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I’ve never bought a thing from Hammacher Schlemmer but I’ve always loved the weirdness of their catalogs.

This will be an understandably controversial move that won’t hurt Jones in the long run.

I love reading movie scripts and there are a bunch here, including for the “Steve Jobs” movie, you can download as PDFs.

Dave and I had a lot of fun today as we talked about his new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. We also took a look at Mac sales and iCloud storage limits.

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As a motorcyclist, this car and others that will come after it, terrify me. The “iPhone on wheels” is an awful and dangerous idea. Watch the video to get an idea of how obscenely huge and distracting that screen is.

Rachel Slade, Medium:

Improbably, AlterEgo, the soundless, voiceless, earbud-less device he’d been working on for the last two years had become adept enough at reading his thoughts that he could use it to order an Uber without saying a word.

And:

Kapur wants to perfect a device that allows users to communicate with A.I. as effortlessly as one’s left brain talks to one’s right brain, so that humans can integrate the power of the Internet into their thinking at every level.

And:

One night, Kapur and his brother were testing the device in their Cambridge apartment. Kapur was wearing the device and Shreyas was monitoring the computer screen. They’d rigged the device to track signals in real time so that Shreyas could note the exact moment it picked up something, if anything.

It was getting late. Kapur had been speaking silently into the device for a couple of hours — having programmed it to understand just two words: yes and no — without any meaningful results.

Then Shreyas thought he saw something. A blip on the screen.

To me, this is the sort of device that Big Tech ought to be building, something that allows you to interface with your personal AI and with the world it connects to, all without saying a word, by purposeful thinking.

There are dangers, of course, as those ad companies do their level best to connect directly with your brain. But still, I find this fascinating.

Barbara Davidson, NetCredit:

The United States is a comparatively young country, but one with a rich and diverse history. From the ancient villages of New Mexico’s Pueblo people and the early Spanish settlers in Florida, to the Russian traders of Alaska and 19th-century missionaries in Utah, each of the 50 states has its own story to tell.

Bucket list for me. I’d love to visit every one of these.

The world economy is increasingly dependent on these kinds of chokepoints. Heaven help us if/when they fail. It will make Y2K look like a walk in the park.

This has the potential to kill sites like Touch Arcade that use the revenue from App Store affiliate links to stay afloat. I think Apple’s stated reasoning for this action is utterly ridiculous and complete bullshit. But it also shows the danger for any site or business to rely too much on one source of revenue.

Many people will say Apple is ignoring the Mac and using the 13 percent drop compared to a year ago as evidence but here is the argument that the Mac is integral to Apple’s Services numbers.

Social media network Reddit said on Wednesday a hacker broke into a few of its systems and accessed some user data, including current email addresses and a 2007 database backup containing old encrypted passwords.

Reddit said they were notifying affected users. Christopher Slowe, Reddit’s founding engineer said the company recently hired its first head of security and noted that “So far he hasn’t quit.”

Oomph.

My wife works in the education system and she echoes a lot of this frustration.

Wenders isn’t just some “cranky old man” we can easily ignore. I don’t necessarily agree with his overall premise but he does make some interesting points. Personally, I rarely take any photo that I don’t want to share with others in any number of ways.

I find this aspect of Apple’s future business to be fascinating. They have the luxury of being able to take their time and “do it right” or, at least, do it their own way. I wouldn’t bet against them accomplishing whatever their goals are.

I had a train set when I was a kid. This is not that “set”. This is an incredible achievement.

“…of the century” makes this a bit of a silly list but it’s still a fun read.

It could be argued that Apple is no longer the company that Segall used to work for in the sense they are not the “scrappy underdog” any more. They are a fully mature, consumer electronics company that no longer needs to be “edgy”.

That being said, I prefer Apple edgy.

Blue makes many podcasters’ favorite microphones. Logitech seems like they’ll leave them alone to continue to do just that.

This might just be the wildest story you read all weekend.

I’d never heard of her until this video. It’s shame she doesn’t get more recognition.

Not only did I not know about the Jell-O family curse, I didn’t even know there was a family involved in Jell-O.

Like many people, I’m fascinated by sharks and when Shark Week first started, I watched it all of it. But now, not only has it become ridiculous, it’s actually often fake and bad science.

I think many of them are silly and childish. A couple make a good point or two but you really have to stretch to see them. Overall, pointless ads in my opinion.

Good news for Apple’s customers in Japan affected by the floods and landslides.

The differences/comparisons between the iPad and the Mac fascinate me. I get a lot of people asking for advice about “what should I buy?” and, for a lot of them, I can often recommend “just” the iPad.

Not your typical documentary. Very little about the actual development and design of this iconic tool but more about the people and some of their amazing stories.

I knew the act of painting a car was difficult but I’d given no thought to how hard colour matching was.

If you’re lucky enough to live within the viewing path of this eclipse, you should really get outside and enjoy it.

I’m glad Cook is doing this but I’m officially old. Except for Cook and Imagine Dragons, I don’t recognize a single other speaker or band.

Interesting that Apple is actually mentioning the chip inside the phone. The average consumer certainly doesn’t care.