and then Zack Snyder somehow convinced them to release it in 4:3 because he thought it looked more like IMAX? That all really happened!
iOS 16.2 is out now with support for Matter (and the first Matter devices updates have arrived) so a reminder that the simplest HomeKit bugfix if things go sideways is to sign whatever Apple TV (or HomePod) serves as your home hub out of iCloud, restart it, and sign in again to download a fresh HomeKit config. This fixed all my broken automations over the weekend!
I spent so much time covering 3DTV in my baby gadget blogger days, but it was always doomed because no one wants to wear the glasses. The Ringer looks back at Avatar, James Cameron, and his short-lived 3D phenomenon.
Rewatching Avatar now, its best moments still have a weightless, stratospheric kick, and you can understand why insiders and observers would have bet on a wide-scale 3D revolution. The early 2010s featured wildly profitable 3D releases encompassing fairy-tale adaptations (Alice in Wonderland), Pixar crowd-pleasers (Toy Story 3), and keynote MCU entries (Captain America: the First Avenger). For a brief moment, polarized glasses were basically mandatory for any summertime theater outing.
The Hunter Biden laptop saga is back in the news because of Twitter and our scoop from today that even WordPress debated taking down the NY Post story at the CMS level. But a reminder that the laptop itself has been widely reported on, including this exhaustive September cover story from Andrew Rice and Olivia Nuzzi in our sister publication New York.
Mac Isaac was a Mac guy in every sense. He had a tattoo of Apple’s smiley-face Finder icon on his bicep and a triangular FireWire icon on the back of his neck. In an unlucky twist for Biden, he was also a Trump supporter, and like everyone in Delaware, he knew the name of Joe Biden’s younger son.
The three laptops, Mac Isaac recalls, were all liquid damaged. One was dead. One was easily revived. The third, a 13-inch MacBook Pro, had a sticky, ruined keyboard. But Mac Isaac thought he could still salvage its data. The job would cost $85 and take a few days.
[Intelligencer]
Twitter’s new manual verification-and-labeling process is going just great, as the Norway’s Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs have all been labeled “Nigeria government organization.”
What can Elon learn from Tumblr?
Max Tani reports on Bidenworld’s reaction to Elon / Twitter for Semafor:
The disdain for Twitter inside the White House has little to do with right-wing control of the platform, and more to do with its role inside the Democratic Party: Biden’s wing sees Twitter as fuel for activist voices who push ingroup thinking, left-of-center bias, and socioeconomic bias.
[www.semafor.com]
The new Prius looks a lot nicer but sounds downright evil when you back it up.
More Katy videos at YouTube, but congrats to Adobe, which was founded in 1982 and launched Photoshop in 1989, Premiere in 1991, and the PDF in 1993. The company will also be trying to kill Flash for the rest of human history.
Meta is shutting down its connectivity division, which tried to give away “free” internet access around the world that zero-rated Facebook and put data caps on competitors. Makes sense, times are tight.
Anyway, one time Meta invited us to write an entire feature about the Aquila connectivity drone but did not disclose the drone had actually crashed. Memories!
