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Like the author of this piece, my entree into fictional maps was through Lord of the Rings and I’ve always had a fascination with maps, real and imaginary.

I feel for the family but it’s good Apple is not being held responsible. That being said, do you believe Apple (and others) should be doing more to prevent these kinds of accidents?

Bombich Software has released Carbon Copy Cloner 5, an upgrade to its bootable backup software for macOS. The upgrade features scheduled task grouping and sorting, guided setup and restore, task history trend charts, a health check for backups, advanced file filtering, and includes hundreds of improvements and fixes.

Carbon Copy Cloner 5 requires macOS 10.10 or later and will be compatible with APFS and Apple’s macOS 10.13 High Sierra release this autumn. A full-featured thirty day trial version is available.

Carbon Copy Cloner is an app that I’ve used for years, in fact, since it was first released. The new version goes a long way to make the software easier to use, while still adding more advanced features.

You can get 15% off Carbon Copy Cloner until September 3 by using the code LOOPINSIGHT at checkout.

The NYPD has to scrap the 36,000 smartphones it gave cops over the past two years because they’re already obsolete and can’t be upgraded, The Post has learned.

The city bought Microsoft-based Nokia smartphones as part of a $160 million NYPD Mobility Initiative that Mayor Bill de Blasio touted as “a huge step into the 21st century.”

But just months after the last phone was handed out, officials plan to begin replacing them all with brand-new iPhones by the end of the year, sources said.

It’s baffling that the NYPD went with the Microsoft-based phones in the first place. It was a costly mistake, but at least they’re making the right choice now.

It’s getting to be that time of year again. If you are in the US or planning a visit, this is a terrific resource for catching foliage at just the right moment for optimum glorious fall color.

Slide the slider to get a sense of when the leaf color change is at its peak in your area.

Apple today announced plans to build a 400,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art data center in Waukee, Iowa, to better serve North American users of iMessage, Siri, the App Store and other Apple services. Like all Apple data centers, the new facility will run entirely on renewable energy from day one.

“At Apple, we’re always looking at ways to deliver even better experiences for our customers. Our new data center in Iowa will help serve millions of people across North America who use Siri, iMessage, Apple Music and other Apple services — all powered by renewable energy,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Apple is responsible for 2 million jobs in all 50 states and we’re proud today’s investment will add to the more than 10,000 jobs we already support across Iowa, providing even more economic opportunity for the community.”

Much respect, Apple.

Follow the link. Then go into airplane mode. The page should automatically detect that the connection dropped and reload with an explanation.

An interesting experiment.

Samsung is working on a smart speaker that will be launched “soon”, the company’s mobile chief told CNBC, which will pit it against the likes of Amazon, Apple, and Google, in the hotly-contested space.

Of course you are.

Uber Technologies Inc reported on Wednesday that its losses narrowed in the second quarter by 9 percent and ride bookings rose, but the company is still a long way from being profitable.

Damn.

Now when you search for “depression” on Google on mobile, you’ll see a Knowledge Panel that will give you the option to tap “check if you’re clinically depressed”, which will bring you to PHQ-9, a clinically validated screening questionnaire to test what your likely level of depression may be. To ensure that the information shared in the PHQ-9 questionnaire is accurate and useful, we have partnered with the National Alliance on Mental Illness on this announcement.

I thought this was a great video from the AppleInsider staff. I’m looking forward to the new WatchOS.

Gruber’s Jackass of the Week. Well said.

Samsung Electronics Co Ltd set out to wipe the slate clean in New York on Wednesday with the new Galaxy Note 8 phablet, hoping features like dual rear cameras and its biggest-ever screen will extinguish memories of its fire-prone predecessor.

Holy sweet shit, why are they doing this?

Apple on Wednesday posted three new articles from the Siri team on machine learning.

• Deep Learning for Siri’s Voice: On-device Deep Mixture Density Networks for Hybrid Unit Selection Synthesis

• Inverse Text Normalization as a Labeling Problem

• Improving Neural Network Acoustic Models by Cross-bandwidth and Cross-lingual Initialization

Luna Display seamlessly extends your Mac desktop to your iPad, creating a wireless second monitor with stunning image quality. Available for Mini DisplayPort or USB-C, Luna sets up in seconds and instantly works with your existing Wi-Fi.

This is a remarkable product. I had a chance to use it this summer and was truly impressed with the implementation and how it worked.

I knew that Kinder eggs were illegal in the US (and it’s a point we Canadians often use to show our “superiority” over America) but I didn’t know the legal reasoning behind it.

SMPTE (The Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers) have announced that former Adobe, Macromedia and Apple employee Randy Ubillos will be receiving the Workflow Systems Medal at the SMPTE 2017 Awards later this year.

Cheers, Randy.

In honor of John Lee Hooker’s 100th birthday, Craft Recordings has announced King of the Boogie, a comprehensive, five-disc box set of the blues legend’s greatest hits, plus some rarities, live recordings and numerous previously unreleased cuts.

This is a must have.

If you watched sports in 1980s, you saw this guy in the background of major sporting events. I found him incredibly annoying and, while I never wondered or cared about what happened to him, the path his life took is tragic.

Many of us Canadians are jealous about the size of the Powerball jackpot. This is an easy way for us (and others outside the US) to get in on the fun.

While CrashPlan was bailing on its customers, BackBlaze released a new version of its cloud backup software.

Popular weather app AccuWeather has been caught sending geolocation data to a third-party data monetization firm, even when the user has switched off location sharing.

How can you ever trust them again? You can’t.

It has been a few years since a decision by a major tech company last turned me into a green rage monster, but it just happened again. Code42 Software has announced that it’s discontinuing its consumer backup product, CrashPlan for Home.

Joe Kissell is pissed.

It’s a little depressing to see how many of these products I used over the years that are no more.

What a great idea and wonderful service by Astronomers Without Borders.

Of the estimated 2.4m apps available on the App Store, we believe less than 1% leverage ML today – but not for long. We believe Core ML will be a driving force in bringing machine learning to the masses in the form of more useful and insightful apps that run faster and respect user privacy.

It’s going to be interesting to see what we will be able to do with our devices in the next three years as machine learning and artificial intelligence make their way into our lives in a bigger way.

After touring with his prototype models throughout 2016 and 2017, Slash is proud to announce the release of these limited edition Gibson Custom Slash Anaconda Burst Les Pauls.

It’s very nice, but I’m more of an Appetite for Destruction Les Paul guy.

“Breakout” was created by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak with help from fellow co-founder Steve Jobs as a successor to “Pong,” and requires a player to knock down rows of colored bricks with a paddle.

Nestle simply replaced the bricks with brown Kit Kat bars, used in a Kit Kate Bites commercial titled “Kit Kat: Breakout,” showing adults and children using paddles to knock the bars down, according to Atari.

How does Nestle possibly defend themselves against this lawsuit? They seem guilty as hell.

A fascinating story about a remarkable project.

I couldn’t/didn’t watch all ten episodes. If you did, what did you think? Would you watch another full season of the show?