Kirkville: “Batch Processing in Apple Photos”

Apple’s Photos app does not allow you to perform batch processing. However, there is a way that you can quickly apply the same changes to multiple photos.

Start with any photo in edit mode; to edit a photo, select it and press Return. Photos switches to its editing interface with controls at the right side of the window. Make whatever changes you want to the photo: adjust the color, contrast, brightness, or apply a filter.

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You can then switch to another photo in edit mode and paste these adjustments. To do this, choose Image > Paste Adjustments, press Command-Shift-V, or right-click on the photo and choose Paste Adjustments. Photos applies all the adjustments you made to the first photo, with the exception of cropping or rotation.

Kirk McElhearn

If I understand this correctly, you can’t actually select multiple photos and paste adjustments at once, you have to: select each individual photo, apply, repeat. To call this ‘batch processing’ is a massive overstatement. On top of that, you have to manually rotate and crop photos later.

To be fair, Microsoft’s modern Photos app doesn’t seem to be any better at this, but the older Photo Gallery (now discontinued) allowed users to select multiple photos and perform adjustments on all at once.

ZDNet: “New details emerge on Fruitfly, a near-undetectable Mac backdoor”

Apple released security patches for Fruitfly earlier this year, but variants of the malware have since emerged. The core of the malware is an obfuscated perl script using antiquated code, with indicators in the code that suggest the malware may go back almost half a decade or more, the security firm said. Nevertheless, the malware still works well on modern versions of macOS, including Yosemite. Fruitfly connects and communicates with a command and control server, where an attacker can remotely spy on and control an infected Mac.

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He found that he could take complete control of an infected Mac, including its keyboard and mouse, take screenshots of the display, remotely switch on the webcam, and modify files. The malware can also run commands in the background, and even kill the malware’s process altogether – likely in an effort to avoid detection.

Zack Whittaker

If five-year-old malware can successfully infect macOS, what does that say about Apple’s security – or about the level of resources dedicated to macOS development?

Yoon Ha Lee – Ninefox Gambit

În ciuda ierarhiei stricte, Hexarhatul se confruntă constant cu rebeliuni și erezii care trebuie înăbușite repede și eficient pentru a nu afecta sanctitatea Calendarului care stă la baza întregului imperiu interstelar. Proaspăt întoarsă dintr‑o campanie, comandantul Kel Cheris este selectată pentru o nouă misiune, a cărei miză este critică pentru supraviețuirea Hexarhiei: capturarea Fortăreței Acelor Risipite. Situată într‑o zonă de importanță strategică, Fortăreața s‑a răzvrătit împotriva Hexarhiei și a respins deja câteva atacuri ale flotei Kel, grație scuturilor impenetrabile de gheață invariantă. Pentru a‑i înfrânge rezistența, Cheris decide să apeleze la una dintre cele mai formidabile, dar și periculoase, arme din arsenalul Kel: generalul Shuos Jedao. Neînfrânt în luptă de mai bine de patru secole, Jedao este însă considerat nebun, după ce într‑o înfruntare decisivă și‑a pierdut controlul, măcelărindu‑și propriile trupe odată cu inamicul. Păstrat prin tehnologii exotice ca o minte separată de corp, Jedao este trezit pentru misiune și atașat de Cheris, o echipă pe care doar moartea unuia sau victoria o poate desface. Dar va fi asta suficient pentru a copleși una din cele mai bine apărate fortărețe din Hexarhat?

The Kel unsheathed their swords, each tinted differently, blank bars of light. Cheris’s ran from blue near the hilt to red at the tip. As they closed with the enemy, numbers blazed to life along the lengths of the blades: the day and the hour of your death, as the Kel liked to say.

Romanul Ninefox Gambit îmbină în mod reușit elemente care de obicei nu se înțeleg prea bine: știința și credința, gândirea logică și cea simbolică. Ba mai mult, în universul Hexarhatului, acestea două sunt practic inseparabile: ritualurile religioase și ierarhia rigidă alimentează construcția matematică a Calendarului. Acesta impune un set diferit de legi ale fizicii pe care se bazează tehnologia avansată a imperiului, de la sistemele de propulsie interstelară la arme exotice, la capacitatea de a stoca minți și a le readuce la viață. Orice schimbare a credinței cetățenilor, orice scăpare a ritualurilor se traduce într‑un Calendar mai slab, sau ușor schimbat, și în cazuri extreme la dezactivarea tehnologiilor exotice – de unde necesitatea fanatică de a‑l apăra de erezii. Nu e de mirare deci că Hexarhia e o teocrație neînduplecată, care‑și impune regimul prin torturi regulate și genocid împotriva rebelilor.

TechCrunch: “Twitter adds updates about interesting links, trends and accounts to its Notifications tab”

Your Notifications tab on Twitter might be getting a little more busy. The company recently added a new feature to this section on both mobile and web, which aims to clue you into what people you follow are up to – including whether they’re tweeting about a particular Twitter trend, sharing a link to a buzzing news article, or even following another user’s account.

If this sounds familiar, that’s because Twitter’s ability to track and alert you to this information has existed for years. But before it was only delivered via push notifications. It’s now appearing in the same tab where you track the activity surrounding your own account and tweets – like who’s retweeting you, favoriting your tweets, or following you.

Sarah Perez

I understand how some people might find the extra notifications overwhelming, but personally I like it. I noticed this change about a week ago and it’s nice to see confirmation that it’s an official feature, not a short-term experiment.

Twitter’s personalized notifications about activity in your network have usually been pretty relevant for me. The only downside was that they were delivered only via push notifications in the mobile apps (I’m pretty sure the web version didn’t show them). On iOS, if you had several personalized notifications available, when you tapped one to view in the Twitter app the others would be also cleared from the Notification Center, so they were suddenly gone for good. Now, they are all present in the Twitter app – problem solved!

Andreas Gal: “Firefox marketshare revisited”

A lot of commenters asked why Firefox marketshare is falling off a cliff. I think that question can be best answered with a few screenshots Mozilla engineer Chris Lord posted:

and yet... pic.twitter.com/Yn471RC3Ip

— Chris Lord (@cwiiis) May 24, 2017

Google is aggressively using its monopoly position in Internet services such as Google Mail, Google Calendar and YouTube to advertise Chrome. Browsers are a mature product and its hard to compete in a mature market if your main competitor has access to billions of dollars worth of free marketing.

Andreas Gal

Google’s banners promoting Chrome throughout their apps are certainly annoying, but they are the least of Firefox’ problems (as a side-note, I find it very amusing that the screenshots from the above tweet were taken in Edge). The truth is, ever since Chrome launched (nine years ago!), Firefox was behind in almost every aspect that matters: Chrome had a faster rendering engine, regularly beating Firefox in tests; a clean, consistent interface; a better, more secure extension model, that most browsers have adopted in the mean time; better overall security thanks to sandboxing – which Firefox is still working on today; it switched to 64-bit fast and painless, while Firefox is still dragging its feet; and, of course, better integration with Google services and being the default browser on Android have helped.

The Ed Bott Report: “Microsoft cuts off Windows 10 support early for some PCs”

No one knows exactly how many Clover Trail-based devices were sold, but collectively the total from all manufacturers was probably in the millions. Analyst Ben Bajarin, who tracks PC and tablet sales closely, estimates that the total number of Clover Trail devices sold was over 10 million. Today, owners of those devices who took advantage of Microsoft's free upgrade offer for Windows 10 are facing a rude shock.

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The irony in this case is that Microsoft aggressively pushed the free Windows 10 upgrade offer to the owners of these devices, turning up the pressure dramatically as the July 2016 cutoff date approached. Now, less than a year later, those devices are being cut off without notice.

The bottom line: If your PC was originally designed for Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 and the manufacturer doesn't officially support it for Windows 10, you're at risk.

Ed Bott

I’ve been patiently waiting for my Windows tablet to receive the recent Windows 10 feature update from April, but it still hasn’t happened. I was already half suspecting it won’t be eligible because of hardware limitations, and this article reinforces this possibility. While the CPU of the Lenovo Miix 2 doesn’t technically fall into the unsupported category, it might still be excluded because of other incompatibilities, or the Spring Update might be its last Feature Update.

Daring Fireball: “Public Service Announcement: You Should Not Force Quit Apps on iOS”

The single biggest misconception about iOS is that it’s good digital hygiene to force quit apps that you aren’t using. The idea is that apps in the background are locking up unnecessary RAM and consuming unnecessary CPU cycles, thus hurting performance and wasting battery life.

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In fact, apps frozen in the background on iOS unfreeze so quickly that I think it actually helps perpetuate the myth that you should force quit them: if you’re worried that background apps are draining your battery and you see how quickly they load from the background, it’s a reasonable assumption to believe that they never stopped running. But they did. They really do get frozen, the RAM they were using really does get reclaimed by the system, and they really do unfreeze and come back to life that quickly¹.

John Gruber

Except… When an app freezes, the only thing you can do to restart it is a force quit. Or when apps suddenly stop ‘seeing’ your network and get stuck showing a ‘Connecting…’ message. Or when you want to stop apps from tracking your location or from running in the background, draining the battery.