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What Spectre and Meltdown Mean for JavaScript
Will Spectre & Meltdown Break JavaScript? - Developer Drive:
Even if we did magically get perfect fixes for the Meltdown and Spectre problems, this is going to spark a larger conversation about security and JavaScript in particular. I mean, what other bits of hardware could be compromised by a simple web page? This could happen again.
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Transmit for iOS Bites the Dust
This is a sad day:
Transmit iOS made about $35k in revenue in the last year, representing a minuscule fraction of our overall 2017 app revenue. That’s not enough to cover even a half-time developer working on the app. And the app needs full-time work — we’d love to be adding all
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Paul Thurrott says Intel Mislead (and continues to mislead) the Industry
Paul Thurrott has some choice words for Intel in how they have handled the recent Spectre/Meltdown exploits:
But if I were to point the finger of blame at one company here, and I will, it would have to be Intel. The microprocessor giant has behaved in an irresponsible manner that is just hard to
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Unlock Your Mac Easily with Unlox
There are 5 reasons you probably want to get Unlox for iOS and macOS (formerly MacID).
One, if you have a strong password on your Mac and you don’t want to enter that long code every time you open your computer, Unlox lets you authenticate with your iPhone via Touch ID or Face ID.
Android
Essentially a Disaster
Andrew Martonik has some choice words for the Essential Phone over at Android Central:
Aside from the hardware, every other aspect of my Essential Phone experience has been about frustration. Mostly, it boils down to horrendous software stability and performance. Despite dozens of updates and the anecdotes you may have seen that indicate performance issues
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Save $5 at Fandango When You Use Apple Pay
MacRumors reporting:
Apple is offering an Apple Pay promotion this week that discounts Fandango movie tickets by $5 when you make a purchase using either the Fandango app or the Fandango.com website.
This is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping Apple would start doing. Android Pay has done this once or twice
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Settling into your Smart Assistant Groove
When Alexa Becomes Part of the Family - Slate:
“I thought that I would be continuously testing the new features that came out of it, that it would always be a source of something novel,” Primiano said of her Echo. “But in reality what happened was that I settled down upon certain Alexa features that I
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Ulysses’ Early Adopter Promotion Ending Soon
In case you didn’t realize, my favorite writing app of all time switched to a subscription model earlier in the year. As any move to subscriptions results in some bad blood with the community (although rarely from me), the good folks over there have been allowing people who have bought the app previously to
Game
Civilization VI (all of it!) Comes to iPad
Correction: now through January 4, the full game upgrade is on sale for $30.
In yet another surprise iOS game release this month, Civilization VI just hit the App Store. No, not some watered down mobile version of the game, this is the entire PC game from last year.
You can download the game for
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When the Tech Press Strikes Out
You’ve probably heard about the fact that Apple has confirmed they throttle iPhone performance down when battery health degrades past a certain threshold. This means that if your iPhone’s battery starts to struggle to hold a charge like it used to, the phone will slow down slightly to make sure your phone stays
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AutoSleep is Far and Away the Best Way for Apple Watch Users to Track Their Sleep
AutoSleep is my go to sleep tracking app for the Apple Watch and it got a big update today:
Much faster, simpler and more accurate.
Now with automatic "live" sleep tracking on the Watch face! No buttons to press.
iPhone X Support. Optimised for WatchOS 4.
I love this tracker because it requires
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Google (sorta) Releases (a link to) Chrome on the Windows Store
Google Chrome Lands on the Microsoft Store As a Download Link - Thurrott.com:
The company today released the Google Chrome Installer on the Microsoft Store, which is a modern Windows 10 web wrapper app that loads the Google Chrome download page. From there, users follow the usual download link to download and install the browser
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"Ron's the handsome one" and Other Gems from a Computer Trying to Write a Chapter of Harry Potter
Botnik Studios ran the Harry Potter series through their machine learning keyboard and had it write a Harry Potter chapter of its own. The results are amazing.
"Ron's the handsome one," muttered Harry as he reluctantly reached for his. They cast a spell or two, and jets of green light shot
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2018 will Totally be the Year of Android Tablet Apps
Dieter Bohn has a great compilation of “Android tablets apps will be good soon” quotes. Here’s one:
Tablet-friendly apps are still few and far between — even the big Twitter web and app overhaul didn't include any optimizations for larger form factors — and it does seem like everyone's waiting for
Android
Google is Killing Project Tango
From 9to5Google:
Begining March 1st of 2018, Tango will no longer be supported, with the company pointing developers to embrace its latest AR initiative instead.
This makes sense as ARCore, Google’s new augmented reality platform for Android is almost as good as Tango in many ways and works on hardware you actually want to
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The Nintendo Switch on Pace to Outsell Wii U by March 2018
Business Insider has a look at Nintendo’s reveal that they just sold their 10 millionth Switch:
Demand has been so high, in fact, that Nintendo had to revise its sales projections for first-year sales of the Switch. The company initially expected to sell about 10 million units in year one — now, Nintendo expects
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AirPods and the Complexity Behind Simplicity
T3 has an extended interview with Schiller:
“At the surface level, it’s an incredibly simple product. But the reality is it’s actually an incredibly complex product to make. Each AirPod really is its own computer, running software and hardware. And those two computers need to deliver this very clear experience that you want,