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Mentalfloss:

One movie trope Hollywood just can’t seem to move past? The frantic hacker. Here’s how those scenes usually go: A character on the screen is shown banging away at a keyboard while a timer counts down and lines of code flash across their monitor. But how realistic is that? YouTuber elsafrickey compiled clips from various movies made between 1970 and 2000, and the resulting supercut shows that while technology has changed over the years, the misrepresentation of hacking has remained consistent.

I won’t lie – I’ve made several girlfriends and one wife nuts from yelling at the TV screen, “That’s not how it’s done!”

Priceonomics:

In 1997, Congress introduced the Copyright Term Extension Act, which proposed to extend corporate copyrights again — this time, from 75 to 95 years. To ensure the bill passed, Disney cozied up to legislators.

Watchdog records show that the Disney Political Action Committee (PAC) paid out a total of $149,612 in direct campaign contributions to those considering the bill. Of the bill’s 25 sponsors (12 in the Senate, and 13 in the House), 19 received money from Disney’s CEO, Michael Eisner. In one instance, Eisner paid Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) $1,000 on the very same day that he signed on as a co-sponsor.

While it is impossible to say for certain whether or not Disney’s efforts directly impacted politics, the results heavily worked out in their favor: the bill quietly and unanimously passed in the House and Senate with no public hearings, no debate, no notice to the public, and no roll call.

On October 27, 1998, Mickey Mouse’s copyright was extended another 20 years, to 2023.

That’s only seven years away. We can look forward to Disney extending the Mickey Mouse copyright again and again with no public oversight or comment.

Ars Technica:

It’s that time of the year again—welcome to the Google Tracker! This is a bi-annual series where we recap every ongoing project (that we know about, at least) inside of Google’s sprawling empire.

This is a long, long list.

The National Football League is planning to live-stream all three games scheduled to be played in London next season, and Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc subsidiary Google are among the technology companies in talks to buy the rights to conduct the streams, said two sources familiar with the situation.

This will be a big win for whoever gets the streaming rights. It’s interesting that the NFL deemed streaming this year with Yahoo a success, but Yahoo isn’t mentioned anywhere as being a contender for next year’s games.

Tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said on Friday its fourth-quarter operating profit likely rose 15 percent from a year earlier, missing expectations and fuelling concerns the tech industry may be in for a tough year of slack gadget sales.

Not a big surprise. Samsung warned employees on Monday that it was going to be a tough year.

The maker of the Onewheel electric skateboard called in federal marshals to shut down the booth of a company making a similar product.

The guy tried to deal with the company and ask them to stop stealing his product—they wouldn’t even respond. I think they’re listening now.

This week, Jim and Merlin talk Apple nostalgia.

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Steve Jobs unveiled the “Fastest Web Browser Ever Created for the Mac” this day back in 2003, introducing the Safari web browser that four years later would power a new kind of mobile browsing experience on iPhone.

I was there when Safari was introduced. It’s been quite a run for Safari on Mac and iOS.

There have been a lot of rumors surrounding a change to the headphone jack in an upcoming version of the iPhone. Basically, Apple is working with its supplier to use the iPhone’s Lightning port for audio and get rid of the traditional headphone jack. […]

There is just nothing better than hearing someone like Pete talk about how he uses his console to write and record.

Apple Inc. has purchased Emotient Inc., a startup that uses artificial-intelligence technology to read people’s emotions by analyzing facial expressions.

Fascinating technology. There are a number of uses for it, including advertising, but I don’t think that’s what Apple will use it for.

Doctors also have tested it to interpret signs of pain among patients unable to express themselves, and a retailer used it to monitor shoppers’ facial expressions in store aisles, the company had said.

Both of those options seem viable to me, especially the medical angle, given Apple’s foray into helping the medical profession recently.

McMaster University:

We watch the same TV shows, listen to the same music and wear the same clothes. But when it comes to what we say on Twitter, Canadians and Americans could hardly be more different.

After analyzing millions of tweets, McMaster linguists have found that Canadians tend to be a pretty polite, happy bunch of tweeters.

They also found that our neighbours’ tweets tend to be a little more, uh, raunchy.

You Americans are apparently a foul-mouthed bunch.

IT’s always a good idea to have a checklist for all instruments, cables and everything else.

“Coffee is a lot more than just a drink.”

I love a good strong cup of coffee.

[Via Om Malik]

TidBITS:

With Macworld/iWorld seemingly stuck in mothballs for good, Apple professionals will have to go elsewhere to gather with their peers. Luckily, there’s no lack of independent conferences both before and after Apple’s own Worldwide Developer Conference, which usually takes place in June and has far fewer slots than developers who would like to attend.

As usual, Engst is being far too kind. Macworld is well and truly dead and no other conference has arisen from its ashes to replace it. But, this is a good list of events occurring in 2016 that might be of interest to some of you.

Jim and Merlin talk New Years and what they hope to see in the year ahead. Also, Motorhead and preparing for presentations.

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Netflix:

Netflix launched its service globally, simultaneously bringing its Internet TV network to more than 130 new countries around the world. The company made the announcement — and the service went live — during a keynote by Co-founder and Chief Executive Reed Hastings at CES 2016.

“Today you are witnessing the birth of a new global Internet TV network,” said Hastings. “With this launch, consumers around the world — from Singapore to St. Petersburg, from San Francisco to Sao Paulo — will be able to enjoy TV shows and movies simultaneously — no more waiting. With the help of the Internet, we are putting power in consumers’ hands to watch whenever, wherever and on whatever device.”

Good news for The Loop readers around the world (except China). You can now watch old TV shows and movies along with the rest of us.

iMore:

If you were at CES, you could see water bottles with screens, alarm clocks with smell, robots with video projectors, underwear that’s smart, and a tablet/refrigerator. That would have been all on one day. Yesterday.

CES started as a trade show for retail. In the ’80s and ’90s, it was a venue for great technology intros such as the CD (1981), the DVD, (1986) and HDTV (1998). By 2000, CES was the place to launch major products such as Xbox (2001). When I look at this year’s show, I see a lot of things no one needs, and few people will want. It’s a Sharper Image catalog brought to life, the ultimate “Why? Because I can!” So why is it still an important event? It’s the place to try and spot the new, new thing that might get consumers to replace the old, old thing. So far, I don’t see it but here’s what I do see.

CES is a gigantic waste of time, energy, and money – but you won’t hear the Tech Media say that. The vast majority of what they “report” on will never see the light of day as a consumer-purchasable product. But they’ll get excited as puppies over it regardless.

Great idea.

Re/code reports on an upcoming sea change to Twitter, plus a tweet from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey that adds legitimacy to the rumor. This will be an interesting change, assuming it happens.

Pete Souza:

One of the best and most challenging aspects of my job is whittling down a year’s worth of photographs to the final selections for my annual Year in Photographs. Every year, I attempt to keep it less than 100 photos — and every year I fail in that goal. But I am excited once again to present this gallery for the seventh consecutive year.

We saw Chief Official White House Photographer Souza’s favorite iPhone shots late last year. Here is his gallery of shots by him and his staff. There are some great images here but I particularly like the one of President Obama and basketball player Shaquille O’Neal. Souza “cheated” by using a wide angle lens to great result.

General Motors Inc (GM.N) said on Monday it will invest $500 million in Lyft Inc and laid out plans to develop an on-demand network of self-driving cars with the ride-sharing service.

The biggest single Detroit-Silicon Valley crossover deal to date comes as automakers work out how to respond to the rush of technology companies such as Apple, Alphabet and Uber – Lyft’s biggest rival – to control cars of the future and likely reshape the global auto industry.

I see why GM invested in Lyft, but I’ll be honest, I don’t trust the quality of GM cars or technology. I’d feel much better if it were Mercedes.

Asymco:

Apple has made a “significant” market entry in phones and others have made entries in cars. If we contrast the rate of growth of Tesla, EVs, and Hybrids to the rate of growth of iPhones in their respective US markets, we obtain a test of significance.

A typically thoughtful post from Dediu. It assumes Apple’s “Cook Doctrine” won’t change in the future and, if so, points to the unlikelihood of Apple making their own car – which I agree with. Given the information in this post, there’s no chance Apple will come out with its own line of cars, any more than they will come out with their own line of HD TV sets.

Yahoo Inc was ordered by a Chicago federal judge on Monday to face a class action lawsuit accusing the Internet company of sending unsolicited text messages to Sprint Corp cellphone users in violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

I hate unsolicited texts.

South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co Ltd said it expects a difficult business environment in 2016 due to weak global economic conditions and heightened competition in key businesses including memory chips and smartphones.

In a statement on Monday, Samsung said Chief Executive Kwon Oh-hyun told employees in a New Year’s address that low global growth will persist this year, with greater uncertainty stemming from issues such as financial risks for emerging countries.

No need to really say anything about this.

Future Toyota models will offer in-dash infotainment systems compatible with Ford’s SmartDeviceLink system rather than Apple’s CarPlay, the Japanese automaker announced on Monday.

Seems a bit odd considering Ford just starting adopting Apple’s CarPlay.

Center for the Study of the Public Domain:

Current US law extends copyright for 70 years after the date of the author’s death, and corporate “works-for-hire” are copyrighted for 95 years after publication. But prior to the 1976 Copyright Act (which became effective in 1978), the maximum copyright term was 56 years—an initial term of 28 years, renewable for another 28 years.

Under those laws, works published in 1959 would enter the public domain on January 1, 2016, where they would be “free as the air to common use.” Under current copyright law, we’ll have to wait until 2055. No published works will enter our public domain until 2019. The laws in other countries are different—thousands of works are entering the public domain in Canada and the EU on January 1.

What books and plays would be entering the public domain if we had the pre-1978 copyright laws? You might recognize some of the titles.

Copyright’s original intent has been completely bastardized to the detriment of the public and in favor of corporate interests.

What if you could get 5% of your day back? What would you do?

You already have enough work to do today and shouldn’t have to waste time looking for the things you need to do your job.

Igloo makes it easy to find what you need, when you need it. And it’s not just for locating your traditional intranet stuff like HR policies and expense forms. It also helps you find experts, talk about problems and share content with your team. So stop digging through your inbox for that file from 3 months back and give yourself the tools you need to do your best work.

Try it yourself or send your IT guy to investigate Igloo, an intranet you’ll actually like.

Petapixel:

Guess who’s getting into the world of photography workshops? Apple.

That’s right: the company wants people to be more adept at shooting photos with their iPhones and editing photos on their Macs, so it’s now launching free 1-hour workshops on those subjects (and more) in its sleek Apple Stores.

The workshops will be available at every single Apple Store around the world, so starting in January 2016, check your local store’s website for its workshop schedule if you’re interested in attending one.

As a teacher of workshops and classes myself, I love the idea of Apple getting into this. Anything that encourages people to learn more about how to take better pictures is a good thing.

Ken Segall:

Recently, Apple hired Tor Myhren as VP of Marketing Communications. He comes from Grey, where he was the global chief creative officer and president of the NY office.

To borrow some new Star Wars terminology, he’s a big deal in advertising.

On the surface, Tor’s hiring is what it is. But if you look a bit deeper, there are all sorts of juicy implications.

To better appreciate, one must first understand how Apple’s marketing has worked in the past, Steve Jobs-style.

I’ve been following this behind the scenes story for a few years now. The most interesting aspect of this, besides the fact that a world-class ad agency guy would go “behind the wall” to work internally is Segall’s statement that Myhren will be reporting directly to Cook and not Schiller. We’ll see the fruits of this hire inside six months.