Samantha Cole, Motherboard:

Two programmer-musicians wrote every possible MIDI melody in existence to a hard drive, copyrighted the whole thing, and then released it all to the public in an attempt to stop musicians from getting sued.

And:

To determine the finite nature of melodies, Riehl and Rubin developed an algorithm that recorded every possible 8-note, 12-beat melody combo. This used the same basic tactic some hackers use to guess passwords: Churning through every possible combination of notes until none remained. Riehl says this algorithm works at a rate of 300,000 melodies per second.

Once a work is committed to a tangible format, it’s considered copyrighted. And in MIDI format, notes are just numbers.

This won’t stop musicians from getting sued for copyright infringement, at least until this is used, successfully, in a lawsuit defense.

And if it is successful, are all bets off? Will wholesale copyright theft follow?

Brooks Barnes, NYTimes:

Mr. Iger, who has run Disney for nearly 15 years, would be replaced as chief executive by Bob Chapek, a 27-year veteran of the entertainment conglomerate who has most recently served as chairman of Disney’s theme parks and consumer products businesses.

And:

“In thinking about what I want to accomplish before I leave the company at the end of ’21, getting everything right creatively would be my No. 1 goal. I could not do that if I were running the company on a day-to-day basis.”

And:

Mr. Chapek, who has limited creative experience, became the seventh chief executive in Disney’s nearly 100-year history. He can come across as a bit stiff in comparison to the magnetic Mr. Iger, whose celebrated run at the company has made him a corporate celebrity.

From a public point of view, this was absolutely an abrupt move, timed unfortunately to a stock market correction.

Gonna be hard to replace Iger, though Chapek seems a reasonable choice. Chapek oversaw construction of the Disney theme park’s massively successful Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and Rise of the Resistance ride. No small thing.

OneZero:

In 2018, unwilling to continue paying the “Apple tax,” Netflix followed Spotify and Amazon’s Kindle books app in pulling in-app purchases from its iOS app. Users must now sign up elsewhere, such as on the company’s website, in order for the app to become usable. Of course, these brands are big enough to expect that many users will seek them out anyway.

Smaller app developers, meanwhile, have little choice but to play by Apple’s rules. That’s true even when they’re competing with Apple’s own apps, which pay no such fees and often enjoy deeper access to users’ devices and information.

Now, a handful of developers are speaking out about it — and government regulators are beginning to listen.

There’s plenty to dislike and be annoyed at with Apple’s App store policies. It’s an easy argument for developers and others to say Apple has overstepped its boundaries and is squeezing for all its worth. But, for most consumers, the App Store is the safest, best place to get iOS apps for their devices.

But Apple has a fine line to follow especially given increased governmental scrutiny. They need to do what is best (in its opinion) for its customers but it can’t afford to force the government’s hand and have them step in and force Apple into policies it doesn’t want to implement.

The Smithsonian Institution:

Culture connoisseurs, rejoice: The Smithsonian Institution is inviting the world to engage with its vast repository of resources like never before.

For the first time in its 174-year history, the Smithsonian has released 2.8 million high-resolution two- and three-dimensional images from across its collections onto an open access online platform for patrons to peruse and download free of charge. And this gargantuan data dump is just the beginning. Throughout the rest of 2020, the Smithsonian will be rolling out another 200,000 or so images, with more to come as the Institution continues to digitize its collection of 155 million items and counting.

Listed under a Creative Commons Zero license, the 2.8 million images in the new database are now liberated from all restrictions, copyright or otherwise, enabling anyone with a decent Internet connection to build on them as raw materials—and ultimately participate in their evolution.

The Smithsonian is a literal national and international treasure and this release continues that reputation.

PetaPixel:

An ill-advised family photo shoot on a set of active train tracks in Greencastle, Pennsylvania nearly ended in tragedy when a freight train came barreling through, narrowly missing the photographer, parents, and five children.

In the video, a family of seven plus a photographer are wandering up and down on the tracks when one of them screams “here comes the train.” From there it’s a mad scramble to get everyone—including a few very young children—off the tracks before it’s too late.

As a photographer, I get why some people like these shots but you’re likely not taking an “original” shot, you’re trespassing, it’s illegal, and you’re putting your life in danger. It’s not worth it.

NPR:

I just got back from my first trip to Japan, and I’m now in love with the country. The ramen, yakitori and sushi. The gorgeous volcanoes. The fascinating people and culture. But of all the things I fell in love with, there’s one that I can’t stop thinking about: the toilets.

Most of the toilets in Japan are made by a company called Toto, which started the high-tech toilet revolution in 1980 when it unveiled the Washlet, a first-of-its-kind electric toilet seat with an integrated bidet. Toto has been innovating on the design ever since. So I reached out to the company. It put me in touch with Bill Strang, the president of corporate strategy and e-commerce at Toto USA.

“U.S. toilets are effectively bedpans with a drain,” says Strang. The lofty price of Japanese-style toilets are another reason that they might not be catching on.

I had the same Japanese experience the author did. While initially confused by my hotel’s toilets, the detailed instructions (!) in English helped and I “loved” using the toilet for the week I was there. We are in the market for a new toilet in our house and while there’s no way we’d splurge for a Toto, there is nothing similar to them on the market for a non-exorbitant price.

This is one of those tips that’s worth going through, just to understand the mechanics of how calendars and reminders are stored in iCloud. Worth tucking away for a day you hope will never come, when your calendars or reminders come up missing or accidentally deleted.

Looking for a wall or desk mounted arm for a new display? Or just a stand? Follow the headline link, a couple of taps and you’re there.

Michael Potuck, 9to5Mac:

It’s great to see Apple’s Pro Display XDR on the market but it’s likely not the best fit for the majority of users with a starting price of $5,000 without a stand. Let’s take a look at some of the best USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 displays available for MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and iPad Pro in the $400-$1,300 range.

Thinking about buying a display for your Mac? This review is worth a look.

Netflix blog:

Whether you love books, music, films or TV, top 10 lists are a great way to find out what’s popular. So today we’re rolling out a new Top 10 feature on Netflix.

This new row – complete with its own special design – will enable you to see what is most popular on Netflix in your country. It will be updated every day and the position of the row will vary depending on how relevant the shows and films are to you.

Couple of things leap to mind here. First, there’s that headline. One Netflix row that’s been around a long, long time is called Popular on Netflix. So no, that headline is just plain wrong.

But that aside, this new top 10 list strikes me as yet another slice through Netflix that is more adding to the mess than useful. How about making all these rows optional so I can limit what shows up to the rows that I find useful.

And how about adding IMDb ratings (or your rating system of choice) to the mix? And maybe give me some sorting options so I can look at movies sorted by said ratings, perhaps with a subsort by year?

Lastly, it’ll be interesting when a top 10 list makes sense for Apple TV+.

The justices rejected Apple’s appeal in the long-running case in which a federal jury in 2016 found that Apple had infringed VirnetX’s patents and awarded $302 million. A judge later increased that amount to $439.7 million including interest and other costs.

Patent cases are always difficult and this one is no different.

Ars Technica:

Katherine Johnson, a trailblazing mathematician best known for her contributions to NASA’s human spaceflight program and who gained fame later in life due to the movie Hidden Figures, died Monday. She was 101 years old.

Most notably, in 1962, she performed the critical calculations that put John Glenn into a safe orbit during the first orbital mission of a US astronaut. NASA engineers had run the calculations on electric computers, but when someone was needed to validate the calculations, Glenn and the rest of the space agency turned to Johnson. “If she says they’re good,” Johnson recalled the astronaut saying, “then I’m ready to go.”

Later, Johnson also assisted in the calculations that ensured a safe rendezvous between the Apollo Lunar Lander and Command Module in orbit around the Moon.

If it hadn’t been for the movie “Hidden Figures“, Johnson and the work of the other incredible Black women at NASA might have gone unnoticed.

Imagine a heads up display on the windscreen of your car, one that alerted you to pedestrians on the periphery of your vision.

Watch the video embedded here:

Body language & eye contact are just two elements that happen in the many exchanges between pedestrians & drivers. Our software allows self-driving cars to better understand the world around them by providing them with an unprecedented level of awareness & intent of pedestrians. pic.twitter.com/CghjDen1GZ

— Perceptive Automata (@perceptive_auto) February 12, 2020

I get that this is about software for self-driving cars, but I’d love to benefit from a display like this, especially at night.

Alison Herman, The Ringer:

Apple TV+ was always bound to be a fraught enterprise, bringing a computer manufacturer into an industry outside its core skill set and awash with other well-funded bids for viewers’ attention. Its history to date has borne that difficulty out, culminating in the recently reported suspension of sprawling page-to-screen project Shantaram. This is a guide to Apple’s bumps in the road, which began well before TV+ actually made it to our living rooms.

This is not an article trolling Apple TV+ shows. Instead, it’s a look at some of the setbacks Apple has faced rolling into this new market.

Is this sort of thing par-for-the-course in the TV/movie/streaming industry? Typical for a rookie in this space? Or has Apple had it rougher than most?

Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:

In a bid to harmonize standards, the EC negotiated a 2009 Memorandum of Understanding that was signed by 14 tech companies including Apple, Samsung, Nokia, and other prominent smartphone manufacturers.

And:

However, the wording of the MoU offered Apple a loophole: For those phones that did not have a USB micro-B interface, an adapter was allowed under the agreed terms. And that’s exactly what Apple did. In 2012, Apple introduced the ‌iPhone‌ 5 with a new Lightning proprietary connector to replace its 30-pin connector, and additionally offered a separate Lightning to micro USB adapter to comply with the 2009 EU agreement.

And:

By 2016, the Commission acknowledged that micro-USB had become dated and that USB-C had become the de facto standard across most devices. The Commission was advised by MoU facilitators that all manufacturers were ready to sign a new agreement in line with different approaches but keeping the solution of using solely USB-C connectors – except Apple.

At least part of Apple’s argument against an on-device USB-C port is that adding USB-C would make the phone thicker. They also argue that a dictated standard would hurt innovation.

Personally, the variety of ports out there, and the differing cables and dongles I’ve got to keep around, especially when I travel, is painful. I just came back from a trip where I rented a car equipped with a USB-A port. I realized that all the bricks I’d brought with me were USB-C bricks, leaving me with only Lightning to USB-C cables. Annoying.

The linked article is a well-written take on the current situation with the EU and Apple’s position in opposition.

The Outline:

Americans don’t know much about Canada, and I don’t blame them. They live in the greatest country in the universe, apparently. The rest of the world is meant to plan itself around the U.S., rather than the other way around, and often that’s how things tend to go down anyway.

Canada and the U.S. share the longest international border in the world, and yet, the average American could probably go their entire life knowing nothing really substantial about their northern neighbor beyond what they glean from Degrassi.

So I can forgive Americans for being clueless. I can forgive them their ignorance about this big, cold, confusing place just to the north of them. And that’s why I want to clear something up, once and for all, so I can put your minds at rest and save us all a lot of time and energy.

Here it is: Canada is fake.

This is an overly harsh view of my home and native land but it is mostly fair. In the most recent news, we have serious issues with our treatment of the Wet’suwet’en Indigenous people and their territorial sovereignty.

TechCrunch:

A successful live-action Star Wars TV series is important in its own right, the way this particular show was made represents a far greater change, perhaps the most important since the green screen. The cutting edge tech (literally) behind “The Mandalorian” creates a new standard and paradigm for media — and the audience will be none the wiser.

What is this magical new technology? It’s an evolution of a technique that’s been in use for nearly a century in one form or another: displaying a live image behind the actors. The advance is not in the idea but the execution: a confluence of technologies that redefines “virtual production” and will empower a new generation of creators.

I’ll be the first to admit I found The Mandalorian boring and juvenile but the effects and visuals are spectacular. Be sure to also check out the much more detailed look into this in American Cinematographer Magazine.

VOX:

Sotakoun worked at Disney World for four years, starting in 2008 when she was just 18. Today, at 30 and with a job in the video game industry, she says she looks back at her princess era with only good memories.

Sotakoun, who is half Laotian and half white, went through an intensive crash course for each of the characters she played in Disney’s “entertainment” division, which refers to the iconic costume characters that cheerfully reside in the amusement parks. At the beginning of her shift, she’d enter the bowels of the Magic Kingdom and be costumed as either Pocahontas, Mulan, or Silvermist (a Peter Pan fairy of East Asian appearance who first appeared in the Disney Fairies direct-to-DVD films).

Afterward, she was let loose on the campus so she could briefly lose herself in the “happiest place on earth.” In that time, Sotakoun became familiar with every curveball the Disney World Resort was capable of throwing at her. From crying children to leering grandpas, she’s seen it all. Nothing fazes a Disney princess.

I’ve never had any interest in going to Disney theme parks but I’m always fascinated by stories of the behind the scenes workings of the facilities.

Many thanks to BBEdit for sponsoring The Loop this week. Bare Bones Software, makers of BBEdit, is one of my favorite software companies — in fact, I’ve been using BBEdit for more than 20 years. BBEdit has been updated to version 13, and is available in the Mac App Store as a subscription! Same great features. Same user experience. You can subscribe in the Mac App Store or purchase perpetual licenses directly from Bare Bones Software. Also, you can still get great merch, including Classic and Rebus T-shirts, enamel pins, and more in their merch store!

The Outline:

At this point, we’ve all heard of Dungeons & Dragons. The game, which has enjoyed a dedicated cult following for decades, has lately seen its popularity lifted with the rising tide of nerd culture in the mainstream. It’s in Stranger Things, Community, and The Big Bang Theory; A-listers — Vin Diesel! Anderson Cooper! — dig it; general-interest media outlets are taking it increasingly seriously.

D&D is just one of a diverse family of games called “tabletop role-playing games” (often simply called “RPGs”), but it’s the only RPG that has managed to get significant traction in popular culture. Its fame is so far beyond its kin that multiple RPG experts I spoke with suggested that D&D’s brand has become virtually synonymous with the very concept of a tabletop role-playing game among the general public, achieving sole brand-name recognition like Kleenex or Xerox. But ironically, when it comes to advancing the popularity of the rest of the RPG medium, all this attention on D&D may actually be doing more harm than good.

While I’m a big fan of D&D and would play again in a heartbeat, I’m completely unfamiliar with any other board game RPGs mentioned in this piece. I’ve already downloaded Crash Pandas (think Fast and the Furious but raccoons).

Hawkeye Access for Mac:

Hawkeye Access for Mac lets you control your Mac hands-free using head movements and facial expressions, powered by your iPhone’s TrueDepth camera. Ever since we first released Hawkeye Access for iOS last year, I’ve been itching to build a hands-free experience for the Mac. Over my winter break from school, I finally got around to it!

Access for Mac is a big step up over traditional hands-free controls. It’s easy to learn, incredibly powerful, and cheap. I can’t wait to see how this helps people with motor impairments use their Macs, from browsing the web to playing games to editing videos. On top of that, I’m hoping Access will make hands-free controls accessible to more people than ever!

I played around with this today. Easy to set up, easy to use. Would take practice to get the movement down cold. I showed it to my wife who is an Occupational Therapist working with kids who have varying levels of disabilities and she can see how this would be of real use to some of them.

The title of the linked Cult of Mac post is (as of this writing), “Tim Cook’s alleged stalker tried to give Apple CEO flowers, champagne”.

But check this tweet, which appears to be from a police report, and contains a quote from the alleged stalker, “I don’t use ammunition, but I know people who do.”

That’s a pretty stark contrast from champagne and flowers. Stay safe, Tim.

Ben Lovejoy, 9to5Mac:

The Streisand Effect has predictably kicked in after Apple attempted to prevent the distribution of a new Apple book written by former German App Store manager Tom Sadowski. App Store Confidential is now number two on Amazon’s bestseller list in Germany, and the book is into its second print run.

You can read a summary of some of the book’s main points in this blog post. From what I’ve seen, nothing alarming, nothing that leaps out as exposing real secrets.

As Ben Lovejoy points out above, Apple’s ban has likely given the book a real shot up the bestseller list. Question is, will legal costs make that success more costly than the success was worth.

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. is considering giving rival apps more prominence on iPhones and iPads and opening its HomePod speaker to third-party music services after criticism the company provides an unfair advantage to its in-house products.

The technology giant is discussing whether to let users choose third-party web browser and mail applications as their default options on Apple’s mobile devices, replacing the company’s Safari browser and Mail app, according to people familiar with the matter.

And:

Last year, Stockholm-based Spotify submitted an antitrust complaint to the European Union, saying Apple squeezes rival services by imposing a 30% cut for subscriptions made via the App Store. Apple responded that Spotify wants the benefits of the App Store without paying for them. As part of its complaint, Spotify singled out the inability to run on the HomePod and become the default music player in Siri, Apple’s voice-activated digital assistant.

How about reminder, calendar, and shopping list replacements? This part of the thinking?