Today in twitter drama, people are up in arms about the Apple Card offering a tech entrepreneur's wife significantly less credit than her husband. Recently, other tech entrepreneurs like the Woz have noticed similar limit discrepancies. However, I think this is all missing the forest for the trees. It is likely that GS is in fact offering less credit to women. However, in both cases, higher credit was offered to male tech entrepreneurs (while their spouses got much less credit). And, given that Only 1/5th of VC money goes to startups with even a single women on the founding board, I don't think it's super far fetched that the statistics will show women, on average, are given notably less credit than men, especially when those men are tech entrepreneurs.

Ultimately, I have no idea why twitter is so surprised by this. People seem to think this is a unique case of bank discrimination, yet it's really just a reflection of a society which pays women less than men, and values their work as less than men. And I worry we might "fix" the algorithm, but never correct the larger societal issues surrounding this problem.

_{Sidenote: Currently, most cards circumvent this issue by linking spouses accounts, so they are one and the same. The Apple card, for privacy(?) reasons, does not allow this.}

Something I wrote after watching a scene in the Apple TV+ "The Morning Show" showing an NYC skyline. I've always had a love for NYC, even though I don't live there, and a love for cities more generally. I've never not lived in a city after moving out of my parents' place, and can't imagine going back to the suburbs. Cities are my home, cities are where I belong. I don't think this one is finished, yet; there are a few rough spots, and I'm not sure about the ending. But, like people have said in a few of the timasomo threads, the important thing is to get the words out, to make the work exist outside of one's head.

the city is awake, alive
lights dance in the dark of night
little lifesigns, each a past and present
each a history and a story not yet told
subways and busses and ubers
the occasional oblivious cabbie
(cancer on the streets)
each moving people to their goals
their dreams
veins and arteries in the city's body
lights for seeing
superstructure in steel and glass
inspiration
aspiration and ambition
passion and drive
these power the pulse and the breath
each person, each cell
shapes and grows the city, the body
each experience shapes epigenetics
no place the same after
the city takes us all in
gives us homes
maybe not shelter, but homes
we are alive and so is our home
an energy ineffable yet indelible

edit: A friend has said that this reminds her of the opening of Murakami's After Dark, and I can absolutely see it. Perhaps a bit of subconscious inspiration?

Okay, so this notion is still a bit undefined in my head, kind of figuring it out now, as I type.

I want to come up with a list (doesn't actually have to be 10) of the worst things the US government has done, to undermine the ideals and principles that the United States was (at least nominally) founded on ... truth, justice, baseball and mom's apple pie - kinda stuff.

You can go back as far in history as you like (so Civil War, Dred Scott, things like that are absolutely open for consideration) ... but it has to be something that continues to significantly impact US govt, US society and/or the world, to this day ... something they have not remedied.

Off the top of my head, the main thing that comes to mind is the Citizens United case, which I believe has fundamentally broken the US political system (which was, previously, already seriously frayed). I'd also consider the non-consideration (by the Senate) of Merrick Garland's Supreme Court nomination (by Obama), and the US (both the govt and the public) collective "whatever" to the news that Russia interfered in the 2016 US elections (and continues to do so, now joined by China and assorted others).

I may edit this to refine the idea. But the basic goal is to create a really high-level list of "First Things" the US needs to fix, to have any hope of returning to a state of democracy (okay, democratic republic), and/or normalcy.

Apple has spent a lot of money on The Morning Show for its new tv service. It has a bunch of actors that I love. In particular I'm excited to see Anniston, Duplas, Carell, and Crudup in this.

Metacritic gives it only 60. https://www.metacritic.com/tv/the-morning-show Sometimes a single terrible review can drag that number down, but that doesn't appear to be the case here. There are a few bad reviews, and lots of mixed reviews.

I don't know much about critique or how reviewing works, so I'm curious: is The Morning Show bad, or are critics terrible at reviewing, or is something else going on?

This debate will start at 8pm EST. From CNN's website:

It will air exclusively on CNN, CNN International and CNN en Español, and will stream on CNN.com's homepage and NYTimes.com's homepage. The debate will also stream live on the following Facebook Pages: CNN, CNN International, CNN Politics, CNN Replay, AC360 and Erin Burnett OutFront.

In addition, the debate will be available across mobile devices via CNN's and New York Times' apps for iOS and Android, via CNNgo apps for Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire, Chromecast and Android TV, SiriusXM Channels 116, 454 and 795, the Westwood One Radio Network and National Public Radio. You can also ask Amazon's Alexa to play the debate, and the voice-controlled assistant will play the audio of the debate.

• Direct link to the CNN livestream
• Direct link to the New York Times livestream

The Apple Keynote is on September 10th, at 10am Pacific Daylight Time (daylight savings is in effect). I'm making this thread as a place to discuss the announcements here on ~tech.

TIme:

• 10:00am PDT (California / Apple time)
• 5:00pm GMT (Greenwich time)

Livestream Links

• Apple's website stream -- requires a browser that supports both HLS and HEVC (safari and edge)
• Apple's Youtube stream -- first time Apple is streaming on youtube. Should work anywhere that Youtube works :) They'll probably break the stream record.

Tl;Dr of actual announcements (updating right now)

• Apple Arcade announced
  • $4.99 / month and one month free.
  • 100 indie exclusives on launch
• Apple TV+ announced
  • $4.99 / month, launching November 1
  • New originals every month! 100 countries at launch
  • Including 1 year free with device (iPhone, iPad, or mac) purchases starting today.
• New base model iPad
  • 10.2 inch display, Runs A10 Fusion chip, (optional) smart keyboard
  • New iPad is made from 100% recycled aluminum (like the new MacBook air)
  • Starts at $399 (competing with chrome books). $299 for education customers.
  • includes Apple Pencil support
• Apple Watch Series 5!!!!
  • Health and Fitness video
  • 3 New health studies!!!
    - Apple Hearing Study
    - Apple Women's Health Study (How cycles affect various health conditions)
    - Apple Heart Study
    - Enrollment is voluntary. OPT-IN by downloading the app and getting enrolled.
  • Apple Watch Series 5
    - ALWAYS ON LTPO OLED display, with Dynamic Refresh Rate (1Hz - 60Hz VRR)
    - Same 18 hour battery life
    - International Emergency Calling on all cellular models
    - 100% recycled aluminum.
    - Stainless Steel, Titanium, Ceramic
    - Series 3 watch starts at $199, Series 5 starts at $499
• iPhone 11!
  • Aluminum and Glass, comes in a bunch of colors
  • Spatial audio + Dolby Atmos for next level smartphone sound
  • New Camera -- 120º FOV Wide angle camera, 12MP with 100% Focus Pixels
    - 0.5x Optical Zoom out :)
    - New Image processing pipelines, with semantic rendering and adaptive tone mapping
    - Portrait mode improvements (wider portraits, and more) (yay, now for pets!)
    - Night Mode has adaptive image slicing and fusion for reducing blur in long exposure.
    - 4K HDR video at 60fps (was previously 30fps!)
    - Front Camera is now 12MP wide angle
    - 4K 30fps HDR video, Slowmotion Video for front facing camera! :)
  • A13 Bionic processor
    - fastest GPU and CPU ever in a smartphone
    - Game demo showing off Metal 2 Shaders, Bloom, and AA in realtime at 60fps
    - Battery is now 1 hr longer than the previous XR
    - U1 Chip? (on slide, not mentioned)
  • Wifi 6 support!
  • 2m water resistance for 30 minutes
  • 6.1 inch Liquid Retina display
  • Priced sanely at $699
• iPhone 11 Pro
  • 3 camera array
  • Matte Textured Glass
  • Super Retina XDR Display.
    - 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio
    - 1200 nits of brightness
    - 426 ppi
    - Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos
  • A13 Bionic Chip Design
    - Machine Learning Matrix Multiplier Accelerators make matrix operations 6x faster on iPhone
    - Best ML platform of any Smartphone
    - Lower power design using 7nm+ lithography
    - 8.5 Billion Transistors
    - 4 High Efficiency CPU cores
    - Hundreds of Voltage domains and clock domains
    - Each region of the chip is at least 20% faster, and uses at least 20% less power
  • 3 camera system
    - 4x zoom range (0.5 to 2x)
    - 53-13mm focal lengths, and f1.8 to f2.4
    - Deep Fusion camera system - stitches together burst photos + long exposure to maximize detail and reduce noise.
    - Filmic Pro demo -- allowing multiple camera use at the same time.
  • iPhone 11 Pro at $999, Pro Max at $1099
  • iPhone 11 at $699 and XR at $599 and iPhone 8 at $499 to complete the lineup.
• Apple Store Updates
  • Apple Watch Studio - pair any watch with any band of your choice. Configure as you want
  • iPhone trade ins can now be used for a lower monthly rate if you buy an iPhone, rather than simply taking off the purchase price.
  • 5th Ave Store is being redesigned and re-opening Sept 20th!

Other miscellaneous / fun stuff

• Apple Keynote Bingo Card -- 5 in a row to win! :)
• Upgrade Podcast Draft Card -- the hosts have predicted what they should see at the event. Person with the most points wins.

Edits:

• fixed part about browsers with HLS support, and added a table showing compatible browsers.
• remved "what we're expecting" section, and started updating the event live feed.