Apple News: Tim Cook’s ‘proud to be gay’ essay is important, historic and brave
Gay rights are the civil rights issue of our time, whether in the marriage chapel, the emergency room or the workplace. That’s why Apple CEO Tim Cook’s decision to proclaim he is “proud to be gay” in a powerful personal essay is an important and truly historic act. For far too long, being gay has been something that was often hidden or denied. It’s long overdue that being gay should be just another fact of life, like whether a person is tall or short, black or white, left-handed or right-handed, Mac or PC. And when one of the world’s preeminent corporate leaders says he’s gay, it advances the cause of equality.
Read full story => CultOfMac
Technology News: Artificial intelligence is now affordable. Use it to work smarter
I’m barely old enough to have been taught how to find content the old way – using library directories and the Dewey Decimal System. Things changed quickly during my middle and high school years. By the end of it, I could do almost all my research from one starting point: In college we were encouraged to be more rigorous, leveraging directories of research papers, like JSTOR and ProQuest — but more and more of my bibliographies were dominated by URLs rather than page numbers. The internet has grown to give us all the information we need, accessible in seconds. With the continuing explosion of information online, there’s speculation that internet-based-research has reached peak efficacy. It’s becoming harder and harder to sift through the noise and consistently pick up the signal you’re looking for. As a result, the knowledge worker’s benefit from online data is beginning to plateau, even decline.
Read full story => VentureBeat
Programming News: AppCode joins Swift club with 3.1 EAP
Most of us have read or at least heard of Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. Well, we kind of feel like a Gulliver now, as we take a big step forward and start with Swift support in AppCode! This summer, soon after the Apple event, we announced basic editing and highlighting for Swift code. Since then we’ve implemented resolve in Swift code and built a couple of useful features on top of that. So, let’s have a look at what’s already available in this EAP.
Read full story => JetBrains
Photography News: DxO Labs introduces OpticsPro 10 with atmospheric haze correction feature
DxO has taken the wraps off its OpticsPro 10, the latest software version that brings with it, among other things, DxO ClearView for correcting atmospheric haze. Joining the ClearView feature are some improvements to the software, not the least of which is enhanced noise reduction promised to trump competing products, as well as interface changes. The ClearView function aims to eliminate both haze and smog from photos of urban and landscape settings, doing so using a new algorithm that looks at every pixel’s color components and tweaks contrast levels as necessary. The correction is a one-click process, and is limited to only the areas in which it is needed. In addition to ClearView, the PRIME technology used to reduce noise levels has been updated to better preserve and reveal image details while simultaneously processing photographs faster (as much as 4x over the previous speeds). This is complemented by a redesigned noise reduction palette, says DxO, that gives its users a larger preview area and improved interface.
Read full story => DPreview
