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The Level-of-Flatness Edition Saturday, December 22, 2018

Apple's Dan Riccio Says 2018 iPad Pro 'Meets Or Exceeds' Quality Standards Of Design And Precision, More Info To Come, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple's specification for iPad Pro flatness is up to 400 microns, which is "even tighter than previous generations." Riccio reiterates that this level of flatness won't change during normal use, nor does it affect function.

Beyoncé Albums Leaked Online, Causing Concerns About Streaming Platforms, by Ben Sisario, New York Times

Unauthorized recordings online are nothing new, of course, but are usually found on YouTube or on file-sharing networks. Yet the fact that two albums by one of the biggest stars in the world were available on Spotify and Apple — two giant online outlets long seen by the music industry as bulwarks against piracy — is largely unheard-of.

Apple Expands iPhone XS And XR Trade-in Program Countries Around The World, by Mikey Campbell, AppleInsider

According to regional Apple websites, similar offers are now available in Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Taiwan. Beyond North America and Asia, a clutch of European countries — Austria, Belgium, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, the UK — are also included in the promotion.

Stuff

Review: ABC Mouse Learning Academy Is My Toddler's Favorite App, by Tristan Greene, The Next Web

Overall, ABC Mouse is the first app that I would wholeheartedly recommend to anyone trying to find an educational app they can trust alone with their young children, and it’ll grow with them all the way through 2nd grade.

Notes

The NYT’s Facebook Investigation Didn’t Prove Quite What Everyone Seems To Think, by Will Oremus, Slate

What has changed to make this sort of feature the subject of a front-page New York Times exposé? Not Facebook’s privacy practices, which by all accounts were worse several years ago than they are today. No, what has changed is that Facebook has forfeited our trust to the point that we are primed to assume the worst of it.

That confirmation bias has become so pervasive that even people like Klobuchar let it cloud their understanding of Facebook’s actions.

Towards The Future Book, by Tim Carmody, Kottke.org

I think there’s a huge commercial future for the book, and for reading more broadly, rooted in the institutions of the present that Craig identifies: crowdfunding, self-publishing, Amazon as a portal, email newsletters, etc. etc. But the noncommercial future of the book is where all the messianic energy still remains. It’s still the greatest opportunity and the hardest problem we have before us. It’s the problem that our generation has to solve. And at the moment, we’re nowhere.

The Case For Taking AI Seriously As A Threat To Humanity, by Kelsey Piper, Vox

The conversation about AI is full of confusion, misinformation, and people talking past each other — in large part because we use the word “AI” to refer to so many things. So here’s the big picture on how artificial intelligence might pose a catastrophic threat, in nine questions.

Bottom of the Page

If someone tries to publish an iPhone AR app that can measure flatness, will Apple block the app?

I wonder if Apple's Measure app can measure in microns...

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Thanks for reading.