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Zack Rosenblatt, Dianna Russini, and Michael Silver have written a devastating profile of the most dysfunctional franchise in all of U.S. pro sports, the New York Jets, whose dysfunction has a clear and obvious root cause: meddling idiot owner Woody Johnson (heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune). One example:

A few weeks later, Douglas and his Broncos counterpart, George
Paton, were deep in negotiations for a trade that would have sent
Jeudy to the Jets and given future Hall of Fame quarterback Aaron
Rodgers another potential playmaker. The Broncos felt a deal was
near. Then, abruptly, it all fell apart. In Denver’s executive
offices, they couldn’t believe the reason why.

Douglas told the Broncos that Johnson didn’t want to make the
trade because the owner felt Jeudy’s player rating in “Madden
NFL,” the popular video game, wasn’t high enough, according to
multiple league sources. The Broncos ultimately traded the
receiver to the Cleveland Browns. Last Sunday, Jeudy crossed the
1,000-yard receiving mark for the first time in his career.

Coming into this season, the Jets had hopes of ending the
franchise’s 13-year playoff drought — the longest in the four
major men’s North American sports — and quieting years of talk
about the franchise’s dysfunction. Instead, this season has only
cemented the Jets’ reputation.

The fans of every other team in the NFL that is having a disappointing season — like yours truly — are all texting this story to each other today, with the same message: “At least we’re not the Jets.”

 ★ 

Zack Rosenblatt, Dianna Russini, and Michael Silver have written a devastating profile of the most dysfunctional franchise in all of U.S. pro sports, the New York Jets, whose dysfunction has a clear and obvious root cause: meddling idiot owner Woody Johnson (heir to the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical fortune). One example:

A few weeks later, Douglas and his Broncos counterpart, George
Paton, were deep in negotiations for a trade that would have sent
Jeudy to the Jets and given future Hall of Fame quarterback Aaron
Rodgers another potential playmaker. The Broncos felt a deal was
near. Then, abruptly, it all fell apart. In Denver’s executive
offices, they couldn’t believe the reason why.

Douglas told the Broncos that Johnson didn’t want to make the
trade because the owner felt Jeudy’s player rating in “Madden
NFL,” the popular video game, wasn’t high enough, according to
multiple league sources. The Broncos ultimately traded the
receiver to the Cleveland Browns. Last Sunday, Jeudy crossed the
1,000-yard receiving mark for the first time in his career.

Coming into this season, the Jets had hopes of ending the
franchise’s 13-year playoff drought — the longest in the four
major men’s North American sports — and quieting years of talk
about the franchise’s dysfunction. Instead, this season has only
cemented the Jets’ reputation.

The fans of every other team in the NFL that is having a disappointing season — like yours truly — are all texting this story to each other today, with the same message: “At least we’re not the Jets.”

Read More 

Joe Otterson, reporting for Variety:

“Silo” has been renewed for both Seasons 3 and 4 at Apple TV+,
with the fourth season set to be the show’s last.

The renewal news comes as the post-apocalyptic drama is currently
airing its second season. The sixth episode of Season 2 is due out
on Dec. 20. The season finale is scheduled to debut on Jan. 17.

I feel bad complaining about a good show not only getting renewed, but renewed through to a planned conclusion. I fucking hate when good shows get cancelled after one season.

But. While I really liked season 1 of Silo, season 2 has been a bore. We’re halfway through — five episodes — and everything interesting could have been put in one episode. Maybe one and half. I hope the remaining five episodes of season 2 pick up, but so far, it really feels like this entire season has just padding to get to what’s next. Hugely disappointing, really.

 ★ 

Joe Otterson, reporting for Variety:

“Silo” has been renewed for both Seasons 3 and 4 at Apple TV+,
with the fourth season set to be the show’s last.

The renewal news comes as the post-apocalyptic drama is currently
airing its second season. The sixth episode of Season 2 is due out
on Dec. 20. The season finale is scheduled to debut on Jan. 17.

I feel bad complaining about a good show not only getting renewed, but renewed through to a planned conclusion. I fucking hate when good shows get cancelled after one season.

But. While I really liked season 1 of Silo, season 2 has been a bore. We’re halfway through — five episodes — and everything interesting could have been put in one episode. Maybe one and half. I hope the remaining five episodes of season 2 pick up, but so far, it really feels like this entire season has just padding to get to what’s next. Hugely disappointing, really.

Read More 

One last item on Acorn 8. Whether you are a longtime Acorn user (like me), or a would-be new user, you should set aside some time to actual read Acorn’s documentation. It’s a full user manual, and it not only describes, in detail, what every feature in the app does and how to use them, but also a vast array of “how-to” tutorials, many of them videos.

In broad strokes, there are two approaches to documenting a serious, professional-level app or software system. One was is a comprehensive functional reference resource. That’s a way that you, the user, can teach yourself how to use a feature, refresh your memory about a feature you haven’t used in a while, or even just check to see if a certain feature even exists. The other is a narrative, storytelling, tutorial approach. That’s not teaching yourself — that’s letting an expert teach you, and today that’s often a visual approach through video.

Acorn’s document is so thorough that it encompasses both approaches. Either one would qualify Acorn as a well-documented application. But by including both, Gus Mueller should be given some sort of medal or award. Different people learn in different ways, and Acorn’s documentation is there for everyone.

It should go without saying, but no serious tool — hardware or software — is complete without thorough, polished documentation. Acorn goes above and beyond. It’s amazing enough that a company as small as Flying Meat — it’s really just Gus and his wife Kirsten — has produced a full-fledged professional-strength image editing application that has remained modern and cutting-edge for 17 years and counting. But it’s also accompanied by first-class comprehensive documentation.

 ★ 

One last item on Acorn 8. Whether you are a longtime Acorn user (like me), or a would-be new user, you should set aside some time to actual read Acorn’s documentation. It’s a full user manual, and it not only describes, in detail, what every feature in the app does and how to use them, but also a vast array of “how-to” tutorials, many of them videos.

In broad strokes, there are two approaches to documenting a serious, professional-level app or software system. One was is a comprehensive functional reference resource. That’s a way that you, the user, can teach yourself how to use a feature, refresh your memory about a feature you haven’t used in a while, or even just check to see if a certain feature even exists. The other is a narrative, storytelling, tutorial approach. That’s not teaching yourself — that’s letting an expert teach you, and today that’s often a visual approach through video.

Acorn’s document is so thorough that it encompasses both approaches. Either one would qualify Acorn as a well-documented application. But by including both, Gus Mueller should be given some sort of medal or award. Different people learn in different ways, and Acorn’s documentation is there for everyone.

It should go without saying, but no serious tool — hardware or software — is complete without thorough, polished documentation. Acorn goes above and beyond. It’s amazing enough that a company as small as Flying Meat — it’s really just Gus and his wife Kirsten — has produced a full-fledged professional-strength image editing application that has remained modern and cutting-edge for 17 years and counting. But it’s also accompanied by first-class comprehensive documentation.

Read More 

Dan Moren, writing at Six Colors:

The newly released Acorn 8 adds a bunch of great
features to the mix. A few of them will be familiar to Apple
platform users: subject selection uses machine learning to let
you quickly isolate and grab the subject of a picture (there’s
also a corresponding “Remove Background” feature to simplify
that task) and a Live Text tool allows you to select and copy
text within an image.

For me, the star of the show is the fascinating Data Merge, which
is a bit like Mail Merge for images. If you’ve ever needed to
create the same image several times but with different information — nametags, for example, or personalized gift cards — this is a
life-saver. You open your template image, identify your variables,
then hand Acorn a CSV file with the relevant data and it will
process through them, assigning text where needed and even putting
images in assigned layers. It’s the kind of wild automation tool
that might not be something you need every day, but when you do
need it, there’s really no replacement.

The rare sweet spot that Acorn hits is that it’s super-approachable to new and casual users, who just need an image editor sometimes, and super-powerful for power users who want to dig in.

 ★ 

Dan Moren, writing at Six Colors:

The newly released Acorn 8 adds a bunch of great
features to the mix. A few of them will be familiar to Apple
platform users: subject selection uses machine learning to let
you quickly isolate and grab the subject of a picture (there’s
also a corresponding “Remove Background” feature to simplify
that task) and a Live Text tool allows you to select and copy
text within an image.

For me, the star of the show is the fascinating Data Merge, which
is a bit like Mail Merge for images. If you’ve ever needed to
create the same image several times but with different information — nametags, for example, or personalized gift cards — this is a
life-saver. You open your template image, identify your variables,
then hand Acorn a CSV file with the relevant data and it will
process through them, assigning text where needed and even putting
images in assigned layers. It’s the kind of wild automation tool
that might not be something you need every day, but when you do
need it, there’s really no replacement.

The rare sweet spot that Acorn hits is that it’s super-approachable to new and casual users, who just need an image editor sometimes, and super-powerful for power users who want to dig in.

Read More 

Dave Nanian, writing on the Shirt Pocket blog:

macOS 15.2 was released a few days ago, with a surprise. A
terrible, awful surprise. Apple broke the replicator. Towards
the end of replicating the Data volume, seemingly when it’s
about to copy either Preboot or Recovery, it fails with a
Resource Busy error.

In the past, Resource Busy could be worked around by ensuring
the system was kept awake. But this new bug means, on most
systems, there’s no fix. It just fails.

Since Apple took away the ability for 3rd parties (eg, us) to copy
the OS, and took on the responsibility themselves, it’s been up to
them to ensure this functionality continues to work. And in that,
they’ve failed in macOS 15.2. Because this is their code, and
we’re forced to rely on it to copy the OS, OS copying will not
work until they fix it. […]

For those who may be working for Apple, or have good contacts, the
bug is FB16090831. A fix would be really helpful, folks.

This means Shirt Pocket’s outstanding utility SuperDuper can’t make a bootable clone of your startup drive on a machine running MacOS 15.2.0. It’s worth noting that you can still use SuperDuper (or other backup utilities) to clone all of your data, which is, by far, the most essential data in any backup. But bootable startup drives clones are an essential part of many people’s data integrity workflows.

This bug seems to affect CarbonCopyCloner and Apple’s own Time Machine, too. A bug like this is always unfortunate, but especially around the holidays, when it might take longer than usual to get fixed, even if the issue is escalated within Apple.

 ★ 

Dave Nanian, writing on the Shirt Pocket blog:

macOS 15.2 was released a few days ago, with a surprise. A
terrible, awful surprise. Apple broke the replicator. Towards
the end of replicating the Data volume, seemingly when it’s
about to copy either Preboot or Recovery, it fails with a
Resource Busy error.

In the past, Resource Busy could be worked around by ensuring
the system was kept awake. But this new bug means, on most
systems, there’s no fix. It just fails.

Since Apple took away the ability for 3rd parties (eg, us) to copy
the OS, and took on the responsibility themselves, it’s been up to
them to ensure this functionality continues to work. And in that,
they’ve failed in macOS 15.2. Because this is their code, and
we’re forced to rely on it to copy the OS, OS copying will not
work until they fix it. […]

For those who may be working for Apple, or have good contacts, the
bug is FB16090831. A fix would be really helpful, folks.

This means Shirt Pocket’s outstanding utility SuperDuper can’t make a bootable clone of your startup drive on a machine running MacOS 15.2.0. It’s worth noting that you can still use SuperDuper (or other backup utilities) to clone all of your data, which is, by far, the most essential data in any backup. But bootable startup drives clones are an essential part of many people’s data integrity workflows.

This bug seems to affect CarbonCopyCloner and Apple’s own Time Machine, too. A bug like this is always unfortunate, but especially around the holidays, when it might take longer than usual to get fixed, even if the issue is escalated within Apple.

Read More 

Gus Mueller:

This is a major update of Acorn, and is currently on a
time-limited sale for $19.99. It’s still a one time
purchase to use as long as you’d like, and as usual, the full
release notes are available. I want to highlight some of my
favorite things below.

“Select Subject”, “Mask Subject”, and “Remove Background” are new
commands which use machine learning (or A.I. if you prefer) to
find the most important parts of your image, and then perform
their respective operations. This has been a request for a long
time, and while I was doubtful of it’s utility, it’s actually
pretty fun to play with and more useful than I figured it would
be. So I’m glad I took the time to integrate it.

You can now set your measurement units to inches, centimeter, or
pixels, and it shows up across the tools for your image, not just
specific ones. This includes the crop palette, shape dimensions,
filter settings… well, pretty much everything. This might be the
oldest feature request I’ve implemented so far. And then related
to this, Acorn 8 now has an on canvas ruler which you can use to
measure out distances, straighten your image with, or even
redefine the DPI.

Look up Table (LUT) support. LUTs are pretty fun, and they work by
mapping one set of colors to another, enabling consistent or
stylized visual effects. LUTs are used primarily in photography or
filmmaking, and you can download and install new LUTs from various
places across the internet.

And more, so much more. The release notes: are copious, and for me, always interesting. Acorn remains one of my most-used tools. It’s fast, reliable, powerful, extensible/scriptable, and the interface makes so much intuitive sense. That’s all been true since version 1.0 back in 2007, and that’s why it’s been my go-to image editor since it was in early beta before version 1.0 back in 2007. It’s just faster and more powerful today. You should absolutely check it out while it’s available for just $20.

 ★ 

Gus Mueller:

This is a major update of Acorn, and is currently on a
time-limited sale for $19.99. It’s still a one time
purchase to use as long as you’d like, and as usual, the full
release notes are available. I want to highlight some of my
favorite things below.

“Select Subject”, “Mask Subject”, and “Remove Background” are new
commands which use machine learning (or A.I. if you prefer) to
find the most important parts of your image, and then perform
their respective operations. This has been a request for a long
time, and while I was doubtful of it’s utility, it’s actually
pretty fun to play with and more useful than I figured it would
be. So I’m glad I took the time to integrate it.

You can now set your measurement units to inches, centimeter, or
pixels, and it shows up across the tools for your image, not just
specific ones. This includes the crop palette, shape dimensions,
filter settings… well, pretty much everything. This might be the
oldest feature request I’ve implemented so far. And then related
to this, Acorn 8 now has an on canvas ruler which you can use to
measure out distances, straighten your image with, or even
redefine the DPI.

Look up Table (LUT) support. LUTs are pretty fun, and they work by
mapping one set of colors to another, enabling consistent or
stylized visual effects. LUTs are used primarily in photography or
filmmaking, and you can download and install new LUTs from various
places across the internet.

And more, so much more. The release notes: are copious, and for me, always interesting. Acorn remains one of my most-used tools. It’s fast, reliable, powerful, extensible/scriptable, and the interface makes so much intuitive sense. That’s all been true since version 1.0 back in 2007, and that’s why it’s been my go-to image editor since it was in early beta before version 1.0 back in 2007. It’s just faster and more powerful today. You should absolutely check it out while it’s available for just $20.

Read More 

Blackmagic Design:

Blackmagic Design announced it will start taking pre-orders for
the new Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive camera — the world’s first
commercial camera system designed to capture Apple Immersive Video
for Apple Vision Pro — today with deliveries due to start in
early 2025. DaVinci Resolve Studio will be updated to support
editing Apple Immersive Video early next year, offering
professional filmmakers a comprehensive workflow for producing
Apple Immersive Video for Apple Vision Pro. Apple Immersive Video
is a remarkable 180-degree media format that leverages
ultra-high-resolution immersive video and Spatial Audio to place
viewers in the center of the action. […]

Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive features a fixed, custom lens
system pre-installed on the body, which is designed specifically
to capture Apple Immersive Video for Apple Vision Pro. The sensor
delivers 8160 × 7200 resolution per eye with pixel level
synchronization and an incredible 16 stops of dynamic range, so
cinematographers can shoot 90fps 3D immersive cinema content to a
single file. The custom lens system is designed for URSA Cine’s
large format image sensor with extremely accurate positional data
that’s read and stored at time of manufacturing. This immersive
lens projection data — which is calibrated and stored on device — then travels through post production in the Blackmagic RAW
file itself.

$30,000 — not cheap, but not crazy. And this isn’t merely 3D in a rectangular frame — it’s 180° 8K 3D.

David Smith:

What really intrigues me about it is when/if it will show up for
rental. I have a few tentative ideas in this space I’d love to
explore but I don’t think would justify the cost of owning one.

Looks like Lensrentals rents a vaguely similar, traditional
Blackmagic camera kit for around $1,000/week … which would make
experimentation much more accessible.

 ★ 

Blackmagic Design:

Blackmagic Design announced it will start taking pre-orders for
the new Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive camera — the world’s first
commercial camera system designed to capture Apple Immersive Video
for Apple Vision Pro — today with deliveries due to start in
early 2025. DaVinci Resolve Studio will be updated to support
editing Apple Immersive Video early next year, offering
professional filmmakers a comprehensive workflow for producing
Apple Immersive Video for Apple Vision Pro. Apple Immersive Video
is a remarkable 180-degree media format that leverages
ultra-high-resolution immersive video and Spatial Audio to place
viewers in the center of the action. […]

Blackmagic URSA Cine Immersive features a fixed, custom lens
system pre-installed on the body, which is designed specifically
to capture Apple Immersive Video for Apple Vision Pro. The sensor
delivers 8160 × 7200 resolution per eye with pixel level
synchronization and an incredible 16 stops of dynamic range, so
cinematographers can shoot 90fps 3D immersive cinema content to a
single file. The custom lens system is designed for URSA Cine’s
large format image sensor with extremely accurate positional data
that’s read and stored at time of manufacturing. This immersive
lens projection data — which is calibrated and stored on device — then travels through post production in the Blackmagic RAW
file itself.

$30,000 — not cheap, but not crazy. And this isn’t merely 3D in a rectangular frame — it’s 180° 8K 3D.

David Smith:

What really intrigues me about it is when/if it will show up for
rental. I have a few tentative ideas in this space I’d love to
explore but I don’t think would justify the cost of owning one.

Looks like Lensrentals rents a vaguely similar, traditional
Blackmagic camera kit for around $1,000/week … which would make
experimentation much more accessible.

Read More 

Paul Kafasis, on the Rogue Amoeba blog:

Even as our products steadily grew in popularity, our relationship
with Apple was almost non-existent. Plenty of individuals inside
the company were fans, but we received very little attention from
Apple as a corporate entity. We didn’t much mind being outsiders,
but it meant that we often had zero notice of breaking changes
introduced by Apple.

During this time, Apple placed an emphasis on improving the
security of MacOS, continually locking the operating system down
further and further. Though their changes weren’t aimed at the
legitimate audio capture we provided our users, they nonetheless
made that capture increasingly difficult. We labored to keep our
tools functioning with each new version of MacOS. Through it all,
we lived with a constant fear that Apple would irreparably break
our apps.

In 2020, the disaster foreshadowed literally one sentence ago
struck. Beta versions of MacOS 11 broke ACE, our then-current
audio capture technology, and the damage looked permanent.

Kafasis is a friend and frequent guest on The Talk Show (and holds his own as a podcast co-host with a combustible collaborator), and I use quite a few apps in Rogue Amoeba’s suite, so I was familiar with the broad outline of this saga. But seeing it all spelled out made clear it was a lot more precarious than I thought.

 ★ 

Paul Kafasis, on the Rogue Amoeba blog:

Even as our products steadily grew in popularity, our relationship
with Apple was almost non-existent. Plenty of individuals inside
the company were fans, but we received very little attention from
Apple as a corporate entity. We didn’t much mind being outsiders,
but it meant that we often had zero notice of breaking changes
introduced by Apple.

During this time, Apple placed an emphasis on improving the
security of MacOS, continually locking the operating system down
further and further. Though their changes weren’t aimed at the
legitimate audio capture we provided our users, they nonetheless
made that capture increasingly difficult. We labored to keep our
tools functioning with each new version of MacOS. Through it all,
we lived with a constant fear that Apple would irreparably break
our apps.

In 2020, the disaster foreshadowed literally one sentence ago
struck. Beta versions of MacOS 11 broke ACE, our then-current
audio capture technology, and the damage looked permanent.

Kafasis is a friend and frequent guest on The Talk Show (and holds his own as a podcast co-host with a combustible collaborator), and I use quite a few apps in Rogue Amoeba’s suite, so I was familiar with the broad outline of this saga. But seeing it all spelled out made clear it was a lot more precarious than I thought.

Read More 

A few weeks ago, in a post primarily complaining about Google’s disingenuous claims about their Messages app’s support for encryption (they suggest, heavily, that it encrypts every message or most messages, but in fact only supports encryption for RCS message sent between users of Google Messages on Android devices), I also complained about the fact that Google’s own Google Voice doesn’t support RCS at all.

Turns out Google Fi doesn’t support RCS fully either. Google Fi is Google’s cellular phone service. I actually use it to provide service to my Android burner phone. The prices are excellent and the service is fine for my minimal needs for a phone I barely use. But Google Fi offers something called “call and voicemail sync” that lets Fi users make and answer voice calls through the web. If you enable this, you lose RCS. See Reddit threads here and here with Fi fans complaining about it.

It’s just wild to me that Google would spend years waging a campaign urging Apple to support RCS, yet Google itself doesn’t support RCS in its own products.

 ★ 

A few weeks ago, in a post primarily complaining about Google’s disingenuous claims about their Messages app’s support for encryption (they suggest, heavily, that it encrypts every message or most messages, but in fact only supports encryption for RCS message sent between users of Google Messages on Android devices), I also complained about the fact that Google’s own Google Voice doesn’t support RCS at all.

Turns out Google Fi doesn’t support RCS fully either. Google Fi is Google’s cellular phone service. I actually use it to provide service to my Android burner phone. The prices are excellent and the service is fine for my minimal needs for a phone I barely use. But Google Fi offers something called “call and voicemail sync” that lets Fi users make and answer voice calls through the web. If you enable this, you lose RCS. See Reddit threads here and here with Fi fans complaining about it.

It’s just wild to me that Google would spend years waging a campaign urging Apple to support RCS, yet Google itself doesn’t support RCS in its own products.

Read More 

Excellent five-minute short video from the ever-insightful Kirby Ferguson for The New York Times, exploring why everything looks the same, sounds the same, and seemingly is the same in today’s pop culture. The short answer: that sameness is only pervasive when you only look at what’s promoted by our three-headed social media hegemony (Meta, YouTube, and TikTok).

 ★ 

Excellent five-minute short video from the ever-insightful Kirby Ferguson for The New York Times, exploring why everything looks the same, sounds the same, and seemingly is the same in today’s pop culture. The short answer: that sameness is only pervasive when you only look at what’s promoted by our three-headed social media hegemony (Meta, YouTube, and TikTok).

Read More