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'Charlie Bit my Finger' to be Auctioned as an NFT... Then Deleted

Charlotte Henry ·

The ‘Charlie Bit my Finger’ video joining the NFT action, The Verge reported. One of YouTube’s most famous and popular videos, it will be deleted after the auction. (The title of the clip has even changed to reflect this.)

At the end of the auction, which will begin on May 22nd, the original video will be deleted from YouTube forever, according to a press release, where it currently has over 880 million views. The auction will kick off on the video’s 14th anniversary. Since NFTs exploded onto the cultural landscape earlier this year, we’ve seen plenty of early-to-mid 2000s memes being sold on the blockchain, with many of them fetching higher prices than I would’ve ever have imagined… Seeing these numbers, some people (including myself) have snidely said something along the lines of “why would you pay that much for something that’s not actually scarce? I can see Nyan Cat on the internet whenever I like.” Deleting one of the most well-known videos from YouTube does at least somewhat solve that argument, since whoever ends up with the NFT will actually be able to lay claim to something scarce.

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Dealing With CAPTCHAs Costs Humanity 500 Years Per Day

Andrew Orr ·

Cloudflare wants to kill CAPTCHAs and replace them with security keys like YubiKey.

Based on our data, it takes a user on average 32 seconds to complete a CAPTCHA challenge. There are 4.6 billion global Internet users. We assume a typical Internet user sees approximately one CAPTCHA every 10 days.

This very simple back of the envelope math equates to somewhere in the order of 500 human years wasted every single day — just for us to prove our humanity.

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Why Putting macOS on iPad is a Bad Idea

Charlotte Henry ·

Since the introduction of the M1 chip to various iPad models, there has been lots of talk about replacing iPadOS with macOS. One person who is not a fan of this idea is Ed Hardy. He explained why at Cult of Mac.

No matter that Macs and iPads run on the same chip. macOS isn’t designed for a touchscreen. Apple would need to redesign the operating system to run on a tablet, and devs would need to alter third-party applications, too. And that would anger people using non-touchscreen laptops and desktops. Plus, people happy with the iPad now wouldn’t like the change either.

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Texan Man Imprisoned For Apple Store Thefts in Multiple States

Charlotte Henry ·

Jalek Ingram, a 20-year-old  man from Texas, has been given two-year in prison for his links to thefts at  Apple Stores in various states. These included shoplifting 25 iPhones, MacBooks, and iPads from the retail outlet in Little Rock, Arkansas, according to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Sentencing papers filed Thursday show Jalek Ingram received a total of three years in prison after pleading guilty to theft and commercial burglary for the March 2018 Apple store theft for a two-year term, with an additional year in prison for a second-degree battery charge stemming from his role in beating a fellow jail inmate unconscious last November. Three other men are charged in the Apple thefts while three other jail inmates, including two murder suspects, are accused in the attack on Marcus Lorenzo Daniels of Crawfordsville about 1½ weeks before Thanksgiving.

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Examining the Boot Process for M1 Macs

Andrew Orr ·

Howard Oakley recently dove into the boot process for M1 Macs and how it affects booting from an external hard drive.

Unless the user has already changed its default security settings to allow it to start up from an external disk, you’ll have no joy whatsoever. Although this is secure, it’s also more than inconvenient, as the times that you most need your Mac to start up from an external disk are when it’s in trouble with its internal disk, and that’s likely to prevent you from changing its security settings, leaving your Mac dead.

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Experts Key to Epic vs Apple Battle

Charlotte Henry ·

The Epic Games vs Apple case is well underway. A key part of the trial is expert witnesses, with David Evans, chairman of Global Economics Group set to be there for the Fortnite maker. Reuters has a breakdown of the significance of his, and other, appearances.

On the stand this week, Evans testified that Apple is what is known as a single-brand market, arguing that once consumers buy an iPhone, the costs of switching to an Android are so high that they rarely make the jump. Since about 2010, Evans testified, Apple’s App Store has effectively been its own market, and users rarely venture outside. After Apple kicked “Fortnite” off the App Store, Evans testified, only a small fraction of Apple users jumped to other devices like PCs or gaming consoles to play “Fortnite.”