I was excited to learn that this blurb I wrote a few weeks ago is no longer relevant. Even though I wasn’t throughly impressed by “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” it’s still one of the better Spider-Man sequels, simply because it exists within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and I’m relieved that Disney and Sony were able to negotiate a new deal.
Anthea Butler offers a brutal (but for the most part, accurate) take in this opinion piece for NBC News.
She’s a bit bold with some of her statements, and I think she misses the fact that a lot of white evangelicals have good intentions, but she also makes some very astute and well articulated points:
Their imagined powerlessness, and the need for a strong authoritarian leader to protect them, is at the root of their racial and social animus. Their persecution complex is a heady mix of their fear of “socialists,” Muslims, independent women, LGB[&]T people and immigration. Their feelings of fragility, despite positions of power, make them vote for people like Donald Trump — and morally suspect candidates like Roy Moore. Rhetoric, not morality, drives their voting habits.
She’s spot on in pointing out that white evangelicals are driven by a persecution complex and deep seated fear (so deep that most of them probably aren’t even aware of its existence) that the status quo is changing in a manner that could put them in a position where they’re no longer the dominant social authority in America.
Trump delivered evangelicals from the shame of losing, and they will back him again in 2020 to avoid losing again. So perhaps we should take evangelicals at their word that they will support Trump come hell or high water, rather than twisting ourselves into knots trying to figure out why.
This hits the nail on the head. They aren’t wearing red hats because they think that’s what Jesus would do, they’re wearing them because they represent the vindication they felt in the wake of the 2016 election, and a hope that they can return to an America in which their authority wasn’t questioned. Perhaps they could regain some the respect and authority that’s been eroded if they were to focus less on their pride and more on actually helping people and being a legitimate moral authority. Fat chance.
The Verge’s Nilay Patel and Chris Welch do a deep dive into the technology that has finally made it possible to watch live football games in 4K HDR; while the nerdy details are interesting, the most exciting part for sports fans really is in the headline—the fact that that we can now watch our favorite pro teams with incredible detail and clarity (this comment won’t have aged well in five years) is huge.
It’s worth pointing out that the advancement of augmented reality in recent years has really made NFL games a lot more enjoyable. In just a few years, we went from only having those superimposed, yellow first down lines to having crazy run patterns and play breakdowns served up almost instantly, and they make complicated plays much easier to follow. It seems a bit odd that those effects came before 4K HDR, but I'm glad we’re finally getting caught up, and I’m sure this will be just as transformative. Hopefully 4K HDR broadcasting will soon expand to all NFL games and top college matchups as well (go Vols).
Tulsi Gabbard has been one of my top 2020 picks for a while now. She’s level headed, she’s a veteran, and she’s moderate enough that she can easily appeal to independent voters. A few weeks ago when it became clear that she wasn’t going to qualify for the September debate, I more or less moved on, knowing that it would be almost impossible for her to recover from such a large setback.
So, imagine my surprise when I received this email saying that Tulsi will be on the stage again in October; I had to read it a few times to believe it. She’ll have to really kick ass, but if she does, she could very well be the candidate people flock to, having thwarted the huge Democratic Party political machine, who clearly didn’t want to have to consider her as a viable candidate for the nomination. I hope her campaign sees a huge rejuvenation, and that she’s able to not only defeat Trump and the Republican Party, but to use this as an opportunity to truly challenge the status quo in Washington, and call out the hypocrisy of the Democratic Party as well.
May Ying Tee and Martin Zhang, writing for Symantec:
In recent times we’ve seen multiple malicious apps found in the Google Play Store by various cyber security firms, including Symantec, yet this problem doesn’t seem to be dissipating. We have uncovered another wave of malicious apps in the Play Store which have been downloaded more than 2.1 million times.
Does this surprise anyone? No? Okay. Lets call this “Breaking Olds”—old news, presented as new news. Today’s Breaking Olds headline: The Google Play Store is full of trash. 🗑
A total of 25 Android Package Kits (APKs), mostly masquerading as a photo utility app and a fashion app, were published under 22 different developer accounts […]
These 25 malicious hidden apps share a similar code structure and app content, leading us to believe that the developers may be part of the same organizational group or, at the very least, are using the same source code base.
What these apps do is essentially pose as a legitimate app (often from the same developer) so that you’ll install them. It initially functions as expected, but some time after a user first launches the app, it downloads a remote configuration file that hides the app icon so that the user won’t realize it’s still there. Classy.
Once the app’s icon is hidden, the malware begins displaying advertisements, which are shown even when the app is closed. Full-screen advertisements are displayed at random intervals with no app title registered in the advertisement window, so users have no way of knowing which app is responsible for the behavior.
It’s seems absolutely preposterous to think that a third party app can completely commandeer a device’s screen at any point in time. Ying Tee and Zhang recommend Android users install a strong antivirus app to help protect themselves from malware like this, and also that users only download apps from trusted sources, which, apparently, does include the Google Play Store. In the article, Ying Tee and Zhang also mentioned “Google Play’s rigorous security testing,” which seems like a funny way to describe whatever approval process Play store apps go through, given the circumstances.
I find it incredibly difficult to believe that anyone who truly cares about privacy or security would ever use an Android device. Imagine having to install antivirus software on your iPhone—there would be riots at Apple stores around the world.
Karin Brulliard, writing for The Washington Post:
The sparrows and finches that visit backyard feeders number fewer each year. The flutelike song of the western meadowlark — the official bird of six U.S. states — is growing more rare. The continent has lost nearly 3 billion birds representing hundreds of species over the past five decades, in an enormous loss that signals an “overlooked biodiversity crisis,” according to a study from top ornithologists and government agencies. […]
There are 29 percent fewer birds in the United States and Canada today than in 1970.
I don’t know quite what to say about this, other than that it is very sad. Almost as sad as the fact that some people don’t believe humans are having any significant impact on our environment.
Good news: Kik is shutting down. If you don’t know what Kik is, all you need to know is that it’s a messaging app that was slightly popular a few years ago but is now used by practically nobody. You may be asking, “But Broc, why does this matter at all, let alone constitute good news?” Let me explain.
Now, I don’t know why this is the case, but for some reason there are a ton of trolls, bots, and pic collectors on the Grindr app (if you’re unfamiliar with Grindr, it’s an app for connoisseurs of freshly ground coffee). These trolls, bots, and pic collectors can sometimes be sneaky, but 99 times out of 100, they’re very easy to spot because they follow the same general conversation pattern, and that’s because they’re there to accomplish a task: to get you to waste your time and money on one of their pitiful scam websites where they’re promoting whatever happens to be the sketchy service du jour—one day it might be an incredible new male enhancement product, the next it could be a dating service for all of the sexy MILFs in your town who “NEED SEX NOW.” Very clickbait-y, you know the type.
Conversations with these accounts generally go like this: they introduce themselves with some funny remark or otherwise interesting statement, and then send you just enough slightly blurry photos of a decently attractive person to gain your confidence. They’ll likely also ask you to send photos of yourself in return—the images they ask for range from seemingly benign (like a photo of your face) to more private (like photos of your.. um, beans). This is when it goes south: after collecting your photos (or before, if you refuse to send any) they proceed to feed you some bullshit excuse about how the app doesn’t seem to be working properly, so that you’ll think it’s reasonable when, a few moments later, they ask you to use the Kik app to communicate with them instead. Now, Grindr can be pretty buggy at times, and users often decide to communicate on other platforms (like iMessage or Snapchat) to avoid the bugs, so to someone who isn’t familiar with the scams these trolls are trying to pull, this may seem like a reasonable request.
You’re probably wondering why they bother with Kik—it’s a fair question. The only apparent reason for this is that, to their credit, Grindr has far more stringent terms than Kik which dictate what users are allowed to send to each other, so while sending links on Grindr would quickly result in their account being banned, sending those links doesn’t cause a fuss on Kik.
You may also wonder why they would want to collect photos from you: the more photos of attractive people they collect, the more photos of attractive people they have to lure in new victims. This is especially problematic because they’re redistributing sensitive photos without permission. By chance, it’s possible that a bot may even send you photos of your OWN beans; I can tell you from personal experience that this is not a fun time, because you know that if they’ve accidentally made it back to you, plenty of other people have seen and been taking credit for that photo of your beautiful beans along the way, and aside from making you feel violated, it’s just not fair to take credit for work that isn’t your own.
This annoyance isn’t Kik’s fault, but it’s satisfying nonetheless that it will soon be brought to a grinding halt. It’s been a long time coming, but I’m glad that the next time one of these fake profiles asks me to message them on Kik, I can inform them that Kik no longer exists, and tell them to promptly go grow some beans of their own.
Kik has announced that they will not be shutting down their messaging service as a result of an acquisition by MediaLab. So, damn. Hopefully the new management team will pull through on their promises to fight spam, and make it harder for people to be taken advantage of on their platform.
I’m not gonna write a long, detailed review; there are tons of good, extensive reviews out there already, and besides, the camera is probably the only thing worth talking amount ad nauseam, and not necessarily for the reasons you might expect. However, I do want to hit the highlights as well as log a few thoughts that other reviewers haven’t mentioned yet, for those who are considering upgrading this year.
First of all, yes, the battery life if great. I’m noticing significantly more time (3+ hours) between charges compared to my iPhone XS Max.
Second, yes, the cameras are terrific—noticeably better than last year’s, at least in some conditions. Are they groundbreaking? No. Should most people go with the iPhone 11 instead of the iPhone 11 Pro? Yes. If you want my more thorough analysis of the cameras, here you go.
Third, the removal of 3D Touch sucks. I have always been a fan, and not having it makes some processes undeniably slower.
Fourth, the physical aspects of the device.
The matte back of the phone looks and feels really nice.
The midnight green looks boring in person, the silver looks white, the gold doesn’t have that weird green/pink tint like last year, and the space gray looks awesome.
It is noticeably thicker, and I don’t like it. I was hoping that it would get thinner, given the removal of the extra layer in the display that enabled 3D Touch (RIP), but nope.
It also seems to be particularly sturdy. I accidentally dropped it from a height of almost four feet, with no case, onto a tile floor. Not only was the iPhone still in perfect condition, it actually cracked the tile. I’ll give it a 10/10 for durability.
Fifth, the improvements to Face ID are hardly noticeable after coming from last years iPhone, but maybe you’ll see more of a difference if you’re upgrading from an iPhone X.
Sixth, the UWB technology is cool for what it will allow in the future, but the current improvements it brings to AirDrop are okay at best. While other iPhone 11 users do show up quickly, the feature where you point the iPhones toward each other to get them to show up at the top is too slow to be useful.
Seventh, the allegedly improved audio quality of the built in speakers seems to have been a myth.
I like the iPhone 11 Pro a lot, overall; it makes more trade offs than I’d like, but it’s still the best phone Apple has ever made. I just don’t think it deserves the name “Pro”—it needlessly adds to the amount of syllables I have to say when I talk about it, and it makes me feel like a show off-y asshole when it comes up. Besides, what truly new, pro level feature does it have that the regular iPhone 11 doesn’t have? The ultra wide angle lens? Nope. The telephoto lens? That’s been around since the iPhone 7 Plus. The chip? No, same chip. Battery life? Doesn’t make sense, given that the XR had the best battery life’s at year—this years Pro models were just playing catch-up. The stainless steel and matte glass design? Hardly.
Is this a great iPhone? Yes. Is it a Pro iPhone? No.
Google has no shame. This is a blatant copy of Apple Arcade. And the sad thing is that Apple Arcade doesn’t even seem good enough to copy—I’ve tried about ten games so far, and eight were so bad I deleted them within five minutes of opening the app for the first time.
Hahahahaha this gives me anxiety.
All jokes aside, this is horrifying. How anyone trusts Facebook at all is beyond me; the only explanation for trusting this company enough to PAY them to put an always-watching camera in one of the most intimate spaces in your home is blissful ignorance.
In perfect Facebook fashion, they’re trying to pass off this new “product,” Facebook Portal TV, as a unique way to connect with your friends while enjoying their video content, as if FaceTime and Skype aren’t good enough.
In any case, the Facebook Portal TV (cute name for a surveillance device, btw), despite having a name that suggests it would serve as a functional set top box like an Apple TV or Roku, doesn’t actually work with Netflix, Hulu, or really any other popular video service—just videos from Facebook Watch (whatever the hell that is). Despite the fact that it’s nearly useless, this isn’t all that surprising. After all, why wouldn’t Facebook make the most of this new “product” as a way to serve you more of their own ads? And with the built in camera (to which they have unfettered access because it’s their own hardware and they control all of the privacy permissions and device settings), they can gauge not only your reactions to the content and ads they’re showing you, but also the combined reactions of you and whichever of your friends you may be connected to via the built in video chat service.
Bottom line: if you buy this, you’re a moron.
Due to a last minute scheduling conflict, this was the first Apple announcement in six yeas that I wasn’t able to watch live. However, it wasn’t a terrible one to miss—most of the upgrades this year were rather modest. Even still, I was fairly impressed by a few things they announced.
I originally thought this service was destined to fail, but I’m a little more hopeful now. The games they demoed weren’t very exciting but with 100+ games, there are likely to be a few good ones, and $5 is cheaper than I think anyone expected, and cheap enough to get people to try it.
Apple TV+ is another service I was unsure about, but I think the way they’re choosing to roll it out will help them gain a lot of traction. $5 is way cheaper than anyone expected, and you get. a whole year free if you buy a new Apple device. Combine that with the star studded casts of their shows, and they’re definitely going to get people watching.
This was a modest update, but its always nice to see the entry level iPad getting some love. $329 is just an incredibly accessible price point.
A few things to note here:
There are very few new features. The always on display is nice, but I honestly didn’t realize that it didn’t already have a compass. That’s hardly a tentpole feature, but its being dressed up as one.
There were rumors of sleep tracking capabilities, but those were apparently just rumors. Too bad.
The new Edition models are cool. I’ve been saying that a titanium case would be nice, but I was disappointed to see that it’s kinda dull and ugly. (UPDATE: 9/30/19, 20:30; after seeing one of the titanium watches in person, they’re actually pretty sleek. The photos don’t do it justice.)
I’m glad they’re finally letting you pair any watch case with any band.
There are finally some good improvements with the bands. There are now at least a few options of nice bands with black hardware, rather than all silver like in the past. The leather loops and Milanese loops now only cost $99, which is much more reasonable. Year after year, we’ve seen the bands get cheaper: first the link bracelets, then the modern buckles, and now the leather loops and Milanese loops. Hopefully next year the prices for the sport bands will drop by ten or twenty bucks — I think they’d sell a lot more of them if they were just a little bit cheaper.
All in all, the best watch to buy right now would be a series 4 on clearance, if you can find one.
People often ask me for advice on which new phone they should get, and the iPhone 11 is the perfect upgrade for almost anyone. It has all the nice features from the iPhone XR, and it’s $50 less expensive. The only people for whom this phone isn’t the ideal choice are those who are already on an annual upgrade plan (like Apple’s iPhone Upgrade Program), or those who are willing to pay a couple hundred extra bucks to stay on the absolute cutting edge of technology.
The Face ID improvements are great, and the new chip seems to be blazing fast. The improved water resistance is nice. The UWB location technology will be an absolute game changer, I just hope they’ve done their due diligence to keep it from being abused by apps like Facebook.
The new camera features are awesome. Night Mode looks spectacular.
The biggest news here was the new midnight green color. It’s rare that Apple is actually able to keep a secret like that, but it was a delightful surprise. The triple-camera setup on the back isn’t the most aesthetically pleasing design, but I appreciate their commitment to solid camera improvements, year after year. The 18w fast charger in the box is a nice touch, as is the further improved water resistance.
There’s actually some bad news here, though, and that is that they’re ditching 3D Touch, one of the tentpole features introduced with the iPhone 6s, in favor of Haptic Touch. I was a big fan of 3D Touch, and I thought it had a lot of potential, but it was poorly implemented so people didn’t generally know when or exactly how to invoke it. getting rid of it means that some features will take slightly longer to access, like adding a song to your up next due or previewing links. The only way I was going to be okay with this change was if removing a component of the display allowed the display to be noticeably thinner, thereby making the device thinner and lighter. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. The iPhone 11 Pro is 6% heavier and 5% thicker than the iPhone XS. If you’re looking for more than just my preliminary thoughts, check out my review of the iPhone 11 Pro.
All in all, this keynote was a mixed bag. A couple of disappointments for power users, but a solid step forward for those who are due for upgrades but don’t necessarily care about being on the cutting edge.
Relationships don’t tend to last when the fights and arguments begin this early.
Ps. Apple, you deserve better, anyway.
On this episode of “Rare Occasions When Trump Actually Deserves Credit For Doing Something Positive,” we see him taking a stand to combat a serious public health issue (and nuisance). Most people should recognize this as a good move, with the two exceptions being hardcore libertarians and companies like Juul.
Ever feel like you’re always seeing posts from the same people on Facebook? That isn’t an accident. Your opinions are being quarantined for profit—it really is digital Gerrymandering, and it’s the reason that elections and politics are getting uglier and uglier; the electorate is becoming increasingly polarized as a result of having their beliefs affirmed by algorithms that skew their newsfeeds to lean whichever way they lean.
Frida Ghitis, in an opinion piece for CNN:
The wall is a fantasy conjured by Trump to get elected. While Trump has imbued the wall with near-mythical powers, many experts say it will do little to stop the current flow of migrants from Central America, who typically turn themselves over to authorities to seek asylum, rather than trying to sneak in undetected. In the horror story Trump told voters in 2016, America was being invaded by rapists, drug dealers and other criminals who "threatened" the country. […]
In his speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016, Trump spoke of a dystopian America with a broken political system and broken borders, before taking on the mantle of the superhero by declaring, "I alone can fix it."
It’s hard to quantify the amount of hubris it takes to make such a claim. Talk about a god complex.
The Trump administration is taking $3.6 billion from approved military construction projects to pay for part of the wall. […]
Altogether, 23 states and three US territories are losing $1.8 billion in funds, and another $1.8 billion will come from construction overseas. Among the projects losing money, according to the Pentagon, are military bases devastated by hurricanes in Florida, North Carolina and Puerto Rico, funding for the US Military Academy at West Point, cyber operations facilities, schools for the children of service members, upgrades to facilities storing hazardous waste and Navy ship repairs.
I’ve written about this a few times before; it’s a subject that really gets under my skin, as it should for any true patriot.
It is absolutely shameful that the greatest military in the world has a Commander in Chief who has proven himself, time and time again, to be completely unconcerned with the successful execution of their day to day operations. It’s too bad he had those bone spurs in 1968 that prevented him from serving in the Vietnam war (see: “draft dodger”), if it weren’t for that, he may have developed some respect for the brave men and women who make sacrifices every day for our freedom. Alas, he seems to have no appreciation for their commitments, as he frequently uses them as political props to fire up his base, which unfortunately, is too ignorant to realize (or, after 2016, too prideful to admit) that such actions represent values opposite of those they have traditionally held dear.
I mean really, who would’ve guessed that vaping causes fatal lung diseases? I suppose I was the only one who had that yearly demonstration in elementary school of what a healthy lung looks like compared to a smoker’s lung. I mean for god’s sake, people don’t use their noodles. How gullible do you have to be to believe that inhaling vaporized nicotine and other chemicals won’t have ANY negative health consequences?
Corporations have been trying to make smoking cool for hundreds of years, and vaping is just the 21st century version of that same corporate goal. Companies like Juul should be treated (and regulated) the same as companies like Marlboro; they exist because they rely on a predatory business model of marketing their inarguably harmful products in a way that makes them seem cool, so that they can swindle money from those who are either too weak to resist the addiction, or are too uneducated to see how it could be bad for them.
Ps. Even without the astonishingly obvious health consequences, vaping is still nasty. Nobody wants to walk through a big cloud of warm, cotton candy-scented smoke that just came out of your mouth. It’s gross.
Brian Feldman, writing for New York:
It’s a seemingly useful service that also acts as a Trojan horse for the company’s existing interests.
Seeing as I am one of the single-est people I know and also one of the only people I know who doesn’t have a Facebook account, I really hope this doesn’t catch on. Facebook has no interest in helping people find love; they have an interest in collecting and monetizing user data, and this is just another iteration of those efforts.
Easily the most ironic part of this is that they’re marketing it as a safe and private option. They say that Facebook Dating won’t collect personal information to be used for advertising purposes, so that’s great (assuming they’re not lying, but that’s far from a safe assumption). However, you can’t JUST use the dating service—for the sake of “authenticity,” they’re requiring that users who want to use Facebook Dating also maintain an active Facebook profile in order to use Facebook Dating. So while the Facebook Dating service will allegedly respect your privacy, the primary Facebook service makes no such promises, and they’re mandating that you use it.
Zach Whittaker, writing for TechCrunch:
The exposed server contained more than 419 million records over several databases on users across geographies, including 133 million records on U.S.-based Facebook users
Is anyone surprised? These records included names, phone numbers, gender, and more.
How anyone still trusts Facebook is beyond me. Let’s not forget the shadow profiles or the flagrant abuses of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
I really enjoyed this fun little article by Duncan Riach on Medium. It strikes a nice balance between being thought provoking yet not taking itself too seriously.
Ps. ⚠️ Spoiler Warning, men aren’t trash, we’re very “kewl” as the kids say.
I recently made a time consuming (and kinda boring) decision. Last week, I elected to delete ALL of the apps on my iPhone (except for the built in ones). This wasn’t a permanent decision, but I told myself that I wouldn’t download another app without first reading the privacy policy of the company that built it. It’s time to start actually understanding all the legal jargon we’re hastily clicking through and agreeing to.
This whole process has been enlightening in a few ways. About a week later, I still only have nine apps on my phone; I’m learning that most of the 70+ apps on my phone were just taking up space, because I’m doing just fine without most of them. I do intend to keep downloading more as I read their privacy policies, but I’m not in a hurry.
A lot of the privacy policies I’ve read so far have surprised me; some companies were way more protective of their users than I expected, and some were worse than I had dared to imagine. Check out the whole list of privacy policies I’ve read, and make your own decisions about which companies you’re comfortable giving your information to.
