Disqus - Latest Comments for Zepfhyr

Re: World’s first USB-C iPhone: Bidding on eBay up to $85,550

Zepfhyr — Fri, 05 Nov 2021 14:14:24 -0000

Could do it again, but no guarantee he will, maybe?

Re: Washington DC now giving out AirPods to every teen (age 12-17) getting vaccinated

Zepfhyr — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 14:22:35 -0000

I'm assuming Apple sold the AirPods at a deep discount through their education team.

Re: Steve Jobs’ 1973 job application once again up for auction, in physical and NFT form

Zepfhyr — Mon, 26 Jul 2021 10:53:41 -0000

Unfortunately, the very idea of NFT was bound to be corrupted by those with the legal authority (or at the very least, the legal grey area) of selling something that they, technically, own in a digital form as a way to extract additional value from the item.

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see something similar happen to classical paintings and sculptures, as well. The artists can't collect royalties from these objects, so why can't the museums or private art owners do it?

(Not justifying their actions, but simply pointing out the logic process they might use to justify their own actions.)

I wouldn't be surprised to see some collectors of truly valuable objects to sell NFTs of things they own as a way to both have their cake and eat it, too. Why sell the physical object when you can just sell an NFT of it, but keep your precious item in your possession.

Anyway, I expect to see more creative uses of NFTs over the next decade. This is just the beginning.

Re: Apple ProRAW + Adobe Super Resolution = Amazing!

Zepfhyr — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 18:17:39 -0000

For anyone that cares, I did test this with ProRAW and Pixelmator Pro's ML Super Resolution. It is impressive, and the ProRAW images blown up with Super Resolution are noticeably improved over standard HEIC blown up. Definitely a justification for shooting in ProRAW if you have any plan to blow up a photo taken with your iPhone.

Re: Apple ProRAW + Adobe Super Resolution = Amazing!

Zepfhyr — Wed, 07 Apr 2021 16:37:54 -0000

Hmmm… going to have to test this with Pixelmator Pro's Super Resolution feature (which, btw, they added over 2 years ago: way to finally show up to the party, Adobe).

Re: “Weekend at Bernies” baseball fan cutout

Zepfhyr — Sat, 15 Aug 2020 13:58:52 -0000

This made the rounds in KC social media circles the day after the game and everyone was so delighted. It was pretty great.

Re: Be wary of the “iPhone Photography Awards”

Zepfhyr — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 16:54:54 -0000

Agreed. It would be nice to have a little more transparency, especially because it would be nice to honor the esteemed judges (should they be so).

I've submitted my work to the IPPAwards before and never even thought twice about it. I would be curious to know more.

Re: Be wary of the “iPhone Photography Awards”

Zepfhyr — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 16:53:01 -0000

Nah, if someone searches for IPPAwards, Cary Halzegrove, and ArtDependence, I'm sure they can find it. :-D

Re: Be wary of the “iPhone Photography Awards”

Zepfhyr — Thu, 23 Jul 2020 15:40:34 -0000

According to an article at ArtDependence, at least one of the jury members (Cary Hazlegrove) identified herself last year to give a quote.

I'm curious if there are other articles out there that contain more information about the panelists.

It's certainly a bit off that they won't reveal who their panel of judges is, but it does appear that the judges aren't sworn to secrecy in the past and can therefore be contacted for comment.

(Sorry if this comes through twice. I posted this with links to the articles and it's still listed as pending 5 hours later. I seem to have that problem a lot. Not sure if it's the links or if I ended up on a list somewhere.)

Re: Zuckerberg said to say of Facebook ad boycott: ‘All these advertisers will be back’ soon enough

Zepfhyr — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 14:37:29 -0000

I miss App Dot Net. 😕

Re: iOS contacts, the low Emergency Bypass setting, and Do Not Disturb settings

Zepfhyr — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 11:44:21 -0000

I've been hoping for some time that Apple would add a "Theatre Mode" to iPhones and modify the behavior on Apple Watch so that Emergency Bypass calls still vibrate in the theater, but don't make noise or light up. But I get the sense that this will never happen because that would be "too complicated" for some users.

Re: Mashup of more than 50 songs from 1984

Zepfhyr — Sat, 09 May 2020 16:00:46 -0000

I got chills. This is so good.

Re: Apple strongly denies that iPhone Mail vulnerabilities have been exploited

Zepfhyr — Sat, 25 Apr 2020 14:11:14 -0000

I'm very curious about this, because just yesterday, I received an email from an acquaintance asking if they should switch to Outlook until this gets fixed. The email he sent me was a forward of an email he received from what I assumed to be a friend that had first come from his IT department. The email suggested that a switch to Outlook was required for this friend of a friend. While typing a response to this email, my phone became sluggish, then unstable, ultimately telling me I was out of space (even though I still had 200GB of storage available). After several attempts to force quit Mail to make my phone responsive again, I had to hard reboot it. It was still misbehaving afterward, until I disabled my iCloud email account to remove the offending data.

Even still, after several attempts to resolve the issue, my Settings app still has a red notification badge on it, even though Settings no longer informs me that I'm low on storage space. I've been contemplating a restore to fix the issue, as it's incredibly aggravating to have that badge staring me in the face.

So, even if it didn't bypass security, if this was indeed a bugged email, it's still a serious nuisance and could leave less savvy users with an unusable device until they can find someone that can help them remove their email account from Mail.

Re: Full stage show of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “The Phantom of The Opera”

Zepfhyr — Sun, 19 Apr 2020 00:29:12 -0000

One of my favorite musicals of all time. Saw it live as a teenager and fell in love. I've seen precious few musicals since, due to a misguided hatred of them through the years, but Phantom will always have a fond place in my heart.

Re: Twitter testing Fleets, Tweets that disappear after 24 hours

Zepfhyr — Thu, 05 Mar 2020 09:29:04 -0000

I agree that solving the bot/misinformation problem should be a focus of at least one of these big social information companies. Honestly, the only reliable method for that is human interaction. Reporting misinformation and having it then independently verified, then removed, should be a friction-less problem. More importantly, once misinformation has been identified, those that shared said content should receive a notification that brings them back to said content so that they realize it was misinformation (otherwise, they'll never believe it wasn't true).

I'm sure a certain amount of automation can apply to existing misinformation, but the key is to never rely too heavily on the algorithm or else the misinformation peddlers will simply continue to find ways to beat the system.

Also, if someone flags something as misinformation, but it is then verified as true, the person that flagged it should also be notified to let them know. And, where possible, something that is partially true should explain what is and isn't true about the post in general, similar to how Snopes indicates something are partially true, but still misinformation.

Re: Twitter testing Fleets, Tweets that disappear after 24 hours

Zepfhyr — Thu, 05 Mar 2020 09:23:55 -0000

Likely not true of these. Instagram's stories aren't archived by The Wayback Machine, so Fleets likely wouldn't be either.

Re: Apple Arcade ain’t what it used to be

Zepfhyr — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 17:51:05 -0000

I still have the service, but I find myself spending less time playing the games than I did at launch. Part of that is simply because I started playing games on the Switch when I'm sitting on the couch "watching" TV, instead of on my phone. But there also hasn't been that one killer game that makes me want to play it over everything else. It's possible that Oceanhorn 2 is that game, but I haven't finished the original yet and the OG (original gamer) in me won't let me start the sequel yet.

I've kept it because since getting Arcade, my kids have asked for fewer games, since there's always something new to try when they get burned out on whatever else they're playing, so that's a plus.

Re: Musicians algorithmically generate every possible melody, release them to public domain

Zepfhyr — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 17:26:20 -0000

Absolutely. :-D

Re: Musicians algorithmically generate every possible melody, release them to public domain

Zepfhyr — Wed, 26 Feb 2020 14:57:06 -0000

If I use a tool to automate composition of a work, I'm still considered the author of said work. This is, technically, no different (though technicality is not guaranteed to hold up in a court of law).

This is clearly designed to prevent record labels from suing people because they happened to use a similar progression as another song simply because there are a limited number of notes and an order in which they can be played. You'll still be able to protect individual compositions and arrangements, but you'll no longer be able to be sued by a multi-millionaire because they feel like they "own" the use of 5 specific notes in a specific order.

No way this holds up in court as a way to eliminate copyright altogether. But it could prevent music's equivalence of "patent trolls" from targeting songs that sound similar but aren't the same.

Re: The first four months of Apple TV+ have been a nightmare

Zepfhyr — Tue, 25 Feb 2020 17:59:11 -0000

No mention of Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet? Then this person clearly isn't paying attention anymore or it's a hit piece.

Re: Why iCloud keeps me from switching from Apple Music to Spotify

Zepfhyr — Tue, 18 Feb 2020 10:28:21 -0000

In my experience, iTunes Match prevents Apple changing which version of a song gets added to your iCloud Music Library. If I recall correctly, iTunes Match compares your songs to all songs in the entire iTunes library. Apple Music's matching feature, however, only compares them to songs in the Apple Music library.

Not sure if that's still the behavior, or if this is even an accurate descriptor of what happened, but I remember a lot of discussion about the differences between the two when Apple Music first launched.

Re: This person does not exist

Zepfhyr — Fri, 07 Feb 2020 22:18:17 -0000

I just found one of these horrific monstrosities next to a picture of a perfectly believable human and I might be scarred for life.

Of course, I downloaded the image to share with others, because I can't be the only one to witness such unspeakable terror.

Re: Microsoft’s Chromium Edge browser is here

Zepfhyr — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 16:00:12 -0000

Touche. :-p

Re: Microsoft’s Chromium Edge browser is here

Zepfhyr — Wed, 15 Jan 2020 23:35:17 -0000

Bandwidth? My understanding of Brave is that you choose on which sites to allow ads, and earn cryptocurrency you can then pay to sites you want to support. Is the generation of that cryptocurrency what is using the bandwidth?

Re: AppleCare+ costs about the same for cheapest MacBook and priciest Mac Pro

Zepfhyr — Thu, 12 Dec 2019 10:05:15 -0000

Apple has always charged a premium for AppleCare on laptops vs desktops, with the assumption being that laptops get moved around a lot more and are therefore more prone to both accidental and non-accidental failure (due to shifting environments, increased non-destructive impact and jostling, etc).

AppleCare on a desktop has always been a no-brainer because of how cheap it is, but until AppleCare+ came along to cover accidental damage to laptops, it was always a tougher call. Now, I put it on everything that I consider critical, since the cost of a single repair is almost always more than the AppleCare itself.