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Ukrainian Strike Damages Central Russian Oil Refinery, Baltic Port Oil Facility

A total of 87 drones were shut down over Russia and annexed Crimea overnight on Saturday, the Defense Ministry said.

Slashdot

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Apple's First 50 Years Celebrated - Including How Steve Jobs Finally Accepted an 'Open' App Store

Apple's 50th anniversary got celebrated in weird and wild ways. CEO Tim Cook posted a special 30-second video rewinding backwards through the years of Apple's products until it reaches the Apple I. Podcaster Lex Fridman noticed if you play the sound in reverse, "It's the Think Different ad music, pitched up." TechRadar played seven 50-year-old Apple I games on an emulator, including Star Trek, Blackjack, Lunar Lander, and of course, Conway's Game of Life.
And Macworld ranked Apple's 50 most influential people. (Their top five?)

5. Tony Fadell (iPhone co-creator/"father of the iPod")
4. Sir Jony Ive
3. Steve Wozniak
2. Tim Cook
1. Steve Jobs


One of the most thoughtful celebraters was David Pogue, who's spent 42 years of writing about Apple (starting as a MacWorld columnist and the author of Mac for Dummies, one of the first "...For Dummies" books ever published in the early 1990s.) Now 63 years old, Pogue spent the last two years working on a 608-page hardcover book titled Apple: The First 50 Years. But on his Substack Pogue contemplated his own history with the company — including several interactions with Steve Jobs. Pogue remembers how Jobs "hated open systems. He wanted to make self-contained, beautiful machines. He didn't want them polluted by modifications."

The tech blog Daring Fireball notes that Pogue actually interviewed Scott Forstall (who'd led the iPhone's software development team) for his new book, "and got this story, about just how far Steve Jobs thought Apple could go to expand the iPhone's software library while not opening it to third-party developers."
"I want you to make a list of every app any customer would ever want to use," he told Forstall. "And then the two of us will prioritize that list. And then I'm going to write you a blank check, and you are going to build the largest development team in the history of the world, to build as many apps as you can as quickly as possible." Forstall, dubious, began composing a list. But on the side, he instructed his engineers to build the security foundations of an app store into the iPhone's software-"against Steve's knowledge and wishes," Forstall says. [...]
Two weeks after the iPhone's release, someone figured out how to "jailbreak" the iPhone: to hack it so that they could install custom apps. Jobs burst into Forstall's office. "You have to shut this down!" But Forstall didn't see the harm of developers spending their efforts making the iPhone better. "If they add something malicious, we'll ship an update tomorrow to protect against that. But if all they're doing is adding apps that are useful, there's no reason to break that." Jobs, troubled, reluctantly agreed.
Week by week, more cool apps arrived, available only to jailbroken phones. One day in October, Jobs read an article about some of the coolest ones. "You know what?" he said. "We should build an app store."
Forstall, delighted, revealed his secret plan. He had followed in the footsteps of Burrell Smith (the Mac's memory-expansion circuit) and Bob Belleville (the Sony floppy-drive deal): He'd disobeyed Jobs and wound up saving the project.

In fact, the book "includes new interviews with 150 key people who made the journey, including Steve Wozniak, John Sculley, Jony Ive, and many current designers, engineers, and executives" (according to its description on Amazon). Pogue's book even revisits the story of Steve Jobs proving an iPod prototype could be smaller by tossing it into an aquarium, shouting "If there's air bubbles in there, there's still room. Make it smaller!" But Pogue's book "added that there's a caveat to this compelling bit of Apple lore," reports NPR.

"It never actually happened. It's just one more Apple myth."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Een semester in het buitenland of backpacken in Azië? Duitse mannen moeten dat nu eerst melden bij het leger

Een tot voor kort onderbelichte wijziging van de dienstplichtwet in Duitsland maakt veel los. Mannen tussen de 17 en 45 jaar moeten voortaan toestemming krijgen van het leger voor reizen van langer dan drie maanden.

De Speld

Uw vaste prik voor betrouwbaar nieuws.

Mensen die vasthouden aan het idee van ‘een betere toekomst’: wat bezielt ze?

​Er zijn nog altijd mensen die geloven in ‘een betere toekomst’. Dat blijkt uit onderzoek van de Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam. “We kwamen deze zogenaamde ‘optimisten’ per ongeluk tegen binnen een dataset van een ander onderzoek”, zegt een van de wetenschappers. “We dachten in eerste instantie dat het een typfout was. Maar die mensen bleken echt te bestaan.”

Uit nader kwalitatief onderzoek naar deze mensen kwamen een aantal opmerkelijke zaken naar voren. “Ze geloven echt echt echt dat er zoiets als een betere toekomst mogelijk is, maar zijn daarnaast ook gemotiveerd voor die toekomst te knokken.”

Een van de respondenten van het onderzoek wilde best met De Speld spreken. Gevraagd naar zaken als oorlog, fascisme, honger, oliecrises en gierende klimaatverandering glimlachte ze en zei ze dat ze dat allemaal wel wist, maar stelde ook zich dan af te vragen wat een logisch alternatief voor optimisme was. “Ja, wanhoop zeker? Maar god, waarom zou je.”

&


Good Shed Art, Boyup Brook Railway Precinct, WA. Artist Sobrane.

Peter.Stokes has added a photo to the pool:

Good Shed Art, Boyup Brook Railway Precinct, WA. Artist Sobrane.

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Boyup Brook Hotel, Boyup Brook, WA. Built in 1911.

Peter.Stokes has added a photo to the pool:

Boyup Brook Hotel, Boyup Brook, WA. Built in 1911.

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A tall Boyup Brook family sculpture in metal.

Peter.Stokes has added a photo to the pool:

A tall Boyup Brook family sculpture in metal.

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Boyup Brook Raiway Station building. Built 1909, when the railway arrived in Boyup Brook, WA.

Peter.Stokes has added a photo to the pool:

Boyup Brook Raiway Station building. Built 1909, when the railway arrived in Boyup Brook, WA.

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A yard crane and old International truck at Boyup Brook Railway Precinct. Boyup Brook, WA.

Peter.Stokes has added a photo to the pool:

A yard crane and old International truck at Boyup Brook Railway Precinct. Boyup Brook, WA.

DSC07457

The Register

Biting the hand that feeds IT — Enterprise Technology News and Analysis

AI agents promise to 'run the business,' but who is liable if things go wrong?

Vendors tout the potential, but responsibility remains unclear

Feature  "You can't blame it on the box," says the boss of a UK financial regulator. What about the people who sold you the box? Good luck with that, says a global tech analyst.…