Reflections From The Cast of ‘Hamilton’

On Broadway, London’s West End and other places around the world, Hamilton has long been a big deal. With its arrival on Disney+, a whole new set of people have been able to see it. In a new video, the cast and crew, including writer Lin Manuel Miranda, reflect on what the show means to them.

The Yale Economist Helping Apple and Amazon Navigate Antitrust Probes

Yale economist Professor Fiona Scott Morton has written papers about bringing antitrust cases against Google and Facebook. She’s also been hired by Apple and Amazon to help them navigate such probes (although that was not revealed in the recent papers). There’s an interesting profile of her on Bloomberg News.

Scott Morton, hailed in a 2019 article in the New Republic as an “antitrust crusader,” said she began consulting for Amazon in the last year, while her work for Apple dates back several years. She said she usually discloses her clients when speaking at conferences. The lack of disclosure on the Google and Facebook papers, she said, shouldn’t be an issue because Apple and Amazon didn’t pay her to write them. What’s more, she added, those papers didn’t focus on either Apple or Amazon.

Behind the Design of ‘Sky: Children of the Light’ Game

“Sky: Children of the Light” is an iOS game with some beautiful visuals. Apple shared the story behind the design in its latest developer update.

Early on, it was clear that Sky would be an ambitious title for Chen and the creative team. This would be their first game for a mobile device, the first that relied on touch instead of console controllers, and their first attempt at an online multiplayer experience — one that celebrated connection over conflict. The team ultimately worked for seven years before bringing Sky to life, with more than 70 people contributing to the game over its creative development.

‘Little Voice’: How J.J. Abrams Got Sarah Bareilles to Sign-up

Musician Sarah Bareilles wrote all the songs in Apple TV+ newcomer, Little Voice. She explained to the South China Morning Post how fellow executive producer J.J. Abrams got her to sign-up to the project.

Bareilles was a huge fan of Felicity, the Keri Russell university-set TV series that Abrams co-created. And Abrams was a big admirer of Waitress, based on the 2007 movie that also happened to star Russell. “Apparently I have a Keri Russell thing,” Bareilles jokes. Abrams didn’t have a plan, but he wanted more of what Bareilles and co-writer Jessie Nelson did with their 2016 Broadway show about a waitress in an abusive marriage. “I started thinking about, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting to see that same sort of tone [as Felicity], but what if Felicity was a songwriter?’ – the idea of a young woman, a young person, finding their voice as an artist and as a person,” Bareilles says.

MOGICS Power Bagel Travel Power Strip: $36.95

We have a deal on the MOGICS Power Bagel, a power strip in the shape of a bagel designed to be portable. It features five international AC outlets (UK, EU, AU, 2x US), and two USB charging ports. The power chord rolls up onto the device, too. It’s $36.95 through our deal.

EU Commission Still Angry at Apple Over Tax

Despite its court defeat vs Apple earlier in the week, the European Commission doesn’t seem to be changing its approach when it comes to taxing tech firms. EU Observer reported comments from top EU officials.

“We do not consider it normal that the largest corporates get away with paying one percent tax at most,” European Commission executive vice-president Valdis Dombrovskis told reporters. “It is just not sustainable from a tax-fairness point of view, it is not sustainable from a public revenues point of view and it needs to be addressed,” he said. Paolo Gentiloni, the EU commissioner for economy, made similar comments. “A single ruling is not discouraging our commitment in this sense. I would say the contrary.”

Google’s ‘Fabricius’ Tool Uses ML to Decode Hieroglyphs

Here’s something cool that Google has created: A web tool called “Fabricius” that uses machine learning to decrypt hieroglyphs.

So far, experts had to dig manually through books upon books to translate and decipher the ancient language–a process that has remained virtually unchanged for over a century. Fabricius includes the first digital tool – that is also being released as open source to support further developments in the study of ancient languages – that decodes Egyptian hieroglyphs built on machine learning.

VSCO Announces ‘BlackJoyMatters’ Photo Campaign

Something I like about VSCO is its curation of photos from its community of users. There are categories like summer, monochrome, abstract, and more. Its latest initiative is #BlackJoyMatters, a summon-long series to share photos from Black creatives.

We are kicking off #BlackJoyMatters with a global call to action, urging online communities to create, capture and share their interpretations of Black Joy to social media through posting art, first-person videos and/or photos across every social platform using the hashtag #BlackJoyMatters. Throughout the summer, we will spotlight the submitted imagery and art across our social channels and within the VSCO app.

Twitter Employee Tool Contributed to Major Hack

On Wednesday, a number of high-profile Twitter accounts were taken over in a major hackMotherboard revealed how an internal tool at the social media firm helped the attackers.

The accounts were taken over using an internal tool at Twitter, according to the sources, as well as screenshots of the tool obtained by Motherboard. One of the screenshots shows the panel and the account of Binance; Binance is one of the accounts that hackers took over today. According to screenshots seen by Motherboard, at least some of the accounts appear to have been compromised by changing the email address associated with them using the tool. In all, four sources close to or inside the underground hacking community provided Motherboard with screenshots of the user tool. Two sources said the Twitter panel was also used to change ownership of some so-called OG accounts—accounts that have a handle consisting of only one or two characters—as well as facilitating the tweeting of the cryptocurrency scams from the high profile accounts.

Pixelmator Pro 1.7 Update Adds Curved Text

In an update dubbed “Sequoia” Pixelmator Pro 1.7 adds text on a path, canvas rotation, a new welcome screen, and version 3 of ML Super Resolution. The text update lets you type text on a path, a circle, or any other shape with Circular Type, Path Type, and Freeform Type. Canvas rotation lets you rotate the canvas at any angle. Improvements to ML Super Resolution improves the quality of the result, adds a progress bar (yay!), and adds support for upscaling RAW files while preserving the RAW data.

TikTok Challenger Instagram Reels Arriving Globally in Weeks

The global launch of Instagram Reels, Facebook’s challenger to TikTok, is imminent. NBC News reported that it will arrive in the U.S. in and over 50 other countries in the coming weeks.

Like TikTok, Instagram Reels lets users make and share 15-second video clips set to a vast catalogue of music. Like TikTok, users can also borrow and remix audio from other people’s videos. And, like TikTok, users could see their clips go viral in a “Featured Reels” section of the most popular videos. Facebook first launched Reels in Brazil last November and expanded it to France and Germany last month. It launched in India last week — just days after India banned TikTok and more than 50 other Chinese apps citing privacy and security concerns. Facebook will launch Reels in the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Mexico and roughly 50 other countries. Users will be able to access Reels through a new icon at the bottom of their screen in Instagram and post Reels to Instagram Stories.