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News - PAGE 1239

Is the Album Review Dead?

Jason Tate

Dan Ozzi, writing for Noisey, asks: is the album review dead?

We are living in that age Bangs never got to see. There are enough services competing to offer us streaming music—Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, Apple Music, Tidal, Google Play, Amazon Prime, Rhapsody, 8tracks, Soundcloud, and Bandcamp, to name a few (and that’s not even mentioning the illegal download market)—that it would take hundreds of thousands of years to listen to it all. So with every new album available at our fingertips completely for free at the instant of its release for our own personal judgment, you’ve got to wonder: Do we still need the album review?

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The 1975 Release “The Sound” Video

Jason Tate

The 1975 have released their new video for “The Sound” on YouTube. The video includes real quotes from past critical reviews of the band. Their brilliant new album is also now available on Apple Music. Over the years when writing about music I’ve come across bands that I think are special, that have it, and that find their way into rarefied air in my music collection. This is one of those bands. This is one of those albums. I hope it means as much to everyone that hears it as it has to me.

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“I’m Not Wearing Hockey Pads”

Jason Tate

Boston Dynamics have released a new video of their robot, Atlas, which can walk on two legs, open doors, stack boxes, and handle being pushed around by dudes with sticks. I had two thoughts while watching this: First, “oh great, like the robots aren’t going to remember this one day.” And two, that maybe I’d been watching too much Humans, because I felt this ping of empathy for what I know is a machine.

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Bill Simmons Announces ‘The Ringer’

Jason Tate

Last week Bill Simmons announced his upcoming new website, The Ringer. Today his partnership with Medium for the publishing of said website has been announced. Edward Lichty’s post about the partnership is filed with PR platitudes but one line in particular set off my bullshit detector:

We eliminate the need for any investment in tech, provide access to a growing network oriented towards meaningful engagement, and deliver constant, always-on innovation from a world-class product development team, whether you’re a single blogger or a large commercial publication — all for free.

I think Medium is a really interesting product and a great environment for hosting medium to long form text — and I’ll continue to recommend it for a certain set of writers. But any company promising this sort of thing for free is really saying for right now. The other shoe drops eventually. I’d recommend a read of David Winer’s “Anywhere But Medium” for the counter argument.

More on Apple and the FBI

Apple
Jason Tate

More news, and some great analysis, has surfaced over the Apple vs the FBI situation I posted about a few days ago. I’ve rounded up some of the best articles I’ve come across on the subject from a variety of angles.

Rich Mogull, asking if we have a right to security:

The FBI wants this case to be about a single phone used by a single dead terrorist in San Bernardino to distract us from asking the real question. It will not stop at this one case, that isn’t how the law works. They are also teaming with legislators to make encrypted, secure devices and services illegal. That isn’t conspiracy theory, it is the stated position of the director of the FBI. Eventually they want systems to access any device or form of communications, at scale. As they already have with our phone system. Keep in mind that there is no way to limit this to consumer technologies, and it will have to apply to business systems as well, undermining corporate security.

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What’s Going on With Apple and the FBI?

Jason Tate

Apple has publicly responded to a court order brought on by the FBI and US government asking them to purposefully break into one of their devices. There’s been a lot written on this subject today, so I’ve rounded-up what I think are the must reads after the jump.

The implications of the government’s demands are chilling. If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data. The government could extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge.

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