A new online journal, published by Apple, about machine learning. A while back, there was a story about how important publishing is in this field. While this doesn’t meet all those needs, it’s a nice look into what the people on this team are working on, at least to an extent.
There’s even an RSS feed.
This week on my new tech Q&A show with Serenity Caldwell:
Michael wants to keep his location private on social media, Neal is looking into iCloud Family Sharing and Max just wants to keep his AirPods clean. Then, a fix for a forgetful Spotlight and the country Ren calls home.
Oh, and Ren has a fake child in her iCloud account, stuck there until they turn 18.
This week on the most educational podcast on your iPhone:
Many people have gone over Niagara Falls in things like barrels and giant rubber balls. You shouldn’t try it.
My thanks to our sponsor:
This week on Liftoff, Jason and I were honored to talk with Dr. Katie Mack. She is a theoretical astrophysicist working on dark matter at the University of Melbourne. On this episode, she explains what dark matter is, and the potential it has to change our understanding of the universe, physics and more.
It was a real honor to talk to Dr. Mack, and I hope you enjoy our interview. Thanks to Blue Apron for sponsoring this week’s episode.
Panic’s FTP client for macOS just received a huge update. The new version is faster, supports more cloud services, and now syncs your servers with other Macs and iOS devices. Interestingly, but not shockingly, Transmit 5 is not in the Mac App Store.
I’ve used Transmit for a decade, and was glad to upgrade today. Go check it out.
Eric Berger, writing about the Soviet Union’s Buran space shuttle program, which was mothballed after a single flight in 1988:
When I visited Russia and Kazakhstan in 2014, one of the Buran mock-ups was on display in Moscow, and a second vehicle could be toured on the grounds of a museum at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. This is the spaceport where Yuri Gagarin launched from more than half a century ago and where Russian and US astronauts still fly to the International Space Station today. During our visit, we saw a hangar where additional Burans were rumored to exist from a distance and asked to go inside. We were given a perfunctory no, so we didn’t.
Now, two adventurers who post videos on YouTube and style themselves as “Exploring the Unbeaten Path” have posted a dramatic video after sneaking onto the well-guarded grounds of the Kazakhstan spaceport at night. The duo spent the next day in the hidden hangar of the Buran vehicles taking impressive photos, videos, and capturing some pretty amazing drone footage of two mostly completed orbiters.
The video is great:
On this week’s Connected, Federico is busy chasing turtles, so Myke and I got to talk about Echo rumors, phones you can squeeze, and macOS High Sierra.
Thanks to our sponsors this week:
Today is World Emoji Day. Started by Emojipedia founder and very handsome man Jeremy Burge in 2014, it’s a day to celebrate the tiny icons that have taken over much of our communication.
To help mark the day, Apple is previewing the new emoji coming to the company’s operating systems later this year. Beyond the press release, Apple Podcasts is getting into the day in a big way:
Happy #WorldEmojiDay!
Come play along with us and turn podcast titles into emojis with #PodcastEmoji.— Apple Podcasts (@ApplePodcasts) July 17, 2017
Over on iTunes, the Movies store has emojified a bunch of movie titles.
The date for World Emoji Day is not random, as the holiday’s FAQ mentions:
July 17 is famously ???? displayed on the iOS Calendar Emoji, which makes it the perfect date for ???? World Emoji Day.
July 17 has been part of Apple’s calendaring history for a long time. If you use a Mac, this should be a familiar site:
iCal for the Mac was introduced at MacWorld new York in 2002 on — you guessed it — July 17.
This month in my MacStories column, I wrote about three of the most adorable Mac notebooks ever shipped: the PowerBook Duo, the 12-inch PowerBook G4 and the original MacBook Air.
My thanks to Balance for Mac for sponsoring 512 Pixels once again this week. Balance is a powerful menubar app for your money built by a team from Apple, Stripe and Ethereum. It’s super nifty.
The last time the Mac Mini was updated was October 16, 2014. Today is June 12, 2017. I had to use an online calculator to be sure, but the results are exactly 1000 days since the last Mac Mini update. This isn’t nearly as bad as the Mac Pro update debacle, but it’s still worth noting.
Damn.