In response to questions from BuzzFeed News, Google, Apple, and Uber clarified their positions on President-elect Donald Trump’s comments about a possible Muslim registry. “In relation to the hypothetical of whether we would ever help build a ‘muslim registry’ – we haven’t been asked, of course we wouldn’t do this and we are glad – from all that we’ve read – that the proposal doesn’t seem to be on the table,” a spokesperson for Google told BuzzFeed News in an email message.
BuzzFeed News asked all three companies whether they would help build or provide data for a Muslim registry. An Apple spokesperson said: “We think people should be treated the same no matter how they worship, what they look like, who they love. We haven’t been asked and we would oppose such an effort.”
Leaving aside the insanity of having to discuss the subject to begin with, the problem is, if the government wants it built, they can do it without any of these companies. Some company out there will take the government’s money.
tvOS packs in Apple’s attractive new Aerial screen saver which plays eye-candy high-definition drone footage of various landmarks and places from around the globe in gorgeous slow motion. Apple has now added 21 new videos to the Aerial screen saver, as first discovered by our own Jim Gresham.
The latest arrivals include birds-eye imagery from Dubai, Greenland, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and United Arab Emirates. Plus, there are now three new videos of Chinese landmarks for a total of 21 new drone clips.
You can enjoy these Apple TV-exclusive screen savers on your Mac thanks to well-known jailbreak developer John Coate who developed a Mac screen saver which streams or downloads aerial footage directly from Apple’s servers.
These are gorgeous. For those of us without a capable Apple TV, Coate’s Mac screen saver is the next best thing.
If you spend most of your day typing, a mechanical keyboard can be a worthwhile upgrade over a cheaper, less comfortable keyboard. They are more durable, responsive, and customizable than other types of keyboards. The best for you depends a lot on personal preference and what you’re using it for, but after spending months testing 31 top-rated keyboards with a four-person panel, we unanimously agree that the WASD Code 87-Key is a great place to start because of its fantastic key feel, build quality, and elegant design.
I fondly remember the old mechanical Apple Extended Keyboards and loved the sound. I used an early version of the Matias Tactile Pro and really liked the racket it made.
when people spot a bear, they call 204-675-BEAR. The 24-hour hotline reaches the staff of the Polar Bear Alert Program, who have divided the area around Churchill into three concentric zones. If the bear’s in the outer zone, the staff will try to scare it away by firing cracker shells—shotgun rounds that explode with especially loud bangs. If that doesn’t work, they resort to rubber bullets or paint balls.
If the bear is in the inner zone, where Churchill residents live and work, the staff will try to capture it.
Churchill has become a symbol of co-existence—not to mention a major tourist destination for people keen to see and photograph the bears. But conflicts are becoming increasingly common.
Churchhill is the poster child for how global warming has affected both humans and animals.
My thanks to 4K Download for sponsoring The Loop this week.
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There are an insane amount of lectures and talks online ripe for the downloading, many of which are free. The problem is that they’re spread across literally hundreds of disparate platforms, like university websites, YouTube, Vimeo, Coursera, and so on.
FindLectures is an effort to centralize the vast quantities of free online lectures and talks into one searchable repository of knowledge. It pulls from a number of reputable sources, including Oxford University, TalksAtGoogle, TED, the Library of Congress, and more. At the time of writing, it boasts a catalog of over 25,968 lectures.
This is a great example of what I call “accidental learning”. A huge and very random list of lectures you can just pick and choose to listen to at your leisure. Everything from “Digging up Dinosaurs” to “Waterloo: Causes, Courses and Consequences” to “Solving the First Person Shooter in VR”.
EFF is excited to announce that today we are releasing Privacy Badger 2.0 for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. Privacy Badger is a browser extension that automatically blocks hidden third-party trackers that would otherwise follow you around the web and spy on your browsing habits. Privacy Badger now has approximately 900,000 daily users and counting.
Third-party tracking—that is, when advertisers and websites track your browsing activity across the web without your knowledge, control, or consent—is an alarmingly widespread practice in online advertising. Privacy Badger spots and then blocks third-party domains that seem to be tracking your browsing habits (e.g. by setting cookies that could be used for tracking, or by fingerprinting your browser). If the same third-party domain appears to be tracking you on three or more different websites, Privacy Badger will conclude that the third party domain is a tracker and block future connections to it.
Privacy Badger always tells how many third-party domains it has detected and whether or not they seem to be trackers. Further, users have control over how Privacy Badger treats these domains, with options to block a domain entirely, block just cookies, or allow a domain.
Why do I get the feeling that your personal privacy is going to be a much bigger issue over the next four years?
After receiving a tremendous amount of user backlash yesterday, Evernote has decided not to move forward with the revisions to its privacy policy that it planned to put into effect on January 23. They would have given the note-taking service more latitude to allow certain employees to look at the information its users stored, in the interest of improving machine-learning algorithms.
“We’re going to take a step back, and not just think about machine learning and what that means for us, but also think about how we can express our approach to privacy in the most clear way possible,” Andrew Malcolm, Evernote’s senior VP of marketing, told Fast Company. “So users can have confidence that we’re as committed to privacy as we’ve ever been, but also understand how we do that.”
Translation: “We’re going to pull our heads out of our asses and try to understand how we managed to screw the pooch so badly on this.”
Though the video below is intended to promote the book Designed by Apple in California, it also gives a tantalizing glimpse inside Sir Jony’s design studio. Take a look.
One thing in particular I learned was the value of the long AirPod antennae (the sticks that hang from your ears). They ensure a reliable connection, even at a significant distance. As long as you have line-of-sight to your device, you can get up to 150 feet away.
I love the fact that when you take one AirPod out of your ear, your audio automatically pauses. Solid Siri integration as well.
After the one-year warranty has expired, Apple will charge a $69 fee for out-of-warranty service repairs. Battery service for AirPods that lose battery capacity is free during the one-year warranty period or $49 out of warranty.
If you lose or damage one of the AirPods or the charging case, Apple will charge $69 for a replacement, regardless of whether or not the AirPods are still under warranty. The pricing in Apple’s support document is U.S. pricing, and will vary based on country.
Interesting that the AirPods do not need to be replaced in pairs. Great technology.
Chris Kohler, Wired, got the chance to ask Shigeru Miyamoto about Super Mario Run.
One highlight, talking about simply porting Super Mario to iOS:
“I don’t want to do anything that boring. We’ve been making Mario games for a long time, and Mario’s evolved with every new platform.
“For me, it wouldn’t be interesting work to just take the existing Super Mario Bros. game, put it on an iPhone, (and) emulate a plus control pad. That’s not very fun creatively. We’re more interested in looking at how we can be creative with Mario, and design for iPhone in a way that takes advantage of the uniquenesses of that device and the uniquenesses of that input and the features that that device has. For us, that is much more rewarding creative work.”
Super Mario Run is a fantastic game. In my opinion, it is well worth the $10. I hope it reverses the “race to the bottom” iOS game pricing trend, helps make it easier for developers to make a living creating great apps.
Federico Viticci, MacStories, on the new Astra app:
Astra is, effectively, just a large microphone in the middle of the screen. You can sign into your Amazon account, give the app permission to record audio, and start sending messages to Alexa. To record a command, you hold down a Siri-like microphone button and then lift your finger to send a request to Alexa. When Astra displays a ‘Thinking…’ message it is not, in fact, processing your request on its own – the Alexa Voice Service is; Astra is just waiting for a response to speak back to you. Astra is a bridge to Alexa’s cloud brain: there are no visual messages and no interface elements built around Amazon’s assistant. Even the audio responses use Alexa’s standard voice.
This is a breach in Apple’s ecosystem, a way for a competing (and some would say, superior) service to live within the confines of the iOS walled garden. Google Maps is another example.
While Alexa and Astra might leach users away from Siri, Amazon is not a threat to steal users from iOS. But add in Amazon’s Fire TV Stick, which gives users access to Netflix, Amazon Video, etc., at a $40 price point, much, much cheaper than Apple TV’s entry point, and there’s the beginning of a slow erosion.
This is a creepy story, and a troubling result. Bottom line, the court likened a passcode to a strongbox key. Reasoning, if you can be compelled by a court to turn over a strongbox key, you can be compelled to turn over your passcode.
I feel a tide turning here. This case will likely end up in front of the Supreme Court.
Oh, Yahoo. It was bad enough that the company already announced a breach exposing 500 million user accounts two years after it happened. Then late last night Yahoo revealed that it had uncovered another unrelated hack exposing the account details of one billion users. It’s not clear how much of that is overlap, but at this point does it really matter?
I don’t know about you, but I’m done. I wasn’t much of a Yahoo user to begin with but the uses I do have for the company are over.
I know that’s easy for me to say. I have a single account that I only use to play fantasy football. But what about those of you who are more fully invested in Yahoo? Here’s a guide to replacing Yahoo’s major services with alternative options, then deleting your Yahoo account.
I got the notice from Yahoo yesterday. I didn’t even know I still had Yahoo email addresses. I’m now down to just using Flickr and even those days may be numbered.
A new kind of Mario game that you can play with one hand. In this game, Mario constantly moves forward through the courses while you use a variety of jumps to navigate. Mario will behave differently depending on the timing of your taps, so it’s up to you to show off particularly smooth moves, gather coins, and reach the goal.
Most guitar players are blissfully unaware of the details of the speakers they’re playing through. Sure, they may know what size the speakers are and how many are in the cabinet, but other than that, they have no idea about how much of an effect the make of the speaker can have on the sound.
It’s always good to know at least some details about you’re playing through.
Yahoo Inc warned on Wednesday that it had uncovered yet another massive cyber attack, saying data from more than 1 billion user accounts was compromised in August 2013, making it the largest breach in history.
President-elect Donald Trump and some of Silicon Valley’s most powerful executives met at his Manhattan tower on Wednesday, a summit convened to smooth over frictions after both sides made no secret of their disdain for each other during the election campaign.
I find it very odd that Trump’s three kids were at the head of the table.
In what is likely the largest data breach ever, Yahoo is reporting that data associated with more than 1 billion user accounts was stolen in August 2013.
The incident is separate from a breach Yahoo reported in September involving at least 500 million users that originally occurred in late 2014 and shook public trust in the company.
Stolen user data from this new breach involves names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, and hashed passwords using an aging algorithm known as MD5 that can be cracked.
If you don’t absolutely need it, you really should delete your Yahoo account.
Uber has rolled out its self-driving car fleet in its hometown of San Francisco, despite lacking the proper permit that state regulators say is required.
Starting Wednesday, riders who request an UberX, one of the company’s budget ride options, may be matched with a self-driving Uber. It is unclear how many of these cars Uber has in San Francisco.
There will be people in the car for now, but I’ll be honest, I’m not sure what I’d do if one of these pulled up to give me a ride when the people are gone.
> Nintendo Co will make a big push into mobile gaming on Thursday with the launch of the popular Super Mario Bros franchise on the iPhone, a risky bet because users will need to pay upfront, at a time when the gaming market is getting crowded.
> While investors are hoping Super Mario Run will be a hit for Nintendo, its decision to charge $9.99 for full access to the game may limit revenues and put its fate at the mercy of loyal Nintendo console-game fans.
I’m betting it will be a huge success. Let’s face it, that’s not much money for a game that so many people enjoy. Go to mild88yc.id for betting games that you’ll surely enjoy!
Thanks to a virtual tour created by Google, you can revel in the best of Fifth Avenue’s festive store displays without even leaving your couch, courtesy of its ‘Window Wonderland’ experience.
The tradition of New York’s department stores competing for the best Christmas windows goes back some 150 years, with Macy’s kicking it all off when it realized that it could lure in more customers with an extravagant display. Naturally, other establishments quickly followed suit, and nowadays, every brand from Ralph Lauren to Barney’s decks out their halls (er, windows), with millions of tourists flocking to New York each year to admire the scenes. In a very 2016 spin on the annual festivities, Google has stitched together hundreds upon hundreds of images that capture 18 of Manhattan’s best decorated storefronts, in turn creating a panoramic experience (consider it a more sophisticated version of its street view feature) that can be viewed via your phone, tablet, computer or even virtual reality headset by simply going to the website.
I’ve known about these Christmas windows since I was a kid in Nova Scotia so I loved going to them when I lived near New York City. There’s nothing like seeing them in person but this site is the next best thing.
A California court has ruled in favor of Apple Store workers who accused the iPhone giant of trampling over their employment rights. It is a bittersweet victory.
The trial jury yesterday awarded store staff $2m after Apple was found to have illegally denied them meal and rest breaks, and was late giving departing workers their final paychecks.
Apple had been accused of a half-dozen violations of state labor laws, including California laws forbidding the failure to provide meal and rest breaks, full pay upon termination, and unfair business practices.
When I first heard of this lawsuit, I knew Apple was likely to lose it. But a $2 million settlement among 21,000 current and former workers is getting off really easy for the company.
