By conventional measures, dart players are not the telegenic type. They mutter to themselves onstage. They wear flamboyant polyester polos. They cradle their handful of tiny spears and stare a lot at a fibrous board seven-feet, nine-and-a-quarter inches away.
But professional darts has catapulted itself from musty British pubs onto millions of television sets across Europe, an insurgency by a working-class sport that has turned the best of its mostly middle-aged players into stars.
The premier darting event, the William Hill World Championship, has grown into a three-week, $3-million-purse affair, replete with cheerleaders and thunderous walk-on music, and the sport’s promoters work tirelessly to ratchet up the show.
I love playing darts. I learned from my mother who was an incredible darts player. I’ll even admit to watching it on TV on occasion. The spectacle it has become is fascinating and not just a little bit ridiculous.
In the face of the retail apocalypse, Apple’s brick and mortar stores are thriving.
Apple is setting out to provide better service, more classes, and a better in-store experience, which is exactly what customers want. However, the company is also using its massive cash pile — estimated at $267 billion in May — to buy its way into historical buildings and expand its footprint into cherished public spaces. And that’s not as popular a proposition.
This is an interesting, if not completely accurate take on the issue. I would take issue with the “Even die-hard Apple fans need to be able to take a breath without always being sold something.” I’ve never felt like I was “always being sold something” when I went into an Apple store – and I’ve been in Apple stores all over the world. But it’s always good to critically examine how we use these spaces to ensure they are primarily serving people and not corporations.
More than a million revelers are expected to celebrate New Year’s in Times Square. They’ll start gathering in the early afternoon, the hard-core among them wearing diapers so as not to lose their spots. No matter where they stand, however, they are certain to be covered in some of the 3,000 pounds of confetti that will be released 20 seconds before midnight.
The New York City ball drop was always a big deal for us to watch on TV as a kid. That being said, there’s no chance I’ll ever want to actually be in Times Square for the ball drop.
Rene and I had a great conversation today that went from Apple’s triumphs of 2018 to how it could improve Siri while keeping its commitment to privacy.
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Arguably one of the biggest differences in physical design for the 2018 iPhone models, the iPhone XR has only one rear camera while the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max have two. AppleInsider takes a closer look at the situation to see if the iPhone XR’s single camera can still stand up to the dual-lens stablemates.
When the iPhone XR came out, I made the switch from the iPhone XS Max, thinking the camera would be just as good for those who want to save some cash, but I was wrong. After spending a month with the XR’s camera, I switched back to the XS Max. Here’s why.
Some very interesting photo evidence that starkly shows the differences. But the “average” user may not notice or care.
Those of you lucky enough to get a new Mac for the holidays will want to check out our collection of Mac how tos and guides to learn the ins and outs of your new machine.
Regardless of whether you’re new to the Mac or are upgrading from an older model, there’s likely to be a useful tip or trick in here for you. Most of this information applies to all of Apple’s latest Macs, from desktops to notebooks.
Did someone you know get a new Mac for Christmas? Here are a bunch of URLs to help them out.
We love beautiful planners and iOS apps, so about three years ago we started a project to build beautiful planners on iOS. We call it Capsicum. It’s a robust and feature-rich daily planning app, designed to help with planning your day, tracking your habits, and telling your story.
We are thrilled to announce that Capsicum has been approved for sale on the App Store. The App Review team is on holiday from Dec 23–27 and we’ll be launching when they return on Dec 28th.
Not only that but, we’re also being allowed (at least for now) to offer the kind free trial that I’ve always wanted to be able to offer.
I’m not a “daily planner” kind of guy but I wanted to post this, not only for the information but to talk about their model. While it’s subscription-based ($2/month), they are doing something really interesting.
Apps with subscriptions are allowed to offer trials, but you’re billed at the end of the trial automatically if you don’t cancel.
I really don’t like this model in general. As the devs say, “It likely leads to more subscriptions, but It feels like you’re being tricked.” and I agree. But they are going a different route.
Capsicum offers a 14-day free trial that doesn’t automatically bill you when the trial expires.
That’s fantastic and guarantees I’ll sign up. But wait, there’s more.
Sound fair? Well, we’ll do you one better. Those 14 days don’t have to be consecutive. So, if you try Capsicum for the first time on a Friday, and then don’t use it again until the following Wednesday, you’ll still have 12-trial days left. We love our customers and we want you to have an actual trial that doesn’t feel pressured.
That is amazing. I often run out of free trials because I don’t use the app every day. I hope this is a model that wroks well for the folks at Illuminated Bits and catches on with other developers.
The simplest answer is one that will leave you slightly unsatisfied, but at least with your confidence in comprehending basic physical properties intact. Glitter is made from glitter. Big glitter begets smaller glitter; smaller glitter gets everywhere, all glitter is impossible to remove; now never ask this question again.
The Dynamic Graph (Data Visualization) Shows the Top 10 Countries with Most GDP from 1960 to 2017. This Country GDP Ranking includes countries such as, United States, China, Japan, Germany, United Kingdom, etc.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced in a period of time, often annually or quarterly. Nominal GDP estimates are commonly used to determine the economic performance of a whole country or region, and to make international comparisons.
This is an incredible visualization. In particular, watch China as it rises falls and rises again and note the year China went to second place and stayed there. They likely won’t fall from that spot and, most likely, will overtake the US in our lifetimes.
Thirty-five years ago, a fantastic movie came out that starred four Hollywood legends, three of whom were Oscar winners. It was directed by one of the most important and influential visual artists in film history, and the plot foretold the invention of virtual reality decades ahead of its time. The script was written as a showcase for a new technology designed to change the way we see movies. One of the Hollywood legends died before the movie was finished, a mysterious death, and this ended up being her last movie.
And you’ve never heard of it.
Wood was in one of my favourite Christmas movies and the other participants in this film would have made it a must watch but, like most of us, I’ve never heard of it.
For over a century, American Jews have eaten American Chinese food on Christmas. This pastime has evolved to a near-holy tradition, parodied on Saturday Night Live, analyzed in academic papers, and reaffirmed by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.
Perhaps the foremost expert on the practice is Rabbi Joshua Eli Plaut, PhD, executive director of American Friends of Rabin Medical Center, rabbi of Metropolitan Synagogue in New York, and author of A Kosher Christmas, the premier (and only?) comprehensive study of what Jews do at Christmastime.
I spoke to Plaut about Chinese food on Christmas, and why he used to sit on Santa Claus’s lap.
I knew about this tradition (and have partaken of it myself) but just assumed was just that. I didn’t realize there’s an actual, “logical” reason for it.
The photo, taken from high on the Oriental Pearl Tower in Shanghai, shows the surrounding landscape in stunning detail. From your virtual perch many stories above the ground, you can zoom in so far that you can read the license plates on cars and spot smiling faces greeting each other on the sidewalk.
The image itself is way too large to post here, but you can visit the company’s website and use their online tool to enjoy it for yourself. It’s a bit like a treasure hunt, and you can easily lose some serious time just trying to find new and interesting things to check out.
It’s an incredible image. See if you can spot the Shanghai Apple Store. Thanks to Les Posen for the link.
For the Christmas tree vendors of Gopher Broke Farms, the day begins at 8 p.m. when a truck from Quebec carrying upwards of 800 Christmas trees will roll up to the corner of 124th and Madison. A crew of five workers will scamper to the top of the large piles of Fraser firs and balsams and begin slangin’ trees — tree-vendor slang for throwing trees, essentially — from that truck into other trucks destined to travel throughout Manhattan. “Tree!” the workers shout as they throw them from the seemingly endless pile.
Selling Christmas trees is a wildly logistical process, involving growers in Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Vermont.
As a native son of a province that is one of the largest Christmas tree suppliers, I love these stories of how the tree gets from that farm in Nova Scotia, Quebec or Vermont to the streets and parking lots of your hometown.
With version 4.0 released today, Darkroom has emerged as a photo editing force to be reckoned with on iOS. The app’s combination of thoughtful design and platform-aware functionality together enable Darkroom to scale its full suite of tools gracefully from iPhone to iPad, which makes it an excellent choice for mobile photo editing.
One of the things that sets Darkroom apart from a photo editor like Lightroom CC is its tight integration with iCloud Photo Library. Instead of requiring you to manually import images, Darkroom accesses your iCloud Photo Library directly.
I’ve used Darkroom and this new version makes a great app even better.
We recently tested four smart speakers by asking Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, and Cortana 800 questions each. Google Assistant was able to answer 88% of them correctly vs. Siri at 75%, Alexa at 73%, and Cortana at 63%. Last year, Google Assistant was able to answer 81% correctly vs. Siri (Feb-18) at 52%, Alexa at 64%, and Cortana at 56%.
Interesting that all four smart speaker systems got smarter over time.
Some 200 to 600 octillion microbes live beneath our continents, suggests an analysis of data from sites all over the world, and even more live beneath the seafloor. Together they weigh the equivalent of up to 200 million blue whales — and far more than all 7.5 billion humans. Subterranean diversity rivals that of the surface, with most underground organisms yet to be discovered or characterized.
As scientists continue their studies, the organisms they find are challenging and expanding the tree of life.
I remember as a kid learning about all the “cooties” that live in our body and being really creeped out about it. I’m not creeped out by the thought of octillions of creatures living beneath our feet but it’s equally as amazing.
…As I am today, given everything I’ve learned about cinema and the universe, I can’t help but refuse and reject this picture in the strongest possible terms. It is a brilliant film that is also, unfortunately, a total mistake.
I’m not interested in films that plunge themselves headlong into violence any more. I’m not interested in the manipulation of multitudinous evidence to tell a simple, linear story. I’m not interested in British soldiers fighting Germans on the Western Front, telling stories about their time in the trenches. I came to the film looking for a story I hadn’t seen or heard before, and those stories were nowhere to be found.
This is a really interesting essay arguing against the film. I’ve seen the trailers and am still looking forward to seeing the film but this gives me something additional to think about as I watch.
My thanks to Bare Bones Software for sponsoring The Loop this week. Do you sling code or compose with words? Whether you’re an app developer, web developer, systems admin or just want a powerful writing tool that stays out of your way, BBEdit is worth checking out.
I’ve been using BBEdit since 1995, so I know first hand that it can handle any job I throw at it.
BBEdit is crafted in response to the needs of writers, web authors, and software developers, providing an abundance of high-performance features for editing, searching, and the manipulation of text.
Dan Riccio, Apple’s vice president of hardware engineering:
Relative to the issue you referenced regarding the new iPad Pro, its unibody design meets or exceeds all of Apple’s high quality standards of design and precision manufacturing. We’ve carefully engineered it and every part of the manufacturing process is precisely measured and controlled.
This iPad Pro bend is a real head scratcher for me. Apple is so diligent and precise in every aspect of manufacturing that it seems impossible that this could happen, but yet it has. I haven’t seen this with my iPad Pro and we don’t know how prevalent it is beyond the few pictures we’ve seen online.
Apple is committed to your privacy and being transparent about government requests for customer data globally. This report provides information on government requests received.
For the last 8 years I’ve been shooting in the San Francisco area I have been absolutely obsessed with the fog. Night and day it’s what I live for and what defines my photographic style. I check the cams, satellites, and other forecasts to always be able to just get up and go. We even have a small group of about 20 of us known as, “Fogaholics” where we keep each other updated all the time as soon as we see it roll in.
These are beautiful, almost surreal images. The technique to create them is actually fairly simple. But the knowledge required to get images like these is not easy to teach or come by.
The army has been called in to help with the ongoing crisis at Gatwick airport, where drones flying near the runway have kept planes grounded for over 12 hours.
The airport has been closed since Wednesday night, when the devices were repeatedly flown over the airfield in what police and the airport described as a deliberate attempt to disrupt flights.
Tens of thousands of travellers have been affected, with 110,000 passengers on 760 flights due to fly on Thursday. Eurocontrol said Gatwick would not re-open before 8pm at the earliest.
This is an issue that is only going to get worse as more and more consumer drones are used and get in the hands of idiots who fly unsafely.
Multiple AirPods sharing audio on the same device, getting back at package thieves, and the bend of the new iPad Pro are among the topics Dave and I tackle on this week’s show.
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Apple has confirmed to The Verge that some of its 2018 iPad Pros are shipping with a very slight bend in the aluminum chassis. But according to the company, this is a side effect of the device’s manufacturing process and shouldn’t worsen over time or negatively affect the flagship iPad’s performance in any practical way. Apple does not consider it to be a defect.
The bend is the result of a cooling process involving the iPad Pro’s metal and plastic components during manufacturing, according to Apple.
And:
My 11-inch iPad Pro showed a bit of a curve after two weeks. Apple asked if I would send it their way so the engineering team could take a look. But the replacement 11-inch iPad Pro I received at Apple’s Downtown Brooklyn store exhibited a very slight bend in the aluminum as soon as I took off the wrapper.
And:
Those who are annoyed by the bend shouldn’t have any trouble exchanging or returning their iPad Pro at the Apple Store or other retailers within the 14-day return window. But it’s not clear if swaps will be permitted outside that policy.
Tricky. Is this really normal? Look at the image in the linked article. Certainly seems like a manufacturing defect to me.
Past as prologue, can’t help but imagine a lawsuit brewing somewhere.
Glenn Fleishman, writing for Smithsonian Magazine:
At midnight on New Year’s Eve, all works first published in the United States in 1923 will enter the public domain. It has been 21 years since the last mass expiration of copyright in the U.S.
And:
“The public domain has been frozen in time for 20 years, and we’re reaching the 20-year thaw,” says Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke Law School’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain. The release is unprecedented, and its impact on culture and creativity could be huge. We have never seen such a mass entry into the public domain in the digital age. The last one—in 1998, when 1922 slipped its copyright bond—predated Google. “We have shortchanged a generation,” said Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive. “The 20th century is largely missing from the internet.”
And:
We can blame Mickey Mouse for the long wait. In 1998, Disney was one of the loudest in a choir of corporate voices advocating for longer copyright protections. At the time, all works published before January 1, 1978, were entitled to copyright protection for 75 years; all author’s works published on or after that date were under copyright for the lifetime of the creator, plus 50 years.
Apple tweaked their App Store review guidelines from:
Apps should not directly or indirectly enable gifting of in-app purchase content, features, or consumable items to others.
To:
Apps may enable gifting of items that are eligible for in-app purchase to others. Such gifts may only be refunded to the original purchaser and may not be exchanged.
It’ll take time to see this, as apps need to implement the change, resubmit, then the updates need to propagate to the end users. But it’ll get there.
Seems a clear win for Apple. Gifting allows more money to flow through the ecosystem.
