More than one thousand MFi controller compatible games. Nice resource.

I’ve passed by Microsoft stores many times. I have yet to see one that is crowded. Their continued existence is a mystery to me.

Ben Thompson:

This, then, is the deep irony of this controversy: Facebook is receiving a huge amount of criticism for allegedly biasing the news via the empowerment of a team of human curators to make editorial decisions, as opposed to relying on what was previously thought to be an algorithm; it is an algorithm, though — the algorithm that powers the News Feed, with the goal of driving engagement — that is arguably doing more damage to our politics than the most biased human editor ever could.

The fact of the matter is that, on the part of Facebook people actually see — the News Feed, not Trending News — conservatives see conservative stories, and liberals see liberal ones; the middle of the road is as hard to find as a viable business model for journalism (these things are not disconnected).

There are a lot of sides here. Does Facebook have the right to publish news as they see fit? Certainly.

But the central issue is the slow erosion of the traditional journalism model. We traditionally have limits on ownership of news outlets. Limits on the number of newspapers, radio stations, and TV outlets a single entity is allowed to own.

Facebook, Google and, to a much smaller extent, Apple, are testing those limits in a completely new way. In my opinion, the real danger occurs not in Facebook’s approach to news, but in giving any single entity the ability to control too great a slice of it.

This is both terrifically informative and fun to read. If nothing else, make your way through the comic at the top of the article, where the author receives an unexpected invitation. Fantastic!

Note that this was published about a year ago. Big thanks to Twitter follower CV for the link.

Reuters:

Oracle Corp and Google faced off on Tuesday in a $9 billion copyright retrial, with Oracle accusing Google of stealing programming to become the world’s leading smartphone player and Google saying it acted legally as a true innovator.

At the heart of this:

Oracle claims Google’s Android smartphone operating system violated its copyright on parts of the Java programming language, while Alphabet Inc’s Google says it should be able to use Java without paying a fee under the fair-use provision of copyright law.

Lots of eyes on this:

The case has been closely watched by software developers who fear an Oracle victory could spur more software copyright lawsuits. However, investors see little risk for Google because the company could afford to pay a one-off fine, and the possibility of an injunction that would force Google to pay ongoing royalties to Oracle appears remote.

Originally went to trial in 2012, jury was deadlocked.

Here’s the original letter, part 1 and part 2.

Here’s Tim’s reply. Short, sweet, and thoughtful.

New York Times:

The chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee demanded on Tuesday that Facebook explain how it handles news articles in its “trending” list, responding to a report that staff members had intentionally suppressed articles from conservative sources.

In a letter, the chairman, Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, asked Facebook to describe the steps it was taking to investigate the claims and to provide any records about articles that its news curators had excluded or added.

And:

Mr. Thune’s actions raised further questions about the content seen by the 1.6 billion people who regularly use Facebook. The platform’s growing role as an arena for news distribution has raised some concerns that it could have undue influence over the flow of information, but any effort by the federal government to regulate or investigate editorial decisions could run into First Amendment protections.

And:

“The notion of Congress looking into or investigating how a medium of communication decides what to say threatens on its face First Amendment rights,” said Mr. Abrams, a partner at the law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel.

This is an incredible display of arrogance. Will Congress investigate the Washington Post for bias? How about Fox News?

Long story short, reset your settings. But read the post to learn about the impact of this move, what you should do to minimize the pain.

WhatsApp has a user base of more than a billion users worldwide. Facebook paid about $20 billion for the company back in 2014. Now WhatsApp has expanded their reach to the desktop, with clients for Mac and Windows.

Here’s a link to the download.

Locate and remove duplicate files, even if they’re in remote corners of your system. Gemini 2 scans your whole disk speed-of-light fast, no matter how massive it is. Dig through scan results and hand-pick the files to erase, or better — let Smart Select do all the work.

Very nice looking interface and something I know I could use.

The Black Album Drums is a drum library for BFD3 and Kontakt 5.5 (full version) inspired by the drum sound featured on the “Black Album” by Metallica from 1991.

This is pretty special—these guys found the kit played on that record, not just the same model, but that exact kit.

Castamatic is the best way to listen to podcasts on any iOS device. Quickly assemble a custom sequence of shows to listen to, create a smart playlist, and listen to your favorite shows with top-notch audio quality, thanks to Castamatic’s custom DSP algorithms.

Another interesting podcast app.

Cheers bearded people!

Visa “has demanded that we allow fraud-prone signature verification for debit transactions in our U.S. stores because Visa stands to make more money processing,” Wal-Mart said.

The retailer pays about five cents more for a signature transaction than a PIN payment, said a person familiar with the rates.

I had no idea they paid more per transaction for a signature.

Yahoo News:

A teenager from Quebec has discovered an ancient Mayan city without leaving his province’s borders.

William Gadoury is a 15-year-old student from Saint-Jean-de-Matha in Lanaudière, Quebec. The precocious teen has been fascinated by all things Mayan for several years, devouring any information he could find on the topic.

During his research, Gadoury examined 22 Mayan constellations and discovered that if he projected those constellations onto a map, the shapes corresponded perfectly with the locations of 117 Mayan cities. Incredibly, the 15-year-old was the first person to establish this important correlation, reported the Journal de Montreal over the weekend.

Then Gadoury took it one step further. He examined a twenty-third constellation which contained three stars, yet only two corresponded to known cities.

Gadoury’s hypothesis? There had to be a city in the place where that third star fell on the map.

What an incredibly clever kid. I think at 15, I was still learning to tie my sneakers properly.

Wired:

The biggest problem with a 120-sided die is not its size, or its weight, or even its price. The biggest problem with a 120-sided die is no one knows what to do with it, a fact not lost on the people who created it. “We were a little concerned to make this because it’s so expensive and there’s no real use for it,” says Robert Fathauer.

Fathauer is one half of Dice Lab, a small company in Phoenix that explores the wonder of polyhedra in dice form. The D120 is its most ambitious project yet, one that, frankly, makes absolutely zero sense but is awesome just the same.

The D&D nerds out there (a group I am proud to be part of) are undoubtedly trying to figure out a way to use these. If nothing else, at only $12 each, I’d buy a couple just to add to my dice collection.

Pexels:

A lot of desktop software has moved to the browser and this trend doesn’t stop with photo editing software. Here are the 7 greatest online photo editors that will rival your desktop software. Depending on the job that needs to be done some of the online editors are easier to use, quicker and/or more affordable.

I’m a big fan of Adobe’s Lightroom but these online tools can do a lot of what desktop apps do.

FastCoDesign:

With the backdrop of the Olympics and a comically botched election, this summer is bound to be what Ricardo Marques, a vice president from Budweiser, calls “maybe the most American summer ever.”

So Budweiser is going to potentially ingenious, potentially absurd branding extremes. The company has kept the same can you already know, but when you look closely, you’ll realize that it has swapped out its own name, “Budweiser,” for “America.” That’s right, Budweiser has renamed its beer America for the summer.

Is it just me or does this seem less “patriotic” and more “weird and pandering” to anyone else?

CBC:

Apple Pay is becoming much more useful in Canada, as the mobile payment system adds several major Canadian partners including Royal Bank and CIBC.

Those banks say they’ll accept Visa and MasterCard credit card payments through compatible Apple devices starting today and Bank of Montreal said the feature is “coming soon.” ATB Financial and Canadian Tire Bank are also participating.

The system launched in Canada late last year, but hasn’t had much pickup because the big banks had been reluctant to sign up. Apple Pay used to only work with non-bank American Express cards, which are rare in Canada. Tuesday’s announcement will also make Apple Pay available to users with Interac debit cards issued by RBC and CIBC.

Great news for my fellow Canadians.

Canalys:

Worldwide PC shipments (desktops, notebooks, two-in-ones and tablets) totaled 101 million units in Q1 2016, as total volumes dipped by 13% year-on-year to their lowest point since Q2 2011. Apple continued to lead the market into the first quarter of 2016 with shipments of just over 14 million units, despite falling 17%.

I suspect we’ll see a nice burst to shipped units when Apple updates the retina MacBook Pro.

Tim Bajarin, writing for Time:

The late Apple CEO Steve Jobs developed pancreatic cancer in 2004. He then spent a great deal of time with doctors and the healthcare system until his death in 2011. While that personal health journey had a great impact on Jobs personally, it turns out that it affected Apple’s top management, too. During this time, Jobs discovered how disjointed the healthcare system can be. He took on the task of trying to bring some digital order to various aspects of the healthcare system, especially the connection between patients, their data, and their healthcare providers.

And:

It seems clear that Apple’s management has now and will continue to have a major focus on bridging the gap between a person and their healthcare providers. I believe Apple is on a mission to improve the overall health of its customers as well as that of the healthcare system, a task Jobs gave them before he died. And while Apple’s products define Jobs’ legacy, it may turn out that his and Apple’s greatest contribution may be to bring greater order to the fragmented healthcare world.

It is within this backdrop that the Apple Watch was born.

The sense I get from reading this is, though Steve may not even have been aware of the Apple Watch design effort, his battle against cancer was a major motivating force behind the Apple Watch design and creation.

This is a long post, but worth the time. There’s a lot of insider’s detail specific to Twitter, but there’s also a lot of insight into privilege, large tech companies, management styles, and being true to yourself.

Thanks for sharing this, Mike. I hope it effects some change and brings you some peace.

MacRumors:

Apple is awarding 350 scholarships to students and members of participating STEM organizations and is also offering 125 scholarships to developers with financial limitations.

475 people are having a very exciting day.

Jim Cramer, on his Tumblr:

Elon Musk can say whatever the heck he wants and get away with it, Tim Cook has to watch every last word even as he has repeatedly delivered the goods.

And:

First, [Musk] produces a quarter that is in line, meaning that he’s losing about $19,059 per car, near a record high.

Second, even as he doesn’t even make the number of cars he promised for the quarter – 17,000, below the 19,000 that analysts were expecting – he’s now projecting he will make 500,000 cars by 2018 and a million by 2020. His transparency is shameless. While he boasts the seemingly impossible – and I put “seemingly” in there because otherwise I am just calling him a liar, and I think he believes the numbers – he uses the forecast both to urge you to send more to him and to raise more money from Wall Street.

Who else but Musk could say: “If you place your order now, there’s a high probability you will actually receive your car in 2018.”

On Tim Cook:

Cook forecasted almost perfectly for the quarter just reported. Yet I defy you to find more than handful of stories that didn’t typify the quarter as a huge shortfall. It was right dead in line, for heavens’ sakes.

As for the forecast? What was Cook supposed to do? Make up one that showed better numbers than he can deliver? Given what he has in the pipe, and what he can see, barring a surge of orders for the new iPhone SE – something that’s entirely possible if you extrapolate comments from supplier Qorvo last night – he had to do what he did to reset growth for the quarter.

Whatever your take on Jim Cramer, there’s something to his comments. Musk is running on promises of growth. Tim Cook has delivered growth and posts accurate projections.

Doomed.

Spotify, which was created in Stockholm 10 years ago, now boasts of having close to 100 million users in more than 59 markets, despite increasing competition and, so far, a lack of profits.

Spotify claims it has 30 million paid users compared to Apple’s 13 million. Both Apple and Spotify say they are growing, so the users are coming from other services, or they are new to streaming.