verge:

While Khan Academy has had an iOS app since 2012, it has typically not offered the full experience found on its website. All of its videos were available, but none of its thousands of training exercises were offered to iOS users.

That all changes today with the introduction of a completely redesigned app for the iPad — now, everything that lives on the site is also available to iPad users. That includes some 150,000 learning exercises.

I’ve checked out a few of the Khan Academy classes and am fairly impressed with them. A great tool for learning.

Vox:

Consumer Reports’ testing processes, scientific rigor, and commitment to independence are commendable. But it’s difficult to take them all in without asking an important question: does Consumer Reports have a future?

Even though I don’t completely trust Consumer Reports because of some of their tech and Apple coverage, their testing process makes for an interesting read.

Seth Clifford:

When Steve Jobs famously made that comment— the “if you see a stylus, they blew it” one—it’s pretty clear that he was talking about the general use cases involving touch screens and human interaction.

Latching on to the core of an single statement in its most literal sense prevents us from growing bigger and better ideas. To come back to the comment specifically, even if Apple decided “hey, you know what… maybe we were wrong about the stylus thing” it would likely be because it took the idea, observed how the world applied it and made a judgment call.

Requiring a stylus in order to use a device would be wrong. That’s what Jobs meant. But using a stylus for specific uses but not be required for that use is not a bad idea. It’s simply offering additional flexibility.