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6 Reasons To Shoot 4k Video

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I have 4k video turned on all the time. I figure that video, and the tools we use, are only going to improve over time, so I might as well start capturing it now.

Apple is learning an expensive lesson about universities

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Washington Post:

You may have heard that Apple’s on the hook for $862 million in potential penalties after a jury ruled that it infringed on a patent owned by the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The university appears to be asking for roughly half that amount, about $400 million, but that is still a huge amount of money, particularly in relation to a) the size of the university’s budget and b) how much Apple’s spent on Washington lobbyists to head off just these types of lawsuits. And the stakes aren’t limited to the fines: If Apple is forced to pay future royalties, it’ll add to the production costs of future iPhones and iPads. While that won’t necessarily lead to increased prices for consumers, it could drag down the company’s profits over the long run even as it grapples with the reputational fallout of having copied someone else’s work.

Apple is almost sure to appeal, and it could very well get the fines reduced further or eliminated, as it did with another recent patent case this year. Still, the ruling represents a stinging rebuke for a company that has spent years accusing its rival, Samsung, of essentially stealing its hardware designs.

Many have and will call the University of Wisconsin–Madison a “patent troll” but that’s not necessarily the case in this particular situation. This does bring into question once again patents and lawsuits. The jury award could also open Apple up to further damages if they also loses a second lawsuit UW-Madison filed against the iPhone 6S, 6S Plus and the iPad Pro.

Stock photos that don’t suck

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Medium:

Finding great stock photos is a pain. You’re left with either low-res amateur photos, people wearing cheesy headsets, or photos that are out of budget for the project you’re working on. Below is an ongoing list (so bookmark it) of the best stock photo sites I’ve come across.

I love using my own photos to illustrate things but sometimes, you just need one particular kind of shot. There are lots of sites that will charge you for lots of different kinds of images but, if you’re on a budget or just cheap, check out some of the sites listed at this page. Many of them have newsletters you can sign up for that will send you a daily list of new images.

Siri ‘distance activation hack’—what you need to know!

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iMore:

Researchers from ANSSI, France’s National Information System Security Agency, have demonstrated a “hack” where, using transmitters from a short distance away, they can trigger Apple’s Siri and Google Now under certain specific circumstances.

Like usual, it’s something to be aware of but not overly concerned about. Once again, we should all be more concerned about the state of security reporting at mainstream publications.

Siri and Google Now are enabling and empowering technologies that help people live better lives. We should all be informed and educated about any potential security issues, but not sensationalized or made to feel scared in any way.

When I saw the Wired story, I (predictably) thought there was more to it than what was reported. As usual, whenever you read about “security threats” to Apple’s products, it’s always good to wait a few days until calmer heads investigate and give you a better, fuller version of the story.

The Dalrymple Report with Merlin Mann: Just Like My Men

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Jim and Merlin talk Apple Watch workouts, playing guitar at parties, and break the fourth wall.

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Pixelmator 3.4

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Pixelmator 3.4 Twist adds support for the new OS X El Capitan, multitasking via Split View, the new Pixelmator Photos Extension with powerful Distort tools, and more.

This is such a great app. The guys at Pixelmator continue to improve the application, adding value for its customers.

You have got to be kidding me Samsung

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Samsung is adding two new Galaxy Note 5 options to its lineup in South Korea. They’re exactly the same internally, but they come in two cool new colors — Silver Titanium and Pink Gold.

“Pink Gold,” really? Samsung is so pathetic.

Tesla unveils autopilot system

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Newer Tesla Motors Model S sedans will be able to steer and park themselves under certain conditions starting Thursday, the carmaker said, although Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk cautioned that drivers should keep holding the steering wheel.

“We’re being especially cautious at this stage so we’re advising drivers to keep their hands on the wheel just in case,” Musk told reporters at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters. “Over time there will not be a need to have your hands on the wheel.”

Newseum

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The dynamic, engaging and interactive Newseum allows visitors to experience the stories of yesterday and today through the eyes of the media while celebrating the freedoms guaranteed to all Americans by the First Amendment.

I really want to go here. I’m a big fan of history and this museum is definitely in my wheel house.

Amplified: I’ll Be Hanging Out With The Cars!

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Jim and Dan talk about Apple’s brand new Magic Keyboard, Magic Trackpad 2, Magic Mouse 2, and the new 5k and 4k iMacs.

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Breaking the sound barrier by air, by land, and in free fall

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Ars Technica:

On October 14, 1947, high above California’s Antelope Valley, Charles “Chuck” Yeager became the fastest man alive. That day Yeager—an Appalachian farm boy-turned-fighter ace—flew an experimental rocket plane called the Bell X-1 through the sound barrier and into the history books. Fifty years and one day later (and only about 500 miles due north), another fighter pilot—RAF Wing Commander Andy Green—equaled Yeager’s feat but on four wheels. Thrust SSC was the name of his ride, and it made Green the fastest man on Earth. It’s a title he still holds.

But 65 years to the day after Yeager’s supersonic flight, an Austrian skydiver named Felix Baumgartner got his own entry into the record books. Baumgartner rode a helium balloon from Roswell, New Mexico, (yes, that Roswell) 128,100 feet (39,045m) into the atmosphere and then stepped out of its gondola, breaking the sound barrier with nothing more than a pressure suit and the laws of gravity. Luckily for Green, Baumgartner became the fastest man en route to Earth.

All three of these historic supersonic firsts happened on (or about) October 14.

The speed of sound is one of those record marks that capture the imagination, even though it was first broken more than 60 years ago. No matter the conveyance, we are still fascinated whenever someone breaks the sound barrier.

‘Bloom County’ and Opus The Penguin return after a 25-year hiatus

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NPR:

Berkeley Breathed has brought back his popular comic strip “Bloom County” after having retired it 25 years ago at the height of its popularity. At the time, “Bloom County” was published in over 1,200 newspapers. Anthologies that collected the strip were best-sellers.

I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. Along with The Far Side, Bloom County was one of my favorite comic strips. It’s latest iteration has lost none of the sweetness and world-weariness of the characters or the ever-so-gentle skewering of the world through Breathed’s eyes.

Apple e-book antitrust monitoring may end after rocky course

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Bloomberg:

The U.S. Justice Department said it’s satisfied Apple Inc. put in place reforms to comply with antitrust laws even though it fought with a monitor appointed to oversee its sale of electronic books.

The government on Monday recommended that the monitoring not be extended. In a letter to the Manhattan federal judge who found in 2013 that Apple illegally conspired with publishers to set e-book prices, the U.S. said Apple has “now implemented meaningful antitrust policies, procedures, and training programs that were obviously lacking at the time Apple participated in and facilitated the horizontal price-fixing conspiracy found by this court.”

While Apple won’t be sad to see the monitor go, looking through other details of this story tells you the monitor will be – he was making a small fortune billing Apple for his court-mandated time.

The inside story of Apple’s new iMacs

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Steven Levy:

There are many reasons why Apple is the world’s most valuable company. Tim Cook is celebrated as a supply chain Maester who has internalized the focus on innovation that his predecessor inculcated in the culture. Jony Ive has drawn global raves for making Apple a design icon. Its marketing and branding practices set industry standards. But a visit to the lab where its legacy products — computers — are made suggests another reason.

Sweating the details.

Levy was given inside access to the iMac team while they developed the new machines and, as usual, his writing on the topic is fascinating.

Scenes from the Incredible Dog Challenge, the friendliest, goofiest competition on earth

Written by

Vice:

There is nothing like the Purina Pro Plan Incredible Dog Challenge. Nowhere else in the nation are the six most popular canine contests—the Agility, the Diving Dog, the 30 Weave Up & Back, the Fetch It!, the Freestyle Flying Disc, and the Jack Russell Hurdle Race—crammed into one Olympic-style event.

The animals are referred to as “athletes” without even a hint of irony, and, for their part, they earn this honor. The agility course requires speed, endurance, execution, and, most important, an almost unfathomable level of obedience.

This is rarely on TV but, when it is, I love watching it. It may be “goofy” but the training and commitment of both the dogs and their handlers is fantastic. I’ll admit to loving the Jack Russell Terriers crash into barriers a little too much and I’ve always wished I had a dog I could play Frisbee with.

On Apple’s insurmountable platform advantage

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Steve Cheney:

One of Steve Jobs’ biggest legacies was his decision to stop relying on 3rd party semiconductor companies and create an internal silicon design team.3 I would go so far as to argue it’s one of the three most important strategic decisions he ever made.

If you study unit economics of semiconductors, it doesn’t really make sense to design chips and compete with companies like Intel unless you can make it up in volume. Consider the audacity back in 2007 for Apple to believe it could pull this off. How would they ever make back the R&D to build out a team and pay for expensive silicon designs over the long run, never mind design comparative performing chips? Well today we know. Apple makes nearly 100% of the profit in the entire smartphone space.

It is – in fact – these chip making capabilities, which Jobs brought in-house shortly after the launch of the original iPhone, that have helped Apple create a massive moat between itself and an entire industry.

I don’t think Apple’s advantage is as insurmountable as Cheney states but it is remarkable Apple is in this position. It’s a sense of mission and dedication and truly amazing foresight from the company that, for those of us long time Apple watchers, we could never have predicted 10 years ago.

The lost art of getting lost

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BBC:

When was the last time you were well and truly lost? Chances are it’s been a while.

Extraordinary gadgets like smartphones and satnavs let us pinpoint our location unerringly. Like the people in Downton Abbey, we all know our place. However, the technology which delivers the world into the palms of our hands may be ushering in a kind of social immobility undreamt of even by Julian Fellowes’s hidebound little Englanders.

Discovery used to mean going out and coming across stuff – now it seems to mean turning inwards and gazing at screens. We’ve become reliant on machines to help us get around, so much so that it’s changing the way we behave, particularly among younger people who have no experience of a time before GPS.

I’m famous for having absolutely zero sense of direction. Even with GPS, I get lost all the time. But I’m OK with that. As a matter of fact, I use my GPS to get lost. I’ll set it for home and then go out riding my motorcycle. Whenever the GPS tells me to go in a certain direction to go back home, I go in the other direction. I’ve explored thousands of miles in the US and Canada like this and have found some wonderful places that I otherwise would have never come across.

The white man in that photo

Written by

Griot:

Sometimes photographs deceive. Take this one, for example. It represents John Carlos and Tommie Smith’s rebellious gesture the day they won medals for the 200 meters at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, and it certainly deceived me for a long time.

I always saw the photo as a powerful image of two barefoot black men, with their heads bowed, their black-gloved fists in the air while the US National Anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” played. It was a strong symbolic gesture – taking a stand for African American civil rights in a year of tragedies that included the death of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.

It’s a historic photo of two men of color. For this reason I never really paid attention to the other man, white, like me, motionless on the second step of the medal podium. I considered him a random presence, an extra in Carlos and Smith’s moment, or a kind of intruder. Actually, I even thought that that guy – who seemed to be just a simpering Englishman – represented, in his icy immobility, the will to resist the change that Smith and Carlos were invoking in their silent protest. But I was wrong.

It’s a powerful photograph and I, like so many others, made assumptions about the third participant. The back story is fascinating but the tale of what happened to him afterward is heartbreaking.

Government will no longer seek encrypted user data

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Boston Globe:

The Obama administration has backed down in its bitter dispute with Silicon Valley over the encryption of data on iPhones and other digital devices, concluding that it is not possible to give US law enforcement and intelligence agencies access to that information without creating an opening that China, Russia, cybercriminals, and terrorists could also exploit.

With its decision, which angered the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, the administration essentially agreed with Apple, Google, Microsoft, and a group of the nation’s top cryptographers and computer scientists.

The administration also agreed with common sense. But make no mistake, this decision came about because of pushback lead by Apple, among others, and more importantly, the administration listening to and trusting the tech companies when they were told this couldn’t be done the way the government wanted it done.