The Library has done its digital users a service in this regard as well, with its “Free to Use and Reuse Sets,” a sizable collection of images that the Library “believes… is either in the public domain, has no known copyright, or has been cleared by the copyright owner for public use.”
Need photographs of Abraham Lincoln—and scans of his speeches, letters, and “dueling instructions”—for that book you’re writing? You’re covered with this gallery. Need a collection of classic children’s books for your website (or your reading pleasure)? Here you go.
We used to use PC tools to do things like place orders, deal with customer service, do banking, budgets, and more. All are phone tasks now for billions. AND more volume and new things.
Many things ran on mainframes for years after PCs took over.
Many things ran on DOS for years after Windows “won”.
Many things ran as Win32/OSX apps even though phones dominate computing.
In each case, the new way opened up a scenario to an order of magnitude more people.
Really interesting thread from a guy who knows a lot about this stuff.
There are moments in this video that literally made me queasy. I’ve been a fan of Honnold for years and I can’t wait to see “Free Solo” in the theater. This just screams for an IMAX release.
If you are considering laying out the bucks for one of the new iPad Pros, take the time to watch Ian Bernard’s video, embedded below. It is a thoughtful, rich piece, told from an artist’s perspective. [H/T Tim]
Lots and lots of numbers in this review, packed with easy to read comparison charts. This iPad Pro comes out on top all the way through.
There’s a battery life comparison (based on continuous web surfing), with the iPad Pro lasting more than 13 hours, compared with the Surface Pro 6 at a bit over 9 hours. Same with GeekBench 4 numbers, with the iPad Pro multi-core at 17995 and the Surface Pro 6 at 13,025.
But scroll down to that video transcoding chart. Whoa. The Surface Pro 6 took 31 minutes to transcode a 12-minute 4K video clip. The MacBook Pro fared a bit better, just under 26 minutes. But the new iPad Pro? 7 minutes, 47 seconds.
Though we did include this review in yesterday’s list of the new MacBook Air reviews, I wanted to link to John Gruber’s review separately, for his take on Intel.
The elephant in the room at last week’s Apple event was Intel.
Apple introduced two products based on Intel chips — the new MacBook Air and new Mac Mini — but barely mentioned the company’s name. The word “Intel” appeared on a single slide during VP of hardware engineering Laura Legros’s presentation of the new MacBook Air. She also spoke the word once, saying the new Airs have “the latest Intel integrated graphics”. In the presentation of the new Mac Mini, “Intel” never appeared in a slide and wasn’t mentioned.
And:
Apple is not going to throw Intel under the bus — they’re taking an “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” approach, as they should.
Push is slowly coming to shove here. As John points out, the new iPad Pro simply crushes the Intel-powered MacBook Air in GeekBench score, especially that MultiCore score (18,051 to 7,847).
As products, the Mac and the iPad are still on different tracks, not plug replaceable. But it does seem highly likely (a “when”, not an “if”) that Apple will eventually ship a Mac powered by their own bionic chip.
The embargo has lifted on the new 12.9-inch iPad Pro and all the usual suspects have posted. I’ll update the post as I find more. Feel free to let me know which one’s I’ve missed in the comments.
Perhaps the most famously bad Marvel movie in history is now available to watch in its entirety online. In 1994, a low-budget The Fantastic Four movie was completed, but never released and has existed in infamy ever since. In an era long before the creation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and even a few years before Blade would help establish Marvel as a brand that could do business at the box office, this cheap monstrosity happened. And now, those brave enough can view it for themselves.
This is the last (hopefully) in a long string of awful Fantastic Four movies.
SmugMug, trying to strengthen its Flickr site as a community for photo enthusiasts, will limit free members to 1,000 photos and scrap the old policy of a terabyte of storage in an attempt to move toward subscriptions.
The move, accompanied by a 30 percent discount on the $50 annual Flickr pro membership through Nov. 30, is the first big business shift at the photo-sharing site since SmugMug’s acquisition of Flickr from Verizon’s Yahoo earlier this year. And while it’ll mean some members have to decide whether to spend some money or save their photos, it also means Flickr’s interests are directly aligned with those of its members, not those of advertisers, Flickr vice president of product Andrew Stadlen said in a blog post Thursday.
This is a controversial decision but, if it works out the way SmugMug wants it to, it will fundamentally change the kind of site Flickr is and how it is used.
This is just impossibly cute. And I’m thinking she learned this from watching Wayne’s World. Why? Cause of the bit at about 1:20 in, in which young Holly Lee proceeds to head-bang, like a boss.
Buried in Apple’s latest range of MacBooks — including the MacBook Pro out earlier this year and the just-announced MacBook Air — is the new T2 security chip, which helps protect the device’s encryption keys, storage, fingerprint data and secure boot features.
Little was known about the chip until today. According to its newest published security guide, the chip comes with a hardware microphone disconnect feature that physically cuts the device’s microphone from the rest of the hardware whenever the lid is closed.
All Mac portables with the Apple T2 Security Chip feature a hardware disconnect that ensures that the microphone is disabled whenever the lid is closed. This disconnect is implemented in hardware alone, and therefore prevents any software, even with root or kernel privileges in macOS, and even the software on the T2 chip, from engaging the microphone when the lid is closed. (The camera is not disconnected in hardware because its field of view is completely obstructed with the lid closed.)
If you watched Apple’s event last week, you’ll know Tom Boger as the person who introduced the new Mac mini.
This is a subset of a longer interview (here’s a link to the longer version, a podcast) that focuses on Apple’s Mac product grid (Steve Jobs famously introduced the Desktop/Portable vs Consumer/Pro grid back in the day) and the MacBook Air’s place in the product line, as well as how Apple decides which parts to make user serviceable.
This is absolutely worth a watch/listen. I found Tom’s explanation of where the MacBook Air fits to be interesting, but it still doesn’t click for me. Listen for yourself. Nice work, Rene.
If you recently bought a new flagship phone, chances are its battery life is actually worse than an older model.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been performing the same battery test over and over again on 13 phones. With a few notable exceptions, this year’s top models underperformed last year’s. The new iPhone XS died 21 minutes earlier than last year’s iPhone X. Google’s Pixel 3 lasted nearly an hour and a half less than its Pixel 2.
Phone makers tout all sorts of tricks to boost battery life, including more-efficient processors, low-power modes and artificial intelligence to manage app drain. Yet my results, and tests by other reviewers I spoke with, reveal an open secret in the industry: the lithium-ion batteries in smartphones are hitting an inflection point where they simply can’t keep up.
In a nutshell, the case being made here is that battery efficiency is growing very slowly, while screen technology (and other) power draw is growing somewhat faster than that.
Lil Peep died of an accidental drug overdose last November at 21. Afterward, attention turned to his computer. First, it went to London, where the files were backed up by First Access Entertainment, the company that helped guide his career.
Then it went to his mother, Liza Womack. In an interview in her cozy Long Island home, sitting on a nondescript couch that belonged to Peep and was shipped cross-country after his death, she calmly recalled walking into an Apple store, handing the laptop to a clerk, and saying: “My son died. This is him. Take this and put it on a new one.”
Sometime after that, in London, the producer George Astasio and Peep’s longtime musical collaborator Smokeasac finally set out to catalog its contents. What they found were Lil Peep’s complete recordings — some finished, some in fragments; some heard and familiar, many not.
This is an interesting story. Lil Peep was just starting to break out. With his death, what would, and should, become of all his songs and song snippets?
> Google and iRobot have announced they’re working together to improve smart home technology using mapping data collected by iRobot’s robot vacuums. This collaboration aims to make smart homes “more thoughtful” by leveraging the unique dataset collected by iRobot: maps of customers’ homes. As smart technology evolves, it’s worth noting that tools like Big Clean backpack vacuums also contribute to modern cleaning efficiency, offering practical solutions for keeping homes spotless while integrating seamlessly with tech-savvy lifestyles.
And:
> “Much like assigning smart lights or other smart devices to rooms in the home, the Assistant only learns what names people have given to areas of their homes, so that it can then deploy the iRobot i7+ to that area,” said Google in a statement. “We do not receive any information on the layout of the home or where the areas are, respectively.”
Very interesting read. AI continues its creep inside your home. Though Google says they do not receive the mapping info, I am skeptical that that info won’t eventually find its way outside, even if it’s via the work of hackers.
And if you find yourself asking, who cares about room data? It’s an avenue, a path to a future where all your data is visible to outside agencies, a pinprick in the balloon of privacy.
“I think your responsibility actually goes further back than that,” he says. “It starts with the determination not to fall into the trap of just making things different. Because when a product has been highly regarded there is often a desire from people to see it redesigned. I think one of the most important things is that you change something not to make it different but to make it better.”
Justin O’Beirne did a fascinating post on the differences between Apple’s old map and the increased detail of the new map. He also compares Apple and Google side-by-side and does a comparison of the included detail.
Apple on Thursday posted its fourth quarter earnings, posting revenue of $62.9 billion. Apple CFO, Luca Maestri, said it’s was Apple’s best September quarter ever.
“We’re thrilled to report another record-breaking quarter that caps a tremendous fiscal 2018, the year in which we shipped our 2 billionth iOS device, celebrated the 10th anniversary of the App Store and achieved the strongest revenue and earnings in Apple’s history,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “Over the past two months, we’ve delivered huge advancements for our customers through new versions of iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad and Mac as well as our four operating systems, and we enter the holiday season with our strongest lineup of products and services ever.”
International sales accounted for 61 percent of the quarter’s revenue.
According to the financial statements, Apple sold 46.8 million iPhones in the quarter, up from the 41.3 sold in the year ago quarter. Apple also sold 9.7 million iPads, down from the 11.5 sold a year ago, and 5.3 million Macs, up from the 3.7 million a year ago.
Services also increased 27 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018, rising from 7.9 $billion in 2017 to $10 billion in this year’s fourth quarter.
Persons resident in Canada (individuals, businesses and governmental entities) can receive a payment from the settlements if they purchased any of the following products, regardless of the manufacturer or brand, in Canada between March 1, 1995 and November 25, 2007:
CRT televisions
CRT computer monitors
CRTs for inclusion in televisions or computer monitors
You must complete and file a claim form by March 1, 2019.
A lot of my fellow Canadians qualify for this class action. You’re not likely to get a lot of money out of it but every little bit helps. Thanks to Greg for the heads up.
The Three Rules of Callsigns: 1) If you don’t already have one, you will be assigned one by your “buddies”. 2) You probably won’t like it. 3) If you complain and moan too much about 1. and 2., you’ll get a new nickname you’ll like even less!
So, how do you get a callsign?
Do something stupid or have it fit with your last name. Obvious examples, ‘Crash’ or LT ‘Cheese’ Kraft. Sometimes it’s based on a physical appearance thing like ‘Carrot’. After you’ve earned the respect of your buddies, you’ll get a more ‘heroic’ callsign.
Unless you were involved in the military, I bet the first time most of us heard about callsigns was from the movie Top Gun. We just called them nicknames. I’m lucky – with the last name I have, the only possible nickname/callsign I could have is Kong. Thanks to Scott Jordan for the link.
This was a bit tough for me to watch. Chris Cornell was an immense talent who took his life last year. This is a chance to see him up close, talking about and playing his signature song.
Take a look at the FlexPai folding phone product page. This is the first folding phone concept I’ve seen that made me see a path to the future.
If you scroll about 3/4 of the way down the page, you’ll see the phone folded in half (sort of), showing three displays, with an interior and exterior display as well as one for the spine.
The design feels clunky to me, the folded phone too bulky for my pocket, but I can absolutely see the value of a phone thin enough to fit in my pocket that unfolds into a full size tablet. Best of both worlds.
I can’t help but imagine such a device from Apple. Someday.
Granted, these comparisons are not apples-to-apples, but still, these iPad Pro results seem impressive. They are both top of their respective line machines and, obviously, the iPad Pro is much less expensive.
If my math is right, the MacBook Pro single-core score is about 6.5% faster than the iPad Pro. That’s not much.
