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The Fixing-News Edition Sunday, April 23, 2017

Apple Apologizes To Users For Mistakenly Saying Their Paid iCloud Subscription Was Canceled, by Neil Hughes, AppleInsider

"You recently received an email incorrectly stating that your iCloud storage plan has been discontinued," the note reads. "Your 50 GB iCloud storage plan is not affected and will continue to renew automatically.

"We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. If you have any questions, please contact us."

How Apple Can Fix News, by Adam Ghahramani, VentureBeat

The short answer is “obsessive human curation.”

Copyright & Censorship On Instagram: How Marie Claire Stole My Photo, by James Jollay, Petapixel

I can only assume that Instagram provides certain accounts tools to automatically censor comments. But what part of my comment triggered it to automatically be blocked? I didn’t write anything obscene, offensive, or threatening. Did Marie Claire set up a filter to automatically block any comments critical of them? Who knows.

From my perspective, it seems that Instagram works hard to protect the big companies while using the little guys, companies or not, as the product. The crop from which the big companies can harvest whatever they desire in order to generate more revenue for themselves.

Stuff

Collate Is A Privacy-Focused Evernote-Style Notes App, by Thorin Klosowski, Lifehacker

When it comes to notes apps, you have a seemingly endless trail of options, but it's rare to find one that's cross-platform, supports the Evernote-style of rich notes, and works without needing an account somewhere. Collate is just that.

Develop

Stop Guessing Languages Based On IP Address, by C. McKenzie, Medium

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a mechanism for someone to express they have say, fluency in English, are pretty good at Spanish, and know a bit of French?

Accept-Language has been able to do this since the days of GeoCities and Lycos.

Notes

The Great Podcast War Of 2017 Is Here, by Jeff Umbro, Daily Dot

If you’re already a podcast fan, just like TV, your chief concern is discovering new shows. There’s such a vast selection of audio out there that exploring is a paralyzing notion. This process of discovery is what huddles of startup techies are betting on.

We Are Entering The Era Of The Brain Machine Interface, by Steven Levy, Backchannel

So this is getting real. For the last year people have been babbling about the conversational interface. BMI trumps this initiative. This new interface doesn’t require us to even speak. Or look up from our screen.

March For Science

Pictures From The March For Science, by New York Times

Thousands of scientists and their supporters gathered on Saturday to participate in the March for Science in Washington and in hundreds of other cities. These are visual highlights from the gatherings around the world.

See Some Of The Nerdiest Signs From The March For Science, by Jennifer Califas, Time

Thousands of scientists gathered in Washington, D.C., and around the world to celebrate science in light of Trump Administration policies targeting their work — including proposed budget cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and National Institutes of Health.

And the scientists certainly did not disappoint with their posters. One read "Shrodinger's cat grabs back," alluding to both the thought experiment described as a paradox and the slogan used by Women's March protesters in January.

Here Are The Best Signs From Boston’s March For Science Rally, by Nik DeCosta-Klipa, Boston.com

In the face of weather as bleak as their opinion of the Trump administration, the area’s advocates for fact-based inquiry were back Saturday afternoon, and more than 1,000 demonstrators descended on the Common, according to The New York Times.

Here Are Some Of The Best Signs From The March For Science In Washington And Around The World, by Joel Achenbach, Washington Post

Providing further evidence that the Earth spins on its axis, the March for Science has already happened in some places, even as the rally-goers are just now showing up in Washington. In Sydney, thousands of people marched, carrying signs with messages such as “Science, not silence” and “Basic science, NOT B.S.!!," according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

We'll post some images and tweets here as people rally in Washington and around the world. A few signs seen so far: “Science cures alternative facts.” “Make America THINK again.” “If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.”

Bottom of the Page

Obsessive human curation? Is that me?

Well, there's obsessive.

There's curation. (I call it copy-and-paste.)

But then, there's human. Not sure.

~

Thanks for reading.