Not sure how I missed this. Is this common knowledge? A fascinating story. Happened back in 1999.
As far as I know, Eugene Merle Shoemaker, from Los Angeles, is the only human whose remains have left the planet.
Follow the headline link, scroll down to the section labeled “Death”.
UPDATE: A number of folks have pointed me to this page, which lists people whose remains have been “buried in space”. Shoemaker remains the only person whose remains were placed on another celestial body. But a pretty fascinating list.
A new Emergency Power Save Mode (EPSM) will be able to broadcast a distress signal in multiple different ways while also minimizing battery use in order to keep the device working until the user is rescued.
This is from a patent application. No guarantee we’ll ever see this in a shipping iPhone, but I do like the idea.
I was in the audience that day 13 years ago. While we “knew” it was going to be called the iPhone, we had no idea what it would actually look like. To say it blew our minds would be an understatement.
Subaru’s display at the 2020 Singapore Motor Show was headlined by the Viziv Adrenaline Concept, the Forester e-Boxer and GT Edition, and the refreshed Impreza. There was one model showcased in the Japanese carmaker’s booth, though, that we figured deserves your attention, too: the Forester Ultimate Customized Kit Special edition.
Make an acronym out of that name, and you’ll see why we consider it…interesting, for lack of a better word.
This is one of those stories you absolutely can’t believe is true until you see it yourself and even when you do, you think, “How the hell did that make it this far!?”
If you’re “of a certain age,” (read: old), this will be comedy gold for you. Personally, I’d rather watch this series than the actual Mandalorian which I found boring and tedious.
Jeffrey Katzenberg insists that his new video-streaming service Quibi isn’t competing against Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, Peacock, or any of the other streaming services that have launched or are launching soon. You’ve got it all wrong. You’re not even asking the right questions.
“We don’t think we’re in the streaming wars,” Katzenberg, the former boss of Walt Disney Studios and founder of DreamWorks, tells The Verge in a closed-door meeting the day before the company’s grand reveal at a CES keynote. “They’re all battling for this,” he says as he thrusts his arm toward a TV in the room. “We’re going for this,” he says, gesturing toward his phone. “Don’t tell them!”
Katzenberg and Quibi CEO Meg Whitman, who is best known as the CEO of HP and eBay, are publicly announcing Quibi at CES — but not quite unveiling it — after having raised $1 billion on the promise of a roster of Hollywood stars and supposedly revolutionary video-streaming technology that delivers portrait and landscape video at the same time. Everything on Quibi is designed for viewing on a phone, on the go, in 10 minutes or less. These chunks of video are called “quick bites” — hence, “Quibi.”
In preparation for his first American tour in a decade, Ronnie James Dio spent months sequestered in a modest office suite in Marina del Rey, in Los Angeles. The office was on the second floor of a strip mall, above a vape shop and a massage parlor.
And:
Opinion among the Dio faithful, nonetheless, was divided on the subject of his “Dio Returns” comeback tour, largely because Dio has been dead for almost 10 years.
I love that last sentence so much.
More from the article:
A start-up called Eyellusion produced “Dio Returns.” It’s one of a handful of companies looking to mold and ultimately monetize a new, hybrid category of entertainment — part concert, part technology-driven spectacle — centered, thus far, on the holographic afterlives of deceased musical stars.
The holograms are coming. More spectacle to convince you to make your way to a concert. Matter of time before this technology makes its way into your home, either in that projected hologram form, or via AR or VR. A chance to bring up holograms of past historical events, and spend some time with people and places that are gone, or just simply inaccessible.
When Rob McElhenney was initially approached by Ubisoft about writing a series set in the video game industry, he was reluctant: He didn’t see a way into that world. But when the company invited him to tour its Montreal headquarters, he figured there was nothing to lose. Once there, he found the inspiration he needed.
And:
The resulting series, “Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet,” is set to launch on Apple TV Plus on Feb. 7.
I’m really looking forward to this series. Funny is not easy. And this will be Apple’s first kick at this particular genre. My two cents, they’ve picked a good team for their first comedy.
The Variety piece goes into a lot of detail on this show, and on the Apple TV+ show launch process. There are issues to address, but it does seem as if Apple’s team is learning, and making changes where needed. Apple TV+ is a long play and, in my mind, seems like a winner.
Interesting post from John Gruber about the Consumer Electronics Show being all about concepts, and most frequently, concepts that will never become products.
But where it really hit home for me was when John turned to Apple and, more specifically, this anecdote from Lev Grossman’s Time Magazine profile of Steve Jobs from 2005:
“You know how you see a show car, and it’s really cool, and then four years later you see the production car, and it sucks? And you go, What happened? They had it! They had it in the palm of their hands! They grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory!”
And:
When Jobs took up his present position at Apple in 1997, that’s the situation he found. He and Jonathan Ive, head of design, came up with the original iMac, a candy-colored computer merged with a cathode-ray tube that, at the time, looked like nothing anybody had seen outside of a Jetsons cartoon. “Sure enough,” Jobs recalls, “when we took it to the engineers, they said, ‘Oh.’ And they came up with 38 reasons. And I said, ‘No, no, we’re doing this.’ And they said, ‘Well, why?’ And I said, ‘Because I’m the CEO, and I think it can be done.’ And so they kind of begrudgingly did it. But then it was a big hit.”
Twitter has been on a long-term mission to overhaul have people have conversations on its platform, both to make them easier to follow and more engaging without turning toxic.
Plenty of toxic, complicated problem to fix.
That strategy is taking another big step forward this year, starting in Q1 with a new way for people to control conversations, by giving them four options to “tailor” their replies: anyone can reply, only those who a user follows can reply, only those tagged can reply, or setting a tweet to get no replies at all.
These coming changes were announced at CES. Not clear how, or when, they’ll roll out to the masses. Tricky to change the mechanics of our Twitter conversations without breaking them.
One thing I think Twitter could do is be better at spotting the bots. I regularly get new followers with names like @rpt011999275 who’ve got no posts and just joined Twitter. Inevitably, they’ve got a generic bio, something like, “Just want to bring happiness into the world.”
And then there are the bots that post strongly opinionated political messages. A bit of checking shows them for what they are. The process of uncovering these bots seems simple enough. I’d love to see Twitter to a better job bot-vetting new accounts.
The OMNY tap-and-go fare readers have been taking a $2.75 charge from people who have enabled a passcode-skipping Apply Pay service — which allows straphangers to enter the subway with a swipe of their iPhone at the turnstile — even while trying to use a regular MetroCard.
And:
MTA Chief Revenue Officer Al Putre confirmed that “about 30 customers” had complained about “unintended charges when the Express Transit feature of their iPhones is activated.”
And:
An Apple rep said the company has not had the issue in other cities where the Express Transit feature is available.
If 30 customers complained, my bet is there is a pool of people who were charged, but didn’t notice it.
That said, the fact that this appears to be specific to the OMNY contactless fare payment system makes me think this is an implementation issue, maybe a hardware issue, not necessary a flaw in Apple Pay. We’ll see.
To deal with some of the changes in Mac OS X, I ran apps and system extensions that restored some behaviors from classic Mac OS. Over the years, I weaned myself off most of these, but a few stuck. In particular, I found I did not want to live without the window layering policy from classic Mac OS.
In classic, when you click on a window that belongs to an application that’s not currently active, all the windows that belong to that application come to the front. In Mac OS X (and macOS), only the window that you clicked comes to the front.
Front and Center is a trivial app—so trivial that I was afraid it would be rejected for its limited functionality. But when running, it is used literally hundreds of times a day. And I obviously found it so essential that I was willing to help bring it into existence myself.
Call me an old dog who can’t learn new tricks but this might be the fastest I’ve ever spent three dollars.
Anyone paying attention to the news coming out of CES this week has probably noticed that 8K TVs seem to be the next big thing.
The coverage of 8K has really irked me. Nearly every article I’ve read that covers these newly announced 8K TVs seem to center around one criticism of the 8K trend: that no native content exists. This, while true, misses the point. Even if we had a surplus of available 8K content — as we do 4K content from services like Disney+ and Netflix — it wouldn’t make that much of a difference. Why? Because whatever benefits might come from 8K probably aren’t worth the added costs of getting it in the first place.
Is there any real interest in 8K TVs or is it all manufacturer hype? Personally, I won’t even bother looking into them until the price comes down significantly.
Before clicking the Checkout button on Amazon or other online bookstores, you might want to check out the handy browser extension called Library Extension. It adds a box to Amazon book listings to show you if that book is available for free at your local library.
The extension is available for Chrome and Firefox, and both versions have near-perfect reviews.
Once it’s installed, you’ll see the new Library Extension icon in your toolbar. Click it to choose which libraries the tool should look for books in.
Now you’re all set. Whenever you view a book’s listing on Amazon, a new box will appear on the right side above the buying options box. This will show you how many copies of that book each of your chosen libraries have on file and how many are available to borrow. Clicking the link takes you to the library’s book listing.
My small local library isn’t included but if yours is (you can check here), then this extension might come in handy.
Apple is starting the new year by celebrating more captivating ways to shoot on iPhone with an all-new Night mode photo challenge. Users are invited to share their impressive Night mode images captured with iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max.
Beginning today through January 29, Apple is in search of the most stunning Night mode shots from users around the world. A panel of select judges will evaluate submissions to reveal five winning photos on March 4.
Follow the headline link, check out some of the examples. Some amazing shots.
Wonder if this contest will tip someone towards an iPhone 11 purchase.
I love my AirPods Pro and, ever since I bought them last October, I’ve been taking advantage of their noise cancellation technology to use them in more contexts than the original AirPods.
And:
There’s one thing I don’t particularly like about them, though: the default silicone tips.
Whether you can’t get a well-sealed fit with any of the AirPods Pro tips, or if you are after a more comfortable fit, take a few minutes to read Federico’s journey. Hard to explain it here, but just scroll through the images in Federico’s post and you’ll get a sense of how he used memory foam from another pair of headphones to make a much better fit, one that offers a better seal.
Apple has marked the close of a historic 2019 for its Services offerings, a year that introduced Apple Arcade, Apple TV+, Apple News+ and Apple Card, and celebrated the continued success of the App Store, Apple Music, iCloud and more experiences only Apple can create and deliver.
And:
Since the App Store launched in 2008, developers have earned over $155 billion, with a quarter of those earnings coming from the past year alone. As a measure of the excitement going into 2020, App Store customers spent a record $1.42 billion between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, a 16 percent increase over last year, and $386 million on New Year’s Day 2020 alone, a 20 percent increase over last year and a new single-day record.
That second paragraph is packed with interesting info. A quarter of all App Store earnings, since 2008, came in 2019. That’s remarkable.
And $386 million on New Year’s Day? Does that indicate a ton of new Apple product unwrapped over the holidays? Is New Year’s Day the day people kick back, relax, and start customizing their devices?
No matter, some incredible success for Apple. Congrats to the Services team.
At last year’s CES tech trade show in Las Vegas, Apple attracted a lot of attention because of a large well-placed billboard ad that read, “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone.”
This year, Apple made its first official appearance at the conference in years and was forced to defend that position. Jane Horvath, Apple’s senior director of global privacy, was on a panel on Tuesday alongside representatives from Facebook, Procter & Gamble and the Federal Trade Commission, and was asked about the company’s use of encryption.
Horvath said that Apple has a team working around the clock to respond to requests from law enforcement. But she said she doesn’t support building so-called back doors into software that would allow law enforcement elevated access to private data to solve crimes like terrorism.
“Building back doors into encryption is not the way we are going to solve those issues,” Horvath said.
This appearance has been touted as “Apple returns to CES!” but it’s all hype. Not what Horvath said but the seeming importance so many in the tech media seemed to place on her panel showing.
They’ve got a six car garage so I bet they can afford the repairs. My question is, how the hell does the Tesla not warn the driver the door is open or better yet, not move if the doors are open!?
A holy site where any casual viewer of Jeopardy! can appreciate the profound weight of the program’s 36-year history. A dissertation-level study on how the show’s nightly trivia affected the ambient knowledge of the American mind. An exacting catalog of the countless number of times that Alex Trebek has shepherded us through categories of potpourri, of arcane word games, of 19th-century novelists whose names begin with the letter E.
What is the J! Archive?
On the fan-run J! Archive, a would-be scholar can click on any season, from any year, and bear witness to thousands and thousands of tabulated episodes. There are national congresses that are less comprehensive than the J! Archive, and Robert Schmidt, a 39-year-old patent attorney and the original architect of the website, tells me over email that the full scope of documenting Jeopardy! requires a near-insurmountable amount of work. Still, he doesn’t think he’s doing enough.
I discovered the J! Archive many years ago when I was prepping to try and be on the show (never actually made it). The website is a throwback to the “old days” of Web 1.0 and is an incredible time sink you should not even look at unless you’ve got several hours to kill.
If you’ve been on social media in the past few weeks, you’ve probably seen a map (or five) of Australia’s devastating bushfires.
Maps displaying alarming red flames dotted around Australia keep going viral. But while such images are certainly raising awareness, they can also be a source of confusion, and even misinformation.
Here are a few examples of the maps being shared, and things to watch out for.
The situation in Australia is bad enough without people passing along incorrect information. Most of the “fire maps” you’ve seen on social media in the past few days are, at the very least, misleading.
Does your Apple Watch keep reminding you to breathe? You’re not alone. People all over the world are interrupted by the Apple Watch reminding them to breathe every day — even if they’re already breathing. So what gives?
One of the most common misconceptions about Breathe alerts is that they are related to stress. The idea is that the Apple Watch detects when you need to take advice from Taylor Swift and calm down.
I don’t suffer from this confusion (I “breathe” with the app when it’s convenient but give it no further thought) but this is a good primer into what’s going on behind the scenes.
With the release of iPadOS 13, Safari took a big step forward as a ‘desktop-class’ browser with a wide variety of enhancements that collectively eliminate a long list of complaints leveled against the app in the past. Safari’s ability to dynamically adjust the viewport to fit the iPad’s screen, enhanced support for pointer events, hardware-accelerated scrolling of frames and other regions of a webpage, along with other under-the-hood changes add up to a genuinely new browsing experience that has made work in sophisticated web apps like Mailchimp a viable option for the first time.
Great read. John Voorhees uses a specific use case to make clear the value of desktop Safari on iPadOS 13. To me, this is one of the tethers keeping me tied to my Mac falling away.
Apple has indicated that it plans to update its serial number format to a randomized alphanumeric string for future products starting in late 2020. Apple says all serial numbers that exist before the change is made will remain the same.
And:
Apple already uses alphanumeric serial numbers, but it has long been possible to determine the date and location that a product was manufactured based on the current format.
Arquette has won multiple Emmys, multiple Golden Globes (one win Sunday night), and an Oscar. A great and storied career, and arguably at the peak of her game. Solid get for Apple.
