Smartphones have gradually become more useful for people with a range of physical abilities, thanks to tools like screen readers and adjustable text sizes.
Today, we take global time synchronization for granted. It is critical to the Internet, and therefore to civilization. Vital systems—power grids, financial markets, telecommunications networks—rely on it to keep records and sort cause from effect. N.T.P. works in partnership with satellite systems, such as the Global Positioning System (G.P.S.), and other technologies to synchronize time on our many online devices. The time kept by precise and closely aligned atomic clocks, for instance, can be broadcast via G.P.S. to numerous receivers, including those in cell towers; those receivers can be attached to N.T.P. servers that then distribute the time across devices linked together by the Internet, almost all of which run N.T.P. (Atomic clocks can also directly feed the time to N.T.P. servers.) The protocol operates on billions of devices, coördinating the time on every continent. Society has never been more synchronized.
For decades, Mills was the person who decided how N.T.P. should work (though he disputes the suggestion that he acted with total sovereignty). Quirky, prickly, authoritative, and sometimes opaque—“He does not suffer fools gladly,” one longtime collaborator said—he has served as the Internet’s Father Time. But his tenure is coming to an end. Mills was born with glaucoma. When he was a child, a surgeon was able to save some of the vision in his left eye, and he has always worked using very large computer displays. Around a decade ago, his vision began to fail, and he is now completely blind. Examining computer code and writing out explanations and corrections have become maddeningly tedious. Drawing diagrams or composing complex mathematical equations is nearly impossible.
Apple held the first screening for Will Smith and Antoine Fuqua’s upcoming film, Emancipation, on Saturday in Washington D.C. Though the fate of the project seemingly hung in the balance following Smith’s now-infamous Oscars slap, the screening indicates Apple is looking to release it soon.
It's October. It's almost time for Apple to show us what is being replacing the Mac Pro.
Not that I am buying one.
Not that I can even afford one.
But, maybe, just maybe, there is a mini version of the Mac Pro? (The only Intel Mac that Apple is still selling is the Mac Pro and the Mac mini.) Can I afford a mini Mac Pro?
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