Posts

Posted on

The Bad Review Revue

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom: “What we have is 124 minutes of fish vomit. Fish vomiting is rare, so when it happens, it’s an indication of a fatal condition and time for little Chips to visit SeaWorld by way of the nearest commode.” — MontiLee Stormer, moviereelist.com

Anyone But You: “Anyone But You updates Shakespeare’s classic romance, Much Ado About Nothing, to a brainless romp with fleeting nudity and F-bombs galore. Thankfully, there’s ample chemistry between the gorgeous leads to facilitate the requisite happy ending.” — Julian Roman, MovieWeb

Freud’s Last Session: “Freud’s Last Session is an appointment you can skip.” — Joey Magidson, Awards Radar

Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire: “Take a Star Wars movie, remove the sense of humor and adventurous fun, and you might have something that looks like the Netflix space opus, ‘Rebel Moon.'” — Russ Simmons, KKFI-FM (Kansas City)

The Boys in the Boat: “The appeal of lads propelled forward through laborious craft is obvious, but The Boys in the Boat fails to do more than skim the surface both literally and metaphorically.” — Jay Horton, Willamette Week

Posted on

Reason for the Season

My son was watching some iteration of a Mickey Mouse holiday special this morning and deciphering the message of the episode declared:

“Mom, it’s just like the book we read. Christmas is not about candy canes!”

“That’s right! What is it about?”

Without missing a beat he confidently declared, “Christmas is about presents!”

Posted on

Ex-Apple Lawyer Responsible for Preventing Insider Trading Charged with Insider Trading

David Thomas writing for Reuters:

Apple’s former top corporate lawyer will receive no prison time after pleading guilty last year to U.S. insider trading charges, a judge said on Thursday.

U.S. District Judge William Martini in Newark, New Jersey, sentenced Gene Levoff to four years of probation and 2,000 hours of community service. Levoff was also ordered to pay a $30,000 fine and forfeit $604,000.

Levoff had admitted to six securities fraud counts that each carried a maximum 20-year prison term and $5 million fine.

A lawyer for Levoff, Kevin Marino, said in an email that they were “extremely pleased” for what he called a “fair and appropriate sentence of probation.”

A spokesperson for the New Jersey U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.

Prosecutors said Levoff exploited his roles as Apple’s corporate secretary, head of corporate law and co-chair of a committee that reviewed drafts of the company’s results to generate $604,000 of illegal gains on more than $14 million of trades from 2011 to 2016.

Levoff ignored quarterly “blackout periods” that barred trading before Apple’s results were released and violated the company’s broader insider trading policy that he himself was responsible for enforcing, prosecutors said.

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, fired Levoff in September 2018, five months before he was criminally charged.

When someone uses insider information to trade stocks, it really does take the money from other investors. That $604,000 came from somewhere. As someone bought shares during that time, perhaps the difference would have only equated to fractions of pennies on any given share, but it still makes me glad they caught him.

(via Daring Fireball)

Posted on

Apple Blocks Android’s New iMessage App

Android has a new app, Beeper, that connects to iMessage. Well, it did for a few days until, apparently, Apple shut it down. It remains to be seen if Beeper Mini has a future.

Chris Welch, writing for The Verge:

On Friday, less than a week after its launch, the app started experiencing technical issues when users were suddenly unable to send and receive blue bubble messages. The problems grew worse over the course of the day, with reports piling up on the Beeper subreddit. Several people at The Verge were unable to activate their Android phone numbers with Beeper Mini as of Friday afternoon, a clear indication that Apple has plugged up whatever holes allowed the app to operate to begin with.

Beeper Mini was the result of a comprehensive attempt to reverse engineer Apple’s messaging protocol. A 16-year-old high school student managed to successfully pull it off, and for a while, everything worked without a hitch. That effort became the basis for the new app, which requires a $2 / month subscription

Beeper Mini used a direct link with Apple iMessage servers, allowing beeper users to access Apple’s exclusive blue bubbles directly using iCloud addresses and no intermediaries.

I’m a little disappointed it’s been shut down because I would really like my Android family (just my brother actually) to get on the iMessage train.

Update: MacRumors confirms Apple shut it down over purported security concerns.

Posted on

Tesla’s Cybertruck has a serious problem that only a complete redesign can fix

From Jesus Diaz writing for Fast Company, “Tesla’s Cybertruck has a serious problem that only a complete redesign can fix“:

The problem, according to Musk, is the bright metal construction and predominantly straight edges mean that even minor inconsistencies become glaringly obvious. To avoid this, he commanded unparalleled precision in the manufacturing process, stating in his email that “all parts for this vehicle, whether internal or from suppliers, need to be designed and built to sub 10 micron accuracy. That means all part dimensions need to be to the third decimal place in millimeters and tolerances need [to] be specified in single digit microns.” Drawing a comparison to everyday products known for their precision, Musk added, “If LEGO and soda cans, which are very low cost, can do this, so can we.”

The cybertruck is not made from LEGO blocks or soda cans. It’s just not feasible to have such tolerances on parts that are so big and non-uniform at production scale. I suspect we’ll continue to see the truck’s release date pushed back as each deadline comes whooshing by until they admit defeat and do a redesign.

At least it’s bulletproof:

Posted on

Living Works

I created these living works by animating some images from The Photography Book as well as a couple other pieces that I just happen to like. Using the magic of Photoshop I widened each of the images to an aspect ratio of 16:9. Check out the originals linked above each image to see what I changed.

I completed a project like this for a university class on Flash and I’ve always meant to make more but since the deprecation of the .swf format I wasn’t sure I could get it to work in html 5. It turns out, it’s not that difficult except that you may have to scroll if you’re viewing them on mobile or viewing from an RSS reader.

Springtime

Large

The Wreck of the Arden Craig 1911 St. Agnes, Scilly

Large

Soldiers of the Sky

Large

In the Car

Large

Posted on

The Amazing World of DAK Catalogs

Cabel Sasser spent 10 years preparing this blog post. It’s a deep dive into the Golden Age of direct to consumer catalogues.

For a decade, I’ve been snapping up copies of a certain gadget catalog, one by one, when they’re up for auction. Collecting and waiting.
The catalogs were disposable, and that means not many people kept them. But, to me, they tell a critically important story of the golden age of electronics, gadgets, copywriting, and sales.
They deserve to be preserved.
And I’m the guy to do it.

The closest thing I had growing up, was the Consumers Distributing magazines.

Posted on

Apple Earnings Report Q4 2023

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2023 fourth quarter ended September 30, 2023. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $89.5 billion, down 1 percent year over year, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $1.46, up 13 percent year over year.

“Today Apple is pleased to report a September quarter revenue record for iPhone and an all-time revenue record in Services,” said Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. “We now have our strongest lineup of products ever heading into the holiday season, including the iPhone 15 lineup and our first carbon neutral Apple Watch models, a major milestone in our efforts to make all Apple products carbon neutral by 2030.”

• iPhone: $43.805 billion (up 3%)
• Mac: $7.614 billion (down 44%)
• iPad: $6.443 billion (down 10%)
• Wearables, Home & Accessories: $9.322 billion (down 3%)
• Services: $22.314 billion (up 16%)1

Jason Snell’s 6 Color Charts.

  1. All percentage changes are year over year looking only at the 4th quarter[↩]