Joe Dator’s short, sweet comic in The New Yorker shines light on Columbo’s renewed popularity and what made the show so special.
(via MetaFilter)
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Just One More Thing…
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President Biden
We were listening to CBC Radio 2 on the HomePod this morning when the news broke. After four long years, our worldwide nightmare is officially coming to an end.
America, I’m honored that you have chosen me to lead our great country.
The work ahead of us will be hard, but I promise you this: I will be a President for all Americans — whether you voted for me or not.
I will keep the faith that you have placed in me. pic.twitter.com/moA9qhmjn8
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) November 7, 2020
Trump, while golfing, tweeted out that he’s not going to accept the results.
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Apple Q4 2020 Results
The quick take-away from Apple’s Q4 earrings is: record Mac revenue while iPhone revenue is down 20%.
Despite the tough iPhone quarter, revenue was a record for the company’s fourth fiscal quarter, at $64.7B. iPhone revenue was $26.8B, down 20% year over year. Mac revenue was $9B, up 29%. iPad revenue was $6.8B, up 46%. Services revenue was $14.5B, up 16%. And Wearables revenue was $7.9B, up 20.8%.
Obviously the huge wave of workers staying home to work during the pandemic has been a boon to Apple’s bottom line. It’s also so interesting to see the huge growth in Apple services — 14 and a half billion is significant by any metric.
Lastly, it shows how diversified Apple’s financials are getting that iPhone revenue could be down 20 percent year-over-year but the company had record revenue for the quarter overall. A few years ago that was unimaginable.
Check out the charts at Six Colors.
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The Bad Review Revue
The Lie: “The actual lie is that anyone will find this entertaining.” — Brian Tallerico, The Playlist
Lost Girls & Love Hotels: “One could look at it as a PSA against self-loathing, but mostly it’s just a really bad movie.” — Eric Eisenberg, CinemaBlend
Antebellum: “The realization of what’s going on dawns on you in waves, and it’s fun to watch as they crash on the shore. But once the water recedes, the rest of the movie goes out to sea along with it.” — David Ehrlich, indieWire
The New Mutants: “It finally arrives more than two years after its original planned release date and at times it’s hard not to stifle the unkind thought: ‘Why so soon?'” — Philip De Semlyen, Time Out
The War with Grandpa: “It depends on your tolerance for watching Robert De Niro flash people.” — Amy Nicholson, Film Week
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Apple Special Event “Hi, Speed”
Today Apple announced four new phones: iPhone 12 Mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max and a new HomePad Mini.
Updates to iPhone are incremental in nature and can be expected yearly with each new iteration being only slightly faster, more efficient, and more capable. This year’s new set of phones are no exception. Unless you call 50% faster “only slightly”, which is one reason why the title of today’s event is, “Hi, Speed”.
Here are some highlights from today’s event.
iPhone 12
All four versions of the new iPhones contain Apple’s proprietary A14 chip. With circuitry separated by a mere 5 nanometers and 11.8 billion transistors, the performance and efficiency of this chip is the fastest cpu in any smart phone. The only chip even close is last year’s A13 chip.
The main reason to want such crazy fast speed is machine learning. It’s the key to computational photography and in turn that’s what makes such great photos from iPhone 12 possible. The iPhone 11 Pro has eight dedicated machine learning cores and this year that number grows to 16. Apple’s new flagship phones are now capable of 11 trillion operations per second up from last year’s paltry 6 trillion.
A14 Bionic is the first 5-nanometer chip in the industry, with advanced components literally atoms wide. Forty percent more transistors rev up speeds while increasing efficiency for great battery life. And a new ISP powers Dolby Vision recording — something no pro movie camera, let alone any other phone, can do.
Also interesting is the inclusion of MagSafe technology for phone charging and accessories. No more worrying about whether your phone is placed on its wireless charging pad correctly because the magnet will straighten itself. I’m also intrigued by the idea of paring down to just the leather wallet attachment shown below with built-in magnetic action.
HomePad Mini
It’s been long speculated that Apple needed a HomePod Mini in order to compete in the smart speaker market against lower cost smart speakers from Google and Amazon. It remains to be seen how the sound quality of the HomePod mini stands up to the original but I’ve always wanted to add a second HomePod for the bedroom where the heavy bass isn’t so important, so I’m tempted.
And, as for rumours that the free year of Apple TV+, is going away, it appears to still be on offer that, “For a limited time, eligible customers who purchase a new iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV, or Mac can enjoy one year of Apple TV+ for free and three months of Apple Arcade for free.”
Here’s Apple’s 51 Second summary of the event:
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Trump Tests Positive
Last night the news broke that Hope Hicks, one of President Trump’s senior advisors tested positive for the coronavirus. This morning it was announced that Trump himself has the virus.
From the New York Times:
Mr. Trump, who for months has played down the seriousness of the virus and hours earlier on Thursday night told an audience that “the end of the pandemic is in sight,” will quarantine in the White House for an unspecified period of time, forcing him to withdraw at least temporarily from the campaign trail only 32 days before the election on Nov. 3.
As far as an October surprise is supposed to be unpredictable, this one is very surprising.
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Pareidolia on Grains of Sand
I came across a site tonight that hits on a lot of my interests. It’s got a nice mixture of art, technology, with just a hint of psychology.
I’ve been interested in pareidolia since I first learned about it years ago. It is, as wikipedia defines it, “the tendency for incorrect perception of a stimulus as an object, pattern or meaning known to the observer, such as seeing shapes in clouds, seeing faces in inanimate objects or abstract patterns, or hearing hidden messages in music.”
In this particular case, the objects are grains of sand and the incorrect perception is that they look like faces.
In the artwork Pareidolia* facial detection is applied to grains of sand. A fully automated robot search engine examines the grains of sand in situ. When the machine finds a face in one of the grains, the portrait is photographed and displayed on a large screen.
Check out Pareidolia, face detection on grains of sand.
(via Waxy)
The Alberta government today released their parents guide for the 2020-2021 school year.
“Your child may feel nervous about what school will be like. While there will be changes, the key school experience will be the same as before—they will learn in class with their teacher and see friends.”
In a letter sent to school superintendents across Alberta yesterday (and then forwarded to all teachers), Education Minister Adriana LaGrange explains that the government has been working hard to increase testing capacity and turn-around times.
I recently became aware that the test result turnaround times in Alberta are already supposedly down to two to three days. Friends of mine decided to get the whole family tested because one of their kids became ill with Covid-19 like symptoms. (Still waiting until tomorrow to hear back).
LaGrange also suggests that all teachers should be tested for the novel corona virus before returning to in-person learning this fall.
Her complete letter after the jump.
The Lincoln Project is an American political action committee formed in late 2019 by several prominent current and former Republicans. The goal of the committee is to prevent the reelection of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Their latest ad features the comedic satire of David Cross explaining that he is just now starting to regret his vote for Donald Trump.
A lot of people are saying they’re regretting voting for trump… I can see why. pic.twitter.com/lqubPCcGvd
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) August 9, 2020
Here’s the original Cross routine that is a little longer than what you get in the ad.