As you would expect, Amazon has Black Friday deals on a ton of items. This page will help get you started.

This is a great article by Steven Aquino on how Face ID stacks up in his uses on the iPhone X.

Research by Apple Inc computer scientists on how self-driving cars can better spot cyclists and pedestrians while using fewer sensors has been posted online, in what appears to be the company’s first publicly disclosed paper on autonomous vehicles.

So interesting that Apple would do this.

The Atlantic:

The top-scoring panoramic photos entered in the eighth annual Epson International Pano Awards have just been announced. The contest is meant to showcase the best work of panoramic photographers around the world.

Enjoy these wide images of our natural and human-built worlds on the largest screen available to you.

There’s approximately a million “photo contests/awards” nowadays and I avoid posting about most of them but these images are spectacular and I had to share. Thanks to John Kordyback‏ for the link.

This is a terrific piece from Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac, a realistic look at the experience of shooting with the iPhone X camera.

I’ve been using the iPhone 8 Plus (similar cameras, but the iPhone X has a slightly faster telephoto f/2.4 vs. f/2.8 – and the X has OIS in both lenses) for the past few days and my experience has been similar to Ben’s.

I will say, I find the iPhone 8 Plus camera to be astonishing.

Take a moment to compare the two images in this tweet. One was taken at the base of Philadelphia City Hall, looking up to the top of a tall tower. Without moving, I took a second shot, pinching out to zoom in on a statue at the top of the tower.

I was floored by the amount of detail in that second shot. Amazing to get this kind of result from a phone that fits in my pocket.

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

When the $350 gadget debuts early next year (on Friday Apple delayed the launch from December), the HomePod won’t be able to do many of the things the Echo can. Amazon offers thousands of “skills” (voice-activated apps) that let users do a range of things (including buy stuff from Amazon). The Google Home Mini, which debuted earlier this year, is similarly endowed. The HomePod will be mostly limited to playing tunes from Apple Music, controlling Apple-optimized smart home appliances and sending messages through an iPhone.

“This is a huge missed opportunity,” said one of the people, who requested anonymity to discuss an internal matter. Apple declined to comment.

I’m just going to quote this Daring Fireball piece from 2006, which itself quotes a post from the San Jose Mercury News, but Gruber really brought this to fame:

Responding to questions from New York Times correspondent John Markoff at a Churchill Club breakfast gathering Thursday morning, Colligan laughed off the idea that any company — including the wildly popular Apple Computer — could easily win customers in the finicky smart-phone sector.

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”

This pattern repeats itself over and over again. They’re not going to just walk in. Until they do.

My money is on Apple and HomePod here. This is not casting doubt on Amazon’s Echo or Google Home. But Apple has an obvious advantage, a real barrier to entry for both Google and Amazon. Even if they don’t reveal all their cards from day one, HomePod (and HomePod Mini, if such a thing eventually ships) will have intimate, private API access to the Apple ecosystem.

Silly to bet against that home court advantage.

From the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum event invitation:

Jonathan Ive, Chief Design Officer of Apple, is widely considered the world’s most influential industrial designer and plays a key role in Apple’s status as one of the most recognized and innovative brands in history. As CDO, he is behind all aspects of the look and feel of the iPhone, iPad, MacBook, and Apple watch—as well as major architectural projects like Apple Park—and new ideas and initiatives in development.

He has been described as one of the most powerful people in the world’s most valuable company and is a 2017 honoree of the Smithsonian’s American Ingenuity Awards (the “Golden Globes of intellect”), which honor revolutionary breakthroughs in the arts and sciences, education and social progress. Ive will be joined in conversation by Rick Tetzeli, Editor At Large of Fast Company and author of the bestselling biography Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader.

Sadly, tickets are all gone, but:

1. There is a waiting list, in case you’ll be in Washington DC next week
2. Hopefully, Fast Company will video the interview, put it on their web site.

[H/T, The minimaluminiumalistically musing Not Jony Ive]

Hackers stole the personal data of 57 million customers and drivers from Uber Technologies Inc., a massive breach that the company concealed for more than a year. This week, the ride-hailing firm ousted its chief security officer and one of his deputies for their roles in keeping the hack under wraps, which included a $100,000 payment to the attackers.

They simply neglected to tell anyone they had been hacked. There is nothing this company won’t do.

The head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission unveiled plans on Tuesday to repeal landmark 2015 rules that prohibited internet service providers from impeding consumer access to web content in a move that promises to recast the digital landscape.

I don’t understand how they think this is a good thing.

Vice:

From Michael Jackson to Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen to Queen, few have ever captured legendary musicians quite like photographer and photojournalist Neal Preston. Over the course of his 48-year career, the New York–born, self-taught shutterbug witnessed the rise of rock ‘n’ roll and the global culture shifts that came with it.

You’ve probably never heard his name but I guarantee you’ve seen his images. I love the disdain he shows for present day, digital photographers and the bloodless way they talk about their work. I see a lot of his images and think, “Well, they couldn’t have been that hard to get” until I realize, he was shooting his iconic shots using a film camera. I could never get those shots.

Motherboard:

The idea of websites tracking users isn’t new, but research from Princeton University released last week indicates that online tracking is far more invasive than most users understand. In the first installment of a series titled “No Boundaries,” three researchers from Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) explain how third-party scripts that run on many of the world’s most popular websites track your every keystroke and then send that information to a third-party server.

Some highly-trafficked sites run software that records every time you click and every word you type. If you go to a website, begin to fill out a form, and then abandon it, every letter you entered in is still recorded, according to the researchers’ findings.

This list of the websites that do this should make you very, very angry.

MacStories:

However, long-form writing is a different animal altogether that benefits from a project-based approach that also includes tools for planning, organizing, researching, and tracking. Today, Literature and Latte released version 3.0 of Scrivener for macOS with a long list of new features that cements its spot as one of the premier project-focused apps available on the Mac for long-form writing.

Scrivener isn’t just for book writers, but the features that cater to them are what sets the app apart from other text editors.

I no longer write long-form but I would have loved this app in college and almost every long-form writer I know uses and loves Scrivener.

Many people realize that smartphones track their locations. But what if you actively turn off location services, haven’t used any apps, and haven’t even inserted a carrier SIM card?

Even if you take all of those precautions, phones running Android software gather data about your location and send it back to Google when they’re connected to the internet, a Quartz investigation has revealed.

Damn, Google.

Apple’s TrueDepth camera features multiple sensors to create a depth map in real time on the iPhone X. Google’s solution relies entirely on machine learning and an impressive single camera to accomplish the same effect on the Pixel 2. Here’s a look at how these two methods compare!

There is no doubt how important selfies are to smartphone owners these days.

The Apple Watch comes with a stock app called Breathe that reminds you to, um, breathe. There’s actually more to it than that, but the thought of needing a reminder to breathe makes me giggle. The point is, the app has this kinda awesome interface with a nice animation.

Very nice.

Apple Inc said on Tuesday it has removed several apps including Skype, Microsoft Corp’s internet phone call and messaging service, from its app store in China after the country’s government pointed to violations of local laws.

Apple has to abide by the laws of the countries it operates in.

Yahoo:

Apple’s iPhone X is an exceptional smartphone. It’s easily the best iPhone the tech giant has ever produced thanks to its improved design, vivid edge-to-edge screen and fantastic Face ID facial recognition scanner.

But the iPhone X has another feature that hasn’t gotten quite as much attention as its ability to use animojis: its camera. See, the iPhone X’s shooter features a dual-lens setup that’s much like the 8 Plus. However, it can capture more light than the 8 Plus’s camera, making for improved image quality.

To test how well the iPhone X’s camera performs, I put it up against the 8 Plus, Google’s Pixel 2 XL and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 8. And while each of the handsets performed incredibly well, Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone X outperformed them where it mattered.

We’re going to see a lot of these shootouts but there’s no reason to believe the results will be any different.

Wired: >While Woods is one of several DMs-for-hire out there, this isn’t his hobby or a side gig; it’s a living, and a pretty good one at that, with Woods charging anywhere from $250 to $350 for a one-off three-hour session (though he works on a sliding scale). For that price, Woods will not only research and plan out your game but also, if you become a regular, answer your occasional random text queries about wizard spells.

I had no idea there was any such thing as a professional DM but, of course there is.

Credit: https://compartesjapan.com/

Mental Floss:

A good poster can make all the difference when it comes to decor. Posters are a cost-effective and fun way to add color, tie together a room, and show off the owner’s personality. If you want to help a loved one track down a poster that doesn’t look like it’s straight out of a college dorm room, here are 11 prints we suggest gifting.

As we get older, it gets harder and harder to find unique, interesting gifts for friends and family. Some of these posters might be just the ticket. I especially love the retro patent ones.

Australia News:

The company wants to use 100 per cent recycled and renewable materials like bioplastics to make its iPhones, Macbooks and other consumer electronics in a bid to reduce its reliance on raw materials.

“What we’ve committed to is 100 per cent recycled material to make our products, or renewable material,” Apple’s vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives, Lisa Jackson, told news.com.au. “We’re working like gangbusters on that.”

While some of Apple’s efforts are described as “nonsense”, they may be the only major company on the planet at least making the attempt to be as green as possible.

Fortune:

The Justice Department and Apple have been locked in a bitter fight for years over the company’s encryption system, which allows consumers to prevent anyone —including law enforcement—from opening their devices without permission. That’s why a security story this week should be getting more attention than it has.

Titled “Yup: The Government Is Secretly Hiding Its Crypto Battles In The Secret FISA Court,” the story appeared on the well-regarded security blog EmptyWheel, and suggests the Justice Department is using a legal backdoor to force open software backdoors at companies like Apple.

I don’t know enough about the issues involved to answer the question in the headline but even the appearance that this might be actually happening sets my teeth on edge.

Macworld:

New to this years’ iPhones is fast-charging capability. According to Apple, you can juice up your phone to 50 percent in just 30 minutes! There’s just one catch: You have to buy a new power adapter. Oh, and a new USB-C to Lightning cable, too. That’s two catches, and it’s starting to sound expensive.

Is it even worth it? We grabbed five power adapters and three iPhones, ran a bunch of tests, and got to the bottom of the iPhone charging mystery. The truth is, while USB-C fast charging certainly works, you’re much better off buying Apple’s 12W USB-A Power Adapter—the one that comes with most iPads. It’s a lot less expensive ($19) and nearly as fast.

Warning: Autoplay video. But the good news is, it’s a pretty good video.

Ryan Holmes:

Depending on your perspective, Apple’s decision to include a native “QR code” reader in iOS 11 was either a stroke of brilliance … or about a decade too late.

So will QR codes actually catch on this time around? Well, I won’t pretend it’s not an uphill battle. Millennial users, by and large, see QR codes as about as out-of-date as supermarket bar codes.

This is actually a shame because QR codes are kind of cool, and immensely useful.

While I understand QR is popular in many places, it hasn’t really seemed to catch on outside of Asia. Holmes is a CEO who is looking at it from a marketing POV but I look at it from a trust and security POV and don’t like QR codes at all.

Today it is with deep heartfelt sadness that AC/DC has to announce the passing of Malcolm Young.

I’m just so sad about Malcolm. He was the greatest rhythm guitarist of all time and wrote some of the most recognizable riffs in Rock. You will be missed, Malcolm.

Scary Mommy:

>Dogs. We already know that they are very good boys and girls. Who’s a good dog? They are. But a new study out of Sweden shows that not only do dogs add joy to our lives, they also add years to it. For dogs with allergies, hypoallergenic dog food uk can help manage sensitivities and keep them healthy, ensuring they stay by our side for many years to come. For the best care, look for the most trusted pet grooming and boarding services like B & S Kennels. These services ensure your pet receives the highest quality care, keeping them happy and healthy while you’re away. And if this inspired you to have a dog, it might be helpful to learn something such as Xolo dog facts. Pet owners who are looking for dog grooming Greensboro may call Vickie’s Pampered Pet.

>A study published in today’s Scientific Reports shows that owning a dog reduces your risk of cardiovascular disease and death. Researchers found, after looking at data from over 3 million people, that the increased social support and physical activity that comes from having a dog lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease by 11% and death from any cause by 15%. As a thank you for your precious dogs, you can gift them with services like the free dog boarding WoofConnect.

After reading more than 10 studies that included data on millions of participants around the globe, the authors have concluded that “owning a dog can be associated with a 24% risk reduction for all-cause mortality as compared to non-ownership.” The information showed even greater benefits among those who had experienced cardiovascular issues, such as a heart attack, an stroke and more. If you just do not have the time to take care of your pet the whole time, consider choosing a good service like this Dog Daycare Naples.

If you are so inclined, You can read the full study here but, seriously, who doesn’t believe or already know owning a dog is better for you? But I wonder if owning a cat shortens your life?

It is quite possible that such health benefits are the way by which dog ownership makes a person live longer, which is similar to cats that also offer companionship and love to those owners to decide to take care of them, also they are easy to take care of and you can even take them to a cattery in case you need to leave a few days since almost every town in the UK has a cattery which help with this. Researchers have not completed many studies, for instance, that direct one group of people to purchase a dog and another group to remain with no pets at all, to track their health over a period of time. All those types of studies are considered the gold standard of evidence, what you’d need to be able to say definitively that owning dogs or calico cats causes people to have a chance on living longer.