Not only was Apple the first company to reach a market value of one trillion dollars, the company recently passed that milestone.
Your Kids' Photos Power Surveillance Technology
The New York Times has a nice feature out today about how a mother found photos of her kids in a machine learning database.
None of them could have foreseen that 14 years later, those images would reside in an unprecedentedly huge facial-recognition database called MegaFace. Containing the likenesses of nearly 700,000 individuals, it has been downloaded by dozens of companies to train a new generation of face-identification algorithms, used to track protesters, surveil terrorists, spot problem gamblers and spy on the public at large. The average age of the people in the database, its creators have said, is 16.
I can’t imagine the gross feeling you get when you see your kids in a database like this.
NASA Aiming For Manned SpaceX Mission in Q1 2020
NASA is aiming for a manned SpaceX mission in the first quarter of 2020. NASA chief Jim Bridenstine made the announcement Thursday, Reuters reported.
The pronouncement of a revised time frame signaled NASA believes SpaceX is getting the Crew Dragon project back on track following an explosion during a ground test in April and technical challenges with its re-entry parachute system. Bridenstine said successful development of the capsule was key to achieving NASA’s top priority – the resumed “launching of American astronauts on American rockets from American soil” for the first time since the space shuttle program ended in 2011. The NASA administrator spoke to reporters at the end of a visit to the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, just outside Los Angeles, where chief executive Elon Musk led him on a tour of the sprawling manufacturing plant.
Apple Arcade Just Got Five New Games
Five games were just added to Apple Arcade, tempting people to keep their subscription as the service’s one month free trial nears its end.
Tim Cook Defends Removal of Hong Kong Protest App in Email to Apple Employees
Tim Cook has written to Apple employees, defending the decision to remove an app used by protestors in Hong Kong from the iOS App Store.
Alleged Apple Employee Says 'Things are so Broken Here at Apple'
A conversation on Hacker News from an alleged Apple employee says that things are broken at Apple and no one communicates.
Broken management structure. I have had many managers (a red flag in itself) but even worse none of the managers take suggestions from engineers. Everything is purely top down. If an engineer realizes there is a problem on a macro scale they cannot fix it. It is literally impossible to unite more than 1.5 teams to get anything done.
Obviously there is no way to tell if they are real or not (At least, my surface research for these linked teasers can’t tell). Another commenter mentions “overt sexism that I’ve been witness to in iCloud management…”
Amazon Music Now Featured on Apple TV
Amazon Music now joins Spotify as third-party features available on Apple TV. Download the Amazon Music app to get started.
For now, the tvOS Amazon Music app is available for Apple TV 4K and Apple TV HD users in thirteen countries: the U.S., UK, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Mexico, Japan, and India.
Amazon Music is a free download from the App Store.
Alfonso Cuarón Makes Multi-Year Deal With Apple
Alfonso Cuarón has set a multi-year deal with Apple for its Apple TV+ while still managing his deal with Anonymous Content.
Doing it Wrong With iOS Screen Time Limits
According to USA Today,
Some screen time is worse than others when it comes to kids and academic performance, according to a new analysis published in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics.
Television viewing, followed by video games, were the two activities most tied to poor school performance, researchers showed in a review of 58 studies published over the decades.”
Other activities: not so much. This is a helpful article for parents.
iPM PU Leather Wallet Case for iPhone 11 with Kickstand: $12.99
We have a deal on the PM Leather Protective Wallet Case. This wallet-style case is made from PU leather, and it includes slots for credit cards, ID cards, and one large pocket for your bills. It also has a kickstand function for propping your iPhone up. We’re linking to the black case for the iPhone 11 for $12.99. There’s a pulldown menu for iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max, too, as well as several color choices.