Google Engineers Brainstorm About Political Search Tweaks

An email thread obtained by the Wall Street Journal shows Google engineers talking about political search tweaks related to President Trump’s 2017 travel ban. They specifically discussed using Google search to highlight pro-immigration organizations.

“To the extent of my knowledge, we’d be breaching precedent if we only gave Highlights access to organizations that support a certain view of the world in a time of political conflict,” one email said, according to WSJ.

Google said they were just brainstorming. This seems likely to me. Google might favor its own products in search results, but going so far as to interfere with political issues? I’m not so sure. But it made me wonder how easily a roque engineer could secretly alter the search algorithms.

Inside the iPhone XS Camera Technology

Lance Ulanoff has a great piece on Medium where he writes about the iPhone XS camera technology. He talked with photographer Pete Souza about the new iPhones, as well as Phil Schiller, Graham TownsendApple’s senior director of camera hardware, and Sebastien Marineau-Mes, Apple’s vice president of software.

One of the really big things we aim for is the first phone, the 1 millionth phone, and the 10 millionth phone we want that experience to be as close as we can humanly manage, and we put a lot of effort, and it’s not something we talk a lot about… but it’s really important to us that there’s no big variation in performance between any phone anywhere the world,” Townsend said.

Want to Play with a 3D iPhone XS on your iPhone? Apple Has a Site for That

Apple has a cool mini website to show off the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max. Just load it up in Safari or Chrome on your mobile phone and you can spin the new iPhone models around by tilting your display. Phone specs pop up as the iPhones twirl around so you can learn more about them, plus you can choose which model you’re looking at, and the phone color, too. It’s a pretty cool was to explore the iPhone XS and XS Max.

Chris Evans Starring in 'Defending Jacob' Series for Apple

Chris Evans, best known for playing Captain America in Marvel’s Avengers movies, has signed on to play the lead in “Defending Jacob” in Apple’s original content lineup. The 8-episode series is based on the best selling novel by Willian Landay, and it’ll be directed by Oscar-nominated Morten Ryan. Deadline says,

Defending Jacob is described as a a gripping, character-driven thriller based on Landay’s 2012 novel published by Random House. The book tells the story of a father dealing with the accusation that his son is a 14-year-old murderer.

Apple’s original content line up is steadily growing and looks to be pretty strong. It’ll be interesting to see how Apple fares against Netflix and Amazon Prime when its shows start airing.