Linked List: November 7, 2023

Tuesday, 7 November 2023

‘Unexpected Baskerville: The Story of LoveFrom Serif’ ★

You may recall back in June, I linked to a story by Mark Wilson about the creation of LoveFrom Serif, a new modern revival of John Baskerville’s legendary type designs created by some of the designers behind Apple’s San Francisco.

Designer Antonio Cavedoni presented a lecture on its design, and that video is now available. Splendid.

New Features for Final Cut Pro for Mac and iPad ★

Apple Newsroom yesterday:

Today Apple announced updates to Final Cut Pro across Mac and iPad, offering powerful new features that help streamline workflows. Final Cut Pro now includes improvements in timeline navigation and organization, as well as new ways to simplify complex edits. The apps leverage the power-efficient performance of Apple silicon along with an all-new machine learning model for Object Tracker, and export speeds are turbocharged on Mac models powered by multiple media engines. Final Cut Pro for iPad brings new features to further enhance the portable Multi-Touch editing experience, including support for voiceover recording, expanded in-app content options, added color-grading presets, and workflow improvements. These updates to Final Cut Pro will be available later this month on the App Store.

I mentioned last week that video editors took notice that Apple’s behind-the-scenes look at their “Scary Fast” keynote showed the film being editing in Premiere Pro, not Final Cut Pro, and that it wasn’t helping allay the fears of Final Cut Pro devotees that Apple was losing interest in it, à la the still-lamented Aperture.

It occurred to me then that the best evidence that Apple remains keenly committed to Final Cut Pro is that they (finally?) ported it, along with Logic Pro, to the iPad earlier this year — and that the iPad versions are good.

Now, as if on cue, Apple has announced significant feature updates to Final Cut Pro (and Logic Pro) for both Mac and iPad.

iOS Tip: ‘Smart Activation’ for Do Not Disturb Turns Off Notification During Screen Recordings ★

Earlier today I was making a screen recording on my iPhone to share with a friend, and during the recording, a notification for a text message arrived. It wasn’t particularly personal, but I made another take of the screen recording anyway. This has happened to me numerous times before — sort of a Murphy’s Law thing, like buttered toast always seeming to fall wrong-side down. It occurred to me that Do Not Disturb should turn on automatically when you’re recording your screen, and I posted the idea to Mastodon.

Glad I did. Because Cabel Sasser replied that it already worked like that for him, and then Jason Walke — my favorite person in the world today — explained that this is enabled by turning on “Smart Activation” for Do Not Disturb mode.

Go to Settings → Focus → Do Not Disturb, and under “Set a Schedule”, tap Add Schedule and enable Smart Activation. Now, when you start a screen recording, Do Not Disturb turns on automatically, and it turns itself off a few seconds after you finish recording. I’m not sure what else triggers Smart Activation — the description in Settings is pretty vague — but for screen recordings this is just what I wanted.

(Ryan Jones chimed in with a good idea: an option to automatically beautify the status bar in screen recordings: removing any extraneous icons (like the Do Not Disturb moon), showing perfect cellular and Wi-Fi signal strength, and having the battery show 100 percent. “Presenter Mode” more or less.)

Google Photos’s Magic Editor Has Content Guardrails ★

Aamir Siddiqui, Android Authority:

Summarizing the strings above, it seems Magic Editor will refuse to edit:

Photos of ID cards, receipts, and other documents that violate Google’s GenAI terms.

Images with personally identifiable information.

Human faces and body parts.

Large selections or selections that need a lot of data to be generated.

Reminiscent of the way that photocopiers and image editing apps like Photoshop try (and largely succeed) at not allowing you to edit or manipulate images of currency.

Trump’s Dark Plans for a Second Term ★

Isaac Arnsdorf, Josh Dawsey, and Devlin Barrett, reporting Sunday for The Washington Post:

Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.

In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump has also talked of prosecuting officials at the FBI and Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said.

In public, Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family. The former president has frequently made corruption accusations against them that are not supported by available evidence.

To facilitate Trump’s ability to direct Justice Department actions, his associates have been drafting plans to dispense with 50 years of policy and practice intended to shield criminal prosecutions from political considerations. Critics have called such ideas dangerous and unconstitutional.

Trump and his supporters remain the biggest threat to America, and to the concept of liberal democracy itself, the world has ever seen. These are plans for a dictatorship, pure and simple.

Tom Nichols, writing at The Atlantic:

Trump is, to put it mildly, an emotionally disordered man. But such men are usually only a hazard to their families and themselves, especially if they lack money or power. Trump has both, but even more important, he has people around him willing to use that money and power against American democracy. As the Post report reveals, these henchmen are now trying to turn Trump’s ravings into an autocratic program; without their aid, Trump would be just another motormouthed New York executive living on inherited money and holding court over a charred steak while the restaurant staff roll their eyes. With their support, however, he is an ongoing menace to the entire democratic order of the United States. [...]

The coalition of prodemocracy voters — I am one of them — is shocked at the relative lack of outrage when Trump says hideous things. (The media’s complacency is a big part of this problem, but that’s a subject for another day.) For many of us, it feels as if Trump put up a billboard in Times Square that says “I will end democracy and I will in fact shoot you in the middle of Fifth Avenue if that’s what it takes to stay in power” and no one noticed.

Daniel Dilger Was Rescued After a Bad Accident Thanks to Apple Watch Crash Detection ★

Daniel Eran Dilger, writing at AppleInsider:

I’m not the first person to be saved by paramedics alerted by an emergency call initiated by Crash Detection. There have also been complaints of emergency workers inconvenienced by false alert calls related to events including roller coasters, where the user didn’t cancel the emergency call in time.

But I literally have some skin in the game with this new feature because Crash Detection called in an emergency response for me as I was unconscious and bleeding on the sidewalk, alone and late at night. According to calls it made, I was picked up and on my way to an emergency room within half an hour.

Because my accident occurred in a potentially dangerous and somewhat secluded area, I would likely have bled to death if the call hadn’t been automatically placed.

Man, what a harrowing story. Best wishes to Dilger for a speedy recovery.

OpenAI DevDay Keynote ★

Strong, tight, 45-minute keynote. Highlights:

Their next-generation model, GPT-4 Turbo, which is both smarter and cheaper to use than GPT-4.
“GPTs”, their name for no-code custom AI agents. There are an awful lot of AI startups whose entire purposed seemed to be just this.

Really enjoyed seeing live demos on stage, and Sam Altman came across well. Smart, engaged, and honest. Worth watching.