I want to focus on my favorite visual update in Yosemite — the dock icons. Before Yosemite, Apple maintained a system for icon design through a checklist of mostly unstated and understood guidelines paired with a few specific recommendations in the Human Interface Guidelines (HIG). With Yosemite, that system becomes more consistent, and regular, yet the HIG remains silent on the specifics.
—Nick Keppol doing an awesome job inspecting the icons in OS X Yosemite

If the awesome tie I wore today wasn’t enough to kill The Mondays then this little bit of Microsoft news is:

In among the larger-than-life humans on NFL sidelines this season, you’ll notice a slew of Microsoft’s Surface Pro 2 tablets helping out. Used by players and coaches to review photos of plays, the tablets are encased in chunky cyan protective cases and have been attracting the attention of the broadcast commentators when put to use. The only problem is that the announcers don’t seem to have been briefed on the name, leaving them to describe Microsoft’s slates as “iPad-like tools.”
Hahahahahahaha.
Oh boy. Nothing like a nice cup of schadenfreude in the morning to get ya going.

Analysts and trend-spotters agree that a major shift in teenage trends, and in teenage spending, is underway. John Morris, a retail analyst at BMO Capital Markets, says that his regular focus groups with teenagers about what trends they find most appealing often stray from clothing.

“You try to get them talking about what’s the next look, what they’re excited about purchasing in apparel, and the conversation always circles back to the iPhone 6,” he said. “You get them talking about crop tops, you get a nice little debate about high-waist going, but the conversation keeps shifting back.”
—Elizabeth A. Harris and Rachel Abrams, Plugged-In Over Preppy: Teenagers Favor Tech Over Clothes

This week Michael and Bryan discuss fall in New York, appreciating jazz and classical music, the celebrity iPhone hacking drama and Apple’s expected wearable computer device thing we didn’t know we wanted. The episode opens with the exhaust from a Lamborghini Countach.
Weekly Exhaust – Episode 15

via Twitter

—found in The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch

—American Dreaming Teaser from Jim Toscano on Vimeo.
taken from The Combustion Chamber

—Ernest Hemingway
via Bombtune

This week Michael and Bryan discuss Bryan’s news embargo, adults not belonging on Facebook, how Xenon headlights suck and blind you, how useless humans are, how shitty humans drive, the likelihood of our universe being a hologram and how your brain can f$#k with you. The episode opens with the exhaust from a 1970 Plymouth Barracuda.
Weekly Exhaust Episode 14

Recently my brother sent my dad a video of the history of the Vocoder. (the Vocoder is a synthesizer that produces sounds from an analysis of speech input) Since my dad is a 30+ year veteran of AT&T and an electrical/mechanical engineer, he dropped some knowledge on my brother:

Much of this technology was also used to improve the efficiencies of the initial fiber optic trans-oceanic cables. I had been directly involved in implementing the first fiber cable (TAT-8) between the US (east coast, NY) and Europe (UK, France) as well as the Pacific ocean cables (HAW4/TPC3) to the far east (via California, Hawaii, Guam to Japan). There was limited capacity and the US telecom quality voice standard at the time was known as 64kbps per voice channel. Not too many simultaneous calls could be carried over the cable at that rate, so low bit rate technology (LBRV) was needed to be used instead to improve transmission efficiencies, which was a direct off-shoot of the Vocoder technology. The algorithm for voice frequencies vs. required bit allocation was critical for passing signals that would “sound” like a person’s normal voice but sent at a lower bit rate that would permit additional calls. Fortunately, the human ear can be “tricked” into thinking it’s hearing the original signal even though you are slipping/subtracting data bits at critically particular times and audio frequencies. I actually sampled some of the Bell Labs “blind tests” testing different bit rates and it was a fascinating experience to be at both ends of the project — lab development and my operations/engineering implementation. At the time Bell Labs was an incredibly deep and competent organization. I had several BTL engineers assigned to my team which made my life a lot easier! But back then then the technology was pure, as we called it then, “Buck Rogers”! Today, we are so many generations beyond this.

You rock, Dad.

via my brother’s site, chasing Tremendous

Being the crusty old-media scold felt good at the time, but recent events suggest that Vice is deadly serious about doing real news that people, yes, even young people, will actually watch. And given that Vice has been in talks with Time Warner for a partnership that may include its bringing its guerrilla aesthetic to an entire news channel, it’s worth looking at its growth and development as a source of hard news.

Last year, Vice gained a share of infamy by getting access to the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the notoriously secretive country he leads through a caper involving Dennis Rodman and the Harlem Globetrotters, a stunt that drew attention, invective and clicks. In March, Vice christened Vice News as a separate entity and joined with YouTube on a news channel. Almost immediately, the Vice reporter Simon Ostrovsky began filing remarkable dispatches from Ukraine and was, for his trouble, kidnapped in April. (He was freed after a few days.)
—David Carr, Its Edge Intact, Vice Is Chasing Hard News

In a world with microchip implants, car-to-car communication, and talk of drone delivery services, it can seem as if innovation is becoming increasingly high-tech. But what about the world’s poorest, for whom such gadgets are out of reach? What types of innovation would be most beneficial for them?

These questions are the driving force behind efforts in “frugal innovation” — designing products specifically to meet the needs of the world’s poorest people. The concept challenges innovators to do more with less. In general, the creators of frugal innovations strive for them to be affordable, sustainable, lightweight and rugged. Wherever possible, they should be made locally with renewable materials. Perhaps most important, they should be developed with the end user in mind, taking into consideration things like power outages in her village, the distance she must walk to seek medical assistance and religious customs she considers sacred.
—Sarika Bansal, Innovation Within Reach