Rexfeng

David Pierce, writing for The Verge:

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced substantial internal reorganizations on Thursday, including the creation of a new team called “Platforms and Devices” that will oversee all of Google’s Pixel products, all of Android, Chrome, ChromeOS, Photos, and more. The team will be run by Rick Osterloh, who was previously the SVP of devices and services, overseeing all of Google’s hardware efforts. Hiroshi Lockheimer, the longtime head of Android, Chrome, and ChromeOS, will be taking on other projects inside of Google and Alphabet.

This is a huge change for Google, and it likely won’t be the last one. There’s only one reason for all of it, Osterloh says: AI. “This is not a secret, right?” he says. Consolidating teams “helps us to be able to do full-stack innovation when that’s necessary,” Osterloh says.

I’m sure this is about AI, but I think it’s also about getting the company’s shit together and forming a cohesive strategy for integration with their consumer devices. Lost amid the schadenfreude surrounding the near-universal panning of Humane’s AI Pin is the question of, well, what are the device form factors we need for AI-driven features? I would argue, strenuously, that the phone is the natural AI device. It already has: always-on networking, cameras, a screen, microphones, and speakers. Everyone owns one and almost everyone takes theirs with them almost everywhere they go.

Putting all of Android under a new division led by the guy in charge of Pixel devices since 2016 says to me that Google sees AI not primarily as a way to make Android better, in general, but to make Pixel devices better, specifically. Best-of-class AI, only on Pixels, could be the sort of differentiation that actually results in Pixels gaining traction.

I saw this new iPhone 15 commercial a few times over the weekend, watching basketball. (Congrats to the South Carolina women and UConn men, both of whom won championships convincingly.) The gist of the commercial is that you shouldn’t worry about deleting photos to free up storage, because modern iPhones have plenty of space. The commercial-ending tagline as our protagonist stops deleting photos and resumes shooting new ones of his adorable dog: “Lots of storage for lots of photos / Relax it’s iPhone 15”.

It’s true that the iPhones 15, 14, and 13 all start with 128 GB of storage, which I think is the perfect baseline storage capacity. Only the so-old-it-still-has-a-home-button 3rd-gen iPhone SE starts at 64 GB. Especially when you’re talking about photos — which is what this commercial is about — 128 GB is a lot of on-device storage.

But this commercial made me want to yell at my TV each time it came on: “The problem is iCloud storage, not on-device storage!” The free tier of iCloud remains just 5 GB, and the $1/month paid tier offers just 50 GB, which may not be enough to back up even a 64 GB iPhone SE. I’m an outlier — 660 GB in iCloud Photos alone — but my wife, a casual/occasional photographer, has 55 GB in iCloud Photos. Even people who don’t shoot many photos in a year can wind up with large photo libraries because they’ve been using iPhones for 10–15 years.

I’d much rather have constrained storage on-device, with ample storage online, than the other way around. iOS does a great job in this situation with the (on by default) “Optimize iPhone Storage” option in Settings → Photos. But the other way around is surely the situation for many, if not most, iPhone users: more space on device than storage in iCloud. And no amount of cleverness in iOS can protect a user with un-backed-up photos and videos if they lose or break their iPhone.

Am I missing something? It feels like this new commercial is just whistling past the single biggest shortcoming in the Apple ecosystem.

Chris Quinn, in his Letter From the Editor column at The Cleveland Plain Dealer:

The north star here is truth. We tell the truth, even when it offends some of the people who pay us for information.

The truth is that Donald Trump undermined faith in our elections in his false bid to retain the presidency. He sparked an insurrection intended to overthrow our government and keep himself in power. No president in our history has done worse.

This is not subjective. We all saw it. Plenty of leaders today try to convince the masses we did not see what we saw, but our eyes don’t deceive. (If leaders began a yearslong campaign today to convince us that the Baltimore bridge did not collapse Tuesday morning, would you ever believe them?) Trust your eyes. Trump on Jan. 6 launched the most serious threat to our system of government since the Civil War. You know that. You saw it.

The facts involving Trump are crystal clear, and as news people, we cannot pretend otherwise, as unpopular as that might be with a segment of our readers. There aren’t two sides to facts. People who say the earth is flat don’t get space on our platforms. If that offends them, so be it.

There’s no need for any straight news publication to tie itself in knots over Trump and Trumpism. There are all sorts of reasons left-leaning Americans were opposed to right-leaning policies when Trump was president. Likewise, there are all sorts of reasons right-leaning Americans are opposed to left-leaning policies of the Biden administration. That’s called politics. And it makes sense that straight news publications try to stay above the fray on those divides.

What Trump did after losing the 2020 election isn’t on that spectrum. As Quinn put it so well, you know that. You saw it. We all saw it. It’s that simple.

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Chicago, D.C., Los Angeles, Boca Raton, Boston, and Dallas are on the docket

H&H Bagels reigned Uptown for 40 years: In its comeback — first on the Upper East Side in 2014, and now as a chain — the company hopes to be the best-known bagel shop in the country.

Two NYC locations will open in March or April — one in Penn Station (Penn 1 LIRR concourse, 32nd Street at Seventh Avenue), and the other in Kips Bay (429 Third Avenue at East 30th Street). The bigger play is the nationwide franchise rollouts, starting with Boca Raton and Chicago, followed by the first of ten locations over several years in Washington, D.C. Los Angeles will get at least one shop this year, and, toward the end of 2024, expect Dallas and Boston.

There could be more, depending on construction, says CEO Jay Rushin. In preparation for the rollout, the company graduated from the company logo he “drew on the back of a napkin” to new branding.

The new stores will serve bagels that are shipped from a production facility in Woodside, Queens. Two weeks ago, the company opened a 20,000 square-foot bakery that can produce 9,000 bagels an hour. At the new locations, bagels will be kettle-boiled and parbaked, then frozen and shipped to stores, where they’ll be finished in special ovens. The only location of the four currently open that boils and bakes them in house is the Upper East Side shop. (Other currently open locations include the Upper West Side, JFK and LaGuardia airports, as well as Moynihan Hall.)

Dylan Nelson/H&H Bagels

Founded in 1972 by Helmer Toro and Hector Hernandez, the original H&H Bagel was as classic as it gets — the New York Times said of H&H that it was the neighborhood’s “most celebrated destination for what is quite possibly the Upper West Side’s most iconic food.” The shop was famous among locals and tourists alike, fueled by name checks in shows like Seinfeld and Sex and the City.

In 2010, Toro was indicted for tax fraud, grand larceny, falsifying records, and violating labor law, and had to spend 50 weekends in jail and pay a $500,000 fine. In 2011, H&H Bagels filed for bankruptcy, closed the original Upper West Side shop, followed by Midtown shuttering in 2012. In the aftermath, in 2014, Rushin says he bought the name and the assets, including a lone location on the Upper East Side at 1551 Second Avenue at East 81st Street that’s still open. A former Wall Streeter, Rushin says he wanted to buy a brand that was “an interesting business to acquire,” and unlike Wall Street, “was not cyclical.”

While the original cash-only H&H sold just bagels, never sliced or toasted, by 2016, Rushin says the shops expanded the menu to include sandwiches, and more business shifted from breakfast to lunch. Today, three-quarters of New Yorkers get their H&H bagels toasted, Rushin says. And the Upper East Side shop is the busiest — for now.

Pokémon Concierge, the stop-motion animated series that launched on Netflix in December, is a total vibe. After spending time watching a lovely series about a Pokémon resort, I almost don’t want to go back to battling and training. I just want to hang out with all these little guys and take a neverending vacation.…

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Like many major tech companies, Amazon is looking to cut costs. Its Twitch division recently laid off 35 percent of its head count (just over 500 employees) and now it's reducing how much streamers make from each Twitch Prime subscription.

Every Amazon Prime member can toss a Prime subscription in the direction of their favorite Twitch streamer at no extra cost. Since that program debuted in 2016, streamers have received the same amount from Twitch Prime subs as they do from a base paid subscription. That's changing, though.

Starting on June 3, Twitch is moving to a fixed-rate model that bases Prime payouts based on the location of a Prime subscriber (and how much they pay for Amazon Prime)."We believe this is the right structure for the program going forward and are making this change to ensure that the monthly Twitch subscription available to Prime members is a long-term, sustainable benefit for the Twitch community," CEO Dan Clancy wrote in a blog post.

Clancy says that for most countries, the payout rate is dropping by less than five percent, but there are steeper drops elsewhere. For instance, a Prime sub from a viewer in the US will soon be worth $2.25 to a streamer, down from $2.50. That's a drop of 10 percent. A Prime sub from someone in the UK will soon be worth $1.80, while one from a viewer based in Turkey will pay a streamer just nine cents.

As Clancy points out, Prime subscriptions are just one of the ways that streamers can earn money on the platform, alongside tips and regular paid subscriptions. He also announced some changes to the Partner Plus program, which is designed to give smaller creators a bigger slice of the pie.

Twitch is making it much easier for creators to benefit from improved revenue sharing. Until now, they've had to maintain at least 350 paid subscriptions for at least three months. That would qualify them for a 70 percent cut of subs for the next 12 months, up from 50 percent.

Starting on May 1, the platform is changing Partner Plus to a two-tier Plus Program that's based on a points system. A base $5 subscription is worth one point, a $10 Tier 2 sub is worth two points and a $25 Tier 3 sub three points. Gift and Prime subs don't count toward points, but qualifying streamers will get a better cut of revenue from gifted subscriptions.

When a streamer earns at least 100 Plus points for three consecutive months (points reset on the first of each month), they'll receive a 60 percent split of subscription revenue from the next 12 months. If they maintain 350 Plus points, that revenue share jumps up to 70 percent in their favor. Clancy says these changes will enable three times as many streamers to qualify for improved revenue sharing. It should result in a solid increase in earnings for many of them, while giving those who hover around 300-350 points a bit more of a cushion instead of dropping back to a 50 percent revenue share

Twitch announced one more change to its revenue-sharing model. It's getting rid of the $100,000 cap on the 70-30 revenue split for high-earning creators. A change implemented last year saw that split drop to 50 percent after a streamer hit $100,000 in subscription revenue. This won't change anything for the vast majority of creators, but it could help Twitch convince high-profile streamers to stay on its platform instead of jumping to the likes of YouTube or Kick.

In the wake of the layoffs, Clancy said Twitch is still unprofitable (streaming live video to millions of people simultaneously isn't cheap!), so something had to give. While the Twitch Prime changes will be hard to swallow for some streamers, the perk wasn't really sustainable as is. Reducing payouts is better for creators than the program going away entirely. Twitch will also be hoping that improved revenue sharing will push creators to convince their viewers to shell out for a paid subscription instead.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

MacRumors has shared multiple details on the iPhone 16’s design, including the unveiling of a new button that is planned for the devices, the Capture Button. While we’ve known the name and location of the button, the internal information that we’ve obtained does not detail what it will be used for.

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the Capture Button will be able to record video. In this week’s Power On newsletter, Gurman says that the iPhone 16 models will include a “new dedicated button for taking video.” [...]

The Capture button will be a capacitive button with haptic feedback rather than a mechanical button, and it is expected to include a force sensor that can recognize pressure. The location of the button may make it easy to trigger, but if it is activated via pressure, it could be that holding it down will launch into the camera and allow video recording to start.

If this comes true — and I hope it does — the button might default to shooting video, but I’d bet the house it will be configurable, like this year’s Action button. When using an iPhone as a camera, the main thing I miss from dedicated cameras is a hardware shutter button. With dedicated cameras, the shutter button can be pressed halfway to set exposure and focus, and only captures on a full press. A force-sensitive Capture button could work similarly.

You can set the iPhone 15 Pro’s Action button to act as a shutter button for the Camera app, but it’s in the wrong location on the frame of the phone. I don’t want to press a shutter button with my left thumb, I want to press it with my right index finger. (You can orient the Action button to be on the top right by holding the iPhone horizontally with camera at the bottom, but that feels awkward to me.)

We believed we were capable of anything. We had already used 22,000 bagels to test 280 brands of toasters in North America. We sent twenty-five reporters to forty-five different countries to test six hundred kinds of alarm clocks. We recruited ninety ex-CIA operatives to embed themselves in every city in India to test every last brand of cooling sheet.

But we were also under a lot of pressure. In 2019, when the New York Times increased our budget from $2 million per year to $500 million per year, the stated expectation was that we would subject every product ever created to twelve months of continuous, hard use by poor cooks, over-sleepers, and profuse sweaters. Once, we received a letter from top brass under our door. The letter contained two words: “TIRES. NOW.”

Within a week, we had scoured millions of records for the nation’s 155 most-absentminded drivers and sent them to the wettest part of British Columbia, the snowiest area of Patagonia, and the hottest road in the Australian Outback. A year later, we published our report: “We Tested Twelve Thousand Kinds of Tires. Here Is the One to Rule Them All.”

Only now do we understand that we were becoming overconfident, even arrogant. When we tested basketball sneakers, we asked our reporters to see how much cushioning they gave you if you jumped from a moving train. When we created “The Most Comprehensive Gift Guide for Three-Year-Olds Ever Devised,” our reporters cut up and ingested every toy in the Mall of America. Our record was impeccable: no broken bones, no sicknesses, no chemical-induced hallucinations—except for the reporter who ate Persimmon, the hippie American Girl doll. Persimmon received a grade of “Recommended with Reservations.”

So when top brass slid an envelope under our door that said, “EVERY SINGLE ARTIFICIAL CHRISTMAS TREE: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE,” we didn’t hesitate. We selected our eighty-six most experienced testers and sent them to 189 countries to test 1,500 faux firs. After six months, we had graded 1,200 trees on color, beauty, sturdiness, ease of storage, and overall joy quotient. And yes, the rumors are true: in order to see how easily they combusted, we also subjected them to a flame thrower.

But we knew it wasn’t enough. We still hadn’t tested the artificial Christmas trees of the future.

So we invented a time machine. It wasn’t hard. Then we invented six more models of time machine, tested them, and selected the best one to go into the future to test three hundred brands of artificial Christmas trees that would be released between 2070 and 2180.

Arguably, this was when things went sideways. Of the sixty reporters we sent to the future, only eighteen returned at the designated time and place. Their flame-retardant analyses were excellent, but they also spoke of a green AI obelisk located in the Nevada desert that “is our government now.” They kept scratching their arms and became increasingly worried because “toad flu starts as a rash.” Four of them were in a “pansexual post-marriage marriage” and were very happy—for now.

Another thirty returned eventually, and they were not faring better. Because the substance “makes you far less susceptible to toad flu,” several were now made of tin. One spoke frequently of sending his semen to the Nevada desert and offering it to the Obelisk. One of them, having come out of an eight-person pansexual post-marriage marriage, said he was “emotionally rather drained.”

To the families of the twelve who still haven’t returned, please know that we haven’t given up on your loved ones. We know they are somewhere between 2070 and 2180. Though the signal is fuzzier than we were hoping for, we also have a good idea of where they are, due to a trans-temporal tracker chip we installed in their buttocks. Of the 950 trans-temporal tracker chips we tested, this was by far the best, and resulted in Orange Spine on only 12 percent of testers.

We are currently preparing a team of fifty people to enter time machines, find the missing reporters, and bring them back. Our motivation has never been stronger. It’s winter, after all, and we need your loved ones to test 28,000 kinds of humidifiers.

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors:

Last month I wrote about how Apple’s cascade of macOS alerts and warnings ruin the Mac upgrade experience. [...]

This issue was brought home to me last week when I was reviewing the M3 iMac and the M3 MacBook Pro. As a part of reviewing those computers, I used Migration Assistant to move a backup of my Mac Studio to the new systems via a USB drive. Sometimes I try to review a computer with nothing migrated over, but it can be a real slowdown and I didn’t really have any time to spare last week.

Anyway, by migrating, I got to (twice) experience Apple’s ideal process of moving every user from one Mac to the next. You start up your new computer, migrate from a backup of the old computer, and then start using the new one. There’s a lot that’s great about this process, and it’s so much better than what we used to have to do to move files over from one Mac to another.

And yet all of Apple’s security alerts got in the way again and spoiled the whole thing. Here’s a screenshot I took right after my new Mac booted for the first time after migration.

I went through the exact same thing. Except if I had taken a screenshot of all the security-permission alerts I had to go though, there would have been more of them — and Snell’s screenshot looks like a parody. Back in the heyday of the “Get a Mac” TV ad campaign, Apple justifiably lambasted Windows Vista for its security prompts, but that’s exactly the experience you get after running Migration Assistant on a Mac today. It’s terrible.

Don’t get me wrong: Migration Assistant is borderline miraculous. It’s a wonderful tool that seemingly just keeps getting better. But MacOS itself stores too many security/privacy settings in a way that are tied to the device, not your user account. There ought to be some way to OK all these things in one fell swoop.

As Snell says, setting up a new Mac should be a joy, not a chore. Migration Assistant takes care of so much, but these cursed security prompts spoil the experience.

The chess world was rocked by a cheating scandal last September after former world champion Magnus Carlsen insinuated that an opponent, grandmaster Hans Niemann, had used foul play to beat him at the Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis, Missouri. Now, some British YouTubers have put the most outlandish theory that arose from…

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Amazon gives Apple's product pages the special treatment and keeps them relatively clear of unrelated ads, signifying an arrangement between the companies, according to Insider. When the Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust lawsuit against the e-commerce retailer in September, it accused Amazon of "deliberately increasing junk ads that worsen search quality." However, Insider found that the pages for Apple products, such as "iPhone" and "iPad," show a clean page layout with no ads or recommendation. Meanwhile, products from rival brands, including Samsung Galaxy and Microsoft Surface, show multiple banner ads and several sponsored recommendations from other brands. 

We tried it out ourselves and did find that Apple's product pages do look cleaner. Microsoft Surface Pro's, however, showed a carousel of sponsored listings "4 stars and above," along with products related to the specific item and multiple banner ads. Insider says Apple asked Amazon to keep its product pages free of ad clutter back in 2018, based on an email shared by the House Judiciary Committee. "We understand that Apple does not want to drive sales to competing brands in search or detail pages," Jeff Wilke, who was then Amazon's retail CEO, reportedly wrote. 

Apple has admitted to the publication that it has some sort of an agreement with Amazon that prevents other companies from buying ads for "specific Apple-related brand queries" on the latter's marketplace. They can still buy ads for key phrases with an Apple name, say "iPad keyboard case," but not for "iPad" itself. "Apple's goal for the Agreements was to create the best possible customer experience, and others are free to do the same," Apple's representative said in a statement. They added that the deal was also meant to address the company's issues with counterfeit products on the platform, because it used to send Amazon "hundreds of thousands of take-down notices" before then. 

While it's not clear whether money exchanged hands between the two companies, the email shared by the House talked about a potential financial deal. Amazon reportedly turned down Apple's request at first, but Wilke wrote in the email: "We cannot alter our organic search algorithm to return only Apple products in the search results when an Apple team is searched... Apple would need to purchase these placements or compensate Amazon for the lost ad revenue."

For people with jobs that demand a ceaseless happy face, Smile Mask Syndrome (SMS) reveals the darker side of obligatory cheer. Sufferers of SMS, primarily young women in the Japanese service industry, exhibit depression and physical ailments as a result of being forced to smile for hours on end. — Read the rest

All images © Victoria Rose Richards, shared with permission

Aerial fields of vision emerge from Victoria Rose Richards’ embroidered landscapes. Setting scenes from above, the artist (previously) uses thread to achieve a variety of patterns and textures, implementing satin stitches and French knots to form curiously shaped fields, patches of trees, and bodies of water. The majority of her pieces take at least 10 to 25 hours each, with every meticulous detail shining through at the end.

Richards is inherently connected to her natural surroundings. Raised and based in South West Devon, nostalgic vistas of farmlands, woodlands, and the countryside make up the subjects of her pieces, emanating feelings of homeliness and familiarity. The artist shares with Colossal that she loves depicting fields because of “the different formations and patterns they make, some being orderly and others higgledy-piggledy, some looking naturally formed and others forced.”

Richards’ embroideries will be included in the ING Discerning Eye Exhibition starting November 17. This winter, the artist is also creating calendars with images of her work, so keep up with her Instagram and website for the latest updates.

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Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Victoria Rose Richards Surveys Land From Above in Atmospheric Embroidered Landscapes appeared first on Colossal.

Artist Alex Chinneck's work "From the knees of my nose to the belly of my toes" turned the side of an abandoned, crumbling home into a skateboarder's dream. I'm not sure if the house was actually skateable, but it is in spirit. — Read the rest

Update 11/03/2023 6:20 p.m. ET: The Verge reports that Xbox chief Phil Spencer has reversed the decision to end free Game Pass Ultimate access for non-Xbox Microsoft employees. In an internal memo, Spencer wrote:

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Seattle's ban on police "ruses", described as the policy of allowing officers to use lies and deception in the course of their work, is a "first-in-the-nation" policy, reports L.B. Gilbert. It applies to anything said in media or in any way that will "shock the conscience." — Read the rest

Axios:

New House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in his first interview as speaker that now is not the time to discuss legislation to address the scourge of mass shootings, adding: “The problem is the human heart, not guns.”

Since no other civilized country on the planet has massacres like this, Johnson is implicitly arguing that the problem isn’t the human heart, but the American heart.

Or, maybe the problem is the fact that America is the only country where military-grade assault rifles are not just legal, but legally obtainable by mentally ill angry men like this lunatic in Maine.

Either we are the worst people on the planet, or we have the worst gun laws.

Why it matters: President Biden and Democrats in Congress are urging action in the wake of the shooting in Lewiston, Maine that left 18 people dead. Johnson argued that it was inappropriate to discuss gun control “in the middle of the crisis,” and that he believes, “it’s not the weapon, it’s the underlying problem.”

This “now is not the time” argument gets trotted out by Republicans after each and every gun massacre. Right after their tweets offering “thoughts and prayers”. Bullshit. The aftermath of a massacre is the time to demand sane gun control measures. That’s when the issue is clarified. Would Republicans argue that October 8 was “not the right time” for Israel to discuss Hamas terrorism? Was September 12, 2001 “not the right time” to discuss Al-Qaeda? Should FDR have delivered an address to the nation on December 8, 1941, advising that we relax, let cooler heads prevail, because the aftermath of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor “was not the time” to consider retaliating?

Imagine a Venezuelan refugee illegally crosses the U.S.-Mexico border next week and kills 18 U.S. citizens with a bomb he carried across. Would Hannity have a guest on Fox News — say, Mike Johnson — arguing that “now is not the time, in the middle of the crisis, to talk about border security”?

Our emotional responses to these massacres are valid. Strike while the iron, and our blood, is running hot. Let our emotions fuel the urgency of our attempts to respond with overwhelmingly popular gun control legislation, and let Republicans head into elections in two weeks opposing them.

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I so very badly wish to push every single one of these buttons. You know they’d have a satisfying clickiness. (Via Present and Correct on Threads.)

Back in the day, you might have wondered: Hey, why does Mario take damage when he bumps into a Goomba in the original Super Mario Bros.? Turns out, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto had an answer: The enemies were biting you. We just never actually saw that happen. Well, that changes in the soon-to-be-released Super…

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