Rolandt

• In April 2019, DataCamp hired an outside firm investigate their mishandling of Jonathan Cornelissen’s sexual assault of Kara Woo.

• On June 12, Anurima Bhargava (one of the investigators) contacted me by email to ask if I would speak with her.

• On June 13, I replied:

I would be happy to take an hour to speak with you next week provided I’m able to record the meeting. I would also like to ask some questions about the discrepancy between what I was told on July 4, 2018 about the non-disparagement provision in the proposed separation agreement (http://third-bit.com/2019/04/15/an-exchange-with-datacamp.html) and DataCamp’s statement on April 24, 2019 that this agreement “specifically and expressly would have permitted them to raise concerns about the company” (https://www.datacamp.com/community/blog/board-update). If you’re OK with this, then please let me know when would be a good time.

• Five days later (June 18), Ms. Bhargava emailed to say, “Would you be open to discussing briefly? I’d like to see what may work for us both.”

• I responded the same day: “…while I mean no disrespect, I’m very reluctant to engage in any discussion at this point without some kind of record - I’d be happy to exchange a few more emails if that works for you.”

Ms. Bhargava never replied. So far as I can tell, the report does not explain the discrepancy I mention above. It also does not tell readers how many current or former DataCamp employees are prevented from speaking publicly about their experiences because of non-disclosure or non-disparagement agreements. (Please note that non-US citizens sometimes feel pressure to sign such agreements because of their visa status.)

1. Insist on a record of all conversations. The biggest mistake you can make is to assume good faith on the part of those who fired you.

2. Take notes of everything and make sure they’re timestamped.

3. Pause before speaking, posting, or tweeting.

4. Keep your public statements brief: people may care, but most won’t care as much as you do.

5. If you want to correct something online, add a timestamped amendment: do not just take it down or edit it.

6. Speak directly to all the issues rather than omitting or ignoring things you’d rather not discuss. (It’s hypocritical to criticize your opponents for spinning things or leaving things out if you’re doing it too.)

7. Don’t sign any agreement that might prevent you from speaking about moral or legal concerns.
   • Unless you feel your immigration status or essential health benefits are threatened, in which case make sure the agreement explicitly covers your concerns before signing it.

8. Don’t cite the law until your lawyer tells you to.

9. Go for long walks, cook some healthy meals, pick up the guitar you haven’t touched in years: do anything so long as it gets you off the screen for a while.

10. Remember: if this is the worst thing that ever happens to you, you had a pretty good life.

The upcoming Firefox 70 release will update the security and privacy indicators in the URL bar.

In recent years we have seen a great increase in the number of websites that are delivered securely via HTTPS. At the same time, privacy threats have become more prevalent on the web and Firefox has shipped new technologies to protect our users against tracking.

To better reflect this new environment, the updated UI takes a step towards treating secure HTTPS as the default method of transport for websites, instead of a way to identify website security. It also puts greater emphasis on user privacy.

This post will outline the major changes to our primary security indicators:

• A new permanent “protections” icon to access information about the restrictions Firefox is applying to the page to protect your privacy.
• A new crossed-out lock icon as indicator for insecure HTTP and a new color for the lock icon that marks sites delivered securely.
• A new placement for Extended Validation (EV) indicators.

 

Streamlining Security and Identity Indicators

Firefox traditionally marked sites delivered via a secure transport mechanism with a green lock icon. Sites delivered via insecure mechanisms got no additional security indicators. All sites were marked with an “information” icon, which served as an access point for more site information.

As part of the changes in Firefox 70, we will start showing a crossed-out lock icon as permanent indicator for sites delivered via the insecure protocols HTTP and FTP. Over two years ago, we started showing this indicator for insecure login pages. We also announced our intent to expand by showing a negative indicator for all HTTP pages as HTTPS adoption increases. By now, Firefox loads about 80% of pages via HTTPS.

The formerly green lock icon will now become gray, with the intention of de-emphasizing the default (secure) connection state and instead putting more emphasis on broken or insecure connections.

We will remove the “information” icon. The lock icon will be the new entry point for accessing security and identity information about the website.

 

Moving the EV indicator out of the URL Bar

A recent study by Thompson et al. shows that the display of the company name and country in the URL bar when the website is using an Extended Validation TLS certificate does not add any additional security parameters. One of the biggest downsides with this approach is that it requires the user to notice the absence of the EV indicator on a malicious site. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that EV certificates with colliding entity names can be generated by choosing a different jurisdiction.

As a result, we will relocate the EV indicator to the “Site Information” panel that is accessed by clicking on the lock icon. This change will hide the indicator from the majority of our users while keeping it accessible for those who need to access it. It also avoids ambiguities that could previously arise when the entity name in the URL bar was cut off to make space for the URL.

 

Adding a new Protections Icon

The protections icon will be the entry point for the privacy properties of every page. It lets the user know about trackers or cryptominers on the page and how Firefox restricts them to improve privacy and performance. The icon will have 3 different states.

Protections Enabled
When no tracking activity is detected and protections are not necessary, the shield shows in grey.

Protections Active
When protections are active on the current page, the shield displays a very subtle animation and adopt the purple gradient.

Protections Disabled
When the user has disabled protections for the site, the shield shows with a strike-through.

 

We are excited to roll out this improved new UI and will continue to evolve the indicators to give Firefox users an easy way to assess their privacy and security anywhere on the modern web.

A big thank you to all the individuals that contributed to this effort.

The post Improved Security and Privacy Indicators in Firefox 70 appeared first on Mozilla Security Blog.

This blog entry is somewhat based on portions of a talk I gave last week to the Chicago .NET Users Group.

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.NET Framework first arrived on the scene in 2002. In the next decade or so, it became very successful. Extremely successful. It is the platform under countless pieces of software, across server, client, and web. And it is installed on hundreds of millions of computers.

In fact, the specific way that .NET Framework is installed helped make it a victim of its own success. Because it is installed as part of the Windows operating system, there is only one instance of .NET Framework per computer, shared by all programs that need it.

An axiom here is that backward compatibility is very important. Users hate it when they update a system component and something else stops working.

When .NET Framework was young, each new release was bold and cool (hey look, generics! wow, async/await!). Later, each release became more and more conservative (er, we've got TLS 1.2 now).

Eventually, .NET Framework became that moment in a Jenga game where every possible move is too risky.

Again

Simultaneously, while .NET Framework was gradually losing its ability to change, the need for it to change was growing. When contrasted with other development ecosystems, and viewed in terms of major industry shifts like cloud and mobile, .NET was not aging gracefully.

At some point, folks inside Microsoft realized that the future of .NET would be much brighter if it could be open source, cross platform, and faster. But .NET Framework could not be any of those things without (at least the risk of) a compatibility break.

So it was time for a "reboot", which I mean in the Spider-Man sense of the word.

Every so often, the Spider-Man movie franchise starts over (usually from the beginning, as if we all really want to watch Uncle Ben die one more time). Why? Because the actors age, and because the context keeps changing.

The movie industry borrowed the word "reboot" from us computer folk so they could apply it to situations where they want to make something again. I'm just borrowing the word back, because their set of connotations are a pretty good fit. The future of .NET would be much brighter with a younger actor playing Peter Parker and a fresh approach across the board.

So if .NET Core were a movie, its title would be ".NET Core: A Way Forward", and its movie poster would have three big-name stars above the title:

• Cross Platform
• Open Source
• Better Performance

The original

What does this mean for .NET Framework?

Well, we can go back and re-watch Spider-Man 2 with Doc Ock anytime we want, right?

Actually, at the .NET Conf in September 2019, somebody from Microsoft addressed this issue with the F-word: "FOREVER".

Yes, they actually said, ".NET Framework is going to be supported FOREVER". Now I'm sure we're all eager to get more detail on what "forever" actually means, but it was a strong statement.

And that's good news. We have a choice. If we want to stay on .NET Framework, we can.

The bad news here is that we have a choice. A choice implies pros and cons, and there definitely are some, on both sides.

Choices

Yes, I was aiming for a chuckle by saying that the existence of a choice is both good news and bad news, but it's actually true. A choice implies the requirement to make a decision. That requires information and time. It can be stressful to try and figure out which sets of pros and cons are preferable. It is quite rational to (perhaps secretly) wish that you did not have a choice.

And not just in software. All kinds of product companies routinely underestimate the customer stress that results when you offer them a choice.

Why does FoodSaver have so many different models? Every one of them does essentially the same thing. (Here I am, trying to stay excited about this cool new sous vide approach, but the %#$@ food sealer company is making me think. And I'm getting angry about it.) As far as I can tell, their product lineup would be massively improved if they cut everything down to one model, or two at most.

What if .NET Core never happened?

Did Microsoft have a good reason for rudely giving its developers a choice?

Personally, I am very thankful that they did.

I mean, can you imagine what .NET would be like right now if it were still closed-source and Windows-only?

Details

To be fair, I am oversimplifying, by talking only about the forest and ignoring certain trees.

What about the specific pros and cons?

For example, one reason that .NET Core 3.0 is a huge release is the support for Windows Forms and WPF. For Windows desktop scenarios, this was a big shift in the pros-and-cons. Without WinForms and WPF, every Windows desktop app would have no way to move to .NET Core.

What about the other items that are getting left behind with .NET Framework?

• WCF
• WWF
• ASP.NET 4.x Web Forms
• System.Reflection.Emit
• etc

Lots of folks are asking questions. "Couldn't you'all have moved a few more of these over to the other side? Or even just ONE of them? (meaning, of course, the one that matters most to ME)"

It's not as if folks are asking for backward stuff, like putting Zendaya's MJ into Tobey Maguire's movies. This is more like wondering why the latest round of movies doesn't have Harry Osborn. Stuff is getting left behind, and people are wondering why.

I'm not gonna try to defend Microsoft's decisions at this level of detail. In each of these cases, bringing the technology along would reduce the "cons" of .NET Core, but they had to decide which ones are worth the trouble. They're smart folks, and I respect their decisions, but I admit it would probably be harder for me to say that if I had a big pile of WCF code.

Endgame

Taking the movie analogy a bit further, this is all one big saga. Each film is a story of its own, but it also supports the larger arc.

Some of the early films did much better with critics than they did at the box office. .NET Core 1.0 was groundbreaking work, but it wasn't a terribly compelling alternative for people on .NET Framework to switch.

The GitHub acquisition was that oddball film that is so very important to the saga even though most people don't understand it.

.NET Core 3.0 is a big-budget summer blockbuster that took forever to make and is now setting all kinds of box office records.

The Xamarin acquisition can be seen as another result that proceeded from the same basic decision that caused the producers to green-light .NET Core (make .NET be cross-platform and open source). So far, the Xamarin films feel a little bit disconnected from the main story line.

But this whole thing is heading toward a huge climax called .NET 5, the point where it all comes together.

(Whimsical aside for MCU fans: Remember the "on your left" moment from Avengers Endgame? .NET 5 is that moment, where all the characters "assemble". It is the scene where we learn, just as we suspected, that Miguel de Icaza was worthy of Mjolnir all along.)

.NET 5 is the grand ending of this multi-year phase.

And it is also the beginning of the next phase.

A ton of things happened behind the scenes to make this whole thing work, but one of the big moments was the difficult decision to leave .NET Framework behind.

[rant] Increasingly, in the contexts I operate in, I feel the distinction between data and information is something of a pre-digital pre-networked hang-up. Yes there’s a difference between e.g. measurements (-1, 0, 1, 2, 4) and an informative conclusion drawn from it (the world’s getting hotter), but in the common perception of both data and information as objects, there isn’t much useful distinction anymore between a database and a document. When digitised, they’re both objects that can be either, as it is in the eyes of the beholder and their use case. Context as always is key. If it was used as data, it was. If the same thing was used as information, it was. (An example is the European Commission’s documents. Information to most of us, but data for Google’s translation algorithms as its the largest body of text on the planet carefully translated into 23 languages)

There is often a difference in difficulty of processing it with machines, yes. Most what is called information in that sense is badly packaged badly marked-up data to machines. Structured data with meta-data and expressed relations (linked data e.g.) in that sense are large documents hard to read for human eyes. But is there any practical gain in terms of agency by making the distinction between data and information, in the context of digital processes? You can make a distinction between a datum (’42’) and a collection of that datum with more of it or other stuff (‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’). But a singular datum on its own is not what ever happens in real use cases where we discuss data and information as separate objects. As a pragmatist, I find I’ve mostly dropped the distinction.

Oh and please don’t extend the data-information sequence to data-information-knowledge-wisdom. The 1970’s DIKW model’s been the CS/IS mantra for decades, but there is no linearity or hierarchy between those four terms, and the implication the latter two are objectifiable is actively destructive. The D-I part served once to help explain how data was a strategic resource, which is still a very valid proposition, more than ever even as data is a geo-political factor now, but don’t assume a wider purpose of the model than that.

[/rant]

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The Canadian men's soccer team just defeated the United States for first time in 34 years 🇨🇦 twitter.com/CanadaSoccerEN…

Julia Carrie Wong @juliacarriew
no one over the age of 35 has friends

Small-m mirrors are a staple in practically every gym in America. But the big-M Mirror—a device that streams live and on-demand fitness classes from a companion app via a two-way video feed—is pushing the boundaries of connected fitness by putting a virtual instructor (and your own reflection) on a sleek screen meant for home use. I spent 10 days with the camera- and mic-equipped device, during which I took multiple classes, got acquainted with the company’s offerings, and hosted seven curious volunteers of all fitness levels for Mirror trials at Wirecutter HQ in New York. We found that using the Mirror is fun, and that its thoughtful details and varied, high-quality programming set it apart from typical streaming scenarios. But although it is beautifully made and nearly seamless to operate, the Mirror costs around $2,200 for the first year, including the required monthly subscription. That said, if your intention is to replace your gym membership or pricey fitness-class habit with in-home workouts that suit your schedule and approximate the feel of a boutique studio, the Mirror may be worth your consideration.

SWR Landesschau: Ein Kernkraftwerk verschwindet – Das Drama um Mülheim-Kärlich. (YouTube, 30min) “Die über Jahrzehnte schwelende dramatische Geschichte des einzigen Atomkraftwerks in Rheinland-Pfalz, das nur 13 Monate lang am Netz war.” (Landesschau vom 13.10.2019)

The most surprising revelation from yesterday’s Made by Google 19 keynote came in Google Senior Vice President of Devices and Services Rick Osterloh’s opening remarks:

If you look across all of Google’s products, from Search to Maps, Gmail to Photos, our mission is to bring a more helpful Google for you. Creating tools that help you increase your knowledge, success, health, and happiness. Now when we apply that mission to hardware and services, it means creating products like…Pixel phones, wearables, laptops, and Nest devices for the home. Each one is thoughtfully and responsibly designed to help you day to day without intruding on your life.

Did you catch that? Apparently Google has a new mission — to bring a more helpful Google to you. So much for organizing the world’s information!

To be clear, I’m overplaying what was surely a misstatement; five months ago, at the beginning of May’s Google I/O keynote, CEO Sundar Pichai both reiterated the company’s longstanding mission statement while also introducing the “helpful” phrasing that Osterloh used:

It all begins with our mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Today our mission feels as relevant as ever, but the way we approach it is constantly evolving. We are moving from a company that helps you find answers to a company that helps you get things done. This morning we’ll introduce you to many products built on a foundation of user trust and privacy…we want our products to work harder for you in the context of your job, your home, and your life. They all share a single goal: to be helpful, so we can be there for you big and small over the course of your day.

So “being helpful” is the company’s goal, not its mission statement. A fine distinction, perhaps, but I’m grateful for the misstatement: going back to Pichai’s comments was how I made sense of what was, at first viewing, a pretty boring and self-satisfied event.

Google’s Announcements

Google announced, in order:

• That Stadia, the company’s video game streaming service, would launch on November 19th
• Pixel Buds, the company’s AirPods competitor, which will ship in “Spring 2020”; there weren’t even working models for the press to try
• Pixelbook Go, the company’s third Chromebook, which will start shipping October 28
• New pricing for Nest Aware, the cloud recording service for Nest devices; instead of charging a fee per device Google will charge a flat fee per household. The new plans will launch in “early 2020”
• Nest Wifi, a mashup of its Google Wifi mesh router with Google Home speakers, which will start shipping November 4
• A new Nest Mini, a replacement for the Google Home Mini, which will start shipping on October 22
• The Pixel 4 smartphone, with radar chips, new cameras, and enhanced Google Assistant capabilities; it will start shipping on October 24

The first thing that is striking about this list is how many of the announcements won’t ship for quite some time. The second thing is that most of the products were not announced on their own merits, but rather after long interludes about Google’s product development process. Like I said, boring and self-satisfied.

Pichai’s articulation of the company’s new goal, though, is helpful to understand what I believe the company was driving towards: to “be helpful” Google needs to be everywhere, which by extension means the company needs to be trusted. Thus the announcement of a wide array of products — whether ready to launch or not — that covered a multitude of places of where you might need Google’s assistance, done in the context of explaining how Google really does have its users best interests at heart.

Google’s Vision

Osterloh described this vision as “ambient computing”. From the keynote:

In the mobile era, smartphones changed the world. It’s super useful to have a powerful computer everywhere you are. But it’s even more useful when computing is anywhere you need it, always available to help. Now you heard me talk about this idea with Baratunde, that helpful computing can be all around you — ambient computing. Your devices work together with services and AI, so help is anywhere you want it, and it’s fluid. The technology just fades into the background when you don’t need it. So the devices aren’t the center of the system, you are. That’s our vision for ambient computing.

Frankly, it’s a compelling vision on multiple dimensions:

• First, it is a vision for the future that actually seems larger than the smartphone reality we live in. Alternatives like augmented reality or wearables feel smaller.
• Second, it is a vision that does not compete with the smartphone, but rather leverages it. The smartphone is so useful for so many things that any directly competitive technology would have to cover an impossible number of use cases to displace it; ambient computing, though, simply conceives of the smart phone as one of several means to deliver on its promise.
• Third, it is a vision that Google is uniquely suited to pursue. The company is a services company incentivized to serve the maximum number of customers no matter the means (i.e. device), and it already has a head start in providing services that contain and accumulate essential information about people’s lives.

Note how much better Google is placed than Facebook or Amazon, both of which I wrote about two weeks ago. The latter two companies are hindered by their lack of a smartphone, and their beachheads in the consumer space — Oculus and Alexa, respectively — are constrained by specialization in the case of Facebook and location in the case of Amazon. Ambient computing that goes away when you turn off a headset or leave your house is not truly ambient. Osterloh made this point:

The Google Assistant plays a critical role here. It pulls everything together and gives you a familiar, natural way to get the help you need. Our users tell us they find the Google Assistant to be smart, user-friendly, and reliable, and that’s so important for ambient technology. Interactions need to feel natural and intuitive. Here’s an example: if you want to listen to music, the experience should be the same whether you are in the kitchen, you are driving in your car, or hanging out with friends. No matter what you are doing, you should be able to just say the name of the song and the music just plays without you having to pull out a phone and tap on screens or push buttons.

Only companies with smartphone platforms can deliver the same experience everywhere. That is to say, only Google and Apple, and the latter seems to be barely trying in the home in particular.

Google’s Integration

This also explains why Google, despite being a Services company, is investing in hardware. Clayton Christensen in The Innovator’s Solution, explained what it took to win in new markets:

When there is a performance gap — when product functionality and reliability are not yet good enough to address the needs of customers in a given tier of the market — companies must compete by making the best possible products. In the race to do this, firms that build their products around proprietary, interdependent architectures enjoy an important competitive advantage against competitors whose product architectures are modular, because the standardization inherent in modularity takes too many degrees of design freedom away from engineers, and they cannot not optimize performance.

To close the performance gap with each new product generation, competitive forces compel engineers to fit the pieces of their systems together in ever-more-efficient ways in order to wring the most performance possible out of the technology that is available. When firms must compete by making the best possible products, they cannot not simply assemble standardized components, because from an engineering point of view, standardization of interfaces (meaning fewer degrees of design freedom) would force them to back away from the frontier of what is technologically possible. When the product is not good enough, backing off from the best that can be done means that you’ll fall behind.

In the case of ambient computing, “integration” does not refer to an individual device and its associated software. Rather, the integration that matters is between all of the various devices that exist in every part of your life — home, work, play, and everywhere-in-between — and the service that links them together. Thus all of Google’s various hardware offerings: without question the best solution for ambient computing by some time next year will be Nest devices in your house, a Google Pixel in your pocket, Pixel Buds in your ears, and a Pixelbook at work.

I don’t think this is Google’s long-run goal, though, nor should it be. While the company has at times been drawn into the trap of prioritizing and differentiating Android with its services, the fundamental services nature of Google means that its ambient computing offering will leverage any OEM that wishes to take part, even Apple. For now, though, the technology just isn’t good-enough, which is why Google is doing a lot of the work itself.

Google’s Challenges

Despite how well-placed Google is to execute on this vision, it is not a certainty that the company will win, for reasons both structural and also internal to Google itself.

First, the customers most likely to not only be interested in the idea of ambient computing but to also have the significant funds necessary to buy all of the various gadgets required to make it a reality probably use iPhones. Apple was the high-end integrated player in smartphones, and contra-Christensen, that was a sustainably large portion of the market. Google, meanwhile, was the modular player in smartphones, which meant it had the most affordable smartphone offerings and by far the largest marketshare. The challenge the company faces is that its modular customer base is less likely to spend on the integrated solution that Google is selling.

Second, while Siri will likely never reach the reliability and usability of Google Assistant — Apple has its own internal challenges — Apple continues to increase the switching cost from iPhone by doubling down on devices. AirPods are infinitely better than Pixel Buds in that they actually exist and have for three years, and the Apple Watch continues to grow strongly. Both devices, particularly when used together, also give you ambient computing beyond the smartphone (and yes, HomePod is still muddling along).

Third, as I noted above, Google spent so much time yesterday framing its approach in terms of user-centricity for a very good reason: its core advertising business is under attack for treating users and their data as a commodity. This raises the question as to whether customers will be comfortable having Google involved in even more aspects of their life, a point that Apple has and will continue to make regularly (Google, as I wrote after I/O, is fighting back by touting the benefits that come from it having so much data).

Fourth, Google has a business model problem. Yes, per the previous point, being a continuous presence in people’s lives will bring in even more data for ever more finely targeted advertisements, but there is no place for advertising in ambient computing generally. The Google Assistant can only give one answer, and it had better be the best one, not one that is paid for, if Google wishes to retain trust.

Fifth, to the extent the previous point does not matter, simply because Search and Display and YouTube make so much money, is the extent to which Google can be lackadaisical about execution. It doesn’t really matter that a good portion of the products announced yesterday won’t be ready until next month or next year because they are a rounding error on Google’s income statement. That may seem like a luxury, but in fact needing to succeed or die is one of the greatest advantages a company can have, particularly while trying to enter a new market.

Google’s Culture

One thing Google can absolutely work on is their messaging: I found yesterday’s presentation dreadfully boring, and only picked up on what Google was trying to convey on a second viewing.

That, though, isn’t necessarily a surprise. Google from its founding has succeeded simply by being better and letting the masses figure it out for themselves. It completely worked too: Google search was better than anything else on the market, and by virtue of being on the Internet it was immediately accessible to anyone anywhere on a zero marginal cost basis.

The company struggles, though, when it has to actually sell something. Look no further than Google Cloud Platform, which is a distant third to Amazon (which was first) and Microsoft (which can sell, particularly to existing customers). The company is currently trying to brute force its way into contention, hiring a VP from Oracle and a whole bunch of salespeople, but those efforts will run up against the company’s sense that simply building better stuff should be enough.

The challenges in ambient computing will be different given the differences between the consumer and enterprise markets, but no less significant: to succeed, particularly with its integrated offering, Google has to get better at all parts of the funnel, from initial awareness to education to conversion to channel to distribution to support. However, there is not much evidence the company has made progress in any of these areas, and, given how strong the company’s core business remains, not much motivation to either.

That’s the thing with visions: they are easy to come up with, harder to articulate, and even more difficult to build. It is the selling, though, that truly requires dedication.

Meetup started charging members of some of its groups $2 to RSVP to events — along with reducing charges for meeting organizers. This made people furious. The messaging was a mess, and they’re trying to clean it up now. As Dani Heahl wrote in The Verge yesterday: Meetup, an online platform that lets you find … Continued

The post To Meetup: if you’re going to change your prices, be clear about it appeared first on without bullshit.

In many ways, the iPhone 11 Pro’s camera system feels like the culmination of over a decade’s worth of judicious, relentless improvements. Not only is the device’s camera the best and smartest Apple has ever shipped, but it also affords the most photographic freedom, allowing non-professional photographers like me to produce amazing shots with minimal effort.

I’ll cut right to the chase: I wasn’t a fan of the camera in last year’s iPhone XS line. As I argued on Connected several months ago, I always felt like pictures taken on the iPhone XS – even with Smart HDR enabled – were too muted and neutral. They didn’t pack the same punch as pictures taken on a Pixel; they were by no means “bad” photos – they just didn’t grab me as much as cameras in older iPhone generations did. Ultimately, it was a matter of taste: I know plenty of folks who appreciate the look of photos captured on an iPhone XS; I’ve never found them distinctive enough. As far as the camera was concerned, I didn’t consider the iPhone XS an exciting upgrade.

In the grand scheme of Apple’s camera plans, however, I can now see how the iPhone XS was a necessary step to lay the groundwork for a new kind of camera, one that is more than the sum of its lenses and which relies on machine learning, neural networks, and custom silicon to deliver pictures that are an intelligent interpretation of a moment in time rather than a mere capture of it. The camera in the iPhone 11 Pro line – and, to roughly the same extent, the iPhone 11 as well – is based on the same concept as the iPhone XS’, but builds upon it with more personality, new options, and more freedom to produce shots that would have been unthinkable on a smartphone just a couple of years ago.

I’m not a professional photographer, but the camera system in the iPhone 11 Pro, combined with the latest advancements in the Camera and Photos apps for iOS 13, makes me excited to go out and take as many pictures as I can again. And that’s precisely my point: the iPhone 11 Pro is called “Pro” for various reasons, including the several camera enhancements that real pros will leverage to push mobile photography to its limits; at the same time though, Apple has abstracted enough complexity from the iPhone 11 Pro’s camera experience to allow even someone like me to benefit from the same features without necessarily understanding the intricacies and minutiae of the entire system. That’s the beauty of software paired with humane design: it democratizes challenging tasks, resulting in a more inclusive experience that is accessible to all kinds of users.

I wanted to put all this to the test, and I had an idea: what better way to show off the iPhone 11 Pro’s three lenses, night mode, and new Deep Fusion technology than taking a walk around Rome and seeing what the iPhone 11 Pro would make of it?

Rome is a city that spans over 2,000 years of history, and it offers unique photographic opportunities – from beautiful vistas that are perfect for ultra-wide shots to monuments and ruins of the Roman Empire, which lend themselves well to classic wide-angle shots as well as zoomed-in close-ups taken with the telephoto lens. The center of Rome is very walkable and provides photo-worthy material at every corner, which makes it an ideal testing ground for a new iPhone model; additionally, each of the famous monuments and buildings is constantly illuminated at night, making night mode possible, but not necessary – which is perfect for before/after comparisons. And last: I may be biased, but Rome is the most beautiful city in the world, and it’s a fantastic subject to photograph either during the day or at night. I’m lucky to be able to live here.

So here’s what I did: I lived like a tourist in my own city for two days. Armed with just an iPhone 11 Pro Max and a tripod (which I only used for night mode photos), I took a tour of Rome with Silvia and a couple of friends, and I ended up taking hundreds of pictures. My goal wasn’t to publish a detailed iPhone 11 Pro “camera review” – you should look elsewhere for that. Rather, I wanted to demonstrate how, even without any formal photographic knowledge, the iPhone 11 Pro’s camera can produce stunning results that, at least for me, are downright incredible for a smartphone.

I wanted to prove how, despite my lack of expertise, the iPhone 11 Pro’s powerful interplay of hardware and software could capture the essence of Rome and do it justice. I think I’ve succeeded in this, but I’m going to let Rome speak for itself.

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Setup and Methodology

Here’s the short version:

• This story contains 50 photos;
• All photos in this story were taken with an iPhone 11 Pro Max;
• All photos have been uploaded in full-resolution, with a Display P3 color profile, with no edits.

And for those seeking a few more details:

A few weeks ago, Apple provided me with review units for the iPhone 11 Pro Max and iPhone 11. I only tested the Pro model for this story since I wanted to test the wide-angle, telephoto, and ultra-wide lenses.

Photos shared in this article were captured on the first beta of iOS 13.2 exclusively with Apple’s Camera app; I had ‘Capture Outside the Frame’ disabled in Settings to ensure that, whenever possible, the system could apply its Deep Fusion technology.

When shooting and previewing pictures, I was able to confirm multiple times that Deep Fusion was indeed working since I could see the “proxy” image in the Photos app while the Deep Fusion shot was being processed. However, in the spirit of replicating the average user’s experience with the iPhone 11 Pro and the Camera app, I didn’t annotate which shots used Deep Fusion and which ones didn’t – I shouldn’t have to know. By design, iOS 13 makes it extremely hard to guess when Deep Fusion is enabled – and that’s the point: Deep Fusion is a feature that works in the background and kicks in when iOS thinks it’s needed. My recommendation: try to zoom in on photos in this story and look at the finer details the iPhone’s camera retained.

Photos shared below are the original files – as saved by the Camera app – uploaded in full quality with no compression or edits. By default, exporting from Apple’s iOS Photos app generates .heic files that cannot be embedded on a webpage; the photos in this story are JPEG files exported at maximum quality, with metadata intact, and with their original color profile (Display P3) using the Photos app for macOS Catalina. You can tap on the button underneath each photo to view it in full-size in a new browser tab; you can also download each file and inspect its metadata and GPS coordinates.

The photos in this story weigh around 400 MB. For this reason, to maximize performance and avoid potential browser loading issues, I’ve split the article in multiple pages. You can move between pages with the navigation tool at the bottom of the story.

Lastly, the majority of night mode photos were taken by setting night mode’s capture time to ‘Max’ and using a tripod (this one); a handful of night mode shots were taken in handheld mode. I attached the iPhone 11 Pro Max to the tripod using the excellent Studio Neat Glif.

The Colosseum

Our tour around Rome happened on two separate days: the night between October 6-7 and the morning of Tuesday, October 8. On both occasions, we were lucky enough to have great weather conditions, which comes through in the daytime shots with a gorgeous blue sky. Also of note: the nighttime shots were taken between 11 PM and 1 AM; I’ve been living in Rome for over 6 years now, and this was the first time I walked around the center of the city with so few people around. It was incredible, and if you happen to visit Rome in late summer or the beginning of fall, I highly recommend taking a walk after dinner on a weekday – you’ll be able to enjoy the hundreds of monuments and hidden corners without the typical tourist chaos.

We began our photographic tour at the Colosseum, the famous amphitheater located in the center of Rome and visited by thousands of people every day. The Colosseum was built roughly 1,950 years ago and, despite issues involving deterioration, stone robbers, earthquakes, and weather conditions, it’s still standing, and it’s the monument to see in Rome. Its sheer size (the outer wall’s height reaches 48 meters/157 feet) makes it a great subject to photograph from a distance, as well as from directly below to play around with interesting perspectives and angles.

In this first photo, you can see how, even with night mode disabled, we have a perfectly usable, gorgeous shot of the Colosseum at night. The outer wall is illuminated by LILT’s pink/purple lights (it’s a cancer awareness campaign), while lights from the inner section are shining through the wall’s arcades.

By switching to night mode with a 6-second exposure (also taken with the wide camera on a tripod), we can observe a few interesting changes. Night mode has retained the detail of the wall and arcades (zoom in to judge for yourself), increased the brilliance of the purple lights, and – the improvement I was after – brightened the right side of the structure as well as the street in front of it. Amusingly, you can see the result that night mode’s longer capture time has on passing cars and scooters with the white and red lights at the bottom of the picture.

I’ve visited the Colosseum several times in my adult life since I moved to Rome in 2013, and I’ve always loved the feeling of being a minuscule, ephemeral human in front of a towering structure that was built nearly 2,000 years ago and is still here with us today. It’s hard to reflect on this aspect of history during the day, while the exterior of the Colosseum is packed with tourists and you have to be mindful of pickpockets. At night, with only a few other people around, admiring the Colosseum takes on another meaning altogether, at least for me. And if you have an iPhone 11 Pro, you can capture some amazing perspectives of the most iconic symbol of the Roman Empire.

In the wide-angle shot above, you can see how night mode retained all the finer details of the Colosseum’s facade, which I find incredible. The telephoto shot, as you can confirm by zooming in on the photo, has a bit more noise and it’s a touch darker – it was taken with night mode disabled since the telephoto lens doesn’t really support it.

I’ve been impressed with the performance of the telephoto lens in the iPhone 11 Pro: at ƒ/2.0 aperture, it captures 40% more light than the XS’ telephoto lens. I’ve been able to take brighter, sharper shots with the telephoto camera on the 11 Pro thanks to its wider aperture.

Obviously, with a structure as tall and large as the Colosseum, it’s almost mandatory to play around with the iPhone 11 Pro’s ultra-wide lens to get some fun shots out of it. I’m going to share a few more ultra-wide examples later in the story; in the meantime, here are two of my favorite ultra-wide shots taken with a tripod in front of one of the Colosseum’s entrances.

Night mode doesn’t work with the ultra-wide lens, which, with an aperture of ƒ/2.4, captures less light than the wide-angle or telephoto lenses.¹ In my tests, I’ve noticed that the ultra-wide lens really doesn’t like low-light situations. But with the right composition and a sufficient amount of light, the ultra-wide lens can produce great results at night too.

As expected, the ultra-wide lens fares much better during the day with a lot of light hitting the sensor. Note how, with plenty of sunlight, this ultra-wide shot has preserved details in the facade and inscription:

The ultra-wide camera doesn’t yield the same dynamic range of other daytime shots taken with the wide and telephoto cameras I’ll share later, but the result’s pretty good. The edges of the image are somewhat distorted, but that’s a natural consequence of the ultra-wide lens, which is why I’m trying to be very conservative with my ultra-wide shots. I want to make sure I can find subjects – such as large panoramas or structures – that lend themselves well to this kind of look.

Due to physical limitations in its first version, I’ve mostly been using the ultra-wide lens during the day, when lots of light is available. I have no doubt that Apple is already planning major improvements to the ultra-wide lens for future iterations; it seems fairly obvious that the lens will eventually gain a wider aperture, higher dynamic range, support for Focus Pixels, and integration with night mode. I’d love to take more low-light ultra-wide shots with my iPhone; as far as the ultra-wide camera is concerned, I already know what’s on my wish list for next year.²

Night Mode and the Eternal City

Night mode has been the highlight of this photographic exploration of Rome. It is my favorite addition to the iPhone’s camera system this year (even more than the ultra-wide camera) and it plays into the idea of creative freedom granted by the iPhone 11 Pro.

At a high level, I like night mode for two reasons: it’s largely automatic, so you don’t have to decide whether it’s best if you enable it or not; and it’s been designed to bring out the detail in pictures that still look like shots taken at night. Unlike night modes I’ve seen on other modern smartphones, Apple’s night mode wasn’t designed to alter your midnight shots so they look like they were taken at noon: it was created to let you see more details and colors in the dark. And in the vast majority of cases, night mode works exceptionally well, producing stunning results.

After the Colosseum, my photo tour continued with the so-called Altar of the Fatherland, located between Piazza Venezia and the Capitoline Hill, right beneath the Roman Forum. Created to act as a symbolic link between the glory of Ancient Rome and the modern metropolis, it was designed with a neoclassical style featuring a cornucopia of architectural elements borrowed from the classic Roman and Hellenistic repertoire, such as stairways, fountains, colonnades, equestrian sculptures, and goddesses. You may disagree with its original purpose (it was built in honor of the first king of a unified Italy), but you can’t deny it’s quite the sight, particularly from the center of Piazza Venezia.

With night mode disabled, the Altar looks good, but the scene is clearly too dark:

And here’s what happens to the same shot with night mode enabled:

To disable night mode, tap on the moon icon in the upper left corner of the Camera app and turn down the slider until it says “Off”.

This photo is a great example of Apple’s night mode tech achieving its goal. The scene is still very much a nighttime shot and cannot be mistaken for a picture taken, say, in the late afternoon or evening. Night mode, however, lit up the entire structure, maintained the highlights generated by artificial lights located around the stairway and within the colonnade, and brought out the color of the grass and flowers (arranged in the order of the Italian flag) in the middle of the piazza. All of this while preserving detail and sharpness, without adding noise, and, more importantly, without requiring me to know anything of what went on behind the scenes. It just worked.

Here’s the Fontana del Moro, which is located at the southern end of Piazza Navona. With night mode disabled, it’s not a bad photo, but the subject is too dark given the absence of large artificial lights:

With night mode, the result is on a different level entirely: it still looks like a picture taken at night, but the iPhone’s software has illuminated the scene in a natural way, allowing us to see more in the dark – all while retaining accurate colors, crispness, and consistency with existing light sources. Take a look at what happened to the statues at the sides of the fountain and the buildings in the background:

If you look at the water streams of the fountain photo above, you can see a byproduct of night mode’s fusion of multiple shots: in the night mode version, water has turned into a continuous, smooth stream. This effect is common to traditional long exposure photography, and it’s often intentionally used for capturing waterfalls or rivers.

The combination of this effect and night mode is behind what’s possibly my favorite photo of all – a wide-angle capture of the Fountain of the Naiads in Piazza della Repubblica:

No previous iPhone could have taken this shot.

I absolutely adore this photo. To capture it, I set my tripod in the middle of Piazza della Repubblica, right by the side of the road, waited for no cars to be around, and initiated a 7-second night mode capture. No previous iPhone could have taken this shot – and, once again, keep in mind that this photo has no filters or adjustments applied. It’s what came out of the Camera app. Night mode hit a fantastic balance between the warmth of incandescent lights in the background porticos, the blueish tint of the fountain’s water streams, and the city’s dark sky.

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In my tests, night mode failed to produce credible shots very rarely. After reviewing ~150 shots taken at night, I saved three questionable examples of night mode, and I think only one of them is a disappointing photo.

Here’s a picture of Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II, taken with night mode disabled from Ponte Sant’Angelo:

Now have a look at the night mode version:

The entire scene has been illuminated: clouds are more visible in the night sky; you can see the buildings in the background of the left side of the bridge; the reflections in the river Tiber show more details of the buildings above. For me, this photo is right at the edge of how far night mode can push a dark scene: anything more than this and the photo would begin to look unrealistic to my eyes.

Whether you like night mode photos that alter a scene’s dark appearance too much is a matter of personal preference; I’ve had a couple instances in which I would have liked night mode to be less aggressive.

I took this photo with night mode disabled near the Trevi Fountain:

It’s an unremarkable subject, but pay attention to what happened with night mode (in handheld mode):

Now, some people may like the effect, and the camera surely did an impressive job maintaining clarity and color consistency; for my personal taste though, the iPhone overused night mode in this particular case since the photo could pass for an afternoon shot if I didn’t tell you it was taken at night.

Here’s another example, featuring Ponte Umberto I:

In the night mode version, the iPhone’s software changed the scene’s brightness and colors so much, it looks like the photo was taken at dawn instead of 1 AM. The sky is too bright, the river has become impossibly reflective, and the trees on the right side are so green, it’s almost as if a rising sun was casting light on top of them. This is a good example of night mode going too far:

Fortunately, this was an isolated fumble. In reviewing the hundreds of shots I took around Rome at night, I noticed a common theme in all night mode photos: iOS 13 used night mode judiciously most of the time, without any assistance required on my end, producing photos that didn’t feel fake and which retained their original personality. I was consistently impressed by the amount of detail and clarity from each night mode shot – which confirms how Apple’s night mode does much more than just “pump up the brightness”.

Let me share a few more examples.

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The Trevi Fountain is always well-lit at night, so night mode wouldn’t be absolutely necessary to capture it. But with night mode enabled, I got that extra balance and soft illumination throughout the scene that makes the fountain and its Corinthian backdrop pop off the screen:

Even with night mode disabled, however, the artificial lights installed inside the Trevi Fountain provided enough light to capture good shots. Here’s one taken with the telephoto camera:

Out of curiosity, when I visited the Trevi fountain again a few days later, I wanted to take a daytime shot similar to the one above and compare the details captured in two different times of day. I find it fascinating how, despite clear weather and plenty of sunlight, the night photo mode contains sharper details for the arch above Oceanus, the pilasters, rockwork, and exedra behind the statue.

I also used night mode to take this beautiful shot of Castel Sant’Angelo, another highlight from my nocturnal Roman adventures:

To give you an idea of how this picture was taken, here’s the shot behind the shot, taken by Silvia using an iPhone 11 (wide camera, handheld mode):

Also at Castel Sant’Angelo, I like how one of the angels from Ponte Sant’Angelo (specifically, Girolamo Lucenti’s Angel with the Nails) turned out. Here’s the night mode version, taken in handheld mode with the wide camera:

But I also like the (slightly darker) telephoto version with night mode disabled. The dark sky in the background looks great on the Super Retina XDR display:

And again, for context, here’s how both shots were taken, as seen from an iPhone 11:

After Castel Sant’Angelo, we walked to Via della Conciliazione, which was effectively empty at 1 AM. That allowed me to take this shot of the thoroughfare with St. Peter’s Basilica in the background:

I’ve found night mode well-suited for close-ups too, as demonstrated by this picture of the Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona:

And if you were wondering: with night mode disabled and a smaller aperture, you get an epic perspective with the ultra-wide camera, but the entire scene is fairly dark:

As I’ve mentioned before, I strongly hope night mode for the ultra-wide camera is on tap for next year’s iPhone camera upgrades.

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In case it’s not clear from all the photos in this story, I love using night mode, which I believe consistently hits the sweet spot of “dark scene, but with better illumination”. I especially find it impressive when night mode can extract details out of a picture that the human eye cannot see in normal lighting conditions, but which are consistent with what would happen if there was more light available.

Night mode has given my iPhone super-vision abilities, allowing it to reinterpret dark scenes and optimize them for a more enjoyable viewing experience. With night mode, I don’t have to care about photography concepts such as ISO or shutter speeds: I can just take a walk around Rome at midnight and let the iPhone 11 Pro figure out what to do. For a first take on this feature, night mode’s results are already spectacular.

Daytime Photography

We were lucky enough to get a beautiful sunny day with no clouds last week, and took advantage of it to take a morning tour of Rome with our dogs and visit a few other landmarks. We started in Piazza di Spagna, where the iconic Spanish Steps provided some cool perspective opportunities. This is where the ultra-wide camera shines – plenty of light (resulting in a crisp image) and an obelisk at the top of a long stairway (174 steps in total):

The same approach works in reverse too: from the top of the steps and overlooking the piazza with the ultra-wide camera, we get an intriguing perspective of Bernini’s Fontana della Barcaccia and the hyper-fashionable Via dei Condotti:

And yes, both Zelda and Ginger approved of this location:

Obviously, the telephoto camera benefitted from the great weather conditions too. On our way to the Pincian Hill, I snapped this photo with the telephoto lens:

Once we reached the Pincian Hill, the view from the balcony overlooking Piazza del Popolo (and its Egyptian obelisk) was simply breathtaking. I’ve been living in Rome for six years, but it was my first time visiting the Pincio gardens during the day. I had a feeling the balcony’s famous vantage point was going to be ideal to test the triple-camera system’s perspective of the obelisk in the center of the piazza, and I was not disappointed:

I’ve never owned a DSLR, let alone one with an ultra-wide lens, and I find it incredible how the iPhone’s ultra-wide camera can capture more of the same scene without having to physically step backwards. The following ultra-wide shot of the Trevi Fountain demonstrates it well, particularly when compared to the wide camera capture from the previous page:

I’ve found that large open spaces compensate well for the distortion inherent to the ultra-wide lens. As I’ve said before, I prefer to use it with moderation, but when appropriate, I like the look a lot. Case in point: the Forum of Caesar, built in 46 BC in a section of the (much larger) Roman Forum, and somehow still in better shape today than certain parts of Rome:

Compared to the iPhone XS, I feel like the iPhone 11 line produces daytime shots with higher contrast between colors and a more balanced, natural Smart HDR – a considerable improvement over the muted, sometimes pastel-like appearance of shots taken in similar conditions last year. Take a moment to appreciate the dynamic range between white/yellow stone, shadows, and the deep blue sky of this telephoto capture of the Trevi Fountain:

Or the vivid greens in this photo of the Arch of Constantine, the largest triumphal arch in Rome situated between the Colosseum and Palatine Hill, also taken with the telephoto camera:

Generally speaking, whether thanks to more light hitting the sensor, Smart HDR’s processing, or finer details assembled by Deep Fusion, I like the color balance and clarity of the iPhone 11 Pro’s camera in a way I never liked the iPhone XS’:

We’ve seen ruins of the Roman Empire, we’ve seen fountains, monuments, arches, bridges and obelisks – I couldn’t possibly conclude this photographic tour without at least one pasta photo. So let’s round it all up with some pasta alla gricia, typical of Rome, originated around 400 AD, and captured with Deep Fusion in 2019:

Other Notes

Here’s a collection of other miscellaneous notes and thoughts based on my experience with taking ~400 shots around Rome with the iPhone 11 Pro Max.

The Display

One of the first improvements I noticed in the iPhone 11 Pro compared to the XS Max when using it outside was the higher-contrast, brighter display. I didn’t pay much attention to the Super Retina XDR display in my first few days of indoor usage – it mostly looked similar to the iPhone XS Max’s display – but the difference became quite apparent as we were walking around Rome in the morning.

Under very bright sunlight (ideal conditions for iOS’ Auto-Brightness setting to kick in and push the device’s brightness to its peak level), I could tell that the iPhone 11 Pro’s display was brighter and more legible than the older generation one. Apple has touted these improvements with numbers such as 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio (compared to 1,000,000:1 last year) and 800 nits max brightness outdoors (compared to 625 last year), but it’s one thing to read the numbers and it’s another to see actual results in practice. I expect the iPhone 11 Pro’s brighter screen to come in handy at the beach next year.

After seeing the difference between old and new display in outdoor usage, I remembered Apple mentioned that the Super Retina XDR display could also push brightness up to 1,200 nits when viewing HDR photos or HDR10 and Dolby Vision video, so I checked for myself. I started watching The Greatest Showman, which is available in 4K Dolby Vision on iTunes and is one of my favorite movies in recent years, simultaneously on the iPhone XS Max and 11 Pro Max. The iPhone 11 Pro was considerably brighter in my side-by-side comparison and I was able to see the higher contrast with superior color separation in dark scenes. I wouldn’t want to watch an entire movie on an iPhone, but plenty of people do, and the Super Retina XDR is one impressive display to make the most of HDR content. Honestly, the sole feature missing from Apple’s iPhone display tech at this point is a higher refresh rate (ProMotion), which I hope to see in next year’s Pro model.

The New Camera UI

I was immediately sold on Apple’s new Camera UI for the iPhone 11 line for one main reason: somehow, Apple managed to pack more options in the viewfinder while also making it more comfortable to use with one hand. Much of it comes down to embedding icons and controls in the top section of the UI (when used in portrait orientation) and allowing users to swipe vertically on the viewfinder to access a secondary row of settings for flash, night mode, Live Photos, format, timer, and effects. Each of these controls expands inline to reveal segmented controls or sliders, which are easy to interact with using your thumb (in portrait orientation) or index finger (when shooting in landscape). Because they’re placed at the bottom of the screen when the iPhone is held vertically, you don’t need to stretch your thumb to reach specific options at the top of the interface.

I also like Apple’s zoom control/lens switcher, available by tapping and holding one of the lens buttons at the bottom of the viewfinder. Although I respect the inclusion of traditional photography details such as focal lengths, I don’t particularly care for them as they’re just numbers to me – I’m interested in the results and the experience of using the Camera app. To me, the best part of Apple’s lens switcher UI is the ability to scroll the zoom wheel with one finger and jump with one seamless motion from 0.5x up to 10x digital zoom. In a nice touch, you feel a subtle haptic tap when the wheel stops on a specific lens at its default zoom level, which adds a pleasant physical dimension to the Camera experience. Add to all this the upcoming ability to change video options without having to open the Settings app, and you can see how the software updates to the Camera app are just as important as the hardware changes to sensors and lenses this year.

Browsing Shots from Different Lenses

Last week, I shared a shortcut to inspect the lens used to shoot a particular photo. The shortcut, called iPhone 11 Lens Inspector, required you to pass an individual item from the Photos app to the share sheet, select the shortcut, and double-check the lens used to capture it. I use this shortcut a lot, and you can find it here.

For this article, I needed a shortcut that would allow me to easily see all recent photos taken with a specific lens. Apple’s Photos app doesn’t currently offer smart views to browse pictures taken with the wide, telephoto, or ultra-wide cameras, so I built my own shortcut for that. Called iPhone 11 Lens Browser, the shortcut lets you select the kind of camera you want to filter photos for, then presents you with a list of photos captured with that camera; you can tap on a thumbnail to preview the selected item in Quick Look.

By default, the shortcut will consider your 300 most recent photos, excluding screenshots; you can customize the number to process fewer or more photos at once. When I was selecting photos to use in this story, this shortcut became an essential tool to ensure I wasn’t forgetting about other interesting shots from my library. I’ve been using the shortcut so much over the past couple of weeks, I even added it to my Home screen using MacStories Shortcuts Icons.

You can download iPhone 11 Lens Browser below.

Battery Life

I was somewhat skeptical of Apple’s touted 5-hour battery life improvement over the iPhone XS Max; in practice, the company’s claim proved absolutely true.

In normal everyday usage, I can use the iPhone 11 Pro Max all day and I’ll only see the 20% battery warning around 2 AM (I usually wake up at 10:30 AM); with that 20% of battery left, I can still use my iPhone until 4 AM before it runs out of power.³ When we went out to take pictures around Rome during the day and I used the iPhone intensively to check directions and take hundreds of pictures, it still managed to end up at 9 PM with 30% battery left.

For the first time in over a decade, I now have an iPhone that truly lasts me all day without having to worry about topping it up every few hours or investing in a battery case. I always disliked seeing the 20% battery warning around 9 PM, which forced me to ensure I would always have a portable battery, Lightning cable, or wireless charger around. With the iPhone 11 Pro Max, I can finally stop worrying about the battery and just enjoy using my iPhone throughout the day.

Apple Maps Collection

Lastly, I’ve put together an Apple Maps collection of the historical landmarks mentioned in this story.

The ability to add places to a collection and share it with friends was added in iOS 13, and I’ve taken advantage of it to put together a list of the 23 locations mentioned or shown in this article. You can find the collection here.

iPhone 11 Pro: Photographic Freedom

The more I think about the iPhone 11 Pro, the more I keep coming back to this conclusion: the iPhone 11 Pro reinvents what “pro” means – it takes pro shots without requiring pro knowledge. The device grants a freedom of visual expression that is unmatched by any other iPhone model; by making the core tenets of professional photography available to everyone, the iPhone 11 Pro’s triple-camera system, paired with its intelligent software, fosters creativity, turning each shot into a fun, unique experiment.

The iPhone 11 Pro has made me fall in love with taking pictures on my iPhone all over again. The device allows me to take great-looking pictures that have a distinct personality compared to the iPhone XS, and it does so in wildly different contexts and scenarios that wouldn’t have been possible before. And best of all, I didn’t have to study a manual to make it all happen.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it took 10 years of unabated evolution for the iPhone camera system to reach this level of excellence. Unlike the eternal city, it won’t last for 2,000 years. But today, the iPhone 11 Pro’s camera sure makes for an amazing, beautiful adventure around Rome.

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The Newest Way to Go Green? Retrofit Your Old Car to Make It Electric

A French startup offers to retrofit some of the most popular car models to make them electric for less than half the price of the cheapest brand-new electric car—and the whole process can be completed in less than a day

Micah Lee, Micah Lee's blog, Oct 16, 2019

It's not exactly the same model, but I'll file this under 'content addressable resources for education'. And - as the headline makes clear - this particular application has its downside as well. But we should be aware it's out there. Basically, the service makes use of The Onion Router (TOR) to allow a user to host their own website anonymously from their own computer. As Wikipedia explains, "Onion routing is implemented by encryption in the application layer of a communication protocol stack, nested like the layers of an onion." OnionShare "will start a web server to host your static website and give you a .onion URL."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Librem 5‘s from the Aspen batch have started shipping to early backers so we’ve done a roundup of some of the best photos and videos shared by us and others as well as some never seen before photos.

Photos

Black Anodized Aluminum Chassis

The Librem 5 case has evolved to a black anodized aluminium shell (with non-metal backing to keep radio reception quality high) with flush, easy-to-slide hardware kill switches.

From the Factory Floor

The Purism factory is ready to ship thousands of Librem 5s to backers over the coming months.

Shell and Applications

Just look at how great PureOS with GNOME and our default applications look on mobile!

Updating PureOS

PureOS is secure and easy to update for any user.

In the Wild

People have been using their Librem 5 while traveling, working and relaxing to connect to WiFi hotspots, browse the internet, use social media, play games and yes… to call and send text messages.

Videos:

If you are looking to see the Librem 5 in action, we’ve got you covered.  Including a hands-on (and hardware teardown) from “The Linux Gamer” featuring our CEO, Todd Weaver.

• Purism: The Librem 5 Now shipping on Archive.org and YouTube.
• Purism: Librem 5 Hardware Kill Switches on Archive.org and YouTube.
• Purism: Librem 5 First Run Walk-through on YouTube.
• The Linux Gamer: I got my hands on the Librem 5 Phone on YouTube.
• The Linux Gamer: Librem 5 teardown with Purism CEO Todd Weaver on YouTube.

We will continue to share more media and stories from other users as they roll in. Thank you to our community for the support and excitement for helping us make a private, secure and open Linux smartphone!

 

The post Librem 5 Aspen Batch – Photo and Video Gallery appeared first on Purism.

A new Michael Ruhlman! It’s nice to see one of the best food writers (and bloggers) back in harness, writing convincingly that it makes a lot of sense to cook your own food. Ruhlman takes a close look at ten recipes — roast chicken, BLT sandwiches, lasagna — and looks at different ways you can make them from scratch. For the BLT, you can cook the bacon. If you like, you can bake some nice bread, too. While you're at it, you can whip up your own mayonnaise. Or you can go for broke and grow some home-grown tomatoes!

It’s just a matter of planning a little bit ahead. If you want roast chicken, buy a chicken so it's already in your refrigerator. If you want beans tonight, soak them in the morning.

The key idea is that you can have fun, and have good food, but you don't need to go overboard if you don’t want to.

A new version of Tinderbox, Tinderbox 8.1, is out now.

You need Tinderbox 8.1 if you're using Catalina. But you don’t want to install Catalina if you don’t need it — not yet. This goes against my usual advice, because usually upgrading right away make everything better. Catalina has headaches. They’ll get fixed. And there's important stuff in Catalina, too, for the future. But if you don’t have to upgrade right now, wait a few weeks.

Tinderbox 8 has a big speed bump, especially if you're working with big and complicated documents. Opening documents, saving documents, adding new notes — it’s all faster. There are dozens of other improvements, too.

You can download a copy here.

sillygwailo shared this story from Gothamist.

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We recently spoke with Byrne, a longtime New Yorker, about the show, the nation, and other NYC topics. [ more › ]

Google’s Pixel 4 series now only sports one selfie camera.

This is a departure from the Pixel 3‘s two dual front-facing shooters. Some might wonder why Google decided to get rid of the shooter. However, it just so happens that the Pixel 4’s one camera is just as good as the two featured in the Pixel 3.

The secondary camera for the Pixel 3 is a wide-angle shooter with a 97-degree field of view and an f/2.2 aperture. Meanwhile, the Pixel 4 primary selfie camera features an f/2.0 aperture with a 90-degree field-of-view.

Google says that this was a ‘best of both worlds’ situation, allowing users to take the same shots they could before without needing two front-facing cameras. In a way, it makes sense for Google to do this considering the company already has several sensors in the Pixel 4’s rather large top bezel.

Stay tuned to MobileSyrup for our full Pixel 4 review, as well as a comparison between the smartphone’s camera and other flagships.

Source: Droid Life

The post Pixel 4’s 90-degree selfie shooter replaces Pixel 3’s 97-degree wide-angle camera appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Google has removed its AI-powered Clips camera from the Google Store.

Speaking to Engadget, a Google spokesperson confirmed that Clips owners will continue to receive updates until 2021, at which time support will cease.

Notably, Clips never made its way to Canada and seemingly struggled to make a splash in the U.S. since launching in January 2018.

In practice, the camera was intended to use AI to automatically capture and record footage of something or someone notable — like a baby’s first steps or dog playing with a toy — that the user might have otherwise missed.

However, Clips’ $250 USD ($330 CAD) price tag coupled with reports of unpredictable and spotty capture functionality seemed to hamper the camera’s success.

In its original review, The Verge said the camera was a hassle to use. Similarly, Cnet said only about a dozen Clips photos out of more than 500 ended up being something the reviewer would want to use.

Clips isn’t the only device taken off the Google Store; the first-gen Pixel Buds have been removed. However, a new wireless pair of the headphones were revealed shortly before.

Additionally, Google has removed its Daydream View VR headset from the Google Store.

Via: Engadget

The post Google has discontinued its AI-powered Clips camera appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Simon Pitt, OneZero, Oct 15, 2019

This is part of the wider trend away from document-based resources and toward data, graph and algorithm. "Files are skeuomorphic," writes Simon Pitt. "That’s a fancy word that just means they’re a digital concept that mirrors a physical item." But there's no need for the digital concept to continue mirroring the physical item, especially when it means mirroring all the limitations of the format. This article is a nostalgic look back at files. "The file has been replaced with the platform, the service, the ecosystem. This is not to say that I’m proposing we lead an uprising against services. You can’t halt progress by clogging the internet pipes. I say this to mourn the loss of the innocence we had before capitalism inevitably invaded the internet.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Evan Selinger, Los Angeles Review of Books, Oct 15, 2019

This is a review of Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI, a collection of 25 contributions edited by John Brockman. Evan Selinger writes that while the contributors "have lots of smart, multidisciplinary things to say about software and society, they mostly underplay or quickly move past the supersized consequences of supersized corporate ambitions." The answer is prehaps suggested by one of the contributors, Ted Chiang. “Billionaires like Bill Gates and Elon Musk assume that a superintelligent AI will stop at nothing to achieve its goals,” Chiang declares, “because that’s the attitude they adopted.”

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Strainprint Technologies, a cannabis data and analytics company, has announced that Health Canada has subscribed to its analytics database.

Health Canada will use the research platform, Strainprint Analytics, to research Canadians’ cannabis use after legalization. The database will help Health Canada to ensure public safety when it comes to cannabis use.

The department will use the software to understand how products and producers rank against each other, as well as get faster visibility into any potential reactions.

It will also help Health Canada to track how cannabis usage has changed before and after legalization.

“Canada has developed the most sophisticated and compliant medical cannabis program in the world, which makes Health Canada, arguably, one of the most important data customers in the industry,” said Strainprint CEO Andrew Muroff in a press release.

Health Canada has access to more than 1.4 million anonymized patient-reported outcomes through the database.

Source: Strainprint Technologies 

The post Health Canada to use Strainprint Technologies’ database on cannabis usage appeared first on MobileSyrup.

mkalus shared this story from jwz.

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I contributed to this article -- "The Null-Terminated String: The most catastrophic design bug in the history of computing" -- but there are a bunch of other worthy entries in here that I hadn't thought of!

Number 4294967295 might surprise you.

Culturally, code exists in a nether zone. We can feel its gnostic effects on our everyday reality, but we rarely see it, and it's quite inscrutable to non-initiates. (The folks in Silicon Valley like it that way; it helps them self-mythologize as wizards.) We construct top-10 lists for movies, games, TV -- pieces of work that shape our souls. But we don't sit around compiling lists of the world's most consequential bits of code, even though they arguably inform the zeitgeist just as much.

So Slate decided to do precisely that. To shed light on the software that has tilted the world on its axis, the editors polled computer scientists, software developers, historians, policymakers, and journalists. They were asked to pick: Which pieces of code had a huge influence? Which ones warped our lives?

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Fred 3.0 @FredRevived
Who do you consider the *nicest* person on Twitter? @ them and make them feel special. Who knows, they might be having a rough day.

An essay in Belt Magazine by Harmony Cox begins:

In the months before I came out of the closet and asked my husband for a separation, I did a lot of things. I googled terms like “later-in-life lesbian” and “irreconcilable differences.” I quietly began the work of separating our finances. I slept in my bed—my newly-purchased separate bed, where I’d been sleeping while we tried to work things out—felt the cold space next to me, and cried.

But mostly, I drove.

Beats introduces new Solo Pro on-ear headphones with PureANC. The left earcup offers a button to swith ANC off, on and transparency mode on. Call and music control are on the right earcup. Folding the headset turns it off, unfolding turns it on. Like more recent Beats headphones, the sound should be very neutral. I hope I get the opportunity to try there. I am a huge fan of the Studio³ over-ear headphones and the new headphones might offer a similar performance in a smaller package.

A welcome change is that Solo Pro charges over Lightning, like most iPads, the AirPods and all iPhones. I prefer this plug to USB C by quite a margin. Unpopular opinion: Apple will not be giving up on Lightning any time soon. Solo Pro uses the same Apple H1 chip for connectivity and should work as seamless as the AirPods with devices tied into the same Apple account.

Solo Pro can now be ordered from Apple.com via BeatsByDre.com and ships Oct 29.

When you can’t rely on people to tell what happened after a crash, a dash cam may be your only good backup. “My client says he had a green light while driving through an intersection,” said Ben Schwartz, a personal injury attorney. “But another driver, who came through the same intersection and struck him, claims he had the green light.” Who’s right? It’s in those situations when a dash cam can be your most reliable—and, often, only—eyewitness.

I’ve been writing about cars and car electronics for more than 25 years, and I’ve used more than 40 dash cams in my car while reviewing them for Wirecutter. I’ve found that I get asked for advice about dash cams right after someone has been in an accident or experienced a too-close-for-comfort miss. They want to be ready ”next time.” Here’s what people ask me about most often.

What to look for

While you’re driving, a dash cam records everything that’s in front of your car, from crazy drivers to stunning vistas to, yes, viral-ready mishaps. Normally, it records new video over the oldest footage on its memory card, but if it detects a crash, it automatically saves that section of video from being overwritten. That’s your insurance. (You can also manually save video.) But you can find huge differences between models, so here are the features I look for:

• A sharp video image: Hands-down, this is the most important consideration for me. If you can’t see the fine details—including the license plates of surrounding cars—the dash cam could let you down when you need it most. The sharpest video I’ve seen has come from higher-resolution models that record in 1440p (QHD) or 2160p (4K). I usually see a big drop-off in 1080p (Full HD) video, which is what most dash cams record. And I would never recommend that someone buy a 720p model.
• Easy-to-use controls: Reviewing video and adjusting the camera’s settings can be either super easy or annoyingly difficult, depending on the dash cam’s design. Models with a touchscreen are the easiest to use. In contrast, many dash cams have small, hard-to-use buttons or place the buttons out of the driver’s sight, so you have to navigate them by feel. That’s a hassle.
• A versatile windshield mount: If you’re worried about theft, you should choose a dash cam that’s easy to remove from its mount and to reinstall. The simplest models have powered magnetic mounts that let you pop the unit on and off without having to hassle with a cord. How the mount attaches to the windshield also makes a difference. Those that use an adhesive pad are secure but very difficult to reposition or move between vehicles. Suction-cup mounts are much easier to move but can take up more space on the glass. Fortunately, many models give you a choice.
• Owner reviews and ratings: Although I always check a model’s owner reviews and ratings, they’re definitely not something to rely on. A lot of dash cams with high ratings on Amazon, for example, get low grades—such as a D or F—on Fakespot. Still, owner reviews are good for learning about common problems.

The best we tested

I’ve had the best overall experiences with the Nextbase 522GW, Wirecutter’s pick for the best dash cam, and its smaller, less expensive sibling, the 422GW. Both record in 1440p, and they deliver some of the sharpest video I’ve seen at this price. In our tests, details in their footage were crisp, and I could easily read license plates that were fuzzier—or indecipherable—in the footage from other dash cams. Both dash cams have bright, responsive touchscreens, as well as a powered magnetic mount that makes them especially easy to remove or to reinstall on the windshield. The Nextbase smartphone app is also the best I’ve seen from a dash cam company.

That’s enough for me, but a notable bonus is that both models include Nextbase’s Emergency SOS feature, which can automatically direct emergency personnel to your vehicle after a crash (through the Northern911 service). That’s a rare and potentially life-saving feature. The 522GW and 422GW are on the pricey side, though.

How to get both front and rear recording

Another advantage of the above Nextbase models is that you can plug in an optional rear camera and then mount it to the rear window to record the view behind your car. But those combos can get pricey. For about half that much, you can get the dual-camera Papago GoSafe S810. It can’t give you the same overall experience, but its front camera is surprisingly sharp for a 1080p model. As with most other dual-cam models, the image from the S810’s rear camera isn’t as good as that from the front, but it provides usable video.

A dash cam under $100

I cringe a bit when asked what dash cam to get under $100. The cheapest models—especially those under $100—just don’t deliver the quality and the handy features I look for. In this range you’ll usually find models that have cheaper electronics, which as a result give you video that isn’t sharp enough for you to see finer details. And they often have iffy construction and hard-to-use controls. I’m usually reluctant to recommend any of these because I think such models could let you down.

If you can stretch a little above $100, I’d suggest the Nextbase 222 as a good no-frills choice. I tested its more expensive sibling, the 322GW, which produces the same 1080p video, and was impressed with the image. The 222 does lack the 322GW’s touchscreen, GPS, and connectivity features, though. I also recommend the small, stealthy Garmin Dash Cam Mini for drivers who want a model that doesn’t draw attention to itself.

Installing it yourself

Dash cams are simple to install on a car’s windshield; positioning it near the rearview mirror is best. But tucking away the long power cord, so it’s not dangling down, can require patience. This YouTube video does a decent job of showing how to perform a tidy installation.

If you don’t want to give up your car’s 12 V power outlet (aka cigarette lighter) to a dash cam, most major companies sell a hardwire kit that lets you connect the unit directly to your car’s fuse box, as you can see from this guide from Black Box My Car. This isn’t hard to do, but having some experience with automotive wiring and a circuit tester definitely helps. Otherwise, you can take it to a car-audio shop or a Best Buy store.

Before buying a dash cam, I recommend that you also check out Wirecutter’s full guide to dash cams, which has more info and recommendations.

So far, the most common path to releasing a Mac Catalyst app on the Mac App Store has been to adapt and release an existing iPadOS app as a first-time Mac app. However, that’s not the only route to the Mac App Store. Apple allows developers to use Mac Catalyst in a variety of ways, as Steve Troughton-Smith has demonstrated with HCC Solitaire, a Mac-only game built using Mac Catalyst. He and Brian Mueller, the creator of CARROT Weather, have also used Mac Catalyst to release new versions of Mac apps that were previously built with AppKit.

As Troughton-Smith’s HCC Solitaire confirms, developers are not required to have an iPad app on the App Store to release an app on the Mac App Store using Mac Catalyst.

The game is an implementation of classic solitaire that’s just $0.99 and displays no ads. Perhaps most interesting from a developer standpoint, though, is that you won’t find HCC Solitaire if you search for an iOS or iPadOS version on the App Store. Troughton-Smith built the game using UIKit and the tools provided as part of Mac Catalyst without also creating an iPadOS version.

Mac Catalyst apps can also be swapped in for existing Mac apps. That’s what Brian Mueller did with CARROT Weather, which was launched the day macOS Catalina was released as version 4.13 of his existing AppKit app. Troughton-Smith took the same approach with SameGame, a color-matching game in which you earn points by eliminating contiguous blocks that are the same color, releasing version 2.2 shortly after Catalina’s release.

I don’t expect either of these approaches to become the main way that Mac Catalyst apps are released, but I’m glad to see that it’s possible. Most developers will be bringing an iPadOS app to the Mac for the first time, but business models, developer backgrounds, the APIs used in an app, and many other variables play a role in the decision of whether to use Mac Catalyst. It’s encouraging to see Apple take a flexible approach and allow developers to experiment because that makes Mac Catalyst useful to more of them. However, as I noted in my Catalina review and elsewhere, that flexibility needs to be coupled with bug fixes, documentation, and rapid evolution of Mac Catalyst for it to become a viable option for a wider audience of developers.

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