Link

Billie Eilish 'Was Excited And Scared' About Apple TV+ Doc

Charlotte Henry ·

Billie Eilish spoke about the Oscar-contending Apple TV+ documentary The World’s a Little Blurry at an event moderated by Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. She described the emotions she felt being followed by cameras for three years, Deadline reported.

“I was excited and scared and nervous, and worried and hopeful,” she told attendees at a post-screening Q&A. “It was not acting, I wasn’t playing a character. It was real life footage of my life… It was a very real and good interpretation of my three years that you were filming it, or however long it was, and it’s really scary. It’s hard to tell anybody a lot of information about your life, let alone put it on a platform for literally anyone in the world to see.” Millions have seen it, noted Zane Lowe, Apple Music’s creative director, who moderated the discussion. Billie was joined on stage by Cutler and by her parents, Maggie Baird and Patrick O’Connell, who feature prominently in the film. The only family member missing (apart from dog Pepper and cat Misha) was Finneas O’Connell, Billie’s older brother and songwriting partner.

Link

Report: How Pinterest is Ruining the Internet for Everyone

Andrew Orr ·

Chris Stokel-Walker isn’t happy with Pinterest and writes how the company has ruined image search for internet users.

Beloved by moodboard aficionados and wedding planners alike, the platform is hated by rank-and-file web surfers. It’s not that it doesn’t have its purpose; it’s just that it intrudes on the search experience of pretty much everyone who doesn’t want to use it.

I have Pinterest to thank for one thing. My annoyance, and eventual hatred, spurred me to move to a standardized data curation system in which I store files in my own folders and not inside Pinterest’s putrid platform.

Cool Stuff Found

10 Arduino IoT Projects for Beginners

Jeff Butts ·

Got an itch to start tinkering with Arduino, but want it to be something useful? As I explained on Apple Context Machine, Arduino is a microcontroller that lets you do just about any task you can find parts and write code for. A great way to get started and have it mean something is with a project that helps your daily life. One way to achieve both is with an Internet of Things (IoT) project. There are hundreds of tutorials on building with Arduino. Some are useful, some are just cute and/or fun. This MakeUseOf article highlights 10 Arduino IoT projects perfect for beginners. From monitoring your plants’ health to reminding you when it’s time to take your medicine (and even dispensing a glass of water to wash the pills down), these Arduino IoT projects will get you on the right path. There’s even a tutorial on building your own automated pet feeder.

Link

Police Called on Parents Who Built an Open Source School App

Andrew Orr ·

Parents in Stockholm built an open source version of a school app that didn’t work properly. The school called the cops on them.

The work started at the end of November 2020, just days after Stockholm’s Board of Education was hit with a 4 million SEK GDPR fine for “serious shortcomings” in the Skolplattform. Integritetsskyddsmyndigheten, Sweden’s data regulator, had found serious flaws in the platform that had exposed the data of hundreds of thousands of parents, children, and teachers. In some cases, people’s personal information could be accessed from Google searches.

Podcast

A Summit of Geeks – Mac Geek Gab 899

John F. Braun & Dave Hamilton · · Add Comment

MacMost’s Gary Rosenzweig joins John and Dave today to share Quick Tips, Cool Stuff Found and, yes, to help answer all of your Apple-related tech questions. Topics include dealing with Monterey’s “Load Content Directly” issues in Mail, Network Utility Replacements, Monterey image tricks, portable Apple Watch chargers, and much more! Press play and learn at least five new things with your three favorite geeks!

Link

A Drone Tried to Attack a Pennsylvania Power Station in 2020

Andrew Orr ·

Wired published a fascinating story of a unknown person who used a drone to attempt to short circuit a power substation last year.

The operator of the Pennsylvania drone appears to have attempted a less brute-force approach. But efforts to hide the operator’s identity may have contributed to their failure to connect with the intended target. By removing the camera, the joint bulletin says, they had to rely on line-of-sight navigation, rather than being able to take a drone’s eye view.

Link

A Collection of Concept Art From Apple TV+ Show 'Foundation'

Andrew Orr ·

Kotaku has put together a collection of concept art from the science fiction show Foundation on Apple TV+.

That comes across pretty quickly watching the show, but it’ll be even clearer here as we take a look at a variety of artists’ contributions to the series, from Paul Chadeisson’s trademark ship designs, to the costume design of WETA’s Adam Middleton.

This isn’t a collection of everything from everyone who worked on the show, but it does give us a cross-section of pieces, covering characters, environments, and weapon and ship designs, all of which I think look cool as hell.

Link

Apple Offers Fix For macOS Monterey Bug Bricking Some T2 Macs

Charlotte Henry ·

When macOS Monterey was rolled out, an issue arose whereby some Macs with T2 chips were bricking. 9to5Mac reports that this has now been resolved.

Now, Apple says it has identified an issue affecting the T2 security chip that caused this problem and is rolling out a fix to prevent it from happening in the future. In a statement, Apple explained (via Rene Ritchie): We have identified and fixed an issue with the firmware on the Apple T2 security chip that prevented a very small number of users from booting up their Mac after updating macOS. The updated firmware is now included with the existing macOS updates. Any users impacted by this issue can contact Apple Support for assistance. To prevent this problem from occurring to additional users, Apple has rolled out an updated version of the bridgeOS firmware that runs on the T2 security chip. Users already impacted by the problem are instructed to contact Apple Support for assistance.

Meet ‘Actions’ a New App to Add More Actions to Shortcuts
Cool Stuff Found

Meet 'Actions' a New App to Add More Actions to Shortcuts

Andrew Orr ·

Actions is a new app for Shortcuts, and it adds actions that Apple doesn’t provide. So far there are 25 actions with more planned in the future. There are actions such as Generate UUID, Get File Path, Trim Whitespace, Remove Emoji, Random Date & Time, and more. I’m most excited about the Get File Path action. It should be useful in a particular shortcut I have that creates a “changelog” of new files I need to remember to back up to my SSD.