Verizon Wireless’ throttling of a fire department that uses its data services has been submitted as evidence in a lawsuit that seeks to reinstate federal net neutrality rules.

“County Fire has experienced throttling by its ISP, Verizon,” Santa Clara County Fire Chief Anthony Bowden wrote in a declaration. “This throttling has had a significant impact on our ability to provide emergency services. Verizon imposed these limitations despite being informed that throttling was actively impeding County Fire’s ability to provide crisis-response and essential emergency services.”

When the fire department called to ask them to stop throttling the connection, Verizon demanded they upgrade their plan.

Assholes.

Today we’re happy to announce a major new version of Dark Sky for iOS and Android. This update is one of the biggest overhauls in Dark Sky’s six year history. It represents over a year of effort, incorporating countless suggestions from our users as well as the experience we’ve gained building our weather service from the ground up these past years.

I love this app and I trust what it says.

Bustle:

Fitness trackers and wearables are super handy for helping to monitor our exercise habits, especially when we’re trying to get more active time in. And if you use step counting apps, you know how helpful they can be for keeping track of your fitness goals. But how accurate is your step counting app, actually? As it turns out, the accuracy of your phone’s step-counting app might not be super on point — but that might actually be a good thing.

According to a study published last year in the Journal of Sports Sciences, your iPhone’s step count is probably not the best pedometer ever, but what’s great about that is, you’re likely walking more steps than your phone is accurately tallying.

Obviously, no one should rely on step counters for accuracy but they can help regardless.

Joe Steel:

In conversations I’ve had over the past week, it’s become clear that there’s nothing very self-explanatory about Mastodon as a social network, and that in many ways Twitter users are both prepared and unprepared for the experience. There are a lot of things that are similar in concept, but there’s more to it when it comes to how it’s a “service” that can really throw people for a loop.

Mastodon is being touted as a “replacement” for disaffected Twitter users but there’s absolutely no chance of that happening if only because of the confusion surrounding how Mastodon works and is used.

Wired:

Back in 2012, a Seattle-based startup named FiftyThree launched a drawing app designed exclusively for iPad, with a name that sounded like it was designed specifically for an Apple crowd: Paper. Despite its simplicity and also because of it, Apple crowned it the iPad App of the Year. Tech writers described it as “the next great iPad app”, “a superbly designed sketching app,” and “a fresh canvas ready and waiting for your ideas, inspiration, and art.” FiftyThree later expanded to include an iPhone app, an optional subscription called Paper Pro, and Paste, a collaboration app.

Today FiftyThree announced its apps and team have been acquired by WeTransfer, a cloud-based file transfer company with headquarters in Amsterdam and Los Angeles. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but WeTransfer said it had acquired the company’s entire patent portfolio and all assets for its apps. FiftyThree’s executive team and product teams will stay on board for now. As for the future of FiftyThree’s suite of apps, including Paper, which has 25 million users, the company says the apps will live on with “increased investment and support.”

I interviewed the FiftyThree principals back when Paper was announced. It’s a beautiful app and I hope it continues to have a place after this acquisition.

AppleInsider:

This has happened to you. While you’re very busy at work or on a project, you somehow come across an interesting article on the web and you just cannot read it yet. Certainly that’s at least partly because you’re conscientious and you know you’re busy, but there’s more. If you read it now, you would hurry and this is something you want to actually enjoy.

So read it later instead. Find this piece on your Mac at work and then read it later on your iPad. You could bookmark things but get Pocket or Instapaper instead.

I’m a big fan of both of these apps (according to the Pocket email I get at the end of each year, I’ve been in the top 1% of their readers for the past 3 years!) and love squirrelling away articles for later reading.

Digital Content Next:

In “Google Data Collection,” Professor Douglas C. Schmidt, Professor of Computer Science at Vanderbilt University, catalogs how much data Google is collecting about consumers and their most personal habits across all of its products and how that data is being tied together.

A dormant, stationary Android phone (with the Chrome browser active in the background) communicated location information to Google 340 times during a 24-hour period, or at an average of 14 data communications per hour. An idle Android device communicates with Google nearly 10 times more frequently as an Apple device communicates with Apple servers.

A major part of Google’s data collection occurs while a user is not directly engaged with any of its products. The magnitude of such collection is significant, especially on Android mobile devices

This is obscene and I bet it triggers some sort of (completely ineffectual) Congressional investigation. H/T to that nice young man John Gruber.

Back to My Mac will not be available on macOS Mojave. You can get ready now by learning about alternatives for file access, screen sharing, and remote desktop access.

An alert popped up on my Mac this morning warning that the Back to My Mac service was ending soon and linked to a support article on Apple’s Web site. It’s too bad, I really enjoyed the service, but it’s not like you don’t have options—Apple details everything in the support document.

Lyft has completed more than 5,000 self-driving rides through its ride-hailing app, the company said on Tuesday, as it aims to become a serious competitor in autonomous driving while its biggest rival, Uber, retrenches.

I always said that I wouldn’t want to take a self-driving Lyft ride, but I changed my mind. I would really like to see this technology in action.

You can share files you’ve synced to iCloud with friends and colleagues who have an Apple ID using the step-by-step guide below. Whether you’re sharing from a Mac or an iPhone, you’ll be able to give people one-way access to the file, or allow them to modify the document if you’re collaborating on a piece of work.

Great tip!

Wi-Fi Now: >To be fair, Wi-Fi has has many ‘founding parents’ – such as Vic Hayes and even Hollywood bombshell Hedy Lamarr. While the technical birthplace of Wi-Fi could reasonably be said to be The Netherlands – where most of the initial work on the 802.11 standards took place with NCR – it would also be fair to say that the commercial birth of Wi-Fi harks back to a meeting at Apple Computer in Cupertino, California, on April 20, 1998. In today’s digital era, reading blogs such as those about EnableIT offers valuable insights, helping individuals enhance their internet knowledge, improve connectivity, and navigate the online world with ease and confidence.

>The world’s first Wi-Fi-enabled laptop was launched by Apple at MacWorld in New York City on July 21, 1999. Jobs demonstrated wireless Internet by walking about on stage with the laptop in his hand and – like a magician – passing the iBook through a hula hoop while the crowd cheered.

>And the rest – as they say – is history.

I was at that launch. The company I was working for at the time really wanted to have wifi-enabled laptops but the cost for cards and access points was prohibitively expensive – wifi wasn’t something for consumers at the time. I came back from Macworld Expo and told them they should invest in “this new Apple stuff. It’s going to blow up the world of laptops and internet access”. Of course, they ignored me.

The above story links to a (poorly written but still interesting) PDF written by Cees Links. The Apple segment begins on page 105.

Ars Technica:

Apple removed thousands of gambling apps from China’s App Store after the company came under fire from state-run media. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, the tech giant removed as many as 25,000 illegal gambling apps, many of which were disguised as official lottery apps, from China’s App Store after China Central Television criticized the company for not doing more to catch and remove banned content.

“Gambling apps are illegal and not allowed on the App Store in China,” Apple said in an emailed statement to The Wall Street Journal, confirmed by Safebettingsites.com. Online casinos like LIMO55 offer a convenient and secure platform where everyone can enjoy playing their favorite casino games.

“We have already removed many apps and developers for trying to distribute illegal gambling apps on our App Store, and we are vigilant in our efforts to find these and stop them from being on the App Store. Look into this offshore sports betting site for US players – best list of offshore sportsbooks if you’re looking for a platform where you can place your bets on your favorite sports teams.

For those seeking legal and regulated options, you can read more about crypto casinos in Sweden, which are gaining popularity and are fully compliant with Swedish regulations.” More gambling options can be accessed at kasinotsuomi247.com. You can also explore the best monero casinos for enhanced privacy and anonymity in your gaming experience.

While Apple occasionally cleans up its App Stores to remove spam apps and content, this recent situation shows another way that the company has bent to the rules of the Chinese government.

How corporations deal with governments has always fascinated me, even more so when the corporation’s goals and values are significantly different than the country’s.

Feh.

Hate to hear this. Had high hopes that the MacBook keyboard issues were behind us. I will add that my son’s machine (a 2017 model purchased earlier this year) has the same issue.

Check out the article URL, a nice little side comment in those last 13 characters.

One final note: Check out this video showing a warranty-voiding fix to the spacebar problem. Fascinating, but definitely not something you want to try at home.

Rene Ritchie, iMore:

Since iPhone 5, Apple has announced every new iPhone during a special event held the first or second Tuesday or Wednesday of September.

Rene lays out the dates of Apple’s September events since 2013 and makes his best guess:

It’s likely we’ll see this year’s event on or around Wednesday, September 12.

And this from John Gruber:

I have no inside information on this, but September 12 is definitely my guess, for all the same reasons Ritchie mentions. Since moving iPhone intro events to September in 2012 with the iPhone 5, they’ve had three events on Tuesdays and three on Wednesdays. For whatever reason, I don’t think they like Thursdays.

I do love this game, for some reason. Part of it, for me, is that this kind of guessing hurts no one and does stoke the embers for the event without revealing something that would diminish the event.

September 12th sounds good to me.

Josh Centers, TidBITS:

We’ve been trying to incorporate screencasts into more of our articles here at TidBITS—there are times when a short video conveys some point better than any number of screenshots. As far as tools go, ScreenFlow is the gold standard, but QuickTime Player can record screen actions and iMovie is a decent video editor. And both come with all Macs for free, so that’s where we’re starting.

But I recently stumbled across an infuriating problem: no matter what I did with my original screen recordings, I couldn’t use File > Share > File in iMovie to save a video file at a resolution higher than 720p.

Solid detective work by Josh Centers, as he works out a kludge to get a better iMovie resolution. But even better, his bit of hackery stuck and he now has reset the default iMovie resolution to something much more usable.

Even if you don’t use iMovie, you never know when the need will arise. Take a read through this, just to get a sense of the technique.

And:

I don’t want to sound ungrateful, since iMovie is an impressive tool to be bundled with the Mac for free, but hacks like this shouldn’t be necessary.

Yup.

Here’s a translation of the body of the article, from the Dutch, courtesy of Google Translate:

An iPad has exploded in the Amsterdam Apple store. Three employees were affected by their airways. The store has been evacuated.

Cause is probably a leaking battery. The fire brigade told the local broadcaster AT5.

Employees of the store have immediately placed the iPad in a container with sand. The employees who suffered from the airways were checked by the ambulance staff. The Apple Store, which is located at Leidseplein, has been aired by the fire department.

As far as I can tell, this story is the source of all the other coverage I’ve encountered. As always, if possible, I like to go to the source and read these sorts of things for myself.

As to the word explodes in the title and story, that’s the translation direct from Google. Was there an actual explosion? Was this more of a sizzle and pop than a boom or bang? Hard to say. Grain of salt.

Dan Moren, writing for Macworld, digs into the Apple TV’s TV app, the Movies Anywhere service, and Apple’s Apple Books rewrite.

The whole piece is worth reading, but a few nuggets:

The big question mark hanging over it all is what exactly will happen when Apple’s own video streaming service launches. Will it take over the [TV] app, pushing the rest of your content aside? Or will it be content to share a place on equal footing with the other partners? For customers’ sake, I certainly hope for the latter.

I use my Apple TV all the time, but never use the TV app, mostly because of the lack of Netflix integration. If Apple can get Netflix buy-in, and avoid overwhelming the TV app when they fold in their own Apple-branded content, the TV app will become my first stop when I switch to my Apple TV.

At this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple unveiled a major overhaul to its ebook platform, including a graphical update to the reading apps, a better store experience, and reading features that take aim at Amazon’s own Goodreads service.

That’s good because Amazon does continue to dominate the market and has little in the way of competition, and Apple is one of the few companies big enough to seriously challenge it. The real question is if Apple can do anything compelling enough to draw market share from Amazon.

I’ve long been an Amazon Kindle reader. I buy all my books from the Kindle store, do most of my reading on my iPad. But this new version of Apple Books has my attention. A central issue for me is the ability to share books with my family, something Amazon only recent started offering. Apple’s deal is much simpler, is already in place for me, and the Apple deal has none of Amazon’s limits.

BBC:

A barefoot farmer is making his way through a forest. Quiet drops of rain tumble steadily through the night, picked out in the light from his torch. The rusty machete he holds isn’t for cutting down vines or chopping away stubborn branches – it is a defence against thieves.

Lots of other men – farmers like him – are out in the rain, patrolling the forest. For the past three months, they have left their homes every night and made the long journey into the plantations to protect their crop. But this is not an illegal coca plantation, or anything like it. In fact, these farmers are growing a crop whose name is a byword for something boring.

The men need weapons to guard against robbers who roam the countryside looking for one thing – Madagascan vanilla.

As an amateur cook, I’ve had chef friends say, “You must use real vanilla!” I had no idea it would make that much of a difference but it really does. That being said, the price of real vanilla has skyrocketed in the past few years.

Smithsonian Magazine:

“I have obtained one of the finest and least expected results—Spectra of the stars!—and beautiful spectra with colors and magnificent lines. Just one more step and the chemical composition of the universe will be revealed,” wrote astrophysicist Pierre Jules César Janssen to his wife from an observatory in Italy in December 1862. Armed with the latest technology of the day and observations made by other Western astrophysicists, Janssen was determined to pry open the secrets of the galaxy.

On August 18, 1868, Janssen managed to do just that. He became the first person to observe helium, an element never before seen on Earth, in the solar spectrum. At the time, though, Janssen didn’t know what he’d seen—just that it was something new.

The mid-1800s was an exciting time to peer at the heavens.

I love these stories from the “Age of Discovery” when it seemed that scientists, amateur or otherwise, were discovering things we now take for granted almost every day.

Paul Guyot:

So, this guy is walking down the street. A rumpled, stained, fast food uniform. Obviously just off a long day of serving ungrateful, hurried guests. But he knows self-care. He’s got himself an ice cream cone.

And he is in a state of nirvana. He’s enjoying this (I’m sure well deserved) ice cream cone like it’s the last one he’s ever gonna have. He is focused. No one has ever been this focused, except maybe Carlos Hathcock.

His focus is only broken by the sound of a bus… I watch him look, and see the realization come over his face – this bus is where he is headed with his delicious feast. And that there is no way he gets there before it leaves… unless he runs.

Twitter is often a dumpster fire, seemingly run by people who have no clue about business in general and Twitter specifically. Many people, here and elsewhere, dismiss Twitter and whatever value it may have. That’s completely understandable.

But sometimes (yes – far too rarely), Twitter brings me a great deal of joy. This thread is an example of that. Thanks to my friend Jared Earle for pointing me to it.

Marc Rooding, Medium:

During that night, my girlfriend and I were fast asleep, when at 03:45 the doorbell rang. We looked at each other dazed. I got out of bed and attempted to journey downstairs in my boxers when the doorbell rang again. Before opening the door I went into the living room to gaze out of the window. A police car with 2 policemen was standing in front of our house. I opened the door and was welcomed with the question whether I owned a BMW with a specific license plate. They said that a car burglary had taken place.

Read the story. Short version, the thieves tried a new approach that might signal a new wave of auto theft techniques. If nothing else, this will give you something to be aware of, if your car is ever broken into, but nothing appears to be taken.

Michael Tsai collected a variety of comments and links about the #BreakingMyTwitter changes Twitter just made that broke 3rd party Twitter clients. There’s just a ton of great reading here.

I would start with this blog post from Twitter’s own Ron Johnson trying to explain Twitter’s intentions.

One take missing from Michael’s collection is this post from John Gruber, which specifically addresses his preference for his 3rd party client of choice, Tweetbot (which I use as well).

One thing that struck me is this bit, from the end of John’s post:

When Rob Johnson shared his email this morning about Twitter and third-party clients, he did so by tweeting two screenshots of the message. Those screenshots show he uses a third-party email client on his iPhone. So my simple argument to Johnson is this: I prefer a third-party Twitter client for the same reason you prefer a third-party iOS email client. One size doesn’t fit all.

Exactly.

Jason Snell, Six Colors:

I went to a wedding in London over the summer, and as you might expect at an event full of techy people, I ended up with hundreds of photos of the event from numerous sources—at least six. I imported them all into my Photos library and then discovered that they were all mixed up—the bride walking down the aisle, immediately followed by dancing at the reception, followed by the exchanging of vows.

This happens to me every time I get photos from other folks and try to mix them with my own photos of the same event. This is especially true when I travel with a group, and we each have our own view of the same series of locations.

The issue, for the most part, is the time stamps and device clocks:

Most cameras embed time data on every file they take, which is great, but whenever I try to mix photos from multiple sources in one place, I end up discovering all the ways that the clocks don’t match. For some of them, the clock is right but the time zone is wrong. For others (especially non-cellular devices that rely on a human to set their clock correctly) there are a few minutes of drift. For still others, there’s a time but not a time zone embedded.

Though this is less and less an issue as more and more photos are taken with clocks set by servers, there are still time zone issues, as well as photos taken using regular cameras.

Take the time to make your way through Jason’s post. If nothing else, I appreciate the walkthrough of smart albums and what they can do for you. Great stuff.

If you haven’t heard about this story, here’s yesterday’s Loop post. Shocking stuff.

Apple’s reassuring response:

An Apple spokesman said the company’s information security personnel “discovered the unauthorized access, contained it, and reported the incident to law enforcement” without commenting further on the specifics of the case.

“We … want to assure our customers that at no point during this incident was their personal data compromised,” the spokesman said.

That last is so good to know.

If you are considering a Verizon unlimited plan, here’s the link to that free six months of Apple Music page.

6 months times $9.99 is $59.94. Worth it if you’re going that direction anyway. And the way I read it, you get the free 6 months even if you already have an unlimited plan.

Andrew O’Hara, Apple Insider:

Google updated help center documentation Thursday to clarify its location data collection policies, changes made in light of recent revelations that the firm’s apps and website continue to harvest user information even when a global “Location History” setting is disabled.

Here’s a link to the updated Google help page. Read it for yourself.

Aretha Franklin, whose gospel-rooted singing and bluesy yet expansive delivery earned her the title “the Queen of Soul,” has died, a family statement said Thursday. She was 76.

The “official cause of death was due to advanced pancreatic cancer of the neuroendocrine type, which was confirmed by Franklin’s oncologist, Dr. Philip Phillips of Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit,” the family statement said.

It’s a sad day. Aretha was one of the absolute greats!

It’s not as if there’s some other mysterious force that maintains Twitter’s API platform, and now poor ol’ Twitter is forced to shut down old technology because there’s simply no other recourse. No.

Twitter, in fact, is the one responsible for its User Streams and Site Streams APIs – the APIs that serve the core functions of these now deprecated third-party Twitter clients. Twitter is the reason these APIs have been stuck in a beta state for nearly a decade. Twitter is the one that decided not to invest in supporting those legacy APIs, or shift them over to its new API platform.

Ugh, Twitter. They don’t like their users. They don’t like the developers that helped make the platform successful. I don’t think they really like themselves. If there is a bad decision that can be made, Twitter will find a way to do it—they’ve proven that over and over again.

Say “May, 2018” and you’ll go right back. Ask for “Cupertino” and you’ll be there. Combine the places and times and Siri will take you anywhere — and any when — you want to go!

Good tip. It sure beats scrolling endlessly looking for a particular photo.