The Center for Reading Research:
Some words are better known to men than to women and the other way around. But which are they? On the basis of our vocabulary test, we can start to answer this question. These 24 words should suffice to find out whether a person you are interacting with in digital space is male or female.
I knew all twelve of the “men’s words” and all but two of the “women’s words”. If you have the time, be sure to take their vocabulary test, too.
In a strongly worded statement issued to international media yesterday, the Department of Finance said that Ireland was “confident that there is no state aid rule breach in this case and we will defend all aspects vigorously.” It signalled its intent to fight the ruling in the European Court of Justice should the commission find against the State.
Good for Ireland.
Farad Manjoo spent some time with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
Nieh and Viennot discovered all kinds of new information about the content in Google Play, including a critical security problem: developers often store their secret keys in their apps software, similar to usernames/passwords info, and these can be then used by anyone to maliciously steal user data or resources from service providers such as Amazon and Facebook. These vulnerabilities can affect users even if they are not actively running the Android apps. Nieh notes that even “Top Developers,” designated by the Google Play team as the best developers on Google Play, included these vulnerabilities in their apps.
Android isn’t secure? I’m shocked.
Stanford Magazine:
Lipreading, which makes one sense do the work of another, is a skill daunting to describe. Rachel Kolb, deaf since birth, shares its mysteries.
Interesting article from the point of view of a deaf person. I’m sure I’ve made the same mistake – assuming if a deaf person can read lips, it’s easy for them.
Jim returns from his well earned vacation to talk to Dan about the potential for an Amazon phone, WWDC two weeks later, the new iMac’s importance as a serious production machine, operating systems as a product, Apple’s veil of secrecy, and more.
Sponsored by HostGator (use code DANSENTME for 50% off VPS) and Squarespace (use code DANSENTME for 10% off).
Moom is Many Tricks’ window moving and zooming app. If you find the behavior of the green zoom button mysterious and thus avoid using it, you’ll love Moom—hover over the green button, and a pop-up palette appears, letting you quickly choose from five built-in size/location options. But you can also create custom commands that will move windows to other displays, size and position them exactly as you wish, or perform many other actions, including centering. Finally, if you use one display at one location, but multiple displays elsewhere, Moom can memorize your open windows for both setups, and automatically switch to the saved layout when the display setup changes. Check it out at Many Tricks.
Macworld:
Mix looks to be yet another example of Adobe pushing to expand the technologies it developed for Photoshop into non-desktop areas like the cloud and, by extension, mobile devices like the iPad. I suspect that artists, designers, and hobbyists who like creating compositions or who want an image editor that ties directly into some of Photoshop’s editing tools and Creative Cloud are going to like Mix. A lot.
I like that Mix doesn’t require a paid Creative Cloud subscription (although it does require an Adobe ID). Makes it more likely I’ll try it out.
New York Times:
Amazon on Wednesday introduced its own smartphone — a device optimized to allow customers to consume great amounts of video, books and music, preferably from Amazon.Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, announced the new phone, Fire, here in Seattle, the company’s headquarters.
Amazon executives asked themselves, Mr. Bezos said, only one question: “Can we build a better phone for our most engaged customers?”
“Our most engaged customers” seems to be the key here. What do you think? Is there anything compelling in the “AmaFone” for you?
From the 1950s until the 1970s Bell Labs spent over $500 million developing the videophone. But the technology failed to achieve mainstream success. Why?The story of the Bell Labs videophone — from the experiments of the mid-50s, to the expensive and ultimately failed consumer trials of the 1970s.
This always seemed like one of those technologies forever searching for a problem for it to solve – a problem average consumers really didn’t have or want solved. The irony is now most of us carry around this technology in our pockets every day. But how many of us use it on a regular basis?
Ken Segall:
We all know that things are different in the post-Steve Apple.However, there’s something about the current move to build an in-house marketing agency that’s really, really different. Unlike previous changes, this one isn’t driven by Tim Cook.It comes from a new place, deeper inside the company — from those who long played a part in Steve Jobs’ marketing machine.
The industry and the press seem to be surprised by this development. To many others, it’s a wonder it didn’t happen sooner.
Some fascinating insights into what may be going on behind the scenes at Apple Marketing. Whether this works out for Apple in the long run will be very interesting to see.
Employees of Apple’s retail stores in Australia have reached agreement with the company on a four-year contract that covers pay, benefits and working conditions, but retail observers say Apple’s offer was barely over the retail industry’s current averages, and includes just two percent annual raises.When the agreement becomes effective this November 1st, starting pay for full-time Level 1 employees will be $20.95 per hour (all rates in U.S. dollars), and Level 2 will start at $25.26. Casual employees will receive 25 percent more per hour to offset fewer benefits. Level 3 employees are management, and will receive a base annual pay of $72,779.
It’s impossible to compare the new Australia pay rates to other regions or countries.
While that’s true and standards of living are different in different countries and cities, it certainly seems, on the face of it at least, that store employees in Australia can make a decent living.
iMore:
There are a lot of cool features coming to iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite this fall. One of the most hotly anticipated is Handoff, which enables you to pick up where you left off in an email, a document and other work between iOS and OS X devices. Handoff is elegantly choreographed dance between devices, operating systems and protocols. It’s partly dependent on Bluetooth 4.0, the most recent widespread deployment of the popular short-distance wireless communication protocol, which includes Bluetooth Low Energy (BT LE). So, how can you tell if your Mac is properly equipped to take advantage of it?You can check for yourself if you’re not exactly sure which Mac model you have. It’s a little convoluted, so bear with me and follow these instructions to find out.
Sadly, mine isn’t “Handoff-compatible”.
In an unprecedented ruling, a B.C. court has ordered Google Inc. to block a group of websites from its worldwide search engine – a decision raising questions over how far one country’s courts can exert their power over the borderless Internet.
On the surface, it sounds utterly ridiculous but reading the judge’s reasoning, it makes a little bit of sense. It still likely will get overturned on appeal and might even be unenforceable.
This is great.
New for 2014, Jackson commemorates 30 years of sonic mayhem with the 30th Anniversary Soloist. This master-built limited-run homage to the godfather of high-performance guitars is the perfect combination of past and present, with features that evoke the Soloist’s debut year of 1984 and contemporary Jackson design elements.
Hell yes!
“Apple is subject to the same tax laws as scores of other international companies doing business in Ireland,” the company said in a statement. “Apple pays every euro of every tax that we owe. Since the iPhone launched in 2007, our taxes in Ireland have increased tenfold. Apple is proud to have been doing business in Cork, Ireland, since 1980.”
Every country, state, province, and county in the world offers tax breaks to big companies in hopes they will open businesses in their area. All of the people complaining about Ireland would line up to offer Apple incentives to relocate to their towns. This is just silly.
There’s some great advice here.
Toontrack’s drum products are among my favorites.
TripAdvisor:
For the second year in a row, Vancouver’s Stanley Park was named the World’s Best Park in the TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice poll. It’s North America’s third-largest park and gets eight million visitors per year.
Similar to Central Park in the sense that it is an oasis (big enough to get lost in) in the middle of a major city, Stanley Park offers much more and in a wider variety than any city park I’ve ever been in.
I have two Slingbox devices that I use everyday. I wouldn’t trade them for anything.
Brian Krebs, 41, of KrebsOnSecurity.com, sits at his Northern Virginia home office, showing me his daily routine. A shotgun in a case leans against the corner of the room. On his desk sit four busy computer monitors and two laptops. One of the monitors has video feeds from security cameras around his house; the others show a range of underground forums and websites that sell stolen personal information and credit cards.It’s the home of a man who understands that a malicious intruder could come from anywhere.
Except for war zone journalists, Krebs may be the bravest journalist working today.
Ars Technica:
How long, exactly, do SSDs last?It’s a difficult question to answer because estimating an SSD’s life requires taking a whole lot of factors into consideration—type and amount of NAND used in the drive, overall write amplification, read/write cycle, and more. TechReport…has been subjecting six drives to a long-term torture test to actually measure, rather than estimate, the drives’ service life.
The results are impressive: the consumer-grade SSDs tested all made it to at least 700TB of writes before failing.
The long term viability of SSDs has always been a concern so it’s good to see reports like this coming out that may put some of those to rest. The speed improvements of SSDs are definitely worth it.
Independent artists could disappear from YouTube “in a matter of days” after the Google video service confirmed it was dropping content from independent labels that have not signed up for its upcoming subscription music service.
Holy sweet shit.
Apple on Tuesday published a new page on its iBookstore, offering users the opportunity to pre-order upcoming books from publisher Hachette Digital.
One year after the first revelations of Edward Snowden, cryptography has shifted from an obscure branch of computer science to an almost mainstream notion: It’s possible, user privacy groups and a growing industry of crypto-focused companies tell us, to encrypt everything from emails to IMs to a gif of a motorcycle jumping over a plane.But it’s also possible to go a step closer toward true privacy online. Mere encryption hides the content of messages, but not who’s communicating. Use cryptographic anonymity tools to hide your identity, on the other hand, and network eavesdroppers may not even know where to find your communications, let alone snoop on them. “Hide in the network,” security guru Bruce Schneier made his first tip for evading the NSA. “The less obvious you are, the safer you are.”
I’m not nearly paranoid or worried enough to go through a lot of this effort but it’s still an interesting idea – what if you needed to be completely anonymous?
Another great article from Ben Thompson.
If it’s good, Facebook could take a significant share of this market. Many consumers will use this type of service simply because they use Facebook all the time, making it the default service.
This particular part of the bill would give the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration the ability to enforce a set of rules for navigation apps on smartphones, which many drivers find more convenient and less expensive than built-in navigation systems. These rules would be subject to change, and apps would have to comply as regulators see fit.
I’m not opposed to regulation and safety, but I’d really like to see something done about people texting while driving, instead of listening to turn-by-turn directions from a smartphone.