There’s now a new way to customize your drive on Google Maps for iOS. Depending on your mood, you can swap out the classic blue navigation arrow for a new icon—a stylish sedan, a timeless pickup truck, or a speedy SUV.

Okay, this isn’t the most productive feature in the world, but it’s cool.

Former President Barack Obama formally announced on Monday a multiyear production deal with Netflix in which he and the former first lady, Michelle Obama, will produce television shows and films for the streaming service.

And

Instead, a release from Netflix said the Obamas will produce “scripted series, unscripted series, docu-series, documentaries and features” that highlight issues and themes the president pursued during his eight years in office.

It will be interesting to see how these shows evolve. I imagine they will be a very popular part of the Netflix catalog.

The information in the exposed database included the email addresses of parents who used TeenSafe, the Apple ID email addresses of their children, and children’s device name and unique identifier. Plaintext passwords for the children’s Apple ID were also among the data set, despite claims on the company’s website that it uses encryption to protect customer data.

It’s incredible to me that companies allow this kind of stuff to happen. It’s inexcusable.

Over the weekend, this tweet appeared:

its quite hard to believe that you are this young and this good at making reviews for WSJ(btw i dont think this is an accurate information i just found this funny ?@JoannaStern pic.twitter.com/wBc6ybcWsb

— WolfysDen (@adriankovacs14) May 19, 2018

First things first, Joanna Stern is one of the founders of The Verge and now writes a widely read tech column for the Wall Street Journal.

Here’s Joanna’s delighted response:

That’s it, I finally love Siri. Apple finally did it.

Here’s a link to Joanna’s Wikipedia page. This turns out to be important since this is the page Siri quotes in the response to the question, “How old is Joanna Stern?”, as shown in the embedded tweet.

I went to the Wikipedia page and did not find any reference to a birthdate. Birthdates are common for most biographical Wikipedia pages. So how did Siri come up with an age as a response to this request?

And to make matters even more confusing, when I posed the same question to Siri, I get the same link, but this response:

Joanna Stern is 32

Siri also helpfully provides a date of birth of December 5, 1985.

According to Joanna’s response on Twitter, both of these are wrong.

This anecdote made me think about the source of Siri’s information and how vulnerable Siri, Alexa, Cortana and Google-person are to misinformation. I’m also interested in how Siri came up with that birthdate, given the link was to a page with no embedded birthdate field.

Jim Black, former technology evangelist at Apple, tells the story of legendary game developer John Carmack (Doom, Quake, lots more) coming to Apple to meet with Steve Jobs:

> I never knew whether it was by design or not, but on that day John wore a T-shirt that featured a smiley face with a bullet hole in the forehead from which trickled a few drops of blood. After an hour of waiting for Steve in IL1, he marched into the room, and immediately mistook me for John Carmack, extending his hand to shake mine (we had never met). I locked eyes with Steve Jobs and looked down significantly at the Apple badge on my belt. Without missing a beat, Steve shifted his extended hand to John’s. >

> I never knew whether it was by design or not, but on that day John wore a T-shirt that featured a smiley face with a bullet hole in the forehead from which trickled a few drops of blood. After an hour of waiting for Steve in IL1, he marched into the room, and immediately mistook me for John Carmack, extending his hand to shake mine (we had never met). I locked eyes with Steve Jobs and looked down significantly at the Apple badge on my belt. Without missing a beat, Steve shifted his extended hand to John’s. >

>Adding unique pieces like a Custom Face T-Shirt to your wardrobe can take that personal expression even further. Imagine stepping into a meeting or gathering, wearing something distinct that catches everyone’s eye, just as John’s T-shirt did. Whether you opt for a subtle design or a bolder statement, these custom tees give you the chance to stand out, make others smile, and share a piece of yourself with the world—sometimes before you even say a word. > > That’s when Steve noticed the T-shirt and the meeting, as soon as it had begun, took a turn for the worse.

I love a good Steve anecdote. I wonder if John was wearing a T-shirt with the Watchmen Comedian’s Badge logo.

Chris Seline:

I decided I would target the CEO of Reddit with Facebook ads.

But how? I didn’t have a big budget so I needed to be clever.

It turns out the Reddit CEO had a public Facebook profile, so I could go there to see details about him. Where he lived. What he was interested in. I took that info to the Facebook platform to help narrow down the campaign. But I didn’t want everyone to click on it, just one person. So I custom tailored the ad to directly target the one person I wanted to read it.

I applaud Chris’ initiative here. Incredibly clever to figure out how to get in front of a difficult to reach person via a highly personalized Facebook ad. His strategy worked. Read the post for the details.

As to how much Chris spent:

The ad reached 197 people. 4 People clicked on it. One of them was the CEO of Reddit. I spent a total of $10.62.

Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, saw my ad, clicked on it, read (probably skimmed) my article, and liked it well enough to send a note to Reddit HR to contact me about a position.

Mission accomplished.

Clever as this is, I can’t help but see a stalker/creepy side to this story as well. The thought that someone could use information easily available on the internet to build a low cost ad that is almost guaranteed to reach the targeted individual seems custom made for a stalker. Or for someone trying to win an election.

Jason Koebler, Motherboard:

When Google Photos was announced in 2015, I downloaded it. I had no intention of giving every photo I’ve ever taken to Google—which categorizes them, runs them through image recognition and facial recognition algorithms, makes weird algorithmic slideshows out of them, and adds them to its massive photo database—but I wanted to try it out in any case. I quickly realized it was not for me, but I did not delete the app.

And:

I texted him asking to see a picture. He responded with a video that he uploaded to Google Photos. Because I had Google Photos installed on my phone, it tried to open in the app. You cannot use Google Photos on iOS—even to view photos that have been shared with you—without granting the app access to all the photos on your phone. Because I was drunk, and because I wanted to see the puppy, I changed my app permissions. I watched the video (very cute, embedded below), the band started, I put the phone in my pocket.

You know what happened next. All his photos went up to Google’s servers, and went through the AI analysis that all photos go through.

Two sides to this. First, obviously, Jason made a mistake giving Google Photos permission to access his photos. Google Photos asked, as it should.

That said, this is the text of the alert Google Photos put up:

Google Photos needs access to your photo library to show photos in the app

Reading Jason’s piece, I don’t get any sense that Google Photos notified him that they were going to start uploading his photos to the Google servers, to start AI-analyzing them.

Should Apple require a finer grain notification when something like this happens? Or, at the very least, should Google recognize that this is a major change in the equation, let the user know that permission to show you a photo from another user gives them permission to suck up and analyze all your photos.

Wired:

In an open letter to Apple that published this morning, a group identifying themselves as The Developers Union wrote that “it’s been difficult for developers to earn a living by writing software” built on Apple’s existing values. The group then asked Apple to allow free trials for apps, which would give customers “the chance to experience our work for themselves, before they have to commit to making a purchase.”

Free app trials have been a sticking point over the past several years for some iOS app developers, who believe that mobile apps–especially premium ones that cost more than a few bucks and aren’t games–should mimic the experience that people have had for years with desktop apps. It’s a particularly thorny issue for app makers who don’t make subscription apps, but who still want to give potential customers a free trial of their apps.

“Fed up” may be a misleading characterization of one of this loosely formed union’s “demands” but I agree the issue of free trials is a sticking point. I try out (and therefore buy) much less software from the iOS App Store than I ever did with the old shareware model specifically because I can’t “try before I buy” iOS apps.

Thanks to Bare Bones Software for sponsoring The Loop this week. BBEdit is one of my most used apps over the last 25 years of my career. It was installed first on any new computer I had over the years because it was so crucial to all the work I did.

Back in the 90s, we built our Web sites from scratch, so we used BBEdit to hand-code everything we needed to get the site up-and-running. We didn’t have a CMS at the time, so BBEdit became the default app for actually posting stories as well. It was an all-purpose tool that became indispensable for us.

We didn’t just use BBEdit for building and maintaining the Website, we also used it as our default word processing tool. Every word written for the stories we posted was done in BBEdit.

Now, as BBEdit celebrates its 25th anniversary, I can still say I am a proud user. Congrats to the crew at Bare Bones Software and thanks for making such a great product.

Download BBEdit now and try it for free!

Start off by reading John Gruber’s take on the fact or fiction of Google Duplex AI calling a restaurant and making a reservation.

Lot’s of interesting details here. Almost like a crime drama. Was the Google Duplex demo genuine? Was it staged?

Was the restaurant called without prior notice? If so, was a phone call recorded without prior consent?

From the Digital Media Law Project:

California’s wiretapping law is a “two-party consent” law. California makes it a crime to record or eavesdrop on any confidential communication, including a private conversation or telephone call, without the consent of all parties to the conversation.

It’s possible the demo was genuine and the Duplex team didn’t think this through. Seems to me more likely that this was staged, showing off technology that certainly exists, at least in pieces. And if it was staged, that call seems likely to have been recorded with the restaurant’s permission.

Also worth reading is the Twitter thread that shows John Gruber reaching out to followers to help figure out which restaurant was the one in question. Here’s the start of the thread. I found the whole thing fascinating.

And for dessert, here’s Google Duplex calling your parents.

Great how-to from AppleInsider’s Malcolm Owen. This comes up for me surprisingly often.

This story was at the top of hacker news this morning. It’s a fascinating read, even if you know nothing about programming. And it’s a riveting true story. I’m convinced this would make a fantastic movie.

I didn’t quote any of it because it’d be hard to do so without including spoilers. But read it to the end. Fantastic.

According to Strategy Analytics:

• Apple sold 600,000 HomePods last quarter.
• Amazon sold 4 million smart speakers.
• Google sold 2.4 million smart speakers.

Amazon’s marketshare dropped to 43.6%. Apple’s is at 6%, though without an entry level product, the percentage of unit sales doesn’t mean much.

I’d be very interested in:

• The same chart, but showing percentage of revenue.
• The same chart in one year.

It would be impossible to get a consensus on something like this, but I always enjoy reading opinions on which albums are a band’s best.

Texas Resistance:

I have a feeling that the vast majority of people on Twitter are not aware of how to take advantage of Twitter’s search capabilities. I’ve had people assume I spent a long time finding something when it took seconds

I’ll explain how to use some of options with Twitter’s search.

If you use Twitter for research or just need to find something, it’s search functionality isn’t very obvious but this Twitter account has some great tips and tricks on how to get the most out of Twitter’s search field.

Ceros:

May 14th marks the 20th anniversary of the finale of Seinfeld. Two decades later, the newly luxurious Upper West Side is nearly devoid of the mom-and-pop businesses crucial to the show’s ecology, and smartphones have fixed the logistical challenges that drove so many plotlines. And yet Seinfeld, both in viewership and cultural memory, endures like few other shows have. Hulu, which has exclusive rights to the show, reports that the average age of their Seinfeld viewer is 27, meaning they were in 2nd grade when the finale aired.

In honor of the anniversary of the show’s finale, we got our hands on the script for every one of the 173 episodes—from the underachieving pilot to the underwhelming finale—and we tried to make sense of them. The essence of Seinfeld will never be captured in data points, but what the data revealed was more curious than we’d have guessed.

My wife is a huge Seinfeld fan and I’m a huge fan of massaging data like this so we’re both happy.

CNN:

London’s skyline is one of the world’s most famous — from this sleek modern glamor of the Shard to St Paul’s Cathedral’s classic dome. Now this striking cityscape is the subject of an innovative gigapixel panorama photoshoot.

The result is a stunning look at how the capital and popular destination changes over 24 hours, from moody clouds and sunset to the bright lights of the big city.

Unfortunately, the panorama doesn’t include some of the more famous London skyline images but it’s still fun to zoom in on the shot and see how the image changes over time.

Pick your material, press and hold the spacebar to start the lathe spinning, then click and move the mouse to start cutting.

Have not figured out how to get this to work on my iPhone. Please ping me if you work that out.

But on my Mac? Surprisingly satisfying.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

The Washington Post says Apple has explored opening a campus for 20,000 employees in Northern Virginia, an area Amazon is also considering for its new campus.

And:

Separately, the Triangle Business Journal says that Apple is considering establishing its new campus in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. Research Triangle Park, a 22 million square foot research park, has become an attractive site for tech companies and is known as North Carolina’s technology hub due to its proximity to NC State, the University of North Carolina, and Duke University.

And:

North Carolina news site WRAL says that its sources believe Apple is close to announcing a deal that could bring up to 10,000 new jobs to North Carolina. Many of those jobs are “high-tech research and development jobs.”

This is me parsing here, but this is from Apple’s original announcement:

The company plans to establish an Apple campus in a new location, which will initially house technical support for customers.

And the WRAL North Carolina article mentions “high-tech research and development jobs.” Is it possible Apple will be pursuing two different campuses? Or will the campus host a blend of high tech R&D as well as tech support?

Regardless, I’d expect some housing speculation in the winning location.

YouTube blog:

YouTube Music is a new music streaming service made for music: official songs, albums, thousands of playlists and artist radio plus YouTube’s tremendous catalog of remixes, live performances, covers and music videos that you can’t find anywhere else – all simply organized and personalized.

And better search:

YouTube Music search works even if fans don’t know exactly what they’re looking for … we’ll find it if they describe it (try “that hipster song with the whistling”) or give us some lyrics (try “I make money moves”).

And:

While fans can enjoy the new ad-supported version of YouTube Music for free, we’re also launching YouTube Music Premium, a paid membership that gives you background listening, downloads and an ad-free experience for $9.99 a month. If you are a subscriber to Google Play Music, good news, you get a YouTube Music Premium membership as part of your subscription each month.

To me, the branding is confusing, but the access to the tremendous catalog of things you can only find on YouTube is compelling. Will user posted content be included?

For example, will this video of Dave Grohl and his daughter Violet performing Adele’s “When We Were Young” be included in the mix? If so, will uploaders be compensated in the same way as when their videos are watched?

Today is the 7th annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day (the third Thursday each May).

Apple customized their home page to embrace the occasion and, at the same time, announced that they are teaming up with leading educators for blind and deaf communities across the US to bring accessible coding to their schools.

From the official press release:

Beginning this fall, schools supporting students with vision, hearing or other assistive needs will start teaching the Everyone Can Code curricula for Swift, Apple’s powerful and intuitive programming language.

And:

“Apple’s mission is to make products as accessible as possible,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We created Everyone Can Code because we believe all students deserve an opportunity to learn the language of technology. We hope to bring Everyone Can Code to even more schools around the world serving students with disabilities.”

Twitter is giving developers more time to adjust to its API platform overhaul, which has affected some apps‘ ability to continue operating in the same fashion. The company clarified this morning, along with news of the general availability of its Account Activity API, that it will be delaying the shutdown of some of its legacy APIs by three months’ time. That is, APIs originally slated for a June 19, 2018 shutdown – including Site Streams, User Streams, and legacy Direct Message Endpoints – will now be deprecated on Wednesday, August 16, 2018.

It’s sad that Twitter continues to treat developers so poorly.

VOX:

On Tuesday, Cloe Feldman, a social media influencer and vlogger, posted a seemingly obvious question on her Instagram story, which she then cross-posted to Twitter: “What do you hear? Yanny or Laurel,” accompanied by a recording of a computerized voice that is clearly saying “Laurel.”

Some maniacs, some of whom I work with, swear they hear “Yanny” even though the recording, in the plainest English, says the word “Laurel.” Some even claim to be able to hear both words at once.

These kinds of things fascinate me. For the record, I hear “Laurel”. Our 12-year-old son hears “Yanny”. But my Australian wife hears “yearly”. Weirdo.

Update from Dave Mark:

This tweet video does a great job of explaining the effect. I found the whole thing super interesting!

Okay, you're not crazy. If you can hear high freqs, you probably hear "yanny", but you *might* hear "laurel". If you can't hear high freqs, you probably hear laurel. Here's what it sounds like without high/low freqs. RT so we can avoid the whole dress situation. #yanny #laurel ? pic.twitter.com/RN71WGyHwe

— Dylan Bennett (@MBoffin) May 16, 2018

This happens to me periodically, both on iOS and macOS. Lasts through restarts, eventually goes away all on its own. Read all the way to the end (it’s short) for the thing that solved this for Glenn. Tucking that away in my brain for the next time it happens.

From the Mount St Helens Wikipedia page:

Mount St. Helens is most notorious for its major 1980 eruption, the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in the history of the United States. Fifty-seven people were killed; 250 homes, 47 bridges, 15 miles (24 km) of railways, and 185 miles (298 km) of highway were destroyed. A massive debris avalanche triggered by an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale caused an eruption that reduced the elevation of the mountain’s summit from 9,677 ft (2,950 m) to 8,363 ft (2,549 m), leaving a 1 mile (1.6 km) wide horseshoe-shaped crater. The debris avalanche was up to 0.7 cubic miles (2.9 km3) in volume.

Someone just found a set of 34 slides, from photos taken on a plane circling the volcano as it erupted. These never-before-published photos are worth a look.

To me, the most amazing thing about this event is how, in the space of a few days, an almost perfectly conical mountain was practically leveled.