AppleZulu

Also, because the Lost Cause lie gets trotted out and regurgitated so often in these discussions, I will preemptively offer this important historical context. The Lost Cause idea was a post-Civil War disinformation campaign advanced by Jefferson Davis and others. In a nutshell, they fabricated a story that the Confederacy had been a noble fight for what ended up as a (*sigh*) lost cause to protect states' rights to preserve a simpler, nobler, more genteel way of life seen in the antebellum South. The war wasn't about slavery, they said. It was about states' rights to choose laws based on local preferences and traditions, free from federal interference. It just so happened as a minor side issue that Southern states wanted to choose to retain slavery, they claimed.

This was all a contrived lie, of course. There are numerous ways to prove it was a lie, but the simplest is to look at the Confederates' own constitution. In it, they clearly expressed their priorities and what they seceded and fought for. Interestingly, in Article IV of that constitution, they nationalized "the institution of negro slavery," assuring that no current or future state or territory of the Confederate States could choose for itself not to allow slavery. So it turns out states' rights were of no consequence to the Confederates so long as they could keep their slaves.

This all remains relevant, because there is an important lesson that advocacy for states' rights is a red flag that almost always represents a diversionary lie, seeking to apply a false veneer of nobility onto attempts to do nefarious things (like disenfranchise certain non-preferred voters who might be coincidentally descended from previously enslaved people) without meddling federal interference.

Hopefully Lincoln's Dilemma will ultimately enlighten more than a few people to how all of this actually played out.

mike1 said:

ionicle said:

gavinthain said:

Total Fail. Need a battery version. 

Sorry, but so many people these days do not have wires for their doorbells. No new houses in the UK have wires installed. 

Yes and no, i currently have a wireless one and changing the battery is a chore, im willing to whip out the drill and get some
calking/silicone and do an install….. only has to be done once and then no more battery changes!

From where would you get power? Drilling the hole is easy. Wiring is the pain-in-the-butt part.

I too would like a battery-operated version. I already keep a spare battery for my Ring and swap out every 4-6 weeks. I wouldn't mind doing it more often if necessary to have this camera's functionality.

It's my understanding that Apple's protocol for HomeKit precludes battery powered cameras. I believe this is due to the facial/object/pattern recognition activity used to trigger various functions, which means the camera is always active and looking, so batteries would drain fairly quickly. While you individually are o.k. with frequent battery changes, the inevitable resulting customer complaints and dissatisfaction for short battery life would be inconsistent with Apple's ethos. 

muthuk_vanalingam said:

ravnorodom said:

Watch. The moment this folding iPhone is out, Samsung will release ultra folding origami phone. 

Just FYI - Samsung has already launched 3 generations of folding phones. By time Apple comes out with their own version of folding phone (assuming late 2023 at the earliest), Samsung would be on 5th generation of foldable phones.

And yet, have you ever seen one in the wild? You might have, but I haven't, and they're certainly a rare novelty. Just as the underselling Microsoft Surface hasn't ended up proving how Apple really needs to make a 2-in-1 MacPad Pro, the Samsung folding phone isn't showing Apple how they've missed the boat on this one.

The first problem is that there's not a good argument for why they would make this. If Apple made things in response to unimaginative fan fiction, they'd have given in and would be losing money on the MacPad Pro by now. 

Those folding iPhone renders above fail to respond to really simple questions like, how do you answer a phone call on one of those things? Do you have to open it up to see who's calling and then awkwardly hold a big square to the side of your head, or is there an additional screen on the one side of the device not shown in the render? If so, that's a really expensive option requiring a lot of additional hardware, plus OS bloat to operate two screens on one device. Also, there's not a good way to put a protective case on that thing, so if there's an additional outside screen, it will be scratched and broken with great regularity. Also älso, the corners of that square hinge will be digging holes into pockets, legs and faces.

Again, what's the point of it? Wow! It the screen folds and unfolds... out into a display area not used for any particular function. Videos in every format will have to straddle the crease, unless they only use half the screen, a screen area you already have with a non-folding iPhone. The most common 16:9 video aspect ratio would only use half the screen, making it pointless, and the older 4:3 would even be letter-boxed, making the big, unfolding screen a natural for neither format.

The original iPhone itself introduced a form factor that a lot of people didn't know they needed. They may not have realized they needed it, but the utility of the thing was obvious from the start. I'd certainly looked more than once at the cellphone and Palm Pilot I was carrying around and thought it would be better if the phone disappeared and became part of the PDA. Looking at the folding iPhone renderings above, there's just isn't an obvious or even vaguely apparent utility beyond novelty that will wear off after the first few days.

mpantone said:

waveparticle said:

mpantone said:

waveparticle said:

Any good tv guide app? TV Guide app used to be pretty good for displaying over the air tv programs. Then for some reason, it changed to become not informative. 

Almost all US television schedule apps use the same data source that has existed for decades, PGD (Program Guide Data) from the Chicago Tribune (at least that's where it came from twenty years ago).

The data is provided by the individual companies (terrestrial broadcasters, major networks, etc.). If WTEH doesn't update their PGD feed, no one gets it.

Returning to the original topic, the best weather app I have ever used is Tenki. There are two main shortcomings: 1.) the app's interface is only in Japanese and 2.) the weather data coverage is only for Japan. The basic weather service data is superb, far better than anything I've seen in a US-based weather data source.

I believe all the weather apps fetched data through National Weather Service or whatever it is called. 

This is incorrect.

Multiple weather data providers exist in the USA. The National Weather Service (NOAA) is just one. There are privately operated weather forecasting services as well. The Weather Channel (operated by IBM) is one. Weather Underground is yet another. Go ahead and look at the five day temperature forecast for your ZIP code with all three services. You will definitely see discrepancies.

The NWS (NOAA) does not create detailed temperature/weather forecasts worldwide. If you use an app/service that sources data from the NWS (NOAA), that same app/service is sourcing international weather forecasts from other sources.

NWS/NOAA is the most common weather data source provider for the USA but it is most certainly isn't the only one. And this isn't a new development. Private weather data service providers have been around FOR DECADES.

There are many regional specific/situation specific weather data providers. Surfline provides surf forecasts for many breaks around the world. Stormsurf does so for the US West Coast (focusing on Central California).

This is true, but with the caveat that much of the raw weather data is first sourced from the National Weather Service’s National Digital Forecast Database (NDFD), then processed for modeling, etc, by the private firms. Weather Underground also uses crowdsourced data from individual end users with weather stations. This provides a lot of additional information, but likely at a lower level of data quality/integrity, as backyard weather stations are not likely placed and maintained with the same level of scientific rigor as are NOAA data collection stations. I haven't checked to see if and how this has improved, but under the previous US administration, there was quite a bit of to-and-fro, seeking to limit the NOAA's production of end-user weather products under the pretext that doing so would be unfair competition with the private firms, even though much of the private firms' raw data was coming from the NDFD anyway. Also, Weather Underground was bought by the Weather Channel years ago, and IBM later bought the Weather Channel's back-end as well as all their front-end businesses, with the exception of the TV channel itself.

So most of the US raw data comes from NOAA, which also does still do its own modeling and forecasting. IBM also does a lot of modeling and forecasting, largely based on NOAA data, with the exception of their Weather Underground product, which offers dual forecasting products, one based on NOAA data and the other on their crowdsourced data. You'd have to check with each one, but likely most weather app developers are creating a front end based on the NOAA data.