[Note: Linked post has an Autoplay ad]

Lots of interesting facets to this deal. The whole thing happened in 22 days, an incredibly short span for such a large investment.

First, there was the meeting:

Didi President Jean Liu said on Friday that talks began less than a month ago when she stopped by to see Tim Cook at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California. Any company named after a fruit “could achieve something big,” she jested during the April 20 meeting. Didi’s legal name, Xiaoju Kuaizhi Inc., means “little orange,” she explained.

Didi gets the capital it needs to compete with Uber:

Didi, battling with Uber Technologies Inc. for supremacy in China, will get additional capital to expand into new cities, recruit drivers and market to potential customers. The Apple investment will bring the amount Didi is raising in its current round of funding to $3 billion, people familiar with the matter said, declining to be named because the matter is private.

And Apple?

Apple gets a potentially lucrative investment and wins powerful allies in one of its most important markets. Didi is backed by China’s two largest Internet companies, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. They could help Apple market Apple Pay and other services, as well as giving it experience in transportation as it weighs an entry into automobiles.

This may turn out to be a lucrative investment for Apple. But it certainly gives them some very powerful, and much needed, native Chinese partners.

Instructions in the documents appear to contradict Facebook’s earlier denials of a Gizmodo article that said Facebook editors directly inserted headlines into the trending news widget. It also contradicts what Facebook told Recode last summer.

Farhad Manjoo:

Facebook is the world’s most influential source of news.

That’s true according to every available measure of size — the billion-plus people who devour its News Feed every day, the cargo ships of profit it keeps raking in, and the tsunami of online traffic it sends to other news sites.

But Facebook has also acquired a more subtle power to shape the wider news business.

It’s scary how powerful Facebook is these days.

Having lost a referendum over whether they would be regulated by the local government, the ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft followed through on their threat to effectively fire 10,000 drivers and strand thousands of customers who had come to rely on them for transportation in this hot, spread-out, car-centric city.

I love Uber and Lyft. I use both services quite often.

Very interesting post from Rian Van Der Merwe about building Postmark.

Atlas Obscura:

Looking at a globe close-up is a wonderful thing. Interacting with a round replica of our world gives an entirely different sensation to say looking at Google maps and even a physical atlas doesn’t really give the true geographical sense of our planet. Two dimensional maps, often relying on the Mercator Projection, can show Greenland to be the size of all of Africa when it’s really more like Mexico. It takes a globe to really see that Texas may be the largest state in the continental U.S. but Australia’s largest state is three times its size. Or that the entire eastern seaboard of America fits quite comfortably into Kazakhstan.

For Peter Bellerby, a passion for globes has quite unexpectedly turned into a successful business—his company is one of the world’s only remaining traditional globe makers. “I think everyone has some sort of soft spot for globes,” he explains. “Maps are wonderful but globes are tangible and tell so much more of a story.”

I’ve always had a fascination with maps and globes, even though I can’t read a roadmap to save my life. I’d love to own one of these art objects.

Based on several Apple Support threads, it appears that the most recent version of iTunes 12.3.3 contains a database error that affects a small number of users, and can potentially wipe out their music collection after the update.

Holy. Sweet. Shit.

I don’t care if it’s iTunes or Apple Music—this is my music library! Fix this shit.

Forbes named Apple the world’s most valuable brand, followed by Google, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and Facebook.

A product team at Google is working on a hardware device that would integrate Google’s search and voice assistant technology, akin to the Amazon Echo, Recode has learned.

This segment of the market is starting to heat up and it’s getting very interesting.

Comey indicated that the debate involving both legal and privacy issues over whether the federal government can compel tech companies to unlock personal devices in the interest of national security is far from over in a briefing with reporters at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

I don’t think this is a big surprise to anyone. The FBI needs overwhelming support from the public and government to win, but they don’t currently have that.

Adobe rolled out another Flash security advisory on Tuesday. Thought this post from Peter Cohen was worth a revisit.

Wired:

SQL injection vulnerabilities are among the most common vulnerabilities around and have consistently appeared at the top of vulnerability lists for years. The computer security firm Imperva calls it the “most pernicious vulnerability in human computer history” and says that between 2005 and 2011, SQL attacks accounted for 83 percent of data breaches during that period.

And:

When you visit a website, you communicate with an SQL database when you type your credentials into the log-in form, conduct a web site search or submit other kinds of data to the site.

An SQL attack occurs when hackers type SQL query code into that web form, and the web application that processes this input doesn’t properly check and validate it, thereby allowing the attacker to command the database to spill its data.

Interesting read. Good to know.

This guide dives pretty deep, but is very readable. Chock full of links and suggestions, all designed to help safeguard your privacy.

More than with most, make sure you have a solid backup before you start down this road. This guide is free. Worth reading, just to know what’s out there. A big hat-tip to @MacKungFuTips.

Beautiful cutaway print showing what really goes on inside the original Mac. [H/T Robert Macmillan]

Bloomberg:

If a person has enabled Apple’s Touch ID, her fingerprint will unlock the phone for 48 hours after locking before the device requires a PIN. Systems on newish Samsung and LG phones work similarly. Los Angeles and Oakland are among the cities that have already granted or received warrants for the use of a finger to unlock a phone. The next step may be a lawsuit that determines whether a fingerprint is off-limits.

Legal scholars say law enforcement is likely to win that fight. Two years ago, David Baust, a paramedic in Virginia Beach, Va., admitted that his locked iPhone 5S may have filmed him in bed strangling his girlfriend, according to a court filing. Baust’s lawyers argued that unlocking the phone would violate his Fifth Amendment right to avoid incriminating himself. A state judge ruled that demanding Baust type in his pass code would entail a “mental process” leading to self-incrimination, but that asking for his fingerprint was more like drawing a blood sample and therefore OK.

As I’ve said in the past, I expect that law enforcement will eventually build a mechanism to pull a fingerprint from a suspect and use that to unlock a suspect’s phone. This concept has been proven and fingerprinting is already widely accepted.

Statement from Pamela Cohen, mother of one of the two missing boys:

“We learned yesterday that Apple went as far as they could to try to get Austin’s iPhone working, which, as Apple advised, was the first step in the process of retrieving information that might help us understand what happened to the boys. Apple also made it clear that getting the iPhone to power up was its only commitment to Blu Stephanos, which differs from what we heard from his attorney in court. For the generous efforts by Apple’s engineers, who we understand worked tirelessly to try to help us, we are so very grateful.

As I’ve said before, I owe it to Perry to exhaust every possible avenue in pursuit of finding out what happened to him. According to Apple, there are other experts in the field who may be able to pick up where Apple left off, to continue the work. Apple has offered to securely hand the iPhone off to an expert in this technology if the families can agree on such an expert. We look forward to working cooperatively with Austin’s family toward this transition. We are not giving up on the iPhone’s potential for evidence until all viable efforts have been exhausted”.

Tragic, tragic story.

The Verge:

It only lasted about two seconds, but wow, what a sort of thrilling two seconds it was! Hyperloop One, the LA-based startup striving to realize Elon Musk’s pipe dream, conducted it’s first public open-air test in the Nevada desert Wednesday.

A crowd of wealthy investors, transportation experts, media, and even North Las Vegas Mayor John Jay Lee, watched as a roughly 10-foot long sled shot down a short train track and then crashed into a pile of sand.

See the video embedded below. I think this has real possibilities, not just a pipe dream.

Note that the concept is Elon Musk’s, but he open sourced it, encouraging others to actually build it. Hyperloop One is a startup whose goal is to build a Hyperloop designed to carry passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in about 35 minutes. Without killing them.

The Guardian:

A factory-sealed third-generation iPod shuffle? $999.95. Mint condition fifth-generation iPod classic, in white? $1,394.99. A silver first-generation iPod mini? Yours for $2,499.99.

But these are on the low end of the price scale. If you have a special edition, especially if it’s still in its original packaging, you could be looking at much more: Apple’s fourth-generation red-and-black special edition released in partnership with the band U2 are trading for around $7,000, used.

And that’s before you get to the real collectors’ items. A first generation iPod classic – “battery is really good for its age” – is on sale priced at $9,999.99. A second-generation, still-boxed iPod classic – that’s the last version that had the moving wheel – is currently listed for an extraordinary $19,999.99.

I found this hard to believe. So I spent a bit of time on eBay.

Prices are definitely rising, but there are still original, first generation iPods to be found for around $150. None that are factory sealed, however. If I was going to shell out money for a collectible like this, that’s probably where I’d start.

My instinct here is that the high prices called out in the article are wishful thinking, asking prices as opposed to actual prices paid.

As always, caveat emptor.

Some solid suggestions from Kirk McElhearn. I hope Apple reads posts like this, really considers some of the pain points. I’d also suggest that Apple spend some quality time with SoundShare (see Point #3). Collaborative playlists is one strong feature of SoundShare, but there’s much more to it. The app has social in its bones, and social is something that Apple Music has traditionally struggled with.

Why not bring the developer in for a meet-and-greet with the Apple Music team, preview planned Apple Music APIs, see if the SoundShare team have suggestions to make things better for both sides.

“This is not true,” Apple spokesperson Tom Neumayr told to BuzzFeed News, rebutting to a Digital Music News report claiming the company “is now preparing to completely terminate music download offerings on the iTunes Store” in two years — or possibly “the next 3-4 years.”

Not a big surprise. I don’t know why people thought it was true.

Keep important information about the items in your home in one place. Store make, model, serial numbers, purchase price and date, photos, receipts, warranty information (manufacturer’s, extended, and other types of warranties), and much more. Use the dated notes feature to make notes about modifications and repairs. Attach files, such as digital copies of owner’s manuals. No more digging through file folders and junk drawers to find the information you need.

Everyone really should be doing this, I think.

“This goose came up and started pecking on the side of the car,” Givens told The Dodo. “I threw some food out for her, but she didn’t take it. She just kept pecking and quacking. Then she walked away, stopped and looked back. Then came over again and pecked some more.”

Wow.

Colorizing retoucher Jordan J. Lloyd of Dynamichrome took vintage photographs of global landmarks under construction and added color to them to give us a different look at history.

These are outstanding.

[Via Kottke]

The colors they chose don’t look connected to the colors of the old icon’s rainbow. In short, it looks and feels like an altogether new brand for Instagram, not an update or refresh of their old brand — and I’m not convinced that was the right move.

Some interesting thoughts from Gruber. As with most major design changes, this one is polarizing, as John points out.

I want McDonald’s fries and bacon. Or McDonald’s fries and anything… or bacon and anything.

Calling him “one of the last members of the original Siri team,” The Information reported on Wednesday that Darren Haas has left Apple for General Electric. He’ll join Steve D’Aurora, another ex-Siri team member who resigned from Apple for GE a few weeks ago.

The changeups also come a few days after a team of ex-Siri personnel unveiled Viv, a new, advanced virtual assistant that aims to offer functionality well beyond what Apple’s Siri can currently do. Demonstrated tasks include ordering a car from Uber, buying flowers from FTD, and ordering tickets from a variety of services, and offer intelligent, contextual responses, such as alternatives when a showtime for a movie is sold out.

This is very sad, especially considering what we’ve seen from the now departed Siri team and what they’ve done with Viv. These types of advances is what we expected Apple to do with Siri.

Loop Canada:

Anyone who’s been to the Canadian Tulip Festival in Ottawa knows that there’s no shortage of bright, beautiful colours. But this year, there will be one flower that overshadows them all.

On Monday, a red and white tulip created to honour Canada’s 150th birthday was unveiled at Commissioners Park. It was engineered to resemble the Canadian flag, and you can think of it as a personal “thank you” from the Netherlands.

The story is a bit misleading – there’s no actual information on how the tulip was engineered – but it’s still a great story about the remarkable affection and friendship the Dutch have for and with Canada. You can see the Canada150 tulip at the Canadian Tulip Festival this weekend in Ottawa and buy it for your own home garden at Home Hardware stores this September.