If you play Spelling Bee, the Times has a Spelling Bee Buddy that offers statistics and personalized hints that update as you play. (There’s also a Connections Bot.)
The NY Times has been doing these challenges every Friday where you sit and look at one piece of art for 10 minutes. Last week featured a woodblock print by Utagawa Hiroshige called Great Bridge: Sudden Rain at Atake, a piece that Vincent van Gogh had in his personal collection and painted a version of himself.
I didn’t expect to last the entire 10 minutes — a slow start to the day (dentist, errands) had me feeling rushed and a computer with an infinite number of apps & websites just a tab or click away is not the ideal medium for this exercise — but once I got going (or, rather, once I slowed down), it was pretty easy. (via laura olin)
Tags: art · Utagawa Hiroshige · Vincent van Gogh
forestvpn.com/blog/technology/internet-security-en/how-to-use-vpn-without-app-on-iphone/
highspeedinternet.com/resources/starlink-offers-free-internet-hurricane-helene
Chili Palmer, reporting for HighSpeedInternet:
Starlink announced on Oct. 2 it will offer one month of free internet in Hurricane Helene disaster areas. The free service will be available to new customers who order through the Starlink website and to customers who activate a kit they already have, whether it was donated or purchased at a retail store. Existing customers may also be eligible.
The announcement comes after more than 500 Starlink kits were distributed throughout the disaster area by private relief organizations.
It’s hard to overstate how differently Elon Musk would be perceived if he weren’t a whackjob on political and cultural issues.
coolhunting.com/tech/nerdy-details-the-apple-iphone-16s-camera-control-button/
Cool Hunting:
We love getting into the nerdy details of design innovations and the iPhone 16‘s new Camera Control button presented a perfect opportunity to dig in. For this first podcast of our new Design Tangents series aptly named Nerdy Details we sit down with Johnnie Manzari from the Apple Human Interface team and Rich Dinh, Senior Director of Product Design, to talk about cameras and photography through the lens of the new control on “the world’s most popular camera.”
You don’t often get to hear Apple employees speak about their work. When you do, it’s often largely about trying to get the feel right.
Link: coolhunting.com/tech/nerdy-details-the-apple-iphone-16s…
9to5mac.com/2024/09/30/excessive-heat-warning-alert-on-iphone-heres-why/
Zac Hall, 9to5Mac:
iPhone users are being notified about an excessive heat weather event through Apple’s Weather app on iPhone. While the weather event is happening in the Santa Clara Valley region of California, the alert says that the occurrence is happening in an area nearby regardless of where you live.
Hall had a good theory — that the warnings were being to delivered to people who live nowhere near Santa Clara Valley because Apple includes Cupertino as a default location for the Weather app — but in an update acknowledges that the warning notification is being received by users who don’t have any saved locations near the heat wave. (I’ve gotten the notification on multiple devices, and don’t have Cupertino saved as a Weather location.)
What a weird bug.
Link: 9to5mac.com/2024/09/30/excessive-heat-warning-alert-on…
When I tell folks (like during my XOXO talk) that I’m leaving a lot of money on the table by not paywalling my stuff on Substack, this is what I’m talking about: “You probably can’t make more than $1 million a year on Substack. But Matthew Yglesias does.”
Two college students paired Meta’s Ray Ban smart glasses with facial recognition tech and were able to pull up info on strangers (name, home address, phone number, and family members) in seconds just by looking at them.
