Vogue:

Destinations with a distinct off-season are seeing a growing number of travelers undeterred its periods of poor weather and, in fact, they’re drawn to it. These thrill-seeking travelers are setting out in search of storms—specifically those of the bone-chilling, house-shaking, fire-and-brimstone variety.

The rise of storm tourism has been an unexpected and perhaps counterintuitive phenomenon. When most people plan a vacation, they typically go in search of greener pastures, or at least warmer weather. But more and more places are seeing an uptick in travelers who specifically want to experience big storms at their finest.

I’m not a “storm tourist” – I prefer to be a tourist in warm places like Italy – but there is a real draw, especially from a photography point of view, to these places during storm seasons.

Being from Nova Scotia, we used to love going to Peggy’s Cove during or shortly after a storm to watch the waves crash against the rocks. Tofino, one of the destinations mentioned in the above piece, is relatively close to me. I think we might be making a trip there to see some storms.

Twisted Sifter:

Ekaterina ‘Kate’ Lukasheva is an incredible Origami artist and designer from Moscow, Russia. The artist has had a fascination with puzzles and construction sets since childhood and first discovered origami in her teens. With its intricate folds and geometric patterns, there’s a lot of math in origami and Ekaterina would later graduate with honors from Moscow State Lomonosov University as a mathematician and programmer.

These are stunningly complex and beautiful.

Arturrr:

In early 2017, a conversation with yet another Waze fanboy finally nudged me to start a navigation app experiment. I was skeptical that the Alphabet owned company could meaningfully best its parent’s home grown Google Maps. I was also curious whether Apple Maps had discovered competence since its iOS 6 release.

I thus set out to answer three questions:

• Which navigation app estimates the shortest travel time?
• How does each app over/underestimate travel times?
• Which navigation app actually gets you to your destination most quickly?

Which led to these three conclusions:

• If you want to get to your destination most quickly, use Google Maps.
• If you want an accurate prediction from your navigation app to help you arrive at your destination on time, use Apple Maps.
• If thinking you’ll get to your destination quickly helps to ease your commuter anxiety, use Waze.

Very interesting. Obviously, this is a relatively small sample size. It’d be interesting if there was some way to crowd-source this experiment to come up with a map overlay that showed which solution worked best in a specific area.

World Economic Forum:

Tideglusib works by stimulating stem cells in the pulp of teeth, the source of new dentine. Dentine is the mineralized substance beneath tooth enamel that gets eaten away by tooth decay. Learn more about this innovations with experts from the Eugene Kids Dentist clinic.

If you plan to develop new drugs, you may need to setup a sterile environment to work in. The portable sterile environment units offer an adaptable solution for industries requiring fast setup without compromising on quality. Their versatility makes them indispensable when time-sensitive projects require the utmost cleanliness and control.

The insertion of tooth fillings is one of the most commonly performed procedures by dentists. These materials are used to fill up the holes in your teeth created by cavities. Pentru servicii de protetică dentară, vizitați https://topaltdent.ro/servicii-stomatologice/protetica-dentara/. Fillings have been traditionally made out of metal alloys, but composite fillings are becoming increasingly popular nowadays. Contact an emergency dentist denton if you have urgent concerns about your dental health.

Fillings help to protect teeth that have already been damaged by tooth decay from decaying any further. Once a tooth if filled up, any pain or discomfort associated with the cavity should go away. While silver amalgam fillings are good enough to get the job done, these tend to be more visible in your mouth. Composites, on the other hand, look just like your natural teeth, so people won’t even be able to tell that you have fillings in some of your teeth.

Fillings are also one of the cheapest medical procedures performed. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so important to go to your dentist immediately if you notice any cavities in your mouth. Once the cavity grows to the point that the pulp chamber is compromised, you’re going to end up spending a lot more than fillings cost to save the tooth. In some cases, if the damage is too extensive, you may even need a more significant procedure, such as full mouth  dental implants Turkeyy, which can be a cost-effective option for those looking to restore their smile when traditional treatments are no longer viable.

Moreover, a good dental clinic will not only focus on fillings and treating existing issues but also emphasize preventive care. This includes education on proper oral hygiene practices, such as brushing and flossing techniques, as well as the importance of a balanced diet for maintaining healthy teeth and gums. By partnering with a skilled dentist henderson nv, you can develop a dental care routine that minimizes the risk of decay and enhances your overall smile. Remember, investing in your dental health today will pay off with a brighter, healthier future.

And:

> The team inserted small, biodegradable sponges made of collagen soaked in Tideglusib into cavities. The sponges triggered dentine growth and within six weeks, the damage was repaired. The collagen structure of the sponges melted away, leaving only the intact tooth.

Hell yes.

[Via The Overspill]

Jean-Louis Gassée:

As a testament to Apple’s place in the pantheon of electronics, reviews for a new product from Cupertino come fast and — often — furious. HomePod, Apple’s contribution to the “smart speaker” genre, exacerbates the venomenon, pardon, phenomenon.

And these three rules for evaluating speakers:

First, we must keep in mind the influence of the room and our position in it, how reflective material can make music sound brittle, how carpets and curtains will deaden the sound — or provide welcome balance for an overly bright room.

Second, all speaker comparisons must be double-blind, where neither the person running the test nor the evaluators know which device is on at the moment.

Third, and most important, output level differences matter. Contestant speakers must be carefully equalized to within 1db, because in any comparison the louder speaker will always sound better.

And on tuning a speaker for a specific room:

How well the device can do this depends on the number of microphones (you need at least two for spatial location) and speakers (the HomePod has seven). In theory, more speakers are better, because it means the device will have more control as it adjusts the balance of sound energy. In reality, the smaller speakers — the tweeters — are the most important; lower frequencies impart little directional information, although the computer can still decide to reduce low frequency output in general if the room “booms” too much.

And:

Put less elegantly, in consumer advertising lore we call early adopters “dogs”: They eagerly snarf any new food. This tells us nothing; we need to wait and see if they come back to the pail.

That process, the spreading of Word-of-Mouth, will be complicated by software updates supposed to appear in the next few months — and for ever after that.

Terrific read, lots more than these few pull quotes.

John Gruber:

iOS 11 finally added a long-awaited feature for those of us who care about typographic details: smart punctuation. You can turn this on in Settings → General → Keyboards. When enabled, quotes and apostrophes (like “this” and ‘this’) are automatically turned into their proper counterparts (like “this” and ‘this’), two hyphens in a row (–) are turned into a proper em-dash (—), etc.

I say “finally” because MacOS has had the feature in the standard text editing system for many years, and I can’t think of a good reason why it wasn’t in iOS years ago.

And:

In some recent update to iOS (I think 11.2.5, but it might have been an earlier 11.2.x update), smart punctuation stopped working in Messages — and as far as I can tell, only Messages. Why? My best guess: unintended consequences when sending SMS messages.

I’m kind of shocked that it took this long for smart punctuation (which has been around in the Mac universe forever) to come to iOS. And that take it out, put it back in again Messages story is an interesting wrinkle.

Tim Cook from this FastCompany interview:

Even when we were idling from a revenue point of view–it was like $6 billion every year–those were some incredibly good years because you could begin to feel the pipeline getting better, and you could see it internally. Externally, people couldn’t see that.

On products like iPhone not being embraced right away:

[People said] it could never work because it didn’t have a physical keyboard. With each of our products there’s that kind of story. Over the long haul, you just have to have faith that the strategy itself leads to [financial results] and not get distracted and focus on them.

On distractions:

The priorities are about saying no to a bunch of great ideas. We can do more things than we used to do because we’re a bit bigger. But in the scheme of things versus our revenue, we’re doing very few things. I mean, you could put every product we’re making on this table, to put it in perspective. I doubt anybody that is anywhere near our revenue could say that.

On following into a product category:

I wouldn’t say “follow.” I wouldn’t use that word because that implies we waited for somebody to see what they were doing. That’s actually not what’s happening. What’s happening if you look under the sheets, which we probably don’t let people do, is that we start projects years before they come out. You could take every one of our products–iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch–they weren’t the first, but they were the first modern one, right?

In each case, if you look at when we started, I would guess that we started much before other people did, but we took our time to get it right. Because we don’t believe in using our customers as a laboratory. What we have that I think is unique is patience. We have patience to wait until something is great before we ship it.

You could make the argument that HomePod followed Amazon Echo and Google Home into the smart speaker market. But as we discussed in the latest Dalrymple Report, the HomePod has been around for a long time, long enough that it could have been a Steve Jobs brainchild.

There’s a lot more to read in this interview. Feels like a deeper look than most Tim Cook interviews.

Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. is in talks to buy long-term supplies of cobalt directly from miners for the first time, according to people familiar with the matter, seeking to ensure it will have enough of the key battery ingredient amid industry fears of a shortage driven by the electric vehicle boom.

And:

About a quarter of global cobalt production is used in smartphones.

It’s a race to lock up cobalt supply, a race between smart phones and tablets, versus the emerging electric car market.

Houston Chronicle:

While I don’t particularly care for the subscriptions model when applied to a single app or suite like Adobe Creative Cloud or Microsoft Office 360, I am a fan of Setapp, a subscription software service that gives you access to full versions of more than 100 high-quality Mac apps, all for just $9.99 a month.

With a comprehensive description of every app, and ultra-fast search, it’s never been easier to find the appropriate app (or apps) for just about any task.

I’m a big fan of the company behind Setapp, Ukrainian-based MacPaw, and was asked to be a tester of Setapp a year ago. The list of available apps has grown immensely over the past year. I’m always happily surprised when I think, “I wish I had an app to do that” and check Setapp to find I do. I’m a general hater of subscription-based services but I have no problem recommending Setapp and, with a seven-day free trial that doesn’t require a credit card, it’s a bit of a no-brainer to try it out and see for yourself.

Nashville Post:

“Gibson Brands, Inc. today announced that the company made a $16.6 million coupon payment to holders of its $375 million, 8.875% senior secured notes due 2018.”

That simple statement issued a week ago — at all of 26 words, it’s less than a quarter the length of Gibson’s boilerplate company description that accompanied it — suggests a business-as-usual tone of a company taking care of its contractual commitments.

But the situation facing the iconic Nashville-based music instrument maker, which has annual revenues of more than $1 billion, is far from normal: CFO Bill Lawrence recently left the company after less than a year on the job and just six months before $375 million of senior secured notes will mature. On top of that, another $145 million in bank loans will come due immediately if those notes, issued in 2013, are not refinanced by July 23.

Reading through all of this, things do indeed look dire. But I can’t imagine the Gibson brand going away. I’d be more concerned with new hands coming in to run the company and changing a process which produces some of the finest guitars in the world, diluting a brand synonymous with guitar craft.

Damn.

[H/T Josh Centers]

I’m on an email list that caters to the geeky and to engineering. This story hit my inbox over the weekend, but was written about 15 years ago, and was given the title “Engineering Pornography”. But it’s not what you think. This is about a massive engineering problem, solved in a beautifully elegant way.

If I still have your attention, here’s a highlight to whet your appetite:

Several days ago a very large number of trucks and men from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power descended on my neighborhood. They removed large sections of Pershing drive to a depth of 15 feet or so over a stretch of about a city block. I assumed they had a problem with a water main or something.

When they started building semi-permanent structures over the holes I knew something really big was up. When the large trucks full of strange power tools, mega-welding machines, breathing equipment, and racks of test equipment came I started wondering. Driving by a couple nights ago (11 PM), I noticed that the pace hadn’t slowed – they were at it 24 hours a day.

My curiosity got the best of me yesterday when they brought in the giant tanks full of liquid nitrogen. LN-2 for the DWP? I parked my car and played the lookie loo.

Fascinating.

John Gruber dug into this article from the Hong Kong Free Press:

The US-based global tech giant Apple Inc. is set to hand over the operation of its iCloud data center in mainland China to a local corporation called Guizhou-Cloud Big Data (GCBD) by February 28, 2018.

You can read Gruber’s take here.

As a postscript, Gruber links to this Apple knowledge-base article, which lays out the encryption methods used to protect the various data types stored in iCloud.

I found all three of these definitely worth a look.

Lory Gil, iMore:

We’ve got a list of the best streaming live TV services. Keep in mind, though, that most of these services don’t offer unlimited access to broadcast channels like NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox. What I’m referring to is the ability to watch any broadcast channel available in your area.

And:

The thing about broadcast television is that I couldn’t watch it on Apple TV. I’d have to switch my TV input over, and then flip through the channels until I found something to watch. I rarely watched broadcast television because I tend to stick with Apple TV for my TV and movie watching activities.

And:

With HDHomeRun, not only can I watch live broadcast television on my Apple TV, I can also watch it on my iPhone or iPad. Plus, with a subscription, you can record live TV and watch it the way a person with cable and a DVR would watch TV. Skip those commercials!

If you are a cord-cutter and have an Apple TV, you should definitely read Lory’s review.

As much as I love to see products like this emerge to fill a void in the marketplace, I see the cord-cutter marketplace as a fragmented mess. And no matter how many alternatives emerge, they are all dependent on a non-throttled connection to the internet. That means, the power cards are still held by the internet providers. Hard to overcome the built-in advantage of being able to package internet access and programming.

Nathaniel Popper, New York Times:

In the beach resort of Phuket, Thailand, last month, the assailants pushed their victim, a young Russian man, into his apartment and kept him there, blindfolded, until he logged onto his computer and transferred about $100,000 worth of Bitcoin to an online wallet they controlled.

And:

A few weeks before that, the head of a Bitcoin exchange in Ukraine was taken hostage and only released after the company paid a ransom of $1 million in Bitcoin.

And:

In New York City, a man was held captive by a friend until he transferred over $1.8 million worth of Ether, a virtual currency second in value only to Bitcoin.

This has become a thing. Why? Because once the Bitcoins have been transferred, there’s no way to prove ownership, no way to get the Bitcoin back. When the victims call the police, the police shrug their shoulders. There’s simply nothing they can do.

Game changer? Really? Hmm. Let’s take a look.

Aneesh Chopra, Shafiq Rabaneesh Chopra and Shafiq Rab, Wired:

In late January, Apple previewed an iOS feature that would allow consumers to access their electronic health records on their phones. Skeptics said the move was a decade too late given a similar (and failed) effort from Google.

But:

This move is a game-changer for three reasons: It affirms there is one common path to open up electronic health records data for developers so they can focus on delighting consumers rather than chasing records. It encourages other platform companies to build on that path, rather than pursue proprietary systems. And it ensures that the pace of progress will accelerate as healthcare delivery systems respond to the aggregate demand of potentially millions of iPhone users around the world.

This, indeed, is a game changer. To me, the key is this:

That’s because Apple has committed to an open API for health care records—specifically, the Argonaut Project specification of the HL7 Fast Health Interoperability Resources—so your doctor or hospital can participate with little extra effort.

Developers, this is an app opportunity, an area full of untapped potential.

Start with the linked Wired article, then dig into the details of the Argonaut Project.

Great stuff.

Complete Digital Photography:

We’ve long advocated Photoshop Elements as the ideal non-subscription image editing app: it is cross-platform, has a decent Organizer, and almost all of the features found in the full version of Photoshop. Right now, through Feb. 20, Photoshop Elements is on sale for $70 on the Adobe site, which is 30% off the list price.

Photoshop Elements doesn’t get nearly the love it deserves. It’s actually a pretty good photo editor, especially for amateurs.

Uncrate:

From the 125 S in 1947 to the FXX K Evo, Ferrari’s passion for automobiles has been on display on and off the track. Almost every Ferrari is an icon, but this video hits the highlights of the most important models in the company’s 70-plus year history.

I am an unabashed lover of most things Ferrari and this video is just a reminder of how many of their cars I’ve lusted over through the years. I’ve always wanted the 308 GTSI (The “Magnum P.I.” Ferrari) and I would murder family members just to drive the 1962 250 GTO.

Discogs:

Our mission is to document every physical record shop and record event on the planet. With your help, we can create an accurate listing of all record shops & record events, useful to diggers and travelers everywhere.

What a cool use of crowdsourcing data.

Charles Arthur, The Overspill:

A couple of weeks ago, I opened my Macbook Pro as usual. The keyboard lit up, as usual. I waited – there’s that pause while the display gathers itself (it’s a 2012 model) and the processor pulls everything together and presents the login window.

Except this time, nothing. The display didn’t light. There was the quiet sound of the fans going, but nothing. Oh dear. Closed the display, opened it to catch it unawares – no, that wasn’t going to fool it. After a bit more futzing around, I concluded that it was not in the mood to work. But I had work to do, and so I turned to my iPad Pro.

This is a well-written post, from someone who uses a MacBook Pro to maintain a blog. This is particularly interesting to me for the obvious connection to my work writing for and maintaining The Loop.

What I particularly like about this post is the objective list of the good and the bad. All of these comments resonated for me. If you’ve considered what it’d be like to move from MacBook to iPad, I’d encourage you to read this list of good and bad first.

Kylie Gilbert, Shape:

• Kacie Anderson, a 24-year-old from Hannover, PA, used the watch’s SOS feature to call for an ambulance after suffering injuries from a car accident late last year which could’ve been broadcasted in a car accident news. As Anderson recently shared in a letter to Apple, she was stopped at a red light with her 9-month-old baby when her car was struck by a drunk driver. She wasn’t able to reach her phone after the collision—but she was able to use her watch to get help.

 

• “The moment he hit us everything inside the car went airborne. My face took a horrible blow to the steering wheel, headrest, back to the steering wheel, and then to the window. I blacked out for about a minute and could not see. My eyes were wide open but all I saw was black,” Anderson shares exclusively with Shape. “My hands flew around to feel for my phone and then I realized I had my watch on and commanded it to call 911.”

 

• If the same thing happens to you or to your loved ones, you can check out here on how to get an accident report in connecticut that you may use for your claims! For an accident report contains a wealth of information recorded by an authority. Insurance companies and negligent drivers will have difficulty twisting the facts if car accidents report holds the truth. We also know of a very well-trusted DUI lawyer who are located in NJ, so contact them if you have a problem with a DUI charge, visit site here for a good attorney. Make sure as well to hire an experienced personal injury attorney like these personal injury lawyers in Hudson Valley. Those who were injured while riding a motorcycle should consider consulting with a Milwaukee motorcycle accident lawyer.

I love stories like this. Great publicity for Apple that shows an unassailable value of the Apple Watch.

I kind of love the look of Apple’s new Close Your Rings page. The design matches the Activity app icon, with lots of red, green, and that “Stand” shade of pale blue.

While we’re on the subject of Stand, I’d love to see Apple add just a bit more functionality to Stand tracking. As is, there’s a “you’ve not reached your Stand goal for the hour” and “You did it”. But nothing in between. The Activity app does show the individual stand status on a time line, but the current hour is either filled in (you reached the hour’s Stand goal) or faded (you’re not there yet).

I’m suggesting more of a status bar, something that fills up so I can see how close I am to my goal for the hour. As is, it’s a bit of a mystery how close I am. Sometimes, I get the “You did it” message and wrist tap when I reach the Stand goal, but often I do not get that completion message. Some sort of progress indicator (fill the Activity app’s bar for that hour as my Stand progresses, for example) would be a motivator for me and less frustrating.

Michael Steeber, 9to5Mac:

On the heels of this past Tuesday’s annual shareholders meeting, Apple has made the transition to their new campus official by changing the company’s corporate address to One Apple Park Way. The change comes just weeks after Apple was given occupancy permits for several sections of the main campus building.

• Here’s a link to an archive of Apple’s old contact page.
• And here’s a link to Apple’s current contact page, with the new official address.

I feel like a small piece of Apple culture shifted. Goodbye Infinite Loop (sung to this tune).

Open Culture:

In addition to his keen melodic sensibility, Sinatra also set a high bar with his technique. In the video at the top of the post from 1965, we see the consummate artist record “It Was a Very Good Year” in the studio, while smoking a cigarette and casually sipping what may be coffee from a paper cup in his other hand.

Think about it…this was a live studio recording. One take. No overdubs, No added tracks. Just pure talent. The only thing the sound engineers had to do was adjust the eq levels a bit and that’s it. This is what you hear on the album. You’d be hard pressed to find ANYONE who could do that today.

Sinatra was “before my time” but my mom loved him and played his music constantly so I grew up listening to his songs. This is a really interesting video of an artist doing something that few, if any, still do today.

Twitter:

Starting today the Twitter for Mac app will no longer be available for download, and in 30 days will no longer be supported.

What used to be a great app atrophied and died because of lack of support from its owner, not because Twitter is “focusing our efforts on a great Twitter experience that’s consistent across platforms.” If you’re looking for a replacement, I highly recommend Tweetbot or Twitterrific.