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Fstoppers:

When I heard the iPhone 6s was coming out on September 25, I decided now was the best time to create a new video to prove once and for all that quality photography can be taken with any budget.

Instead of using a fancy studio (which was actually just my garage in the last video) I decided to do the shoot around my house and then outside at the beach. Instead of seamless paper I decided to use backgrounds that anyone could easily find. Most importantly, I limited my lighting budget to about $40 maximum per shot.

I love this post because it shows you don’t need a ton of gear to get great shots. With your iPhone, some stuff you can buy at Home Depot and a little ingenuity, you can create your very own fashion shoot. Thanks to iheartapple2 for the link.

Vox:

“The bottom line here with the industrial tomatoes is that tomatoes have been bred for yield, production, disease resistance,” Klee told me. “The growers are not paid for flavor — they are paid for yield. So the breeders have given them this stuff that produces a lot of fruit but that doesn’t have any flavor.”

“We are raising a whole generation of people who don’t know what a tomato is supposed to taste like.” That’s why you see gigantic strawberries and fist-size apples on the store shelves. Since Americans like their produce big, and big fruit is more efficient to grow, growers do everything they can to supersize their fruit, even at the expense of flavor.

Anyone else noticed this? I did especially when I was in Italy. In particular, the tomatoes tasted amazing and completely different from the blandness of what we get in supermarkets here in North America.

The Daily Dot:

To shoot the video, the band hopped aboard a special fixed-wing airplane, lovingly dubbed the “vomit comet” by astronauts in training thanks to its ability to induce, well, vomiting. The plane, provided and operated by the company S7, climbs higher than a commercial jet and then the pilot begins to take it on a parabolic flight pattern. In other words, the plane goes up at a steep angle, then back down again, creating 25 seconds of weightlessness for the cargo (i.e. OK Go and crew).

Dave posted this morning about the video. Here are some details about how they accomplished it.

This is a podcast you really need to listen to today. According to Gruber:

It’s a wide-ranging discussion, and includes a bunch of interesting scoops: the weekly number of iTunes and App Store transactions, an updated Apple Music subscriber count, peak iMessage traffic per second, the number of iCloud account holders, and more.

The New Yorker:

Twenty-two years ago, construction began on an enormous detector, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). Then, on September 14, 2015, at just before eleven in the morning, Central European Time, the waves reached Earth.

Marco Drago, a thirty-two-year-old Italian postdoctoral student and a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, was the first person to notice them. He was sitting in front of his computer at the Albert Einstein Institute, in Hannover, Germany, viewing the LIGO data remotely. The waves appeared on his screen as a compressed squiggle, but the most exquisite ears in the universe, attuned to vibrations of less than a trillionth of an inch, would have heard what astronomers call a chirp—a faint whooping from low to high.

This morning, in a press conference in Washington, D.C., the LIGO team announced that the signal constitutes the first direct observation of gravitational waves.

The science involved in this is mindbending. Can you imagine the excitement of the scientists on hearing that first chirp?

A great story from a Reddit thread entitled, What was a loophole that you found and exploited the hell out of?

I think Kirk is really on to something here. Terrific discovery opportunity for Twitter. Hope someone there reads Kirk’s writeup.

Immersion, a company that develops and licenses haptic touch feedback technology, today filed a lawsuit against Apple and AT&T accusing the two companies of patent infringement. Citing technologies like 3D Touch, Force Touch, the Apple Watch Taptic Engine, and vibration patterns for ringtones and notifications, Immersion says multiple Apple devices use its intellectual property.

Another interesting case.

Pandora has the largest number of users for music streaming, but the competition is encroaching. Spotify is said to be arming itself with another $500 million in capital, and Apple Music recently surpassed 10 million paying users. Pandora’s users peaked at 81.5 million at the end of 2014, declining to 78.1 million in the third quarter.

Pandora has the best algorithmic stations around. I’m surprised they’re shopping themselves around after taking over the Rdio assets last year, but I guess we’ll see what happens.

I’ve used parallel processing on drums in my mix before, but this is another interesting usage.

How Darwin Award candidates are made.

Samsung already warned it was going to be a rough year—news like this is going to hurt them even more.

The ENCRYPT Act, sponsored by Democratic Representative Ted Lieu and Republican Blake Farenthold, would prevent any state or locality from mandating that a “manufacturer, developer, seller, or provider” design or alter the security of a product so it can be decrypted or surveilled by authorities, according to bill text viewed by Reuters.

Very smart, I hope this passes. Governments have to understand that any weakness will be exploited—there is no backdoor just for law enforcement.

I am suspicious of any for-profit company arguing its good intentions and its free gifts. Nothing — and I do mean nothing — in this life is free. You always pay a price.

Om Malik makes some valid points here.

Macstories:

I just returned from a two week vacation in which I used my iPhone 6s to take hundreds of photos and videos, find places to eat, and get public transit directions to and from various places in unfamiliar cities. It was also the first time I had no concerns about my iPhone battery running out of juice before I returned to my accommodation at night, and it is all thanks to Low Power Mode.

I use LPM whenever I’m out riding my motorcycle. I don’t want to take a chance of running out of juice but also don’t want to carry around a backup battery. I really like the tip of how to quickly turn LPM on and off.

Observer:

Think about it: Every driver makes hundreds of daily driving decisions that, strictly speaking, break driving laws (for example, crossing the yellow line to pull around a double-parked vehicle). It all works out fine because of something called “human judgment.” But what company is going to program its driverless cars to break the law? And what regulators will approve that product, knowing that it has been programmed to break the law?

Will insurance policies for driverless cars cover the car itself? Or will they cover the owner of the vehicle? Or perhaps the technology company that controls the car’s routes? Who will be responsible if there is an accident? The individual owner or the vehicle manufacturer? Or the company that designed the navigation system? To cut through this conundrum, some have proposed the creation of the legal fiction of “virtual drivers” who will purchase “virtual insurance.” But this gobbledygook is just vaporware for the fact that nobody knows how to move through this morass.

I disagree that driverless cars won’t happen but the writer brings forward several points that are glossed over by driverless car advocates. The legal, ethical and even employment related issues are massive and aren’t being discussed nearly enough.

Macworld:

Unless you’ve been living under the proverbial rock, there’s a good chance that you have, by now, become aware of how tragically easy it can be for your online credentials to be stolen. From picking weak combinations of characters that can be easily guessed—it’s somewhat sad that, in 2016, “password” is still the most common passphrase—to reusing the same password across multiple websites, it doesn’t take much to make a mistake that could very well turn out to be fatal.

While there is no bulletproof solution to this problem, the easiest way to alleviate it is to engage the services of a password manager—an app designed to provide an encrypted digital vault in which all your different logins are stored. This way, you can use completely different (and highly secure) credentials for each website while only having to remember the one “master password” that unlocks your vault.

AgileBits’ 1Password is perhaps one of the most venerable members of this family of programs, and one that, with its newest version 6.0 release, aims to retain its position as the leader of the pack.

I don’t need or use the new enterprise features but I can’t recommend 1Password enough. It (and apps like it) are invaluable in keeping my passwords long, complicated and secure.

Fast Company:

Twitter is rolling out a revised version of the timeline that indeed shuffles around some tweets into an order that isn’t purely reverse-chronological—but it doesn’t blow away the old format in the manner that had some users writing obituaries for the service.

I spoke with Michelle Haq, a Twitter product manager in charge of the timeline, about what’s new. Without further ado, some questions and answers.

Reading this, you can understand better how and why Twitter is making this relatively minor change. The good news is that is opt-in – if you’re like me and don’t want Twitter to “curate” your tweets, you won’t see any difference.

Ken Segall:

In honor of the Super Bowl I’m setting the time machine back to 1985, when Apple ran its notoriously awful Lemmings commercial on that year’s Super Bowl.

Just twelve months earlier, Apple had stunned the technology and advertising worlds with its famous 1984 commercial, and Lemmings was meant to carry on the blockbuster tradition.

Instead, it was a dud of extraordinary proportions.

But what exactly is the origin of Lemmings? It’s a story that’s never been told publicly, and it’s definitely not what you think. Join me now on this journey down memory lane…

Segall is one of those guys who was deeply involved with Apple (he came up with the name “iMac”) and I love his stories of the behind the scenes goings on at Apple during his time working with the company.

Engadget:

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a knack for space-themed travel posters. A little over a year ago, its “Exoplanet Travel Bureau” series made its debut with an homage to the iconic WPA prints of the 1930s. This year, the JPL commissioned Seattle-based design firm Invisible Creature to be part of a project/gift for staff. Invisible Creature designed three “travel posters” to be included in the “Visions Of The Future” 2016 calendar. Among the collection are visuals for a multi-planet tour, a stop at Mars and exploring Enceladus, Saturn’s icy moon.

For those of you wanting to remain on Earth, the JPL will make the artwork available as downloadable posters soon, but for now, you can purchase high-quality prints from the source.

The look and feel of these posters is spectacular. Very art deco.

The Verge:

Well you did it, mean-spirited internet humans. Tim Cook has deleted the Super Bowl picture that sent Twitter into a tizzy on Sunday night. As the Denver Broncos celebrated their Super Bowl 50 victory, Apple’s CEO made his way onto the field and took a photo of all the excitement (and confetti). He uploaded it to Twitter with a message congratulating the Super Bowl champs.

Now, either Cook didn’t take much time to review his shot or he just didn’t care, but it was a very blurry snapshot of what must’ve been a thrilling moment. Although he took a second, far better shot minutes later, the damage was already done — and the mockery and ridicule came flying. There were too many “Shot with iPhone” jokes to count.

There are several lessons here: Always check your photos before posting. The internet never forgets. Anyone can take good shots with the iPhone but anyone can take bad shots with it as well. And, if you’re the CEO of a company that makes cameras, make sure your shots are really good before you post them.

Since first writing about Apple Watch, and the follow-up on my weight loss using the device, I’ve been answering questions from readers about my progress. I thought I’d take a minute and give you an update. […]

This is a fascinating story. Academics do the research for free, but they have to buy back their papers through expensive subscriptions from publishers. Enter the dark web.

I love this bag. It’s quality from top to bottom and the leather artisan even signs it.

It’s no surprise that lawyers are considering suing Apple, but this is an interesting case.

People who have iPhones running iOS 9 sometimes see “Error 53” when trying to restore the phone through Apple’s iTunes software after being prompted to connect the device to a computer. The error, which prevents the user from using the device, seems to occur on the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6S, and iPhone 6S Plus after their Touch ID sensors are repaired by unapproved retailers.

I can understand Apple’s reasoning, but perhaps they should have been more proactive in letting people know before they updated.

Macworld:

One of the joys of macro photography is that for most of our lives most of us just don’t look at the world in that much detail. Whether you’re shooting or just looking at close-up shots, there’s something a bit magical about taking the time to examine things around us in minute detail. What they reveal is the “analogness” of those apparently crisp, perfect objects, their imperfections, and the artifacts of their manufacture.

So join me. Come near. Nearer! Let’s quite literally take a close look at some of the vintage Apple hardware in my collection.

As awful as the slideshow is, it’s a great example of macro (close up) photography and the beauty and attention to detail of some of Apple’s hardware.

Ars Technica:

The Expanse series takes place two centuries from now in the Belt, a ring of asteroids that orbit the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. People who have migrated to the Belt come from all over Earth speaking dozens of languages, and they’re often isolated for years at a time on remote mining stations. To communicate, they evolve a creole called Belter, which becomes the lingua franca for what is essentially the solar system’s new proletariat. The problem? In the book, Belter could be referenced. But now that The Expanse was coming to television, people would actually have to speak the damn thing. SyFy suddenly needed a linguist who could build a language out of dozens of parts. Luckily, Franck knew a guy. He soon recommended Farmer, who delivered a lot more than they bargained for.

I’m really enjoying this show. It started off a little slow but hit its stride about four episodes in.

That’s certainly original.

The Onion:

Disappointing the thousands of fans in attendance as well as an estimated 100 million viewers watching at home, the Super Bowl 50 halftime show was marred Sunday by the stadium’s functioning sound system, sources confirmed. “Right from the beginning, the sound was working normally, and unfortunately, I could clearly hear the singing,” said 29-year-old spectator Joe Kessler.

Priceless.

This week, Jim and Merlin talk about Apple’s software struggles and their wish list for Apple Watch updates.

Also, some fun #heytdr, including listener questions about iOS text editors and easy songs to learn on guitar.

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