Apple Reflects On 30 years of Macintosh

At the Verge.

Unhinged Leftists Escalate 'Google Bus' Protests to Home of Driverless Car Designer Anthony Levandowski

This isn't legitimate political protest. It's ideological harassment and intimidation. And for what? Because the guy commutes 45 miles to work at Google? Because he works on self-driving cars? The horrors.

I mean, they not only launched an insane protest at the guy's home, but they doxed his street address and photo online at Indy Bay?

Behold the Luddites of today's sociopathic left. At the Los Angeles Times, "'Google Bus' protests escalate as activists target employee's home":

SAN FRANCISCO -- Bay Area protests against technology companies got very personal on Wednesday when activists blocked the driveway of a Google employee's home.

Calling themselves the Counterforce, the protesters showed up on Anthony Levandowski’s doorstep to call attention to the Berkeley resident's work for the military and Google’s “surveillance” techniques.

Levandowski, who works for Google’s X laboratory, where he helped develop Google’s self-driving cars, was recently featured in the New Yorker magazine. In the article, he talked about his 43-mile commute in a Google self-driving car from Berkeley to the Google campus in Mountain View.

Protesters said they rang his doorbell to alert him that they planned to protest Levandowski's work with the defense industry developing “war robots," (Google recently bought Boston Dynamics, a military robotics contractor) and a condo project being built on land he owns in Berkeley.

Then they held a banner in front of his house that read “Google’s Future Stops Here.” They also placed fliers on the windshields of cars that said: “Anthony Levandowski is building an unconscionable world of surveillance, control and automation. He is also your neighbor.”

The protest to block Levandowski’s “personal commute” lasted 45 minutes. The protesters then went to block a Google bus at the BART station on Ashby Avenue in Berkeley.

And they issued a warning in an anonymous post on local news site Indybay.

“Our problem is with Google, its pervasive surveillance capabilities utilized by the NSA, the technologies it is developing, and the gentrification its employees are causing in every city they inhabit. But our problem does not stop with Google. All of you other tech companies, all of you other developers and everyone else building the new surveillance state--We're coming for you next.”

And here's Berkeley City Councilman Gordon Wozniak, "It’s one thing to protest against a corporation by demonstrating beside a bus, but going after an individual at his home is a bad escalation." You think?

And at Arstechnica, "Protesters show up at the doorstep of Google self-driving car engineer." From the comments:

Viva La Revolution!

*sigh*

Singling out employees does not change corporate culture. Stalking and attacking individuals is a sure fire way to lose public support. And this odd fixation against self driving cars just strikes me as strange.

Yeah. Strange, and f-king unhinged. Luddite freaks.

The Consequences of Accelerated Modern Life

At Der Spiegel, "Do More, Faster: Acceleration Plagues Modern Society":

Faster! Faster! Even Faster! The phenomenon of acceleration is a defining characteristic of modern life. A new book analyzes how it fuels a constant need for new experiences and a counterintuitive shortage of time.

Steve Ballmer is no Steve Jobs. The CEO of Microsoft is not considered to be much of a philosopher. And yet, for the company's recent developer conference he perceptively wrapped the motto of our time into a pertinent slogan: "Faster! Faster! Faster! Faster!"

Ballmer may have been referring to the development of new products or the creation of ever faster operating systems, but acceleration has also become a universal goal in the modern world. It's more than just a technological phenomenon, argues German sociologist Hartmut Rosa, a professor at the University of Jena. His recently published essay "Beschleunigung und Entfremdung," or "Acceleration and Alienation," posits that acceleration is the core element of modernization and consequently the key concept of our age.

Rosa differentiates between mechanical acceleration, the acceleration of social change and the accelerating pace of daily life. The process of mechanical acceleration began in the 19th century in conjunction with industrialization. In terms of the time it takes to travel across the world, for example, it has effectively shrunk the size of the world to one-sixtieth of its actual size.

Keeping Our Options Open

Today, mechanical acceleration affects the digital sector in particular. But paradoxically, it also goes hand in hand with an acceleration of the pace of life. Even though mechanical acceleration, by shortening the time it takes to complete tasks, was intended to create more available time for the individual, late modern society does not enjoy the luxury of more leisure time, Rosa writes. On the contrary, individuals suffer from a constant time shortage.

The reason for this is our urge "to realize as many options as possible from the infinite palette of possibilities that life presents to us," he says. Living life to the fullest has become the core objective of our time. At the same time, this hunger for new things can never be satisfied: "No matter how fast we become, the proportion of the experiences we have will continuously shrink in the face of those we missed." As a result, more and more people suffer from depression and burnout, according to Rosa.

His definition of social change utilizes a term that originally stems from Marxism: alienation. But Rosa's criticism is not directed against capitalist production conditions (unlike earlier critics of industrial modernity, Rosa's focus is not on labor), but against acceleration as a resulting meta-phenomenon.

Rosa's book shows that this phenomenon deserves at least as much attention as the buzzword "globalization," especially because the continuous acceleration of social change also leads to changes in values, lifestyles and relationships.

Continue reading.

U.S. Supreme Court: Human Genes Can't Be Patented

This was one of the big blockbuster cases that Court-watchers were expected.

Seems like a whimper more than a bang.

At the New York Times, "Supreme Court Rules Human Genes May Not Be Patented."

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion for a unanimous Court. Interesting.

See also SCOTUS Blog, "Details on Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc.," and "Opinion recap: No patent on natural gene work":

In a way, the ruling was a silent tribute to screen actress Angelina Jolie, who recently gained huge notoriety not for her acting but for voluntarily having her breasts surgically removed after discovering that she had the threatening genes in her body. She, of course, was able to pay the high cost of that test; now, women of less means will be able to afford it, and that was a key motivation for challenging Myriad’s patent rights.

More at Memeorandum.

Apple Shows Hand for Staying on Top Through Innovation

At IBD, "Apple Shows Off iOS 7, iTunes Radio, Cylinder PC":

Apple (AAPL) on Monday responded to criticism that it isn't innovating enough by unveiling a revamped mobile operating system with a plethora of new features, a radically redesigned desktop computer, and an Internet radio service.

But the largely anticipated news failed to wow investors as shares dipped 0.7%.

At Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, executives shared their latest products with 6,000 software developers in attendance.

The cylindrical Mac Pro desktop for creative professionals is the Apple's boldest design since the short-lived Power Mac G4 Cube more than a decade ago. The black, 9.9-inch tall PC looks like oversized 35-mm film canister. It is one-eighth the volume of the current Mac Pro. It also boasts much faster computing and graphics processing. Assembled in the U.S., the new Mac Pro will be available later this year.

"This is the future of the Pro desktop," marketing chief Phil Schiller said. "This is a machine unlike anything we've ever made both inside and out."

More at that top link

And Apple's iOS7 page is here. The new Mac Pro is here. And the "keynote" page is here.

And some responses, at GigaOM, "Much iOS 7 design inspiration came from others but Apple elegantly puts it all together."

Also at TechCrunch, "Design, And Insecurity, Is Back At Apple," and at the Verge, "The design of iOS 7: simply confusing." (Via Techmeme.)