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Apple ML Study Compares Supervised Versus Self-Supervised Learning

Andrew Orr ·

A research team at Apple published a study in October examining supervised and self-supervised algorithms. The title is “Do Self-Supervised and Supervised Methods Learn Similar Visual Representations?” From the abstract:

We find that the methods learn similar intermediate representations through dissimilar means, and that the representations diverge rapidly in the final few layers. We investigate this divergence, finding that it is caused by these layers strongly fitting to the distinct learning objectives. We also find that SimCLR’s objective implicitly fits the supervised objective in intermediate layers, but that the reverse is not true.

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Time For The Apple Watch to Separate From The iPhone

Charlotte Henry ·

The Apple Watch Series 7 became available to order on Friday. In the latest edition of his ‘Power On’ newsletter, Bloomberg News‘s Mark Gurman noted how the wearable has got closer to breaking free from the iPhone but isn’t there yet.

Seven years into the Apple Watch era, one of Apple’s most promising device categories still does things the old way. As any Apple Watch owner knows, an iPhone is required for activation and setup, syncing data and day-to-day operating. The Apple Watch doesn’t meet the Jobs vision for every Apple device being able to operate and exist on its own. Apple has taken some steps over the years to push the Apple Watch in that direction, though… Despite those enhancements, you still can’t buy an Apple Watch, set it up from the device itself, and move over all of your content from the cloud. That limits the potential user base of the Apple Watch—and excludes people who might want to only own an Apple Watch and a Mac or iPad and no iPhone. Or, one day, people who want an Apple Watch as their only device.

Bring Dark Mode to all Websites With ‘Noir’ Safari Extension
Cool Stuff Found

Bring Dark Mode to all Websites With 'Noir' Safari Extension

Andrew Orr ·

Noir is an iOS | iPadOS 15 extension that generates a custom dark style for each website you visit, based on the colors that are used on a page. You won’t even notice this happening in the background – that’s how fast it is – but you’ll certainly appreciate the end result: a beautiful dark mode tailored for each website, where contrast is preserved and highlights still pop. Noir works with any website you visit in Safari, automatically. By default, Noir is linked to your device’s Dark Mode, so websites will only go dark when you want them to. But you can easily customize this to your liking, even per website.

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Sneak Peek of Features Coming With Cryptomator 1.6.0 Update

Andrew Orr ·

Although we don’t have a definite release date, the developers of Cryptomator shared some features users will see in the upcoming 1.6.0 update.

A feature already wished in its earliest days will be present: Auto Lock – the automatic locking of a vault. For every vault you can set up an idle timer after which the vault is automatically locked. If any write or read happens during the time span, the timer is reset.

Cool Stuff Found

The iPhone 13 Candy Catapult Case

Jeff Butts ·

I’ve been thinking about getting a 3D printer for quite some time, and now I may have the perfect excuse. While waiting for his iPhone 13 Pro Max to be delivered, Matty Benedetto designed and produced his own custom case. Benedetto, over the past two years, has “designed and fully prototyped over 280 new inventions that solve problems that don’t exist”. I think Benedetto has cited the problem of the boring phone case with this one, though. This case actually stores pieces of candy, which it dispenses through old-school pinball mechanics. If designing and crafting something like this isn’t a good enough excuse to buy a 3D printer, I don’t know what is.

Podcast

Monterey On The Horizon — Mac Geek Gab 894

John F. Braun & Dave Hamilton · · Add Comment

Your macOS Monterey questions are starting to trickle in, and your two favorite geeks have your answers. That’s not all, though! This episode’s got Quick Tips about webpage screenshots, Safari 15 tabs, Internet Recovery, and making your music sound better for YOUR ears. Plus, John and Dave answer your questions about all kinds of things…and they share your recommendations for new keyboards, too! Press play and enjoy learning at least five new things.