Wall Street Journal:

For the first time, the Apple Watch can have an independent cellular connection, allowing people to use it to make voice calls, send and receive text and data even if the watch isn’t wirelessly connected to an iPhone.

But in China, the feature was abruptly cut off for new subscribers, without explanation, after a brief availability with one telecom company.

Industry analysts say the suspension likely stemmed from Chinese government security concerns to do with tracking users of the device, which uses different technology than standard mobile phones.

This is a stunning development. After all the approvals were in place, prototypes no doubt submitted for inspection, deals signed with all players, manufacturing process completed, product packaged and distributed, and cash laid on the table as promised product was delivered and paid for, the rug was pulled out from under.

Here’s hoping this is a temporary setback.

John Koblin, New York Times:

In the five years since Netflix started streaming original series like the Emmy-winning “House of Cards” and “Master of None,” the shows have had a question hanging over them: How many people are watching?

Outside of Netflix, nobody knows the answer.

But Nielsen (the people who, for decades, have been crunching data to tell us who is watching what) has worked out a scheme to tell us:

Nielsen announced the initiative on Wednesday morning, but it has been collecting Netflix viewership data over the last two months in a kind of test run.

The company said it was able to determine how many viewers were streaming Netflix content through audio recognition software in the 44,000 Nielsen-rated homes across the United States.

Yes. Audio recognition software. They are eavesdropping on Nielsen households, obviously with permission, and parsing exactly who is watching Netflix, and exactly when and for how long.

This is fascinating to me, but it also made me wonder about Amazon and Google. With the Amazon Echo and Google Home in more and more homes, this kind of data would be easy enough to gather. With permission, of course.

Here’s a link to the photo. I actually like the iPhone 8 design, but there’s no denying the extra screen real estate you get with the iPhone X, notch and all.

Read the article for Zach Epstein’s take on the photo.

There’s been a ton of controversy over the past few days as Pixel 2 XL reviews come in. Though some reviews are glowing, a number of reviews (here’s one launch point we posted yesterday) are taking the Pixel 2 XL to the woodshed.

Vlad Savov, The Verge:

Look at that New York Times icon in the image above. Stop flinching and really look at it, soak in the kaleidoscope of colors washing over it. Just to make sure we’re all on the same page, I’m seeing a haze of green in the middle of the gothic “T”, which then blooms into a red that eventually transitions into the white that the icon is supposed to be. But the fun isn’t over; when you get up real close, you’ll see the edges of the icon are all fringed by a sort of purply-red and, again, green. The neighboring heart icon, which is also supposed to be white, presents us with a crosshatch of red and green and white micropixels.

Click to Vlad’s review and really get up close and personal with that image. Hard to argue with his logic.

If you own a Switch, you’ve no doubt wondered about the lack of save file portability. For example, if my Switch breaks, how do I recover my game progress? If my Switch is stolen, is there a recovery option? Or if I’m visiting a friend with a Switch, is there a way I can play my games on their Switch?

With other systems, I can back up my data and bring it with me. Not so with the Switch.

Until now. Sort of. Read the article. Baby steps.

Engadget:

Adobe has unveiled a raft of new apps and updates for Max 2017, most notably a big revamp of Lightroom CC to make it more cloud-friendly for mobile users. The centerpiece is an all-new Lightroom CC with a 1TB cloud service — the “Project Nimbus” app that leaked last year. It features a streamlined version of Lightroom CC that keeps images, edits and metadata synced in Creative cloud across PC and Mac, Android and iOS. For desktop users who prefer the current, non-cloud app, Adobe has re-branded it as Lightroom Classic CC.

To be clear — because Adobe’s new naming system is pretty darn confusing — Lightroom CC is a series of apps app and a service. As Adobe describes it, Lightroom CC “is designed to be a cloud-based ecosystem of apps that are deeply integrated and work together seamlessly across desktop, mobile and web.”

As usual for anything Adobe related, this will cause a lot of consternation among its users and customers. Personally, I will hold off “updating” for as long as possible.

Vox:

On Monday, a team of thousands of LIGO scientists around the globe published an incredible finding spread throughout several papers in the journal Physical Review Letters. Not only did these scientists detect, for the first time, the gravitational waves produced from two colliding neutron stars, but they were able to pinpoint their location in the sky and witness the event with optical and electromagnetic telescopes.

The gravitational waves tell physicists how large and how far away the objects are, and allow scientists to recreate the moments before they collided. Then the observations in optical light and electromagnetic waves fill in the blanks that gravitational waves can’t answer. They help astronomers nail down exactly what the objects were made out of, and which elements their collisions produced. In this case, the scientists were able to conclude that the resulting explosion from a neutron star merger produces heavy elements like gold, platinum, and uranium (which has been previously theorized but not confirmed by direct observation).

These scientists were able to witness, directly, the alchemy of the universe in action.

This is such a cool, amazing discovery. We’ve always known everything was created from stars but the knowledge your gold jewelry was probably created in the aftermath of a kilonova is mindboggling.

From Apple’s Machine Learning Journal:

The “Hey Siri” feature allows users to invoke Siri hands-free. A very small speech recognizer runs all the time and listens for just those two words. When it detects “Hey Siri”, the rest of Siri parses the following speech as a command or query. The “Hey Siri” detector uses a Deep Neural Network (DNN) to convert the acoustic pattern of your voice at each instant into a probability distribution over speech sounds. It then uses a temporal integration process to compute a confidence score that the phrase you uttered was “Hey Siri”. If the score is high enough, Siri wakes up. This article takes a look at the underlying technology.

We take speech commands like “Hey Siri” for granted these days, but what goes on in the background is absolutely amazing.

Today I Found Out:

Here’s the strange story of a family-owned business so dysfunctional that business schools teach it as a lesson in how not to run a company.

The fascinating story of an incredibly dysfunctional family. I knew Adidas was a German company but I had no idea Puma grew out of this feud.

CBC:

Gord Downie, the Tragically Hip frontman who united a diverse array of music lovers with his commanding stage presence and Canadiana-laced lyrics, has died.

He was 53.

Downie had an aggressive and incurable form of brain cancer called glioblastoma, which he discovered after a seizure in December 2015.

He died Tuesday night surrounded by his children and family, according to a statement on the band’s website.

A life well lived but not lived long enough.

Zac Hall, 9to5Mac:

If you’re selling (or generously handing down) your MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, Apple recommends an extra step when erasing your data before parting ways with your machine. This step requires an obscure Terminal command that you wouldn’t assume and isn’t required on Macs without the Touch Bar.

Here’s the Apple Support document titled What to do before you sell or give away your Mac.

Check out step 6, “If you have a MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, clear its data”.

Begs the question, what is specifically stored in the Touch Bar that requires cleaning? Good to know that this step is necessary, but a bit of a mystery. Anyone know the specifics? Please do ping me.

Nice find, Zac.

UPDATE: And the answer is, this script removes your Touch ID data from your Mac, as proved by Stephen Hackett, written up on this 512 Pixels post.

Erin Griffith, Wired:

On Friday CEO Jack Dorsey announced plans to act more aggressively. Twitter will introduce new rules around unwanted sexual advances, non-consensual nudity, hate symbols, violent groups, and tweets that glorifies violence, he tweeted. To add a sense of urgency, the company is holding daily meetings on the issue.

And:

The new plans stop short of sweeping measures such as banning pornography or specific groups like Nazis. Rather, they offer expanded features such as allowing observers of unwanted sexual advances—as well as victims—to report them, and expanded definitions, such as including “creep shots” and hidden camera content under the definition of “non-consensual nudity.” The company also plans to hide hate symbols behind a “sensitive image” warning, though it has not yet defined what qualifies as a hate symbol. Twitter also says it will take unspecified enforcement actions against “organizations that use/have historically used violence as a means to advance their cause.”

Follow the link, read the email in full. I would love to see progress made here, but I’ve reluctantly filed this under “I’ll believe it when I see it”.

Zachary Crockett, Priceonomics:

Auto-Tune — one of modern history’s most reviled inventions — was an act of mathematical genius.

The pitch correction software, which automatically calibrates out-of-tune singing to perfection, has been used on nearly every chart-topping album for the past 20 years. Along the way, it has been pilloried as the poster child of modern music’s mechanization.

And:

For inventor Andy Hildebrand, Auto-Tune was an incredibly complex product — the result of years of rigorous study, statistical computation, and the creation of algorithms previously deemed to be impossible.

And:

“The sampling synthesizers sounded like shit: if you sustained a note, it would just repeat forever,” he harps. “And the problem was that the machines didn’t hold much data.”

Hildebrand, who’d “retired” just a few months earlier, decided to take matters into his own hands. First, he created a processing algorithm that greatly condensed the audio data, allowing for a smoother, more natural-sounding sustain and timbre. Then, he packaged this algorithm into a piece of software (called Infinity), and handed it out to composers.

And:

Infinity improved digitized orchestral sounds so dramatically that it uprooted Hollywood’s music production landscape: using the software, lone composers were able to accurately recreate film scores, and directors no longer had a need to hire entire orchestras.

“I bankrupted the Los Angeles Philharmonic,” Hildebrand chuckles. “They were out of the [sample recording] business for eight years.”

Great, great read. [H/T The Overspill]

Rene Ritchie, iMore:

I’ve owned almost every Nexus and the original Pixel, but problems with the Pixel 2 display may force me to look elsewhere for my yearly Android fix.

I bought most of Google’s Nexus phones, starting with the Nexus One. I bought the original Pixel. I pre-ordered the Pixel 2 XL right after the event. Now I’m thinking of canceling that order. The reason? It seems like Google chose to ship bad displays on their flagship phones.

Rene follows up with a host of quotes from other reviewers, almost all from traditional Android bloggers. This was really surprising to me. I expected a best-in-class display at this price point.

Read the post, and dig into the other quoted reviews. I’m not sensing Google-bashing here, more disappointment at the screen performance from people who want to love their new Google phone.

Todd Spangler, Variety:

Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, is teaming with NBCUniversal to bring scripted programming — like short-form comedies and dramas — to mobile screens. The companies have established a studio joint venture to produce programming exclusively for the social-messaging and media platform.

And:

The companies have recruited Lauren Anderson, who has served as NBC Entertainment’s senior VP of current programming, to be the JV’s chief content officer. “Lauren was a great get for us,” said Mills, who has worked with Anderson on the NBC shows created for Snapchat. “She has tremendous experience, and instantly got what we were going for.”

Yet another twist in the unfolding story of what we’ll be watching in the future and who will hold the puppet strings. This is an industry in the midst of disruption. At some point, the models will settle down and we’ll see who is making money, long term, determine who survives, prospers.

The more companies that jump into the soup, the more chaotic the model. Might be an advantage for Apple to wait before jumping in whole hog just to let the new model form more fully, to let the money find its path. I find this whole thing fascinating.

Dropbox Professional lets you store, share, and track progress on your work. Get powerful features like Smart Sync and Showcase as well as 1 TB (1,000 GB) of space.

The company unveiled the new plan earlier today.

TidBITS:

Don’t panic about the new Wi-Fi security problem that you’ve likely seen trumpeted on news sites. Yes, the KRACK exploits reveal a fundamental flaw in the process by which a Wi-Fi device — like a Mac, iPhone, Windows computer, point-of-sale terminal, or smart fridge — connects securely to a Wi-Fi access point. You shouldn’t underestimate how significant that is (it’s huge), but also don’t overestimate how likely it is to affect you (very unlikely).

Make no mistake – this is very bad. But it’s not as catastrophic as some make it out to be.

Fast Company:

I couldn’t know it then, but the outcome of that battle would influence the purchase decisions of many thousands, if not millions, of people seeking a good night’s sleep. It would also reveal just how thoroughly the internet and the businesses that thrived there had blurred the lines between product reviews and advertisements. All I’d wanted was a mattress, but what I got was a look at a little-known and hugely lucrative annex of e-commerce, one where the relationships can often get a little too comfy—until they’re not.

What an insane story. We’ve all heard about these “online mattress” companies – they advertise on many podcasts – but you probably haven’t given them much thought beyond that. But its as cutthroat an industry as any other.

AppleInsider:

One of the advantages of Apple’s iMessage system is the ability to see and respond to iPhone texts across multiple Apple devices. AppleInsider shows you how to set up the feature and get messaging on your iPad, Mac and more.

I’ve always done this and found it very convenient to receive and respond to texts from whatever device/computer I have at hand.

Unsplash:

From space pics taken by NASA, to bewitching urban streetscapes, to astounding shots of nature taken by high-flying drones—find mesmerizing wallpaper for your Mac in seconds.

Two clicks. That’s it. No fidgeting around with the settings. We’ve made it dead simple.

After yesterday’s post about the Irvue app, Luke Chesser‏, one of the co-founders of Unsplash, tweeted to me about their very own app so I’m including it here.

Apparently, the Amazon Treasure Truck has been a thing Since February 2016. Amazon just announced that they were bringing this sort of ice cream truck for the Amazon crowd to a bunch of new cities.

This is a cool idea and some terrific marketing. This came to my attention when I was asking about SuperNES Classic Edition availability and someone pointed me to this tweet:

Today on the Truck: It’s the @nintendoamerica Super NES: Classic Edition! Say hello to nostalgic feels and banana peels. pic.twitter.com/yPpsr9Euo5

— Treasure Truck (@treasuretruck) September 29, 2017

Check the official Amazon Treasure Truck page, see if your city has one. If so, sign up for text notifications, grab yourself some treasure.

Reuters:

Apple Inc’s older iPhone 7 models are outselling the recently launched iPhone 8 ahead of the early November debut of the premium iPhone X, broker KeyBanc Capital Markets said, citing carrier store surveys.

Traditionally, new editions of the iPhone have sold quickly as fans queue for the latest upgrade, but early surveys have added to chatter that the iPhone 8 is not proving as popular as its predecessors.

1. Not clear if this is true. These are not Apple’s numbers.
2. If true, not clear if the motivation is demand for the iPhone X dimming demand for the iPhone 8, or a statement about the relative perceived values of the iPhone 7 vs iPhone 8.

No matter, this is the first time Apple has created this type of choice for the iPhone consumer, pitching a next generation product at the same time (give or take a month) as a new product that extends an existing line.

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

If you own a 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display released in Mid 2012 or Early 2013, and your notebook qualifies for battery service, the repair should be free if you are willing to wait for around one month.

To check if your MacBook Pro battery needs service:

Click on the Apple logo in the menu bar. Then, click on About This Mac > System Report > Power. In the Health Information section, the condition should say “Service Battery.”

Good stuff. Pass this along.

Cliff Kuang, FastCoDesign:

I systematically unfollowed every single person and organization in my network except the actual news outlets. That promptly turned my sprawling social network of friends, frenemies, and strangers into a mere news reader plugged into just a half-dozen publications. Problem solved! No more updates about people’s lives.

And:

There’s a follow-on effect that I didn’t realize either: If you unfollow people on Facebook, you drop out of their Facebook feed as well. So now, whenever I have something I really want to share–a new job, or the final draft of the book I’ve been writing for years–I’m met with crickets. I’m stranded on the digital equivalent of a deserted island.

And:

There’s no obvious way to get off this island. I could manually re-follow everyone I unfollowed. But even if I do that, I have no idea if Facebook automatically makes them follow me. For all intents and purposes, my Facebook is ruined.

My understanding is that Facebook is a two way street. Not a follow and follow-back model but a binary friend or not-a-friend model. In other words, if someone accepts your friend request, they are your friend and you are “following” each other.

That aside, there’s this:

This is a problem that Facebook hasn’t acknowledged directly, and it’s even worse on Twitter, where following people eventually makes your feed into an unruly mess. This dilemma will only grow as other services increasingly lean on passive choices to shape the user experience. I call it dead-end UX.

I think there’s a fair point here. Services like Facebook and Twitter are designed to grow in complexity as your graph of relationships grows. The more connections you have, the more your feed grows, and that growth is exponential. This means, the more people you follow, the easier it is to miss any particular post.

Also:

Let’s roll the clock back to the very first “Like” you record on the platform. Using that little bit of data, along with whatever else is available, Facebook tries to extrapolate what else you might like. Its entire view of you is filtered through that single data point. But if you go on to Like dozens and then hundreds of other things that it throws in front of you, it starts generating a stronger and stronger hypothesis of what you’ll react to.

Cliff makes some solid and interesting points here. Worth reading the rest. But one thing that springs to mind for me. This is both lessons learned for social network builders, and an opportunity for the next generation, a chance to build a better social network, one that is more easily tunable and one that does a better job of filtering fake news.

UPDATE: Feedback is, this is just point-by-point wrong. We try never to delete posts, or I would delete this one, but at the very least, file this one under, here’s a source I’ll not post from again.

Motley Fool:

One of the sources said that Apple will need to significantly improve the performance of its mobile processor technology to support a digital pen. The source also added that Apple “had to compromise on some touch performance of the latest iPhone X largely due to the less advanced chipset.”

And:

With the latest iPad Pro tablets, according to the company, when a user writes on the screen using the Apple Pencil, the screen begins to scan for input at a rate of 240Hz, or cycles per second. This is twice the peak refresh rate of the display (which is 120Hz).

And:

Apple reportedly tested a high-refresh rate display on the iPhone X (Apple calls such displays ProMotion displays) but ultimately chose not to ship the device with such a display. Instead, the iPhone X shipped with a display that could only refresh its contents at 60Hz — half that of the current iPad Pros.

In effect, the article makes the case that the current lineup of iPhones has too slow a refresh rate to support the Apple Pencil.