This morning, I responded to a Betanews commenter who asks: “I’m curious though about one thing and have been for a time. Does a Editor or someone else choose your titles or do you?” He responded to my story “I’m Microsoft All-In“, writing: “I personally have found my groove with ‘All-in Apple. for many years.
He asks a good question, and I answer at length, which I share below (and not in block quotes for readability reasons):
In the era of misinformation, Amnesty International—rather than a major news organization—provides tools for ensuring accuracy in the media. Launched today, Citizen Evidence Lab is an outstanding resource for journalists, or anyone else, for assessing whether videos are real or fake. Amnesty’s agenda is straightforward: “To assist human rights researchers to systematically assess citizen videos that depict potential human rights violations”. However, benefits for news gathering cannot be overstated.
Hat-tip goes to Nieman Journalism Lab for posting about the tools, which include a step-by-step how-to guide that “integrates best practices of citizen video authentication and brings the myriad of required verification steps into one, linear format”, according to Amnesty. There are lots of useful tools here, and I strongly encourage review of these how-to ones, many of which predate today’s launch. That makes me wonder how much is really new versus packaged as a new resource. Regardless, Amnesty serves a cornucopia of valuables for anyone actually willing to do the work of validating videos. I worry too few news gatherers will make the effort.
I can’t express how much we enjoyed hosting Richard Abendroth, Andreas Hochmuth, and Jake Mas. The young men, all in their earlier twenties, motorcycled across the country, from Maryland to California. They left here yesterday heading up the coast, with an eventual destination of Seattle before traveling back East.
These are fine young men, whose comradery and energy inspire me. Jake’s description of the three huddled together under the rocks at La Jolla Cove watching the sun set over the Pacific for the first time was evocative. “Friends forever” is more than a cliché. It is a living vital force as demonstrated by the travelers’ familiarity and trust.
Today, I bought Neko a cat tree—found on Craigslist—from a woman who makes them in her home. “I’m trying to get off welfare”, she told me. I paid $60, and I felt guilty for her giving such a good deal. I didn’t negotiate for better price.
I love enterprising people. Don’t you?
This is our Uglydoll family. My wife keeps them in a traditional Micmac basket, which the folks back home in Aroostook County use for the potato harvest.
The Mi’kmaq tribe is native to and mostly lives in the Maritime provinces of Canada. We bought the basket, which has sentimental value because of my younger days as a potato picker, from the Aroostook band of Micmacs in 1996. White as I am, one of ancestors is Micmac.
For anyone wondering why my online writing volume is way done, I can explain. My vision is in a state of crisis. The decline occurred slowly until I could no longer ignore it. With different health insurance situation, I would have acted sooner to fix the problem. But when finances are tight and health-care expenses high, you make sacrifices—even where you don’t want to.
I have macular edema in both eyes, which is swelling of the retina, or fluid leaking into it. The ailment affects the central vision area, causing visual distortion. The first signs manifested in my right eye in 2011. A retina specialist recommended laser surgery to repair scarring left by capillaries that had leaked and healed. But we were uninsured then, as now, and the cost was prohibitive for the family budget. I could see well enough, and cancelled treatment.
Two years ago this month, I adopted Chromebook as my primary PC. Except for brief betrayal last summer, mine is the Chromie lifestyle since. “Can I use Chromebook as my primary PC?” It’s a question I see often across the Interwebs. The answer is different: You can use Chromebook as your only computer.
The only PCs in my home are Chromebooks. There are no Macs or Windows machines doing double duty. Chromebook is more than good enough. Most people will be surprised just how satisfying Chromebook can be—and how affordable. For 96 cents more than the cost of one entry-level MacBook Air, you can buy from Amazon four HP Chromebook 11s. User benefits are surprisingly similar.
This car is in my neighborhood. I shot the photo using Google Nexus 5 with HDR+ mode. Colors and contrast are accurate as the eye sees. That’s what a good phone camera should give.
I learned about the change yesterday, unhappily. File this story under “read the fineprint department”. Since Apple introduced its extended warranty plan, I have praised the benefits and plucked down the extra $99 for every new iOS device. AppleCare+ extends standard repair coverage to two years and offers fairly affordable replacement—up to two times. Somehow I missed that Apple raised replacement price to $79 from $49 for iPhone.
The saga started around the midday meal. My daughter expressed amazement how last week her iPhone 5s popped out of her jeans and fell from a third-story balcony. No damage. Twenty-minutes later, while we sorted clothes for the thrift store in the garage, she fumbled the device, which fell face flat onto the cement—shattering the screen. No words can describe either of our reactions. The irony was so thick my eyeglasses fogged.
The more I ponder Apple’s Beats acquisition, the less sense it makes. Buying big well-known brands that compete with yours is usually a bad idea—worse when the acquirer owns no foreign brands. Extinguishing the big name, as Microsoft does with Nokia, is marketing murder. There’s no place for the Beats brand in the Apple lexicon. The gun is drawn and ready to fire.
What I do see is another sign that Apple has lost its way. Tim Cook is a very able CEO, but as stated previously he is Star Trek’s Spock without Captain Kirk (Steve Jobs). Cook’s approach to business logistics, while brilliant, unmakes Apple. Beats is an acquisition that is off-key—out of tune with the culture that made the fruit-logo company great. As such, on this Thursday in May, comes my confession. I was wrong five years ago in post “Why Apple succeeds, and always will“. That company is gone. But it can come back.
I snapped this cat around sunset under overcast skies using HTC One M8. Both renditions are cropped. The left is otherwise untouched. To the right, I applied the phone’s UFocus feature. The One uses a duo-lens system to capture photo and additional depth information. I applied depth-of-field centerpoint to the cat’s face, which blurs rest of the image. I cropped afterwards. UFocus can also change the focal point, even after shooting.
Quite a few reviewers ding The One for having only a 4-megapixel camera. I shake my head and laugh. Look back a few years when 4MP was state of the art, and the same reviewers raved. Here’s the problem I see: Relativity. Making relative assumptions about A to B. Not long ago people praised 4MP for printing large photos, close-cropping, etc.—cited criticisms today. Now that there is 8MP and greater, 4MP is looked down upon.