Ash Wednesday And Lenten Fasting →

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"The root of all sin" is thinking that one is god, something often expressed in a total preoccupation for accumulating money and power, the pope wrote. And just as individuals can be tempted to think they have no need of God, social and political systems can run the same risk, ignoring both God and the real needs of human beings.

"Love alone is the answer to that yearning for infinite happiness," Pope Francis wrote. It is the only response to the longings "that we think we can satisfy with the idols of knowledge, power and riches."

As he advised a year ago, Pope Francis reiterated that Lent is not just about giving up the soda, video games or anything else personal per se. The bigger picture is partaking in giving and doing good for others.

But Pope Francis has asked us to reconsider the heart of this activity this Lenten season. According to Francis, fasting must never become superficial. He often quotes the early Christian mystic John Chrysostom who said: “No act of virtue can be great if it is not followed by advantage for others. So, no matter how much time you spend fasting, no matter how much you sleep on a hard floor and eat ashes and sigh continually, if you do no good to others, you do nothing great.”

Playboy Goes PG-13 →

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In short, the new Playboy, which will appear on newsstands as early as this weekend, has ditched its jauntily illicit aura and become a slightly saucier version of a lot of other magazines, like Esquire and GQ. But the March issue retains elements of the original DNA, including a lengthy interview (with the MSNBC host Rachel Maddow) and a long essay by a famous writer (the Norwegian memoirist and awkward-moment connoisseur Karl Ove Knausgaard).

Whether this will appeal to younger readers without alienating regulars is unclear. The problem is that many of these ingredients can be acquired separately by anyone with time and a web browser. And with a web browser, these ingredients can be acquired in no time at all.

The print version of Playboy, in other words, is struggling with the conundrum of the Internet, just like every other legacy media enterprise. But say this for the redesign: Even if it fails to increase subscriptions, it makes that deathless dodge “I read it for the articles” a little easier to utter with a straight face.

Exactly. Now we can truly admit it was always for the articles. I will miss the cartoons but who the hell am I to say. I haven't seen a Playboy magazine since my college dorm room days and back then, Maxim was the "better" magazines for pictures. Just saying.

via NYTimes via Playboy

Apple's iPad Pro Beats Last Year's MacBook Pro →

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The benchmarks speak for themselves. Apple is out pacing Intel's x86 architecture with their own in-house ARM A series build out and it’s really impressive. See for yourself.

After a very short conversation with my wife, looks like the iPad Pro might be her next machine while I’m still reserving myself for the SkyLake Retina MacBook Pro for gaming and heavy photography processing. Maybe some video intertwined here and there.

The iPad Pro →

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The iPad Pro is without question faster than the new one-port MacBook or the latest MacBook Airs. I’ve looked at several of my favorite benchmarks — Geekbench 3, Mozilla’s Kraken, and Google’s Octane 2 — and the iPad Pro is a race car. It’s only a hair slower than my year-old 13-inch MacBook Pro in single-core measurements. Graphics-wise, testing with GFXBench, it blows my MacBook Pro away. A one-year-old maxed-out MacBook Pro, rivaled by an iPad in performance benchmarks. Just think about that. According to Geekbench’s online results, the iPad Pro is faster in single-core testing than Microsoft’s new Surface Pro 4 with a Core-i5 processor. The Core-i7 version of the Surface Pro 4 isn’t shipping until December — that model will almost certainly test faster than the iPad Pro. But that’s a $1599 machine with an Intel x86 CPU. The iPad Pro starts at $799 and runs an ARM CPU — Apple’s A9X. There is no more trade-off. You don’t have to choose between the performance of x86 and the battery life of ARM.

It's getting to the point that Apple is indeed paving the way for a faster and better experience. If they up the game with iOS X (or whatever they are going to call it) and make it a more viable operating system for the notebook replacement, I can see them conquering the $1200 and lower market segment.

The only thing that sets me back on making this a replacement laptop is that sometimes, Mac OS X has more to offer in terms of shortcuts and various other apps that are NOT for mobile. Jon Gruber also points out a few short comings on using a keyboard without a trackpad. Funny though, I see my daughter (3 years old) try and manipulate my laptop and her little fingerprints are all over my screen. After some frustrations has set, she turns to me confused. 

Read or Better Yet, Jam with Your Kid! →

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Crucially, its findings are based on situations where the child’s musical activities were informal and shared, typically with a parent – essentially a playful social experience.

Simple and fun musical activities can have enormous power in developing numeracy and literacy: try improvising a counting song, or making up new rhymes to familiar tunes.

But the true power of musical play lies in the unique blend of creativity, sound and face-to-face interaction; the learning is strengthened by its basis in a positive, empathic emotional relationship.

Let's jam. I'll host. Bring your best kitchen utensils and percussion instruments.

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UK's New Proposed Internet Bill is Wrought with Crazy

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From Independent:

iPhones the include a messaging programme called iMessage which would likely fall under the provisions in the bill banning “strong” end-to-end encryption of messages.

The proposed law, to be published in its full draft from on Wednesday by the Home Secretary Theresa May, will mandate internet and technology companies to hand over communications data on request.

Published in BBC:

In urgent situations, such as when someone's life is in danger or there is a unique opportunity to gather critical intelligence, the home secretary would have the power to approve an interception warrant without immediate judicial approval.

The judges would also be able to refer serious errors to an outside tribunal which could then decide to tell the individual their data has been illegally collected.

The bill also proposes:

Making the Wilson doctrine - preventing surveillance of Parliamentarians' communications - law

Placing a legal duty on British companies to help law enforcement agencies hack devices to acquire information if it is reasonably practical to do so

Edward Snowden has chimmed in and we already know what Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has said. All in all, I hope this doesn't happen. You'd hope that the government, especially the U.K., who was voted in by the people, would know better. Here's a guide to the U.S.'s CISPA and all the other bills that the US have passed or have tried to pass in the name "security."

Anandtech Reviews Apple's iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus →

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The iPhone 6s in a lot of ways seems like it’s simple enough to review, but it turns out if you dig deep the changes have been significant. Over the course of a review, we’ve found major changes in the SoC, storage solution, camera, touch screen, fingerprint scanner, voice recognition software, cellular architecture, and WiFi chipset.

It's a doozy. Wonderfully technical and the most thorough that I've read. I love how both Joshua Ho and Randy Smith comb over the details on everything that Apple's latest "s" model has to offer. Even if you're not an Apple fan, the extent of technology, craftsmanship and design that Josh and Randy go over proves to be an exemplary read. Don't take my word for it.

The one disappointment here is that the iPhone 6s doesn’t have OIS, which increasingly feels like a pretty significant differentiator.

I completely agree and that's why I went with the iPhone 6s Plus. Check out the Optical Image Stabilization in the video below.

Attention is in the Details and You Wouldn't Know →

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It's also evident in the MacBook parts laid out before me. The tiny logic board (aka the motherboard) fits in one of my hands. It's literally packed on both sides with chips of varying sizes and includes everything from memory to storage and even the display drivers. It's also deeply informed by everything Apple learned from building circuit boards for handheld technologies like the iPhone. As I examine it, Ternus tells me the board is 67 percent smaller than the one found in the 11-inch MacBook Air.

Simply amazing. The palm of your hand or in other technology comparisons, smaller than the Raspberry Pi!

Every single unit gets measured on line for force required to open it, and we actually adjust every single unit," Ternus said.

In fact, Apple is apparently taking the time to custom-fit all sorts of pieces in the MacBook through a process it calls "binning." Since there can be minuscule variances that might make, for instance, the Force Touch trackpad not a perfect fit for the body or the super-thin Retina display not exactly a match for the top of the case, Apple finds matching parts from the production line. Even the thickness of the stainless steel Apple Logo, which replaced the backlit logo on previous MacBook models, can vary by a micron or so, meaning Apple needs to find a top with the right cutout depth.

It's all in the details. Simply an amazing read from an engineering perspective even if you're not a fan.

Adobe Flash Vulnerable... Again →

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Just one day after Adobe released its monthly security patches for various software including Flash Player, the company confirmed a major security vulnerability that affects all versions of Flash for Windows, Mac and Linux computers. You read that correctly… all versions. Adobe said it has been made aware that this vulnerability is being used by hackers to attack users, though it says the attacks are limited and targeted. Using the exploit, an attacker can crash a target PC or even take complete control of the computer.

And now for the fun part: The only way to effectively protect yourself against this serious security hole is to completely uninstall Flash Player from your machine.

Another reason why Nest needs to update their Dropcam player. I haven't installed Flash in years and use Google Chrome for the sometimes necessary Flash shenanigans. And yes, I'll say it again. Steve Jobs was way ahead of his time in NEVER enabling Flash on Apple's iPhones.

The Best Implementation of 3D Touch a la Tweetbot →

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3D Touch facilitates this behavior as quickly previewing tweets and links is easier than ever. If I want to see how many faves, retweets, or replies a tweet has received I no longer have to swipe on it and then swipe back – I can just press, peek, and let go to return to my timeline. Tweets are previewed in a smaller card with the same design of a standalone detail view (which is what you get if you "pop" and choose to fully expand a tweet, entering a nested view).

Leave it up to one of the best apps on iOS to implmenet 3D Touch in the way that it's suppose to be. Way to go Tapbots team! If you haven't already, buy the latest version and best twitter client now, Tweetbot 4 only for iOS.

Austin Mann Reviews the new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus →

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Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) for video is hands down the most significant improvement in the iPhone 6s Plus camera upgrade. The 6 Plus has OIS for stills (mainly helpful with low-light photos), but it wasn’t active when shooting a video or time-lapse. Now, with the 6s Plus only (not the 6s), we have active stabilization of all video and time-lapse content and the improvement is dramatic.

The time-lapse piece at the top utilized the Optical Image Stabilization significantly. The ability to create stable time-lapses anywhere, anytime, opens up so many doors. I can't wait to see what everyone creates with this.

If you had any doubts about going with the iPhone 6s Plus, they should all be absolved with Austin Mann's thorough review.

Rear-Facing Until 2 Years Old in California Starting 2017 →

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All in the name of safety. Still don't know why it doesn't go into effect for another 15 months when January 2016 could have easily been the target date.

The bill, signed Monday, was backed by doctors and traffic safety experts. It will extend the mandated use of rear-facing seats from the current 1-year requirement when it takes effect at the start of 2017. Children taller than 40 inches or weighing more than 40 pounds will be exempt.

My wife and I, including our little Norah, favor the Diono variety. As expensive as they are, capitlize on the Amazon sale or the Toy 'R Us trade in program which is happening now!

 
 

Websites Sharing All Your Data

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I've always wondered why over the years or so that one of my favorite websites started to get bogged down by excessive loading times. Now I know exactly why and no it's not your old iPhone / Android phone model.

Holy crap. It took over 30 seconds. In the end, it fetched over 9.5MB across 263 HTTP requests. That's almost an order of magnitude more data & time than needed for the article itself.

Just to put this in some rough perspective: Assuming I had a 1GB / month data plan, I could visit sites like The Verge about 3 times per day before I hit my cap. If I'm lucky, some or most of this will get cached between requests so it won't be quite that bad. In fact, another report tells me that a primed cache yields 8MB transferred - so maybe 4 visits per day.

Read his entire analysis and tell me what you think. It's mind boggling really.