Month: January 2019

The shutdown comes in response to news that Facebook has been using Apple’s program for internal app distribution to track teenage customers with a “research” app

Source: Apple blocks Facebook from running its internal iOS apps – The Verge

This doesn’t surprise me. Facebook as a company is trying every tactic to learn about everybody, even those it isn’t allowed to track, even if it is completely unethical. They haven’t learned, but proven that apologizing afterwards and doing nothing to change their actions is acceptable in our society.

Microsoft is limiting Cortana instead of competing with Google and Alexa, it will work with them

“Cortana needs to be that skill for anybody who’s a Microsoft 365 subscriber,” explains Nadella, referencing Microsoft’s new consumer subscription push. “You should be able to use it on Google Assistant, you should be able to use it on Alexa, just like how you use our apps on Android and iOS so that’s at least how we want to think about where it’ll go.”

Source: Microsoft no longer sees Cortana as an Alexa or Google Assistant competitor – The Verge

Microsoft is also recommending customers move to iOS or Android from Windows Phone

With support for the now-discontinued Windows 10 Mobile devices set to end on December 10, 2019, Microsoft is recommending that its current Windowa 10 Mobile customers move to an Android or iOS device instead.

Microsoft made the recommendation in a Windows 10 Mobile support document (via Thurrott) explaining its plans to stop offering security updates and patches for Windows 10 Mobile.

Source: Microsoft Suggests Windows 10 Mobile Users Switch to iOS or Android as Support Winds Down – Macrumors

I honestly didn’t know Windows Phone was still supported, so I’m sure this isn’t going to come as a surprise to anybody.

The first stories of the iPhone XS battery cases all immediately looked at the mAh capacity of the battery. I assumed Apple put a smaller battery in the case because the battery in the phone was larger, thus needing less weight in the case to more than make up the total charge time. Turns out, I was wrong.

Apple cases have the lowest mAh rating, at 1,369mAh. But that’s because instead of using a single large cell (like the iPhone 7 battery case’s 2,365mAh battery or the iPhone 6 case’s 1,877mAh), Apple is using two battery cells wired in series, which keeps the net amperage the same but lets it boost the voltage to 8.7V, dramatically higher than the estimated 3.8V that the older cases output power at.

Shannon Liao and Chaim Gartenberg go on to say Wh is the correct method of measuring these batteries, which tops out over 10Wh versus 7.13Wh of the iPhone 6 battery case

Source: Apple’s new battery cases are its most powerful ones yet – The Verge

A solar system has been identified with two sets of binary stars.

the two binary systems have stars that orbit their mutual centers of gravity at a distance about the same as the Earth’s distance from the Sun. The two binary systems are separated by about 54 times that distance, or about 1.8 times the Sun-Neptune distance.

If that weren’t enough, there is a ring orbiting on the polar axis that is primed to produce a planet

the material in the disk appears to have condensed into dust particles, a key early step that enables planet formation. So, at some point in the future, there may be planets orbiting the system graced with two suns and two very bright, very nearby stars.

Insert Yelp! review ratings joke somewhere in here…

Source: System has four stars and a planet-forming disk oriented vertically | Ars Technica

His former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski wrote, in “Let Trump Be Trump,” his book chronicling the campaign, that “on Trump Force One there were four major food groups: McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza, and Diet Coke,” and that his boss’s go-to McDonald’s order was two Big Macs, two Filet-o-Fishes, and a chocolate milkshake.

That’s a lot of food for one sitting.

Source: The Pure American Banality of Donald Trump’s White House Fast-Food Buffet | The New Yorker

Montgomery has launched free 1-gigabyte Wi-Fi through the central part of downtown, and bigger changes are on the way. Plans include street cameras, a fiber network, 22,000 new LED lights and “smart parking” through an app, all part of a wider effort to create a “Smart City Living Lab” in the heart of the city.The free internet service quietly launched along Commerce Street and Dexter Avenue earlier this month, paid for by the Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce.

This is pretty impressive. I would love to see further expansion of MGMIX to include surrounding neighborhoods with access to fiber.

Source: Downtown gets free 1GB Wi-Fi; ‘smart parking’ next