Darius Kazemi, Tiny Subversions (via DF):

There’s a common belief that Twitter accounts with usernames like @jsmith12345678 must be bots, or trolls, or otherwise nefarious actors.

I have long felt this way.

The thing is, since at least as far back as December 2017, the Twitter signup process has not allowed you to choose your own username! It instead gives you a name based on your first and last name, plus eight numbers on the end.

TIL. In fact, I’ve blocked some followers that I now realize were just newbies. Feh.

If you’re curious about the new process, and the secret Settings deep dive to set your own name, follow the headline link.

Apple is celebrating its 18 Emmy nominations on the homepage of its web site.

Tim Cook:

“At Apple, we are optimistic about technology’s awesome potential for good. But we know that it won’t happen on its own. Every day, we work to infuse the devices we make with the humanity that makes us.”

Apple published its Human Rights Policy and it’s worth a read. I believe that Apple is serious about the policy and treating everyone equally, but they also have to follow the laws of each country they operate in. That’s a tough balancing act.

Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac:

It was suggested earlier this week that we might see an Apple Silicon 12-inch MacBook before the end of the year, as one of Apple’s first ARM-powered Macs.

If the report is true, I’ve already talked myself into buying one.

I’m in the same boat as Ben. Read his whole post but, for me, the focus is:

If the 15-20 hour battery-life claim is true, this is a machine I would absolutely use as a supplement to my MBP. Especially as, with an A-series processor, that claimed battery life might be accurate. In general, I find MacBooks deliver around 50-60% of their claimed life in real usage, while my iPad meets or even exceeds the claimed life.

There are two Apple devices I own with all-day battery life: My iPhone 11 Pro (barely) and my Apple Watch. At the end of the day (say, 15 hours of use), my iPhone is typically in the red (< 20%) but my Apple Watch is typically good for a second day (about 75% left).

My Mac? I’m lucky if I get 4 hours out of it. It lives plugged in. So a MacBook with all day battery life? That’d be enough to change my habits. I’d carry it around with me. Especially if it was less than a kilogram.

Sign me up.

Reuters:

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday said Apple Inc must pay more than 12,000 retail workers in California for time they spent going through security screenings at the end of their shifts.

A unanimous three-judge panel reversed a judge who had tossed the case and ordered him to enter summary judgment for the plaintiffs, after the California Supreme Court in response to certified questions in the case said in February that time spent undergoing security checks is compensable under state law.

I’ve always felt that retail workers who had to wait in line to be able to leave their job (to be screened for theft, for example) should be paid for the time they wait in line. This the end of the road for this case?

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

Apple has released a new version of the Apple Support app today with useful new integration with the Wallet app. With today’s update, users can now add a pass from the Apple Support app to the Apple Wallet for “easy check-in” at Genius Bar locations.

Wondering if the Apple Support app is uniformly known about, if it’s widely used. The Apple Wallet integration is an interesting twist. One less interaction with a person, one less line to stand in, a bit easier for social distancing.

Later this year, you’ll be able to acquire, retain, and win back subscribers with subscription offer codes: unique, alphanumeric codes that provide free or discounted prices for auto-renewable subscriptions. Provide your one-time use codes digitally or offline at physical events, alongside products, and more. Customers on iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 and later can redeem offer codes on the App Store, through a one-time code redemption URL, or within your app if you’ve implemented the presentCodeRedemptionSheet API.

Great idea!

A Russian lawmaker submitted draft legislation on Tuesday that would cut and cap the commission on the sale of mobile applications by tech giants Apple and Google.

The bill, submitted to Russia’s lower house of parliament by lawmaker Fedot Tumusov, stipulates that commissions on the sale of applications be capped at 20%. Apple currently collects a 30% commission on sales in its App Store.

This is absolutely ridiculous to me. The law would also require the sellers to pay one-third of their commission to a “special training fund.”

Phil Shuman, Fox11, Los Angeles:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating after an American Airlines pilot reported seeing a mystery person in a jetpack flying high above Los Angeles, right in the path of incoming jets at Los Angeles International Airport Sunday evening.

This sounds made up, but it was reported by multiple pilots and the FBI is investigating. Follow the headline link for a video containing the actual audio from a pilot reporting the sighting.

Amazing. This is normal for 2020.

Apple:

The iOS app economy has created nearly 300,000 new jobs since April 2019, helping to provide opportunities for Americans of all ages even as COVID-19 continues to create immense challenges and uncertainty for communities across the country.

And:

The App Store ecosystem now supports more than 2.1 million US jobs across all 50 states — an increase of 15 percent since last year — as part of the 2.7 million jobs Apple supports across the country.

Follow the headline link for a map showing the densest US job growth, by state. For example, Texas added 36,000 new jobs in the past year.

Spencer Soper, Bloomberg:

A strange phenomenon has emerged near Amazon.com Inc. delivery stations and Whole Foods stores in the Chicago suburbs: smartphones dangling from trees. Contract delivery drivers are putting them there to get a jump on rivals seeking orders, according to people familiar with the matter.

This is a real sign of the times. And, I suspect, a hack that will quickly spread beyond Chicago. Desperate for work, drivers have figured out that Amazon’s dispatch software hands off deliveries to the driver closest to the Whole Foods store with the goods to deliver.

Follow the headline link to see an example of one such tree. From what I’ve read, Amazon appears to be aware of the behavior. I’m assuming drivers hang their phones and then park nearby, with an eye on their phone.

A crossbreed between the LBXI and the LBXII, the seductively dark stealth LBX-S blends the Green “clean” channel with the Red “full burn” channel for a sonically diverse soundscape — from pristine cleans that soar to that sizzling modern Brit sound with high-gain attitude.

Armed with four JJ ECC83S (12AX7) preamp tubes and two JJ EL84 power tubes, this easy-to-carry lunchbox head also includes dual-concentric gain and volume controls for precise and independent control of each channel, as well as shared EQ presence and resonance controls.

I love these lunchbox type heads. I have an Orange and a Mesa Boogie, but I wouldn’t hesitate to add in an EVH into he mix.

Here’s a link to the original Reddit post if you want to read the comments. Follow the headline link for the image itself, be sure to tap to embiggen.

Follow the headline link for the MarketWatch version of this story. What’s interesting is the financial side of inheriting 7,000 shares of Apple stock. It’s now worth north of $3 million.

What would you do with that money? Sell it, pay the taxes, buy a house? A car? Pay off the installment loans online that you got a year ago and have been fighting the interest payments of? Give it to charity? Start a foundation? Or just let it ride?

If you are feeling brave, here’s a link to the original Reddit post. It’s not for the faint of heart (be warned, it’s offensive), and will likely trigger all kinds of things, including your BS meter. But if that’s your thing, dive in, read the comments. All very interesting.

IGN:

IGN asked Scott, director of critically acclaimed films like Alien, Gladiator, and Black Hawk Down, if he has seen the Epic remake of his famous Apple “1984” commercial.

Ridley Scott:

“I sure have and I wrote to them because on the one hand I can be fully complimented by the fact they copied [my commercial] shot for shot,” Scott says. “But pity the message is so ordinary when they could have been talking about democracy or more powerful things… And they didn’t use it.”

Scott added, “I think the animation was terrific, the idea was terrific, the message was ‘ehh’.”

Almost made that last bit the headline. Just not enough context, though. But a great take.

Lily Hay Newmman, Wired:

College student Peter Dantini discovered the notarized version of Shlayer while navigating to the homepage of the popular open source Mac development tool Homebrew. Dantini accidentally typed something slightly different than brew.sh, the correct URL. The page he landed on redirected a number of times to a fake Adobe Flash update page. Curious about what malware he might find, Dantini downloaded it on purpose. To his surprise, macOS popped up its standard warning about programs downloaded from the internet, but didn’t block him from running the program. When Dantini confirmed that it was notarized, he sent the information on to longtime macOS security researcher Patrick Wardle.

And:

The campaign is distributing the ubiquitous “Shlayer” adware, which by some counts has affected as many as one in 10 macOS devices in recent years. The malware exhibits standard adware behavior, like injecting ads into search results. It’s not clear how Shlayer slipped past Apple’s automated scans and checks to get notarized, especially given that it’s virtually identical to past versions. But it’s the first known example of malware being notarized for macOS.

Interesting how this stuff gets discovered. All this time and it’s still in the wild. So much so, that it slipped past Apple’s scanners and got notarized.

Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:

Riders in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area should now be able to add their reloadable SmarTrip fare card to the Wallet app, and simply hold their ‌iPhone‌ or Apple Watch near a contactless payment reader at Metrorail stations or on Metrobus buses to pay their fare.

Huzzah! Can’t wait to give this a try. Great implementation. No need to wake your iPhone. No need for Face ID.

MTV used to be a really big deal. When it first started, it was a real game changer. And here’s the very beginning, with that historic countdown and segue into “Video Killed the Radio Star”.

Just like the original Macintosh was a pirate movement against the establishment, this earliest MTV flew its own pirate flag. This first two hours started on August 1, 1981.

Enjoy.

Reddit:

Since I started noticing this issue, I’ve gotten counterfeit batteries, counterfeit shampoo, and counterfeit guitar strings, and they were all sold by Amazon.com. It got so bad that I completely stopped using Amazon.

The bigger question is “what the hell is going on?” This didn’t seem to be a problem, say, 5 years ago. I started looking into why this was the case, and I found a pretty clear answer: commingled inventory.

And:

Let’s say I am a third-party seller on Amazon, and I am selling Crest Toothpaste. I send 100 tubes of Crest Toothpaste to Amazon for Amazon fulfillment, and then 100 tubes are listed by me on Amazon. The problem is that my tubes of Crest aren’t entered into the system as “SolitaryEgg’s Storefront Crest Toothpaste,” they are just entered as “Crest Toothpaste” and thrown into a bin with all the other crest toothpaste. Even the main “sold by Amazon.com” stock.

This is a fascinating read. In a nutshell, the logic here is, commingled inventory means a counterfeiter can dump their bad goods into the river of genuine goods and never get caught, since the goods are not validated until the end user receives them.

Not sure this is fixable, since the cost of validating goods on the Amazon side would be enormous, a non-starter. One thing Amazon could do is prevent third party goods from entering the validated goods stream. That way, when you make a purchase, you could choose “validated” goods or “take a chance” goods.

TechRadar, on Apple Arcade’s highly addictive game, Grindstone:

Anyone who’s played Grindstone can attest to its engagement: the novel puzzle game centers around killing like-colored enemies in sequence to rack up big combos, with plenty of items to spare. But anyone versed in free-to-play games can see how easily Grindstone could include in-app monetization: there’s in-game gems and consumable health items that feel tailor-made for players to drop real-life money to buy. It’s so apparent that it seems like the game would have released with in-game purchases had Apple not come calling.

To me, this is a tremendous value point for Apple Arcade. You will never be held up for in-app-purchases that you need to, say, complete a level, or save yourself from an unreasonably, unnecessary grind.

Continuing:

In other words, part of what’s so engaging about Grindstone’s gameplay loop overlaps heavily with addictive loops that free-to-play games deploy to get players spending real money on in-app purchases.

There’s nothing preventing Apple from adding more games to Arcade that use such gameplay loops to keep players subscribed to the service without betraying Arcade’s no-monetization policy.

Interesting take, all the way around. The takeaway I got from this is that Apple Arcade has found its sweet spot. And they are tuning their future game acquisition model to home in on games that keep people engaged.