Covered this week; Will Facebook be ready to defend the mid-term elections from foreign meddling? A major revision of Dark Sky hits the streets… John Oliver schools Drumpf on how global trade actually works… Nikon’s new mirrorless cameras put another nail in the DSLR’s coffin… The flow of ex-Tesla employees to Apple… John McCain dies at 81… Neil Simon dies at 91…
August 20, 2018
“Will Facebook be ready? The company says it’s moving quickly on its plan — which includes a physical war room to monitor the elections from its corporate headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. — and has promised to double the number of safety and security employees on staff to 20,000 people. Facebook says it’s spending so much money monitoring political ads that it will actually hurt profits. But Facebook is also running out of time to execute its plan. With the midterms less than three months away, it’s almost go time.”
August 21, 2018
“Today we’re happy to announce a major new version of Dark Sky for iOS and Android. This update is one of the biggest overhauls in Dark Sky’s six year history. It represents over a year of effort, incorporating countless suggestions from our users as well as the experience we’ve gained building our weather service from the ground up these past years.”
I’ve been using this new version for a couple days now and I’m not completely comfortable with the updated interface yet… but the functionality of the app is both in tact and better than ever… so check out the update.
August 22, 2018
On the latest episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver zeroes in on trade, which he defines as “the basic system of barter and exchange that you have to do really carefully or you’ll end up with Dwight Howard.” This is a completely hilarious tutorial intended for our Idiot-In-Chief… the best part is near the end at the 19:48 mark where the homemade video plays.
August 23, 2018
“What’s the big deal about taking out the mirror? Originally, doing away with it made the camera smaller, but also crummier. The first mirrorless models, from Olympus and Panasonic, had smallish sensors, lethargic autofocus systems, and either no viewfinder or a lousy, pixelated digital eyepiece. You pretty much had to use the LCD screen on the back of the camera to eyeball a shot–as distasteful to a photographer as a Ford Pinto to Mario Andretti.”
Mirrorless cameras are on the rise, this could signal the end for DSLR cameras…
August 24, 2018
“Several people familiar estimated that Apple pays about one-and-a-half times the salary for technicians, software and manufacturing engineers than Tesla does today. That’s important in California’s San Francisco Bay Area, where living expenses are among the highest in the world.”
Many former Tesla employees now work for Apple… an explanation of why that’s happening.
August 25, 2018
“John McCain was an essential element of the nation’s political conversation for half a century, an ever-present figure eager to challenge friend and foe through his singular temperament — sometimes angry, often funny, always ardent. Now he is gone, leaving behind a storied life and a tear in America’s political fabric at a time when national unity — always a McCain theme and ultimate goal — seems especially elusive.”
John McCain, dead at 81.
August 26, 2018
“Neil Simon, the playwright whose name was synonymous with Broadway comedy and commercial success in the theater for decades, and who helped redefine popular American humor with an emphasis on the frictions of urban living and the agonizing conflicts of family intimacy, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 91.”
