Linked List: January 20, 2013

Sunday, 20 January 2013

Stan ‘The Man’ Musial Dies at 92 

“Put him in the outfield and see if he can hit.”

Jackass of the Week: Eric Mack 

Eric Mack, CNet:

Just to be clear on what I’m saying, my best educated guesses are that we will see a new iPhone this summer, and it will be an iPhone 5S with mostly iterative updates, a choice of colors, and perhaps the lower-cost model of the latest rumors. But the real question is: then what?

My gut tells me the iPhone as we know it will be done at that point. I have a hunch there will never be an iPhone 6, because Apple will be forced to move into a significantly different form factor to keep people interested and compete with the movement toward bigger phablet-like thingies and emerging wearable electronics (lots of us have fat thumbs, after all). Or, there will be an iPhone 6 and it will disappoint.

For context, the iPhone 4S was the best-selling smartphone in history, the iPhone 5 appears set to sell even better than the 4S did, and Apple currently reaps upwards of 70–75 percent of all profit in the handset industry. So Mack thinks they’ll make one more, it’ll disappoint, and that’ll be that and the iPhone will move into the Home for Retired Apple Product Lines, down the hall from the Newton. OK.

TSA to Remove Invasive Body Scanners From Airports 

Ron Nixon, reporting for the NYT:

After years of complaints by passengers and members of Congress, the Transportation Security Administration said Friday that it would begin removing the controversial full-body scanners that produce revealing images of airline travelers beginning this summer. […]

Not sure if this is good news, or no news, given this:

The removal of the Rapiscan scanners does not mean that all full-body scanners will be removed from airport security checkpoints. A second type of full-body scanner does not produce revealing images. Instead, it makes an avatar-like projection on security screens.

Privacy is a genuine concern, but so too is safety. Are these “avatar-like projection” machines still using x-rays? Update: Apparently the remaining ones use millimeter wave technology.