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The People-Are-Adapting Edition Thursday, February 11, 2016

Y'all Have A Texas Accent? Siri (And The World) Might Be Slowly Killing It, by Tom Dart, The Guardian

Apple has refined and developed Siri since the tech giant bought it from a small startup in 2010. It is improving fast. But while voice-recognition programs will continue to evolve when hearing non-standard speech such as regional accents, a question that neither human nor machine can answer for certain is whether they will need to. People are adapting to virtual assistants, as well as the other way round.

App Changes

Day One 2: Journal App Users Unhappy With Pricing And Sync Options, by Jim Lynch, CIO

Like some other users, I'm taking a pass on Day One 2. I'm not comfortable with journal data being held on the developer's servers. Perhaps I'm being paranoid, but I will only use iCloud sync since I have more trust in Apple than I do in anybody else.

Twitter’s Algorithmic Timeline Option, by Federico Viticci, MacStories

For now, the feature will be opt-in, meaning you'll have to visit the Settings of the Twitter app and, if available, you'll be able to turn on the option. "In the coming weeks", the feature will become opt-out (it'll be on by default) but you'll still be able to turn it off from the Settings.

Murphy's Law Is Still Alive, Though

Moore’s Law Really Is Dead This Time, by Peter Bright, Ars Technica

Rather than focus on the technology used in the chips, the new roadmap will take an approach it describes as "More than Moore." The growth of smartphones and Internet of Things, for example, means that a diverse array of sensors and low power processors are now of great importance to chip companies. The highly integrated chips used in these devices mean that it's desirable to build processors that aren't just logic and cache, but which also include RAM, power regulation, analog components for GPS, cellular, and Wi-Fi radios, or even microelectromechanical components such as gyroscopes and accelerometers.

Stuff

I Have Multiple Apple IDs. What Happens If I Delete One?, by Glenn Fleishman, Macworld

You can’t delete an Apple ID without losing associated purchases.

Quartz’s New App Wants To Text You The News, by Sean O'Kane, The Verge

For a brief moment during development, the first app from Quartz — the four-year-old business news publication owned by The Atlantic — was going to be completely blank when you opened it up. "The whole thing was just notifications," Zach Seward, Quartz's executive editor and VP of product, tells The Verge. "The thought was that this would tell you, like, this is an app meant to be consumed entirely outside the square icon."

Develop

Friction Between Programming Professionals And Beginners, by Tom Dalling, Programming For Beginers

In this article I want to talk about negative aspects of the programming community, regarding beginner programmers. This is a touchy topic. I will try to explain both sides to the best of my ability, but I’m not endorsing either side. My only hope is that some readers will gain more empathy for the people they are communicating with, and hopefully use that knowledge to make friendlier communities.

Notes

Apple's In-house CDN Efforts Spell Trouble For Akamai As Infrastructure Biz Warns Of Losses, by AppleInsider

Seminal internet infrastructure provider Akamai has cautioned investors that traffic from its two biggest clients — Apple and Microsoft — will decline in the year ahead, thanks to what chief executive Tom Leighton called their "DIY efforts."

New Bill Aims To Stop States From Banning Encrypted iPhones, by Jeff Byrnes, AppAdvice

The legislation, introduced by U.S. Reps. Ted Lieu, D-CA, and Blake Farenthold, R-Texas is called the Encrypt Act of 2016, short for Ensuring National Constitutional Rights of Your Private Telecommunications. What it would do, in a nutshell, is preempt state and local government encryption laws. It would make such encryption a federal mandate, which still leaves open the possibility of new national-level laws requiring back doors.

Burger King Has Its 'iPad Moment,' Announces Two Hot Dog SKUs, by Ross Miller, The Verge

Last night, Burger King announced one the biggest changes to its product lineup since chicken: a hot dog — two different SKUs of hot dogs, to be exact. Yes, we now live in a world in which hotdogs have SKUs, and tech is everything, even our lunch.

Bottom of the Page

The local Burger King here in Singapore has already been selling hot dogs for quite a while. I am not quite impressed, but my daughter loves it.

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Singaporeans don't seem to enjoy hot dogs very much. Fast-food restaurants that have hot dogs as one of the main menu items never did survived down here. And even though we have all sort of food from around the world adapted for sale in street markets (pasar malam), hot dogs never made it. So I am surprised Burger King kept the hot dogs on the menu for so long.

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Come to think of it, there isn't any good New-York-style pizza in Singapore either, as far as I notice.

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Thanks for reading.