Pretty Famous:

PrettyFamous, an entertainment research site by Graphiq, found the most famous band formed each year since 1951. To do this, they created a customized Band Score on a scale of 1 to 100 based on a weighted average of a band’s Wikipedia page views in the last 30 days, page views of album releases and total number of Spotify followers.

The bands with the highest Band Score from each year were then ordered into a list starting in 1951 and continuing to 2015. It is important to note that since Wikipedia page views are current, all of these bands have stood the test of time, and remained famous many years after they were formed.

Interesting methodology. Not sure how you’d come up with a better measure of fame without turning straight to sales numbers.

Regardless, I found this pretty interesting. Scroll down to the tool, type in a year, then start clicking the arrow just to the right of the band picture to step through other bands formed in that year.

Bloomberg:

Didi Chuxing, the dominant ride-hailing service in China, said it will acquire Uber Technologies Inc.’s operations in the country, ending a battle that cost the two companies billions as they competed for customers and drivers.

And:

The truce brings to an end a bruising battle between the two companies for leadership in China’s fast-growing ride-hailing market. Uber has been spending at least $1 billion a year to gain ground in China, while Didi offered its own subsidies to drivers and riders to build its business.

Didi Chuxing and, as an investor, Apple are now in the driver’s seat (sorry) in China.

John Gruber explores a tree of possibilities:

The question is, what will Apple ship in the box with the new iPhones? I see the following options:

• Wireless ear buds.
• Wireless ear buds and this adapter.
• Lightning ear buds.
• Lightning ear buds and this adapter.
• The existing 3.5mm ear buds and this adapter.

At the bottom of the piece:

The bottom line: this move should be about moving away from wired headphones period, not moving from one wired jack to another. The best way to achieve that is for Apple to ship wireless ear buds in the box.

Great stuff.

This site aims to be a comprehensive list of things you can do with Siri. Save the link, but spend a few minutes scanning through the commands to see if there are any use cases that are new to you. And, of course, if you find this useful, pass the link along to your iOS friends.

[Via iHeartApple2]

Apple’s newsroom:

Thousands of customers turned out Saturday for the grand opening of Apple Williamsburg, the first Apple store in Brooklyn. Customers began queuing Friday on Bedford Ave before midnight, and when the store opened at 10 a.m. Saturday the line stretched around the block.

Here’s a link to the page, with pictures of the celebration.

The Telegraph:

Apple’s iTunes customers are being warned to delete “scam” emails that are being sent to some customers claiming they have been charged more than £20 to download a song.

Reports have surfaced on social media of iTunes users receiving an email claiming to be from Apple, detailing an alleged recent song purchase from the iTunes Store that costs £23.34.

Phishing continues to thrive because it works, at least to enough of a degree that it is profitable overall. As always, be vigilant, hover over links to verify before clicking on them.

I found this exchange amusing, especially this Kanye tweet:

I need Tim Cook Jay Z Dez Jimmy Larry me and Drake Scooter on the phone or in a room this week!!!

Is that the way you set up a meeting with Tim Cook? I wonder what Apple makes of this tweet stream.

Uproxx:

Meet Luke Aikins, a daredevil skydiver — he’s the guy in the tasteful lime green in the video below — who just plunged from 25,000 feet without any sort of safety device, save for a football field sized net waiting below. A net that had already proven to be less than perfect when a crash test dummy tore right through it during a test.

You ready for this? Because it’s pretty intense.

Dave wrote about this on Friday. It’s one of those stories that could have gone horribly wrong (Contrary to reports, FOX didn’t show it live but via a seven second delay for obvious reasons) and is something that seems like a ridiculously dangerous thing to do. But he made it.

Autoblog:

Translogic host Jonathon Buckley has done a lot of crazy things on the series, but being a “monkey” in a sidecar race might just be the craziest. In this episode, we travel to Millville, NJ, to learn more about the Sidecar Racing Association and participate in a few laps as a passenger, or monkey as they’re known in the racing world. It doesn’t take long for Bucko to realize just how physically exhausting it is to participate in this unique motorsport.

Racing a motorcycle is a dangerous thing to do. Being a “monkey” in a sidecar is insanity. Best line of the video: “I hope I get out of this alive…”

RGB stands for “red, green. blue”. Like hexadecimal, RGB color is an additive system. Values of 0 for each component will produce a black color, while maximum values for each component will produce white. Modifying the values for each component will change the color; while easier to read than hexadecimal, RGB is not as instinctive as a system like HSL.

This is very cool. How much Apple is spending and making on various products every second. I don’t know how accurate it is, but it’s still fascinating.

Space.com’s Dave Brody takes a look at telescopes in a number of categories. I’m finding space more interesting all the time, so I decided to have a look around at telescopes and share my findings. I’m still not sure what’s best, but I’ll continue to look.

To further protect users, we’ve taken another step to strengthen how we use encryption for data in transit by implementing HTTP Strict Transport Security—HSTS for short—on the www.google.com domain. HSTS prevents people from accidentally navigating to HTTP URLs by automatically converting insecure HTTP URLs into secure HTTPS URLs.

Some great things from Ben Brooks in here. I especially liked this part when he talked about picking up your iPad:

This took some training, but now I am very accustomed to reading with my iPad in my hands, portrait orientation, and my feet kicked up on my desk. At first this didn’t feel like I was taking my work seriously, but then I realized just how much more attention I was paying to the document at hand.

I’m going to have to think about this a bit more, or at least how I use it, but I think he’s right.

Tesla is considering whether the radar and camera input for the vehicle’s automatic emergency braking system failed to detect the truck trailer or the automatic braking system’s radar may have detected the trailer but discounted this input as part of a design to “tune out” structures such as bridges to avoid triggering false braking, the source said.

Wired:

The inflation team showed up at 7:30 am yesterday. By the time they left well into the evening, 100,000 balloons were ready to descend from the heights of the Wells Fargo Arena, drowning the Democratic party’s presidential nominee and upper crust in a sea of star-spangled latex.

Balloon drops like the one that closed out the Democratic National Convention last night are commonplace by now; they’ve graced political conventions as far back as 1932. That doesn’t make them any less spectacular, though. Or any easier to coordinate. Pulling it off takes a team of wranglers and riggers, all working together to execute a balloon visionary’s master plan.

It’s actually a surprisingly complicated procedure.

Boing Boing:

Allec Joshua Ibay’s flight sim recreation of United Airlines Flight 232’s loss of all flight controls doesn’t skip a second. The unadorned, tick-tock quality of the video makes it surprisingly gripping, not least because of the incredible solution the crew found to their predicament: controlling the plane entirely by raising and lowering thrust from the engines. Even then, they couldn’t turn left at all, meaning the slightest overturn right would require an entire 360-degree swoop to get back on target.

Then they had to land it.

I’d seen the crash footage of this before but I’d never heard the story behind it. Ignoring the spelling mistakes, the flight sim recreation is very gripping.

Buzzfeed:

Apple’s chief executive Tim Cook will host a fundraiser with Hillary Clinton next month, as the Democratic nominee becomes the first woman in American history to lead a presidential ticket of a major party.

Cook, joined by Lisa Jackson, Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, will help raise money for the Hillary Victory Fund, according to an invitation obtained by BuzzFeed News.

Cook is hosting the event as a private citizen. This comes on the heels of a similar event he held for Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

This article is going to explore the options we have today for creating the reflection, illustrate the “almost” solutions, how cross-browser issues cause pain and, finally, discuss my thoughts on what should be done.

The point is this: if you start by counting and measuring, you will likely count and measure what’s easiest – and that might be the wrong thing. “Figure out what your goal is and stop worrying about looking smart. That’s my best piece of advice ,” Hall asserts. “Most bad decisions are somehow grounded in insecurity about looking smart. That makes people dumb.”

A great interview with Erika Hall, the co-founder of Mule Design.

In its legal brief, Apple said Samsung has introduced “no evidence” that design patent damages should be decided on anything less than the value of an entire smartphone. Apple said there was no need for the Supreme Court to send the case back to a lower court for further proceedings.

Samsung are thieves and should pay what they owe.

I’m not a big fan of the new Corvettes, but the 1960 model is a gem.

[Via Coudal]

This one might seem obvious, but…. Bulgarian state railway company BDZ is urging players of Pokemon GO to keep off the railway tracks.

You know what—if you’re that stupid, go ahead and play on the railroad tracks, it’ll be fine.

The Verge:

When Michael Crichton passed away in 2008, he left behind a massive collection of papers: outlines, notes, and several incomplete novels. In the years since his death, Crichton’s widow Sherri has been combing through those files, and recently discovered a new manuscript called Dragon Teeth, which is now set to be published by HarperCollins in 2017.

I’m a huge fan of Michael Crichton’s writing, from The Andromeda Strain, up through Jurassic Park and beyond, to project like the E.R. TV series. His books fueled my imagination. I hope that Dragon Teeth is up to the standard.

Mark Gurman and Alex Webb, writing for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. plans to roll out a redesigned version of its Apple Store mobile app for selling devices that will use a customer’s buying history to recommend further purchases, taking a page from Amazon.com Inc.’s playbook. The updated retail app could be rolled out in the next two weeks, according to people familiar with the intended revamp. It’s likely to include a “For You” tab that suggests products based on prior orders, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the project isn’t yet public. While there are currently separate Apple Store apps for the iPhone and iPad, the new app will work on both devices and have the same basic features and interface.

Glenn Fleishman, writing for Macworld [AUTOPLAY]:

If you’re using Apple’s two-step verification system for logins, I have just one (not two) questions for you: do you know where your Recovery Key is?

A friend recently went through a multi-week set of interlocked problems when he was locked out of his Apple ID account on his iPhone, and couldn’t find his Recovery Key. He wasn’t ultimately able to get Apple to unlock his account. (During this period, his phone also locked up for a few days and he couldn’t receive texts or alerts, either.)

He had forgotten he’d enabled two-step verification, which is the older of Apple’s two methods of using a second piece of information to validate that you’re the accountholder. With the two-step system, Apple uses something akin to Find My iPhone to provide a code on your iOS devices or sends an SMS that you use to complete your login.

If you are not sure what kind of verification you have in place on your account, read this post.

AP News:

He’s made 18,000 parachute jumps, helped train some of the world’s most elite skydivers, done some of the stunts for “Ironman 3.” But the plunge Luke Aikins knows he’ll be remembered for is the one he’s making without a parachute. Or a wingsuit.

Or anything, really, other than the clothes he’ll be wearing when he jumps out of an airplane at 25,000 feet this weekend, attempting to become the first person to land safely on the ground in a net.

The Fox network will broadcast the two-minute jump live at 8 p.m. EDT (5 p.m. PDT) Saturday as part of an hour-long TV special called “Heaven Sent.”

Way back when, Evil Knievel did these sorts of televised, death-defying stunts on a regular basis.

More recently, we had Felix Baumgartner jumping from a balloon on the edge of space, albeit with a parachute.

Godspeed, Luke.

If you subscribe to the notion that Apple skates to where the puck is going to be (forgive the hockey analogy), this is clearly where this particular puck is headed. The marketplace is tipping away from wired headphones and the 3.5mm headphone jack that goes with it.