Bond jump should have been seen coming, yet the reaction is nevertheless a big rush to the exits
In what some are calling a Taper Tantrum, the markets dropped with a sense of purpose today, with little bounce after the close in the futures market. With Fed rate hikes now a certainty, inflation concerns real, and bond yields spiking today, there were plenty of things to point to as catalysts.
This could be, and this is extremely likely regardless of what endless permanent-bull commentators would have you believe, the start of a tough two months, with late September and October being known as a very dangerous time in markets, especially whey they exhibit pre-crash signs and warnings.
Insane valuations that have preceded past September / October disasters are back
It’s unbelievable that the fall of 2008, when the financial crisis came to a head with the Lehman Brothers collapse, was 13 years ago, and the prior peak in November 2007 was a full 14 years.
I guess we can observe that we now have the iPhone 13, with the iPhone “1” which was just called “iPhone” at the time, has been marking the time with yearly iterations, not always named in sequence:
iPhone: June 29, 2007
iPhone 3G: July 11, 2008
iPhone 3GS: June 19, 2009
iPhone 4: June 24, 2010
iPhone 4S: October 14, 2011
iPhone 5: September 21, 2012
iPhone 5S & 5C: September 20, 2013
iPhone 6 & 6 Plus: September 19, 2014
iPhone 6S & 6S Plus: September 19, 2015
iPhone 7 & 7 Plus: September 16, 2016
iPhone 8 & 8 Plus: September 22, 2017
iPhone XS, XS Max: September 21, 2018
iPhone 11, Pro, Pro Max: September 20, 2019
iPhone 12, Mini, Pro, Pro Max: October 23, 2020
iPhone 13, Mini, Pro, Pro Max, September 24, 2021
And during all these years, for the most part the artificially inflated Fed “bubble of everything” has continued.
Here is a disturbing chart, courtesy of Elliott wave International at Elliottwave.com:
This behavior, seen across nearly all markets since extreme measures were taken to respond when the March 2020 pandemic crash occurred, has been building to a crescendo. And today was a tiny pin-prick that could augur ill for October.
What this has led to, naturally, is an overvaluation beyond anything seen in modern times, perhaps 500 years. The previous all-time-peak for overvalued stocks (S&P) was in March 2000. August 2021 is far beyond that peak and likely will stand as the most overvalued moment for decades.
Unless, that is, somehow the insane valuations are pushed even higher. Which is unlikely, but not impossible, given the state of delusional euphoria that pervades the financial markets.
Many 2021 characteristics, such as the Crypto, NFT frenzy will be seen in a similar light to the tech stocks in 2000 or Real estate in 2007
There’s a sense that it is normal for bored apes NFTs to experience a multimillion dollar bidding wars, or for crypto alt coins with dog mascots to explode 10,000% or more during this, possibly final phase, of what has been called the “everything bubble”.
And why not? If you bought and held almost anything in March 2009 or again at the bottom of the crash on March 16, 2020, then you have seen nearly continuous gains that you’d be eager to risk on, well, anything.
And if you were 10 years old in the year 2000, you’d not have known about NASDAQ drops that take around 13 years to regain what was lost after a 1 year bear market, so why worry?
Perhaps the Fed and the markets seemingly infinite ability to expand and inflate will go on for years. Or the next bear, possibly the one that already kicked off today, and will accelerate into October, is one to take seriously.
Photo by Extinction Rebellion NYC / Twitter @XR_NYC
At least 40 climate activists were arrested Friday at the New York City offices of JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, and Bank of America, organizers said, as campaigners across the United States demanded financial institutions stop supporting the destruction of the planet.
“People are in denial about the mess we’re in,” said Kerith Creo of Extinction Rebellion (XR) NYC. “We’re sending a message loud and clear that the little action that politicians and greenwashing CEOs have taken so far does not begin to deal with the magnitude of this crisis.”
The protest actions included delivering 150,000 petition signatures as part of the Stop the Money Pipeline (STMP) coalition‘s “Deadline Glasgow: Defund Climate Chaos” campaign to pressure banks ahead of COP 26, a United Nations summit set to start on October 31.
Despite financial institutions’ net-zero emissions by 2050 pledges, the petition highlights, “they are providing loans, insurance, and billions in investment capital to corporations expanding the fossil fuel industry and deforesting the Amazon and other tropical forests―companies that are guilty of human rights abuses and violations of Indigenous sovereignty.”
The petition calls out some specific projects—such as Line 3—and urges banks, insurers, asset managers, and the Biden administration to “end their support for companies engaged in climate destruction and human rights abuses” before the two-week U.N. summit in Scotland.
@XR_NYC is staging a boat outside @Chase HQ, who is the biggest fossil fuel funder in the world.
They poured $317 billion poured into fossil fuels since the 2015 Paris Agreement. Who pays the price for Hurricane Ida? We do.https://t.co/1pZUyDyRLD
The upcoming negotiations in Glasgow “are the most important international climate talks since the Paris agreement was signed in 2015,” STMP said in a statement Friday. “It is also supposed to be ‘the climate finance COP.'”
In New York City, climate activists set up a boat outside the office of JPMorgan Chase, urging the bank to “stop the greenwashing,” and draped a banner that read “#1 Funder of Climate Death” over the building’s entrance.
At Bank of America’s Manhattan office, “half a dozen women blockaded the entrance and a seventh woman sat in a hammock supported by a large tripod on the sidewalk,” according to XR. Outside Citibank’s building, “activists set up a camp on the lawn near the entrance and put up a tripod to which they locked themselves down.”
And thank you to these activists at @Citibank HQ this morning for also risking arrest to bring attention to the SECOND worst fossil fuel funder @XR_NYChttps://t.co/4bLjmuPgff
“We’ve reached the breaking point,” said Christina See of XR NYC. “We need our government leaders to take action immediately. The New York City area saw over 40 deaths due to record breaking floods just a few weeks ago. The climate crisis is here, now.”
The remnants of Hurricane Ida—which initially made landfall in Louisiana on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina—caused fatal flooding across the Northeast, sparking warnings from not only climate activists but also political leaders about what the future holds.
While touring damage in New York and New Jersey, President Joe Biden said that “we got to listen to the scientists and the economists and the national security experts. They all tell us this is code red; the nation and the world are in peril. And that’s not hyperbole. That is a fact.”
Climate campaigners responded to Biden’s comments by urging him to declare a national climate emergency and stop all fossil fuel projects, highlighting his refusal to block the Line 3 tar sands pipeline opposed by Indigenous leaders and environmentalists in Minnesota.
The protests came as the U.S. president held a climate meeting with leaders of major economies and confirmed a new global pledge to reduce methane pollution at least 30% by 2030. Biden’s event followed his leadership summit in April, during which he pledged to cut the nation’s overall planet-heating emissions in half within this decade.
Activists on Friday “shut down 4th Avenue in downtown Seattle, and disrupted business at the Canadian Consulate, Chase, and Bank of America,” according to the Washington city’s arm of 350.org.
STMP explained that “they’re targeting the world’s biggest financers of climate chaos, as well as the Canadian government, who bought the troubled Trans Mountain oil pipeline in 2018.”
The demonstrations in New York City, Seattle, and beyond came as a new U.N. analysis revealed that recent emissions reduction pledges governments have made in anticipation of COP 26 are nowhere near ambitious enough to meet the Paris agreement’s 1.5°C target.
According the new report, the world is on track for 2.7°C or warming by 2100—a revelation that prompted U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to warn that a failure to meet the Paris temperature goal “will be measured in the massive loss of lives and livelihoods.”
Ahead of a national vote this month, Citizen Browser data shows that posts promoting the AfD party appeared more than three times as often as rivals’
Earlier this month, Germany’s far-right nationalist political party Alternative für Deutschland, or the AfD, posted on Facebook. Widespread support for Sharia law among Muslims in Afghanistan, the group claimed, illustrated the danger “wenn sich Massen von Afghanen auf den Weg nach Deutschland und Europa machen” (“when masses of Afghans make their way to Germany and Europe”).
The post was soon shared by thousands of users and commented on by thousands more. It was one of many posts by AfD-related pages over the past couple of months that railed against immigration or, another popular topic, disparaged COVID-19 restrictions as unnecessary.
Despite its modest size in Germany, the AfD has been remarkably successful on Facebook. Data obtained through The Markup’s Citizen Browser project, in partnership with Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung, shows how the AfD has gained tremendous traction on Facebook in the run-up to a historically contentious national election to replace Angela Merkel, the long-serving chancellor, later this month.
The Citizen Browser project, which collects data from a diverse panel of 473 German Facebook users, shows the party and its supporters have peppered Facebook with pages promoting its ideology, with posts on those pages appearing in our panelists’ news feeds at least three times as often as those from any rival party.
Fewer unique panelists had posts from AfD-related pages appear in their news feeds than posts from the sister parties of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) and the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CDU/CSU), which led in this count, and from Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (Alliance 90/The Greens). But the data shows AfD deeply engaged with its core audience: The users who did see content from the AfD tended to see it repeatedly, and the AfD was especially good at reaching its own supporters.
Citizen Browser captures up to 50 posts from a panelist’s Facebook news feed one to three times a day. The Markup catalogued every time a post from a page named for a German political party appeared in our panelists’ feeds over the past two months, from July 20 to Sept. 16, 2021. We included any pages that mentioned “AfD” or one of its political rivals (“SPD,” “CDU,” or “FDP,” for example) in its name. We did not determine whether the page was officially sanctioned by the party itself. We removed any pages meant to disparage a party.
Posts from more than 200 different pages promoting the AfD party—the most pages of any party we looked at—appeared in our panelists’ feeds. While the quantity of pages promoting the center-left Social Democratic Party, the SPD, followed closely behind with 175 pages, posts from AfD pages appeared four times as often in our panelists’ news feeds. Our panelists were shown posts from the AfD more than 3,200 times, while they were shown SPD posts only about 760 times.
The other major political party in Germany, the center-right Christian democratic political alliance, or the CDU/CSU, fared slightly better. Posts by pages related to those parties appeared in panelists’ news feeds around 850 times. But the AfD’s posts still appeared more than three times as often.
The AfD’s dominance of our panelists’ news feeds is especially stark considering the makeup of our Citizen Browser panel in Germany. Our panel consists of more people who identified themselves as SPD and CDU/CSU supporters—62 and 82, respectively—than the 44 who identified themselves as AfD supporters.
Those who did report aligning with the far-right party had an average of 55 posts from AfD-related pages appear in their news feeds in the eight weeks of data we examined. By comparison, supporters of the CDU/CSU had an average of just six CDU- or CSU-affiliated posts appear in their feeds.
“Given its very limited number of participants, data from The Markup’s ‘Citizen Browser’ is simply not an accurate reflection of the content people see on Facebook,” Facebook spokesperson Basak Tezcan said in an emailed statement. “We actively reduce the distribution of content that is sensational, misleading, or are found to be false by our independent fact-checking partners. Our approach goes beyond addressing the issue post-by-post, so when Pages or Groups repeatedly share this kind of content, we reduce the distribution of all the posts from those Pages and Groups.”
The AfD did not respond to a request for comment.
Our analysis has limitations. Citizen Browser tracks a small percentage of Facebook users in Germany compared to the tens of millions of Germans on the platform and is unlikely to perfectly mirror what Facebook shows all of its users in Germany. On Sept. 1, Facebook introduced a new interface that affected captures for 3 percent of the panel across all parties. Some captures for this small subgroup of panelists could not be included in this study.
But the panelists represent a diverse set of party affiliations across the political spectrum in the country, from AfD supporters to centrists to far more liberal users.
And AfD’s savvy on Facebook has been documented in past elections.
The AfD’s Rise on Social Media
The AfD launched in 2013, initially as a conservative party harnessing skepticism of the European Union. Though it failed to reach the vote threshold for representation in the German Bundestag in the federal election that year, the group’s facility with social media quickly became evident.
“Directly in their beginning, in 2013, they began to install a very strong network of interconnected Facebook accounts for nearly all local branches of the party,” said Isabelle Borucki, an interim professor at the University of Siegen who studies German political parties online. The AfD operates on many platforms, but Borucki said it was clear the party “understood especially how this network works.”
It isn’t just Facebook where the AfD has performed well, either. This year, a report from Süddeutsche Zeitung and AlgorithmWatch that relied on data from hundreds of users showed how Facebook-owned Instagram seemed to favor right-wing content, with posts from the AfD tending to appear higher up in users’ feeds.
While it’s difficult to say how social media popularity translates to votes, many observers have attributed the AfD’s growth, at least partially, to its social media strategy.
“They managed to use social media to explode and find people and citizens that weren’t interested in politics before,” said Juan Carlos Medina Serrano, a Ph.D. student at the Technical University of Munich who has studied the AfD’s use of social media and is now heading data operations for Germany’s Christian Social Union party.
In past elections, researchers and journalists have tried to measure how well the AfD has reached users on Facebook compared to other political parties. Like The Markup, they also found that the AfD has been able to use Facebook to find a large online audience.
After the 2017 national election, a Washington Post analysis noted that AfD posts had been shared more than 800,000 times that year, far outpacing all other major parties put together.
In 2019, one report found that AfD posts on Facebook accounted for about 85 percent of shared content from German political parties, according to Der Spiegel. A researcher told the outlet at the time that the AfD had become “the country’s first Facebook party.”
Facebook has highlighted its efforts to combat misinformation in past German elections. In 2017, after the last German federal election, the company said it had removed tens of thousands of suspicious accounts to clamp down on the spread of false information.
Facebook also announced earlier this month that it had removed a network of pages associated with Germany’s anti-lockdown Querdenken movement that promoted violent content and health misinformation. The movement is not directly aligned with a political party, although it shares its COVID-skeptical perspective with the AfD.
This month’s vote may present new challenges for the social network. In June, Politico reported that there had been a spike in election-related misinformation as far-right social media users appeared to be laying the groundwork to make claims of election fraud after the vote.
What’s Driving the AfD’s Success on Facebook?
Experts point to several factors that have contributed to the AfD’s Facebook presence.
As the Citizen Browser data shows, the AfD and its supporters tend to run more active pages in general than their rivals, setting up relatively small, localized pages that garner support across the country.
The AfD, researchers say, also relies more on sensational, aggravating content, which is a perspective Facebook rewards with greater reach. “They trigger anger, fear—I would say anarchic or basic emotions,” Borucki said. “Those trigger people and affect people more than bare facts.” One recent AfD post found in our dataset bemoaning “climate hysteria,” for example, led to more than 5,000 “angry” reactions on Facebook.
This strategy seems to be catching on with other political groups. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that some European parties had shifted policy positions to align with what performs well on Facebook, including more negative content.
The CDU didn’t respond to The Markup’s requests for comment, and the SPD declined to comment.
Like many conservative politicians in the United States, the AfD has been eager to court voters skeptical of COVID-19 restrictions and vaccines, leaning into a populist stance against preventative COVID-19 measures.
Facebook says it attempts to automatically tag any content related to COVID-19 with a flag sending users to reliable information. The Citizen Browser data shows that, of the posts shown to our panelists, posts from the AfD were by far the most likely to be tagged by Facebook as being related to COVID-19. Our panelists were shown AfD posts tagged by Facebook for being COVID-related more than 250 times. In contrast, our panelists were shown posts from the SPD with tags related to COVID-19 fewer than 15 times, and this was the second most tagged in our dataset.
Many of the AfD posts inveigh against lockdown measures and suggest that the vaccines may not be as effective as health officials claim. A post about infections spread in a club that required proof of vaccination, for example, called vaccine-related restrictions quatsch, or nonsense.
The group’s posts remain popular, but it’s also not clear whether those posts are leading to new votes. The party is projected to end up in fourth or fifth place in the upcoming election.
Since the 2017 election, Medina Serrano said, the AfD’s explosive growth on Facebook seems to have leveled off. Now, he said, the party has gone from a strategy of looking to pull in new voters to one of cementing its base in German politics through Facebook.
“It’s more about maintaining the base than growing—it’s already capped, in my opinion,” Medina Serrano said. “But we’ll see the results on election night.”
Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / J. Flavia / Unsplash
Ear related! 2nd best and more are also interesting
With so many new features on the iPhone 13 Pro models, and with so many of them made possible by iOS 15, the A15 bionic chip, the 16-core Neural Engine, which performs up to 15.8 trillion operations per second, and power features like Cinematic Mode and Smart HDR 4, machine learning and other hard to explain facets of the overall experiential upgrade, sound playback (and recording) are often barely mentioned, it seems.
Ever since there was the biggest Apple success story near the turn of the century there has been a special relationship between the fruit company and music / sound. I’m talking, of course, about the iPod.
Long before the iPhone was even a rumor, the iPod was a huge success, taking over the mp3 player market and, with the iTunes store for music downloads, launching the software and services division, for all practical purposes.
It’s hard to imagine now, but there was doubt that Apple could make it in the competitive cell phone market, with behemoths like Nokia and Blackberry so well established. It was the iPod’s success that made it seem plausible.
There was one thing that the iPod never had, however; speakers. And even the recent iPhones, with speakers for voice and music, if you didn’t use your AirPods for that, had speaker and sound quality that was not on the quality level of the larger iPads.
With a much larger area to hide speakers, the iPad was always an obvious choice for watching movies and listening “out loud” via the built in speaker system. With an iPad pro that could be pretty spectacular with a relatively full frequency spectrum and, more recently via software upgrades, spatial audio.
With iPhone 13 Pro models the audio barrier has finally been shattered
In a tiny, nearly forgotten passage at the very end of a list of new specs and enhancements in the iPhone 13 line, Apple adds one more thing; a stereo speaker at the top where the notch is located and a second stereo speaker at the bottom next to the Lightning port.
What it doesn’t mention is the improvement in the sound quality. Like so many features in the newer generation of devices and software, this unassuming, seemingly simple statement is just the tip of the iceberg and does not divulge what’s really going on.
Once more a combination of all the recent software and hardware upgrades combine to produce an experience that goes beyond what you could expect with these tiny, nearly invisible, speakers.
First, the two stereo speaker sets are, sound wise, equal in quality. So when you are watching a movie in landscape mode there is a distinct stereo effect. This is enhanced by spatial audio and dolby atmos depending on your set up.
The actual experience is noticeably “iPad like” and in some ways even goes beyond. Having the phone relatively near you, due to its size, and listening to a high quality movie score, there’s a feeling that your phone has morphed into a personal theater – as long as you can let the sound out into your local environment.
Try “SharePlay”, once it’s live in iOS 15.1, or just manually sync with your partner, assuming you each have a new iPhone 13 (!) and you will get a glorious room filling surround experience from the 4x stereo output (8 speakers?!) into the room.
And the mysterious mics also hidden in multiple places, are also a big upgrade – the seem to switch roles for video, calls etc and maximize the audio quality in live recording situations.
Apple’s software and service bundles and ambitions are driving hardware and iOS upgrades
As jubilant as this may sound, there is also an ulterior motive lurking. Some of the audio features work best (or at all) with an Apple Music subscription. And having more subscriptions, Apple TV, Apple News, Apple Music, iCloud Extra Storage, along connected devices, with so many available, it becomes an ecosystem of plenty for Apple, already the largest company by market cap.
On the optimistic side there’s always Apple One Premiere, the top of the line for bundled services (see below) and looking more and more like a steal at $29.95 per month.
Perhaps, one day not to far away, there will be a Apple One Premiere plan that also includes all Apple devices and you just trade them in every two years (every year?) or maybe you never own them at all?
The way the upgrades in hardware, software and the rest are becoming more interdependent and how crazy it already is to upgrade various devices (assuming you have more than one or two) yearly or bi-annually it’s an interesting idea to try and imagine.
And with an Apple Car perhaps on the way (self driving and outfitted with all the rest of the tech and service bundles) this could be a whole-house, whole-office (will there still be offices?) all transport bundle too. Apple haters will be in trouble, and have to move to Google Island, but otherwise, hey, why not?
Apple One Premiere example package:
Speakers after tear down by iFixit:
credit: iFixit
Audio Playback
Audio formats supported: AAC‑LC, HE‑AAC, HE‑AAC v2, Protected AAC, MP3, Linear PCM, Apple Lossless, FLAC, Dolby Digital (AC‑3), Dolby Digital Plus (E‑AC‑3), Dolby Atmos, and Audible (formats 2, 3, 4, Audible Enhanced Audio, AAX, and AAX+)
Spatial audio playback
User‑configurable maximum volume limit
Video Playback
Video formats supported: HEVC, H.264, MPEG‑4 Part 2, and Motion JPEG
HDR with Dolby Vision, HDR10, and HLG
Up to 4K HDR AirPlay for mirroring, photos, and video out to Apple TV (2nd generation or later) or AirPlay 2–enabled smart TV
Video mirroring and video out support: Up to 1080p through Lightning Digital AV Adapter and Lightning to VGA Adapter (adapters sold separately)9
Upgrades for hard and software, though groundbreaking and exciting, do have limitations and problems
The new upgrades for iOS 15, iPad OS 15, mac OS 12 Monterey and the rest are in many ways amazing, feature filled wonders, as we’ve discussed at every opportunity. The multi-year transition to a more unified system across all apple devices is underway and we are big supporters of the benefits.
However, nothing is perfect, and particularly in the early days it is to be expected that glitches and strange twists and turns in the journey can disappoint and confuse along the way.
Below we’ve outlined a few.
Various less than perfect ideas and execution in the OS software
Some issues are not really issues at all but things that people just don’t like. One example is the move of the address bar on safari in iOS 15 to the bottom. Many people had trouble getting used to this so a button was added to move it back to the top.
Other glitches include a false warning that you are out of storage space. Others have reported a reduction in perceived (if not real) battery life. Although these are minor annoyances and will be fixed with future updates, such as iOS 15.1 due any minute now, they show that this bug hunting is, unfortunately part of the process of any upgrade, much less a huge and important one like iOS 15.
There are also specific limitations though that should be mentioned about the iPhone 13 Pro camera system.
This issues are less bugs or errors and just limitations that may, or may not, be improved at a later date.
The new high end Pro camera system for the iPhone 13 Pro series is a major upgrade that has so many features and new capabilities that it is hard to even list them all, let alone illuminate the multitude of options and enhancements that they create.
On the obvious down side, however, a few things have jumped out at users now that these phones are in the wild.
Cinematic mode only works (currently) in 1080p. This is a serious limitation, since the whole idea of “Pro” is 4k and above. Many even go so far as to say that 1080p aka HD is no longer the standard for video and even obsolete. While there are rumors that this could get a software upgrade, perhaps even before the next iPhone model next fall, but it is not at all clear if, or when, that might happen.
This limitation is a fairly serious one, since an entire project would have to be shot at 1080p HD rather than 4k to make any use at all of the beautiful and fascinating rack-focus effects available in cinematic mode.
Less and issue but often mentioned is the inability to shoot 4k slow motion footage.
The lack of slo-mo at any resolution above 1080p is also something that has surprised aficionados. There is an option for 1080p at 240 fps, but unless you are shooting ultra high speed action that is not a hugely useful setting.
It seems odd, since a large part of the limitation is likely the large amount of data required to make this happen at 4k but there is a silver-lining here that few have mentioned in recent articles decrying the lack of 4k slow-mo options.
Since the system is already capable of shooting 4k at 60fps, and a final project setting for editing could be 4k at 30 or even 24fps, the 4k 60fps could be seen as a double speed slo-mo setting for a 4k video projects shot at 30fps for standard and 60fps for footage to be slowed to 30fps for the 1/2 speed slo-mo effect.
In the feature film 35mm celluloid days this was a very common and useful way to get slow-mo without eating up tons of expensive film stock.
Also, shooting at 4k 60fps for a 4k 24fps project would yield a 1.5 ratio of frame rate, giving an even more extreme slow-mo effect. For most slow motion effects 1 to 1.5x speed in-camera for later playback at the project rate is more than adequate.
The 120fps rate, since the top frame rate at 4k is 60fps, is, indeed, double which, as stated above, standard.
Therefore, for all practical purposes, there is already a way to produce beautiful 4k slow motion effects in a 30fps or 24fps project and have those be in camera pristine slo-mo and not the less desirable edit-only EFX.
Summing up, even with glitches and minor disappointments, it’s a beautiful world and now we just have to shoot it
If no more serious glitches or known issues pop up during the transition from iOS 14 to iOS 15, and iPhone 12 Pro to iPhone 13 Pro, we can be satisfied that this is a monumental job well done by the gang at Apple.
Though there are a lot of shortcomings that we may perceive in the new world topping combo-pack; iPhone 13 Pro Max running iOS 15.1, these are when compared to far more costly and cumbersome alternatives, or simply, when compared to our wildest dreams. Those will have to wait a few years, in all likelihood.
Human greed is a powerful thing. When given a photographic system that even attempts to approximate a profession system based on prime and zoom lenses and accessories, there’s a tendency to want it all, right now!
Of course, instead, what we get is an amazing extension of the iPhone photo tradition – taken up a bunch of notches at once. The computational enhancements are incredible and will only get better – in many cases without a new phone as they are based on AI and machine learning, which as the name implies, are continually improving while you sleep.
It is also the reason why real lenses and traditional DLSR cameras still have an important use and value.
The new system unveiled with the iPhone 13 pro is revolutionary precisely because of the potential for people to create new visual expressions and ways of communicating.
These photographic traditions and the efforts that were made in the design to emulate them are important and valuable. However, the future will benefit from the spontaneous and new ways that people will decide to use this evolving system and the current extensions of our eyes, ears and minds….
The cameras are at the center of what makes an iPhone 13 a Pro investment
Direct hands on experience with something as complex and interesting as the new iPhone 13 Pro Max is invaluable for a useful assessment. After a few days and also taking into account some observations of others I will attempt to shed light on the state of the art of iPhone as of September 2021.
Comparing this iteration of iPhone with the previous versions is meaningful for buying decisions, but it must also be compared based on what it can do for a professional that has a need for a higher grade of gadget.
Judging and comparing the machine as a whole is also necessary, since the cameras are not cameras at all be just one part of an integrated system of visual (and audio!) production tools.
Big changes that begat others and on the circle goes
The first thing I noticed, out of the box was the sheer size of the 13 Pro Max, particularly compared to the 11 Pro Max, which was my previous workhorse. From photos I had gathered that the three cameras stuck out more and, yet they do, so much so that it is almost comical.
If you brave the world sans case and put this monster in your the back pocket of your loose fitting jeans, the bulge from the cameras will feel like you are doing something crazy, as it is as if they are rubbing against anything they touch, continuously.
That’s not all about the physical size, though. Looking at the diameter of the three circles (lenses) they appear significantly larger. Believe me, they are. Since the 11 Pro max and the 12 Pro Max have the same size triple camera layout (spec upgrades notwithstanding) this is an immediate and obvious change.
Above: Photo / Lynxotic
The increased size and weight of the camera itself is noticeable, more than I expected. The screen appears far larger due to the new specs and it is a bit of a shock at first, but the level of quality is the biggest and most noticeable feature.
The design logic has an implied history that jumps out once you start to use the camera system.
The changes to the three cameras are significant. After two years of using the 2019 11 Pro Max the framing options, based on the three lenses is a complete new experience.
The ultra wide 13mm equivalent is a bit of a bold and crazy choice. If I was ordering a set of lenses for a music video shoot the ultra wide might go as far as 11mm (very wide!) but that is basically an EFX look and causes an almost fish-eye look.
The 13mm is literally as wide as you can get without getting into potential “clown” territory, which is fun but not usable for a non-EFX composition.
What is odd, in a way, is that the “main” lens at 26mm equivalent is still very wide meaning that the standard 40mm equivalent, which was always considered the closest to a neutral look, is absent here.
Similarly, the telephoto lens at a 77mm equivalent is exactly the same type of choice – once again in my kit this would have been a 100mm for a deep bokeh and a noticeable sweet spot that is ultra-flattering for close ups and head shots.
The 77mm, therefore, is a long enough lens to get the magnification and emulate the look of a telephoto style. But wait, no glass no bokeh.
Both the 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max have the same sensors, optics, stabilization and features. The three cameras in the Pro models span a 6x optical focal length range.
This is where the logic of the design and how the system works, as a whole, begins to get deep.
Once you have made the commitment to not only extend the range of the entire optical focal length range to 6x the differences between a glass & steel 77mm prime lens and a “cell phone camera” must be addressed.
The 77mm requires the bokeh and relatively narrow in-focus range of a “real” telephoto lens is the stylized creative uses that a full kit of prime lenses makes possible is to be achieved.
This is addressed with the already present portrait mode – with enhanced functionality made possible by the A15 chip, the machine learning, AI and neural network – in other words software and computational assists.
And for video, cinematic mode is an absolute must – since the same bokeh effect and stylized effects are needed and desired for video.
All of this does not include the macro effects that effectively extend the range into the nearly microscopic. This feature requires a whole article, which you can check out here.
Getting to a full photographic system in your pocket, and beyond.
Once the effects and artifacts of the 77mm style glass prime lens have been added to the mix, emulated things get more interesting.
Since the bokeh and artifacts in the cinematic mode for video are computational and not photographic, they are stored separately and can be altered after the fact, just like has been the case with portrait mode all along.
This is a big deal in one way, since it could never be conceived of with traditional lenses and cameras. It also, however, one more variable to consider when putting together a large batch of footage for a project. This adds a new layer of creative flexibility, and choices to contend with.
Further, since the long lens stylizations are a byproduct of and influenced by focus settings, that has to be in the mix also. That produced the need for the cinematic mode which you can think of as a slightly stoned robot focus puller. who is also a little bit psychic.
The first robot camera assistant is already in the box when your phone arrives
Let me explain…. A real life focus puller (doing rack focus settings) in real life would function roughly as follows:
A shot is planned that requires a focus pull from one subject to another – this could be a close shot of a face panning to another face, or a close up that refocuses from the foreground to the background, for example. The focus must also factor in any movement of the camera / dolly.
The two desired subject distances are measured (using a tape measure) and the focus settings noted. In complex shots this can be multiple focus settings and a particular speed of the “rack pull” from one to the next.
Often such complex focus / dolly set ups must be rehearsed multi times just for the focus puller – so that his error does not ruin a perfect take when, for example, the actors get their best performances.
So, in the robot world practice is also good – and a plan is almost essential, but the virtual focus puller will go with the flow, and try to anticipate and predict what you want him to focus on in real time as you shoot.
This is pretty incredible and also, much like autocorrect typing, sometimes very successful and sometimes comical in the outcome. What is tricky is how to get the robot puller to know what you are trying to have as a subject if it is not a persons head or face.
Also, if the action is fast or if you are shooting something that has no pre-determined outcome or script, like a political protest or a sporting event, you will get somewhat random results.
This makes the name apt, since cinematic also implies a movie with a plot and a script.
Conclusions and a few known limitations and caveats
Human greed is a powerful thing. When given a photographic system that even attempts to approximate a profession system based on prime and zoom lenses and accessories, there’s a tendency to want it all, right now!
Of course, instead, what we get is an amazing extension of the iPhone photo tradition – taken up a bunch of notches at once. The computational enhancements are incredible and will only get better – in many cases without a new phone as they are based on AI and machine learning, which as the name implies, are continually improving while you sleep.
There are specific limitations though that should be mentioned about the iPhone 13 Pro camera system.
Cinematic mode only works (currently) in 1080p. This is a serious limitation, since the whole idea of Pro is 4k and above. There are rumors that this could get a software upgrade during the year but it is not clear if or when that will happen.
Along with the lack of slo-mo at any resolution above 1080p there is a lot of disappointment in this issue. It is the reality of how difficult the computational “assist” really is to achieve that makes this a big step that is still in the future.
It is also the reason why real lenses and traditional DLSR cameras still have an important use and value.
The new system unveiled with the iPhone 13 pro is revolutionary precisely because of the potential for people to create new visual expressions and ways of communicating.
These photographic traditions and the efforts that were made in the design to emulate them are important and valuable. However, the future will benefit from the spontaneous and new ways that people will decide to use this evolving system and the current extensions of our eyes, ears and minds….
Looking at the cast alone, is likely to turn out to be a must watch. With the writers and directors behind “Anchorman” and “Step Brothers” the film can’t not turn out to be hilarious!
The premise is a trending theme: doom and hopeless dystopian futures; this time there is a comet that will collide with Earth. Two astronomers (Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo Di Caprio) discover the problem, but the twist is, no one actually believes the news. Sound familiar? Just ask the Climate deniers and antivaxxers out there…
The impressive cast boasts a gaggle of untra-high-profile names including: Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Ron Perlman, Timothée Chalamet, Ariana Grande, Kid Cudi, Cate Blanchett, and Tyler Perry.
The comedy will have a theatrical release on December 10th and quickly be available to stream on Netflix starting on December 24th ( as a little Christmas eve gift for the rest of us, apparently).
A teaser trailer of the film was previewed in small select theaters around Los Angeles this week. Those present for the sneak peak of the film characterize it as an “intimate mashup of ‘Inherent Vice’,‘ Boogie Nights’ and a “love letter to the youth generation”
“Licorice Pizza” which was only recently renamed over working title “Soggy Bottom” and the upcoming film is set within the San Fernando Valley during the 1970’s. It follows the story of a high school child actor. The movie is also a coming of age story following the character Cooper Hoffman as he tries arduously to make it in entertainment business.
Directed by the iconic Paul Thomas Anderson (PTA) who has given movie-goers a slew of great films including: “There Will Be Blood”, “Inherent Vice”, “Punch-Drunk Love”, “ Boogie Nights”, “Magnolia” and more.
So where the heck did the name Licorice Pizza come from? It is a reference to a real record store, infamous in its day, established during in the 70’s (and has since closed down).
The cast includes Bradley Cooper, Ben Stiller and Tom Waits. The film is scheduled for limited release on November 26th with a larger release towards the end of the year on December 25th.
“The climate crisis has not disappeared,” said Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. “It’s the opposite—it’s even more urgent now than it was before.”
Young people by the hundreds of thousands took to the streets across the globe on Friday to deliver a resounding message to world leaders: The climate crisis is getting worse, and only radical action will be enough to avert catastrophe and secure a just, sustainable future for all.
“As emissions and inequalities increase, we rise up and demand climate justice.”
From Pakistan to Italy to Germany to the Philippines, the worldwide “Uproot the System” actions marked the largest climate demonstrations since the coronavirus pandemic forced campaigners to take their protests online last year. Climate activists in developing countries—where access to vaccines is limited due to artificial supply constraints and hoarding by rich nations—were still forced to limit the size of their demonstrations Friday as a public health precaution.
“Last time it was digital and nobody was paying attention to us,” Yusuf Baluch, a 17-year-old activist from the Pakistani province of Balochistan, toldReuters. “In the global north, people are getting vaccinated so they might be out in huge quantities. But in the global south, we are still limited.”
The Global Climate Strike continues! Balochistan is predominantly agriculture-based. They have been affected by drought due to climate change and the problems faced by people are increasing alarmingly.
Above: Photo Collage / Great Thunberg – via Instagram / Lynxotic
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, whose solitary sit-down strike outside her home country’s parliament in 2018 helped spark the global Fridays for Future movement, said that “it has been a very strange year and a half with this pandemic.”
“But of course, the climate crisis has not disappeared. It’s the opposite—it’s even more urgent now than it was before,” said Thunberg, who on Friday joined a large demonstration in Berlin, which was hammered by massive, climate-linked floods in July.
Watch Thunberg’s full speech in front of the Reichstag building:
Organizers said that more than 1400 climate strikes are set to take place in at least 70 countries Friday, with hundreds of thousands expected to attend demonstrations in Germany alone.
“As emissions and inequalities increase, we rise up and demand climate justice,” saidBerlin-based climate activist Luisa Neubauer.
The latest youth-led global action kicked off just weeks ahead of the pivotal COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, which many civil society organizations want to be postponed over fears that inequities in coronavirus vaccine access could prevent delegates from developing nations—those most vulnerable to the climate crisis—from attending.
Equalizing global vaccine distribution is one of the six demands that climate campaigners are aiming to put before world leaders during Friday’s mass demonstrations. The full list is as follows:
The Global North needs to cut emissions drastically by divesting from fossil fuels and ending its extraction, burning, and use. We need concrete plans and detailed annual carbon budgets with roadmaps and milestones to ensure we get to net-zero with justice and equity in the time needed to address climate change.
The colonizers of the north have a climate debt to pay for their disproportionate amount of historic emissions and that starts with the increase of climate finance to implement anti-racist climate reparations, the cancellation of debts especially for damage caused by extreme weather events, and providing adaptation funds that serve the communities.
Work towards a genuinely global recovery from Covid-19 by ensuring equitable vaccine distribution worldwide and suspending intellectual property restrictions on Covid-19 technologies. This is an essential step towards a global, green, and just recovery.
Recognize the tangibility of the climate crisis as a risk to human safety and secure the rights of climate refugees in international law.
Recognize the invaluable impact of biodiversity on indigenous communities’ lives and culture, and commit to make ecocide an international punishable crime.
Stop the violence and criminalization against indigenous peoples, small farmers, small fisherfolk, and other environmental and land defenders. Support the work they do. Respect and listen to our defenders.
The worldwide demonstrations came a week after the United Nations warned that even if the 191 parties to the Paris Agreement meet their current climate targets, global greenhouse gas emissions will still rise 16% by 2030 compared to 2010 levels. The U.N. also estimated that the planet is on track for 2.7°C of warming by the end of the century, a level of heating that experts say would be cataclysmic—particularly for developing nations.
At the U.N. General Assembly in New York this week, the leaders of vulnerable countries pushed wealthy nations—the largest contributors to the climate emergency—to stop shirking their responsibilities to confront the planetary crisis.
“We simply have no higher ground to cede,” Marshall Islands President David Kabua said Wednesday. “The world simply cannot delay climate ambition any further.”
Participants in Friday’s global action pointedly amplified that message. Valentina Ruas, a Brazilian activist, toldThe Guardian that “the global north should be developing climate policies that have at their core climate justice and accountability to the most affected people and areas.”
“Instead,” she added, “they continue to exploit vulnerable communities and recklessly extract fossil fuel, while bragging about their insignificant emission reduction plans.”
”It Just Works” is the basic how-to for the new Macro-Mode on iPhone 13 Pro
Steve Jobs was famous for repeatedly using this line to describe in product demos how something was so intuitive that no user manual would ever be needed. While this phrase has also often been used to try to help Apple accountable when something doesn’t “just work” it is a core design principal and an important part of the legacy of Steve Jobs, up until the current day.
The new iPhone 13 Pro (we are using an iPhone 13 Pro Max for photos and testing) has so many new features that it can be overwhelming to try and absorb, at first. Fortunately this one is almost completely intuitive to learn to use, if not obvious.
A short history of what the heck macro photography is
I will never forget when I was first taught about macro lenses and learned how to shoot extreme close ups. I was working with a professional camera operator (as a music video director) and I wanted to do a close up that would be so close as to be considered a macro shot.
Novice that I was at the time, I assumed that you could just keep pushing the camera closer and closer and focus on the tiny area desired, with no further ado. When my operator told me we would need a special “macro” lens adaptor (that we had not ordered as part of our kit), I felt a bit foolish and knew I would need to bone up on the macro ins-and-outs for the future shoots.
For traditional photography and film shooting there are macro lenses and adaptors that can enable super-close-up shots. These can be simple and relatively cheap or more elaborate and expensive for traditional film cameras and digital DSLRs. There have also always been lens attachments that can be used with an iPhone to get some macro capabilities.
Now, with the iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max you have a built-in software enhanced macro capability that “just works”. Currently this feature is not supported on the iPhone 13 (regular) or mini.
Above: Photo / Lynxotic
Real world test shows some extreme possibilities that beg for more
As with many of the new camera features in iOS15, when using an iPhone 13 Pro, the macro mode is built-in and needs only be triggered by your behavior.
To shoot your first macro photo follow these steps:
Open the camera app and choose either photo or video (not cinematic or portrait
Move the phone closer to the object that you want to shoot a macro photo of. When you get close enough you should see a “jump-cut” indicating that you have automatically switched to macro mode due to the untra-close object in frame have been detected by the software. The macro range appears to be 14cm to 6cm according to specs.
Move camera into position (you might be almost touching the object if you want an ultra-macro-look) so that the object is in focus and shoot.
Above: Photo / Lynxotic
Above: Photo / Lynxotic
Some considerations: With large professional macro lenses, which are “slow”, extra light would be required to get the proper exposure. This is less true with the “computational photography” hybrid on the iPhone 13 Pro, but light conditions, as always, will impact the photo quality, a lot.
In particular, with a huge phone so close to the subject of the photo it is sometimes difficult to avoid shadows cast on the object being shot by the phone itself. It is also a somewhat surreal feeling, at first, to be shooting an object that you are almost touching with the lens.
Our live real world experiments (shown in the various photos above and below) are using every possible combination of lens and the automated software to see just how extreme the results can be. In a word, the answer is; very.
Above: Photo / Lynxotic: A reference photo to give scale, the two following photos show the extreme macro close up possible magnification
Above: Photo / Lynxotic: A reference photo to give scale, the two following photos show the extreme macro close up possible magnification
The future of computational and software manipulated imagery production using iPhone and iOS
Anyone who had initially learned about photo techniques based on the “real world” environment of glass, steel and celluloid will no doubt at times feel confusion, anxiety or even a sense of loss when confronted with software, AI and machine learning based computational photography.
And, yes, purists have commented and complained about the various trade-offs when images are produced with software manipulation during the shooting process.
But, as results here show, most of us will feel a sense of exhilaration at the visual and artistic potentials that are becoming possible – all using a device that is, pretty much always, “in your pocket”.
While a multi-thousand dollar high end professional lens, using optical grade, painstakingly engineered glass (usually from Germany), can be used to produce world class image quality, now and in 100 years, the benefits of computational hybrid photography techniques are already going in a whole new direction.
An important, and nearly infinite, benefit is that these enhancements are being improved, both through human based code improvements, and even more so, by machine learning and AI on a continual basis.
As we’ve discussed in previous articles, the fact that these improvements are inevitable and will potentially even accelerate, “while you sleep” is a mind-blowing concept that spills into all aspects of future potential for iPhone photo techniques.
The trade off is large, if you want to turn off these “artificial” enhancements, you will have to wait for macro mode (or use current work arounds) and then switch off night-mode and personalized filters and other beautifying add-ons in order to get a more “natural” or realistic look.
Apple, meanwhile, is 100% all-in with the idea of making iPhone photography intuitive and as beautiful as possible, even if, in some cases the “beauty” is enhanced beyond reality (!).
The photos and degree of magnification possible with macro mode on an iPhone 13 Pro, as seen in these rough test photos, is almost surreal. So much so that it’s easy to imagine that, not long in the future, a medical grade microscope could be possible. One that “just works”, of course, and usable by anyone, anywhere and all on a device that’s already in your pocket.
Pro 12MP camera system: Telephoto, Wide, and Ultra Wide cameras
Telephoto: ƒ/2.8 aperture
Wide: ƒ/1.5 aperture
Ultra Wide: ƒ/1.8 aperture and 120° field of view
3x optical zoom in, 2x optical zoom out; 6x optical zoom range
Digital zoom up to 15x
Night mode portraits enabled by LiDAR Scanner
Portrait mode with advanced bokeh and Depth Control
Portrait Lighting with six effects (Natural, Studio, Contour, Stage, Stage Mono, High‑Key Mono)
Dual optical image stabilization (Telephoto and Wide)
Sensor‑shift optical image stabilization (Wide)
Six‑element lens (Telephoto and Ultra Wide); seven‑element lens (Wide)
Subpoenas have been issued for documents and testimony that held close ties to then-President Trump and were either working or had communications with the White House on in the the days leading to Jan 6th. An official press release revealed four individuals have been served and include: former WH Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, former WH Deputy Chief of Staff Daniel Scavino, Defense Dept Official Kashyap Patel, and lastly former advisor Stephen Bannon.
Chairman Bennie G. Thompson wrote:
“The Committee is investigating the facts, circumstances, and causes of the January 6th attack and issues relating to the peaceful transfer of power, to identify and evaluate lessons learned and to recommend corrective laws, policies, procedures rules, or regulations”
According to committee, Mark Meadows allegedly communicated with officials at the state level and Justice Dept in an effort to overturn 2020 election result ( or prevent its certification).
Kashyap Patel performed several national security jobs for Trump as well as served as Chief of Staff to then Defense Secretary Christopher Miller. Patel allegedly was in involved with discussions among senior Pentagon officials regarding Capitol security before and on Jan 6.
Daniel Scavino prior to Trump’s rally on the 6th took to his social media to encourage MAGA-ers to “be a part of history”. According to records obtain he also have text messages from the White House on Jan. 6.
Steve Bannon communicated with Trump around Dec 30 regarding focused efforts on or leading up to Jan. 6 and even told his War Room podcast listeners that “all hell was going to break loose”
The subpoenas instruct the witnesses to appear at depositions on the following dates and are required to produce all relevant documents by October 7th:
October 15, 2021: Mark Meadows and Daniel Scavino
October 14, 2021: Kashyap Patel and Stephen Bannon
The letters to the four witnesses can be found here:
The 25th James Bond Movie, just may be the best chance to help theaters that are struggling in a post-pandemic recovery. According THR, ahead of the UK World Premiere on Sept 28, there has been a spike in presale tickets and overall excitement is building as people are tearing to see the film, not at home but in a real live movie theater.
For the U.S. market, the film will be released soon, on October 8th, with the option to stream on the Paramount Plus platform 45 days after cinema release. Craig’s final Bond movie can easily be said to be one of the most anticipated movies this year (given the bigger build up that was started and re-started due to the continued postponements due to pandemic).
The trailer for “No Time to Die” first emerged back in 2019. The film’s plot will continue on from events of “Spectre”, and, this time, it looks like betrayal could be at play, especially with Madeline Swann. We hear 007 in the trailer react and say; “We all have our secrets…. we just didn’t get to yours yet”.
James is recruited to rescue a kidnapped scientist, but finds himself hot on the trail of a mysterious villain armed with a dangerous new technology.
Alongside Daniel Craig, cast includes a long list of incredible actors: Rami Malek, Lea Seydoux, Judi Dench, Christopher Waltx, Helena Bonham Carter, Mark Strong Naomie Harris, Ana de Armas, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Whishaw and Jeffrey Wright.
Shocking. DTJ sues his own niece, Mary Trump along with The New York Times and several reporters (Suzanne Craig, David Barstow and Russ Buettner) for obtaining his tax documents used to investigate his finances.
The 2018 article which won a Pulitzer Prize which showcased how the former president “participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990’s including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents”.
The report reveal confidential tax returns and financial records, highlight that Trump received at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, although he always touted himself as a “self-proclaimed” billionaire.
“I think he is a loser, and he is going to throw anything against the wall he can. It’s desperation. The walls are closing in and he is throwing anything against the wall that he thinks will stick. As is always the case with Donald, he’ll try and change the subject.”
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg is said to be working on a rebranding plan. According to The New York Times, the plan which has come to be known internally as “Project Amplify” was signed off by the CEO and included a boost of pro-Facebook stories (written by the Facebook Team) onto its billions of users.
An internal meeting back in January hatched the initiative to showcase “positive” stories about the social network platform on its largest digital real estate, the News Feed.
Based on the report from the Times, some executives present at the meeting were “shocked” by the proposal.
Project Amplify also made strong attempts for the Facebook platform to distance itself from any scandals (i.e. minimizing access to negative reports) relating to Zuckerberg, while simultaneously, ramping up new stories that provided a more flattering spin on the social network.
China is at the forefront of government opposition to cryptocurrencies
The central bank of China stated as a declaration that all transactions involving Bitcoin and any “virtual” currencies illegal, according to the AP.
This seems to be an escalation of the various methods being used to block and prohibit the use of any currency or “money” outside the direct control of the Chinese government.
In a notice released by the central bank the reasoning was elaborated on – stating that digital currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and others disrupt the current financial system and encourage and help facilitate money-laundering and other crimes.
“Virtual currency derivative transactions are all illegal financial activities and are strictly prohibited,”
–the People’s Bank of China
The price of Bitcoin fell, to $41,180, in the hours after the announcement. Other major cryptocurrencies also fell. . Ethereum dropped almost 10%, falling from $3,100 to around $2,758.
Those levels appeared to be a short term low as there has been a recovery bounce since the initial reaction selloff.
China is gearing up for it’s own ‘innovations’ involving digital currencies and transactions
This clampdown follows the banning of Bitcoin mining and an exodus of a large number of Chinese mining operations, many relocating to the US, Europe, Southeast Asia and elsewhere. At the peak, Chinese miners accounted for around 3/4 of the world’s electricity consumption related to crypto mining, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption index.
That share is still the highest, though far lower, with the USA being the second largest consumer of electricity used for Bitcoin mining.
There is a worldwide “showdown” of sorts building, with cryptocurrency adherents touting, often with great resolve, the privacy, anonymity and “freedom” of using the coins, while many governments, China, and Turkey being outspoken, consider the potential losses that could come from allowing private actors to control financial transactions.
Although fiat currencies all have cash, paper bills, that can also be used anonymously, the potential criminal laundering has government controls and laws in place to minimize (or at least attempt to minimize) the magnitude of the problem.
tumbles
Governments getting increasingly worried as crypto adoption continues to expand worldwide
Many governments, including the People’s Bank of China, are developing electronic versions of the local fiat currency, such as China’s yuan for example. to facilitate cashless transactions which, unlike with Bitcoin, can be more easily tracked and controlled by the local authorities, communist or otherwise.
Calls and warning are also building with Regulators in many countries, including the US, warning of the dangers and emphasizing that they want cryptocurrencies to have greater oversight.
For example, Gary Gensler, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, recently said that investors need more protection in the cryptocurrency market, calling the current state of the largely unregulated market “rife with fraud, scams and abuse” and compared it to the “Wild West.”
The SEC has already cracked down on cases of alleged freud involving crypto, but Gensler believes that the agency will need more authority from Congress to and funding to adequately regulate the market..
As a result, miners have been moving operations out of China.
Two years ago, China alone accounted for around three-quarters of all the electricity used for crypto mining, by far the most in the world, according to the Cambridge Bitcoin Electricity Consumption index.
Expect more government announcements involving crypto and new ways to try to control or inhibit its proliferation
The looming showdown appears heading for a significant and dangerous climax, with both sides, crypto enthusiasts and private holders and users of the coins on the one side, and, in some cases, terrified governments on the other wanting to outlaw and stamp out the entire sector.
In the US this will be difficult, with so many high profile and powerful individuals and companies already embracing the idea that the future will contain, at least for the foreseeable time frame, both the government controlled fiat system and the surging and diverse cryptocurrency systems.
Apple’s tweet, presumably, to avoid a collision course with the iPhone 13 arrival day (big!) says it all. A sudden, last minute escalation of the time frame for this highly anticipated new series:
From @Foundation_’s epic debut to @TedLasso’s Emmy-winning antics, watch the latest episodes from Apple TV+ three hours earlier this week. Streaming begins Thursday at 9pm EST/6pm PST.
Apple TV tweet
Perhaps a planned sudden breaking news update to the years long scheduling for this big sci-fi event? Hard to say – maybe the iPhone 13 arriving in stores and for some folks arriving by UPS is more of a distraction than expected, in the eyes of the Apple TV+ big-wigs?
Of course, that’d be a good thing since it would mean that the futuristic phone has just too much juice for the venerated classic book series come-to-life as a streaming series on Apple TV+. Hooray for both, I suppose. If you are starting to become enamored with Apple TV+ shows after having fun with Ted Lasso or other recent hits (really a hit, seems so according to the Emmys ) that are perhaps the early beginnings of a trend…
And last, but definitely not least, is the long-awaited sci-fi adaptation of the timeless classic “Foundation” by Isaac Asimov.
click to see “Foundation” and help Lynxotic and independent bookstores. Also available on Amazon.
The first 3 episodes of Apple TV’s “Foundation” will be live tonight (!) and will ultimately have a total of 10 episodes in total when all is said and done.
From @Foundation_’s epic debut to @TedLasso’s Emmy-winning antics, watch the latest episodes from Apple TV+ three hours earlier this week. Streaming begins Thursday at 9pm EST/6pm PST. pic.twitter.com/vxkkAEUuOe
That’s not all. Apple TV+ is also bringing us an extraterrestrial extravaganza. On October 22nd (when the first 3 episodes will be released), sci-fi fans can experience what it would be like to live through an alien invasion. Joy!
The new season welcomes back the unforgettable cast members, including Sarah Snook as Shiv, Kieran Culkin as Roman, Matthew Macfayden as Tom Wambsgans, and Nicholas Braun as Cousin Greg.
There will also be some new faces which include a lineup of high-amplitude and high-profile guest stars like Adrien Brody, Alexander Skarsgård, Hope Davis, Sanaa Lathan, Linda Emond, and Korean music star Jihae.
A lot has been mentioned in the media-verse about an intensification of Kendall and how it’s all going “full fucking beast.” The trailer does show that and the earlier seasons of incredibly vile dysfunction are looking to be, what else, pumped up a notch is season 3. And those of us that got hooked already into the decadent moral decay of this erzatz Fox-media fiction will cheer at the new depths of disgusting behavior. Yippeee!
Season 3, will strategically enter during the 2022 Emmy Season, and is likely to again be a frontrunner for Best Drama Series. The show won big-time in 2020 for Best Drama Series, Writing, Directing as well as Best Lead Actor to Jeremy Strong grad Guest Actress Cherry Jones.
The brand new season of Succession is slated to premier on October 17, 2021, and you can catch seasons 1 and 2 already and, of course, the new episodes when they are released, as before on HBO Max.
A string of upcoming dystopian sci-fi will be hitting the streaming platform
What does a post-apocalyptic earth, a robot, a dog and Tom Hanks all have in common? That would be the new Apple TV+ film called “Finch”. This project marks Hank’s 2nd Apple TV+ outing, his first appearance on the streaming platform was “Greyhound” which was met with mucho critical acclaim.
This time around, this family friendly film futuristic cashing into the feel of a mash-up between ‘Wall-E’ and ‘The Martian’ and based on the trailer looks to be an oddball thing: bleak futuristic fun for all ages.
A massive solar flare nearly destroys Earth, Hank, who plays a robotics engineer named Finch and has only survived because he has been living in an underground bunker for the past decade. During his time in a post-apocalyptic Earth he befriends a stray dog which he names Goodyear (shades of Wilson?. Hanks decides to utilize his expertise by building a robot to help take care of Goodyear when he is gone.
“Finch” premieres on Apple TV+ this November 5.
Check out the trailer below:
We Aren’t Alone – Invasion:
That’s not all. Apple TV+ is also bringing us an extraterrestrial extravaganza. On October 22nd (when the first 3 episodes will be released), sci-fi fans can experience what it would be like to live through an alien invasion. Joy!
Enter the Galactic Empire – Foundation:
And last, but definitely not least, is the long-awaited sci-fi adaptation of the timeless classic “Foundation” by Isaac Asimov.
The first 3 episodes of Apple TV’s “Foundation” will be released on September 24 and will ultimately have a total of 10 episodes in total when all is said and done.
When the iOS 15.1 update drops for the general public (likely soon as it’s already been seeded to beta testers since Monday) it will feature the ability to add your proof of vaccination status to the Health app and then create a vaccination ID card in Apple Wallet.
Many businesses, venues, restaurants, and more are requiring proof of vaccination for entry. For example California is the first state where proof of COVID vaccination or negative test for indoor events over 1,000 people.
The new feature in iOS 15.1 is made possible by the support Smart Health Cards which are valid for California, Louisiana, New York, Virginia, Hawaii, and some Maryland counties, as do Walmart, Sam’s Club, and CVS Health.
Above: ID in iPhone Wallet
Therefore, using this system you would be able to to look up their information in state databases, if you are in any of the states listed above, but if you were vaccinated through at Walmart or CVS it will also be feasible to add your information to the Health and Wallet.
Once you have gone to the web site for your state, for example in California it would be found at https://myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov where you can type in personal information such as name and date of birth to get access to your records and status.
Though iOS 15 already has the ability to download the information to your Health app, and you can do this today, the last step, adding an ID to your wallet from the health app will not be possible until you have upgraded to iOS 15.1.
The record is locked to your name and can only be used by you. There will be a QR code that you will first download to your health app on the iPhone, then, once it is in the health app there will be a prompt to allow you to “add to wallet”. By clicking that link a vaccination ID car, with the QR code will be generated and added to your wallet.
iOS 15.1 is likely to be available under > General > software update in your phone’s Settings app within days. (Our guess is by Monday, September 27, 2021)
Tap the download link on your iPhone or iPod touch.
Tap Add to Health to add the record to the Health app.
The official trailer for “Spencer” has been released, starring Kristen Stewart who looks like an absolute ringer for Princess Diana.
There have already been rave reviews since the film had its debut at the Venice Film Festival. Stewart is said to be an Oscar Award top contender for Best Actress.
The movie is set over a single weekend and focusing on how Princess Diana contemplates ending her marriage to Prince charles.
According to Neon, the official synopsis reads:
“December, 1991: The Prince and Princess of Wales’ marriage has long since grown cold. Though rumors of affairs and a divorce abound, peace is ordained for the Christmas festivities at Sandringham Estate. There’s eating and drinking, shooting and hunting. Diana knows the game. This year, things will be a whole lot different.”
The movie will be released in theaters later this fall on November 5, 2021. Check out the official trailer, below, for the upcoming biographical drama:
The tweak, which targets the code in accessibility features for visually impaired users, drew ire from researchers and those who monitor the platform
Facebook has begun rolling out an update that is interfering with watchdogs monitoring the platform.
The Markup has found evidence that Facebook is adding changes to its website code that foils automated data collection of news feed posts—a technique that groups like NYU’s Ad Observatory, The Markup, and other researchers and journalists use to audit what’s happening on the platform on a large scale.
The changes, which attach junk code to HTML features meant to improve accessibility for visually impaired users, also impact browser-based ad blocking services on the platform. The new code risks damaging the user experience for people who are visually impaired, a group that has struggled to use the platform in the past.
The updates add superfluous text to news feed posts in the form of ARIA tags, an element of HTML code that is not rendered visually by a standard web browser but is used by screen reader software to map the structure and read aloud the contents of a page. Such code is also used by organizations like NYU’s Ad Observatory to identify sponsored posts on the platform and weed them out for further scrutiny.
“We constantly make code changes across our services, but we did not make any code changes to block these research projects,” Lindy Wagner, communications manager at Facebook, said in an email to The Markup.
Following the changes, the Citizen Browser project experienced a drop in data collection rates from early September, prompting the investigation that uncovered these changes to the code. At around the same time, users of certain ad blockers noticed a decrease in their effectiveness.
Laura Edelson, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering and founder of the Ad Observatory project, expressed dismay at Facebook’s latest move impacting data collection. The website update had at first caused a sharp drop in the amount of data collected by the Ad Observatory, she said, but a fix was found that allowed the team to collect data at normal levels.
“I think it’s unfortunate that Facebook is continuing to fight with researchers rather than work with them,” she said.
Facebook has used similar tweaks to attempt to frustrate researchers and ad blockers in the past, often with the result of making the platform less accessible to visually impaired users.
In 2019, the company made changes to obfuscate its code in a way that blocked ad collection efforts by ProPublica, Mozilla, and British ad transparency group WhoTargetsMe. And in 2020, Quartz reported that visually impaired users had been unable to hear a legible label distinguishing between sponsored and nonsponsored posts for the previous two years because the platform had added numerous junk characters to the text to reduce the efficiency of ad blocking software.
In its latest update, Facebook seems to have implemented the code in a way that prevents screen readers from reading the new tags. As the update has not yet been rolled out to all users, it’s unclear what, if any, impact the change may have on visually impaired users. In at least one circumstance, a developer from The Markup who was testing the new code found that the Microsoft Narrator screen reader read aloud a string of junk characters as an unintelligible word when accessing the site through the Google Chrome browser.
“Our accessibility features largely appear to be working as normal, however we are investigating the claim,” Facebook’s Wagner said.
Jared Smith, associate director of accessibility research and training nonprofit WebAIM, expressed concerns about the code in Facebook’s web update after reviewing it for The Markup.
According to Smith, the new updates break many basic rules of accessibility design. Rather than presenting a clear and simplified structure, he said, the accessibility code was hugely complex, potentially heralding problems down the road.
“When you see thousands and thousands of patterns of ARIA attributes—code that could be used for accessibility but doesn’t seem to support accessibility—it poses a scenario where things could jump the rails and really negatively impact accessibility,” said Smith.
“We’ve seen misuse of technologies like this for things like search engine optimization, but this is on an entirely different scale,” he added.
In July 2020, a blog post from the Facebook engineering team trumpeted an extensive rebuild of the site that was apparently made with accessibility in mind. This included requirements for Facebook developers to use a code linting plugin (similar to a spelling autocorrect) that would highlight violations of ARIA standards.
“I suspect that the Facebook team implementing these apparent anti-transparency mechanisms does not realize that there are potential accessibility consequences to what they’re doing,” said Blake E. Reid, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School who focuses on accessibility and technology policy.
Sen. Ron Wyden, who has been critical of the company in the past, told The Markup in an emailed statement that Facebook’s latest move showed a disregard for visually impaired users.
“It is contemptible that Facebook would misuse accessibility features for users with disabilities just to foil legitimate research and journalism,” he said.
Facebook has long claimed that it wants to share data with researchers, Edelson said, but in practice numerous social scientists have faced obstacles when trying to work with the platform.
In August of this year, Facebook disabled the accounts of NYU Ad Observatory researchers for alleged violations of its terms of service with the researchers’ own ad collector. (At the time, The Markup’s senior executives published a press release critical of Facebook’s actions.)
And reporting by The New York Times brought to light the fact that Facebook had given incomplete data to misinformation researchers from the high profile Social Science One research group, potentially undermining the findings of years of academic studies. The error was first uncovered by a university professor who found discrepancies between numbers in the Social Science One data and Facebook’s recently published Widely Viewed Content Report.
“At what point does the research community stop thinking of Facebook as a positive actor in this space?” Edelson said.
House Bill Would Blow Up the Massive IRAs of the Superwealthy
Legislation currently making its way through Congress would take a sledgehammer to the massive individual retirement accounts built up tax-free by a select group of the ultrawealthy.
The proposal, which is part of the infrastructure and tax package advancing in the House, targets the jaw-dropping IRAs accumulated by multimillionaires and billionaires such as tech investor Peter Thiel, which were first reported by ProPublica earlier this year. Those accounts — Thiel’s alone was worth $5 billion in 2019 — have allowed some super-wealthy Americans to turn their Roth IRAs, tools meant to incentivize middle-class retirement saving, into supersized tax shelters.
The proposed reform, put forward by House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., would effectively cap the total amount someone could hold in a Roth at $20 million and compel the holders of the giant accounts to withdraw anything over that limit. Separately, individuals would have to add up the balances of their retirement accounts — including Roths, traditional IRAs, 401(k)s and 403(b)s — and every year withdraw half of any amount over $10 million. The provisions would only apply to individuals with taxable income of over $400,000 or couples making over $450,000.
The reform wouldn’t affect the overwhelming majority of Americans, whose retirement savings (if they have any) are far more modest — the average Roth was worth just $39,108 at the end of 2018.
“Incentives in our tax code that help Americans save for retirement were never intended to enable a tax shelter for the ultra-wealthy,” Neal said earlier this year. “We must shut down these practices.”
Should the bill pass, it could have profound implications for PayPal founder Thiel, whose gargantuan Roth stunned lawmakers, spurring Neal to vow a crackdown. Thiel wouldn’t owe any tax up front and no early withdrawal penalties would apply, but he’d be required to move billions out of the tax-advantaged account. And any gains on investments made with that money would no longer be sheltered from taxes, potentially creating hundreds of millions of dollars in future tax liabilities.
Above: “I’ll Take Your Questions” book on inside secrets of the Trump final days, by Stephanie Grisham for aide to both Trump and Melania
The great appeal of the Roth IRA is that once money is inside it, any income generated — such as capital gains from selling a stock, investment interest or dividends — is tax-free, as long as the holder waits until he or she is 59 and a half to withdraw it. (Thiel hits that mark in 2027.) In a traditional IRA, by contrast, money that’s withdrawn counts as income and is taxed.
The IRA reforms are part of a slate of proposals designed to eliminate loopholes and boost tax rates on rich individuals and corporations.
Several of the changes address revelations contained in The Secret IRS Files, a series of ProPublica stories published this year that are exploring the ways the very richest Americans avoid paying taxes. Usually such efforts remain secret, but ProPublica has obtained a trove of tax records covering thousands of the country’s richest people. The records reveal not only the diverse array of tax-avoidance techniques used by the rich, but also that some of the very richest have consistently found ways to avoid taking income, so they pay little or no taxes, even as their wealth multiplied to historic levels.
The current House plan falls short of President Joe Biden’s more ambitious proposals to combat wealth inequality through the tax code. But experts say it would significantly increase the taxes paid by high-income Americans. Among other things, it would all but eliminate a major deduction created by President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax law that, as ProPublica recently reported, showered massive tax breaks on some of the richest families in the country.
Given the stakes for a small group of wealthy and powerful Americans, it’s unclear whether the IRA proposal, along with the rest of the package, will become law. It must pass the House and make it through the Senate, where it will likely need the votes of all 50 Democratic senators to pass. Capitol Hill staffers say the bill remains fluid and provisions could still be cut, added or modified.
For now, however, the proposal has alarmed those who stand to lose the most. Three tax lawyers told ProPublica that clients with giant IRAs have reached out to them, worried about the potential reforms. Already a lawyer and an accountant are offering a paid webinar that pitches strategies to help owners of large IRAs get around the proposed rules.
A spokesman for Thiel didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The tax proposals have drawn opposition from Republicans on Capitol Hill. “This is very bad news for the U.S. economy,” said Ways and Means Committee ranking member Rep. Kevin Brady, R-Texas, in an interview this week.
A budget analyst at the anti-tax Heritage Foundation specifically criticized the IRA reform proposals as “stifling retirement savings and decreasing the economy-wide investment in future productivity.”
Neal announced his plans to curb the size of mega IRAs in July following ProPublica’s story revealing how Thiel and other billionaires had amassed giant retirement accounts using techniques largely unavailable to most taxpayers. Other wealthy investors with giant retirement accounts included financier Michael Milken, Warren Buffett and executives from investment giant Bain Capital.
Neal joined his Senate counterpart, Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who had been pushing for reform of mega IRAs for years without much support from his peers.
With a multibillion-dollar tax-free account on the line, a wealthy investor might try to keep his income below the $400,000 threshold set by the proposal. In Thiel’s case, it’s not clear if that would be possible, given that he’s long reported tens of millions of dollars on his tax returns from capital gains, interest and dividends on investments he holds outside of his Roth IRA. And even if he has to withdraw billions from his Roth, he will never have to pay taxes on years of growth inside the account.
ProPublica has previously reported that several billionaires have had very little taxable income in certain years, including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. Musk did not respond to questions for that story and Bezos’ representatives would not designate someone to accept questions related to that story.
The proposal would also add restrictions in areas that congressional investigators have said are ripe for abuse by the wealthy: The owners of IRAs would be barred from using the accounts to either purchase certain nonpublic investments or buy stakes in companies in which they are an officer.
Thiel launched his Roth IRA by purchasing so-called founder’s shares of PayPal in 1999 when he was chairman and CEO of the company, according to tax records and a financial statement Thiel included in his application for residency in New Zealand. Securities and Exchange Commission records show he bought 1.7 million shares for $1,700, or a tenth of a penny per share. (The maximum contribution to a Roth that year was $2,000.) PayPal later told the SEC the shares were sold “below market value.”
The practice has become popular among the founders of Silicon Valley companies, who tuck shares of their startups into IRAs, often after buying them at bargain prices. This can sidestep IRA contribution limits and generate massive tax-free growth if the value of their companies explodes.
The proposal would also shut down the so-called backdoor Roth. ProPublica found that billionaires like Buffett had taken advantage of a maneuver, known as a conversion, that allows the wealthy to sidestep existing income caps to create a Roth IRA. In a conversion, the owner of a traditional IRA can transform it into a Roth by paying one-time tax on the money. Once the account is converted into a Roth, no additional income taxes are ever due. The new provision would bar conversions for individuals with income over $400,000, though the ban would not go into effect until 2031 for budgetary reasons. (Buffett previously didn’t respond to questions about his IRA.)
The proposal also has implications for the holders of giant traditional IRAs, who could suddenly owe a hefty tax bill. Money withdrawn from a traditional IRA counts as taxable income. Milken, the 1980s junk bond king who went to prison for fraud and was later pardoned by Trump, had traditional IRAs valued at $509 million at the end of 2018, according to tax records. If the law passed, Milken could face a tax bill of roughly $100 million, depending on the current size of his account. A spokesperson for Milken declined to comment.
Separately, another part of the bill would tackle the generous business income deductions granted by Trump’s 2017 tax law.
As ProPublica previously reported, the drafting of the deduction was marked by last-minute changes and a rush of lobbying dollars from corporations and the superrich. The result of its passage, confidential tax records show, was a windfall for billionaires such as media mogul Michael Bloomberg, packaging tycoons Dick and Liz Uihlein, and the Bechtel family, owners of a global engineering and construction firm.
Bloomberg received a deduction of roughly $183 million in 2018 alone as a result of the provision, while the Uihleins netted around $118 million.
Under the House proposal, the deduction would be capped at $400,000 for an individual and $500,000 for a couple, virtually wiping it out for the very rich. If such a cap had been in place in 2018, for example, the Uihleins would have gotten a deduction worth just $500,000 instead of $118 million. A competing Senate proposal unveiled by Wyden in July would go even further. A spokesperson for the Uihleins declined to comment on the proposed reforms.
On a broader level, the House plan would spell a significant tax hike on Americans earning more than $400,000, raising their individual income tax rates as well as bumping up the corporate tax rate, the first such hikes in a decade.
But despite the proposal’s ambition, critics say it misses a rare opportunity to capture the massive untaxed wealth of some of the richest individuals in history, including Bezos and Musk, who have often found ways to keep their income low.
As ProPublica reported, they and other billionaires have managed to pay little to no taxes in the past. Some have done so by pursuing the so-called buy, borrow, die strategy. By holding on to his Tesla stock but borrowing money to finance his lifestyle, Musk, for example, can avoid income that is taxable under current law. If he sticks to this strategy till death, the income tax liability on his fortune will evaporate for his heirs.
Some Democrats and policymakers had aspired to even bolder tax code changes that would have targeted the stratospheric increases in the ultrawealthy’s riches. One idea, championed by Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., would be to levy a so-called wealth tax on billionaires’ overall holdings. Another, pushed by Wyden, would tax the annual gains billionaires logged, even if they hadn’t sold the assets. Both ideas foundered, with concerted opposition from billionaires and skittishness from Democratic centrists. Some critics point out that wealth taxes have often failed in other countries. And many policymakers believe it would be too logistically difficult to measure assets properly and enforce such a sweeping rule on gains.
Originally published on ProPublica by Justin Elliott, Patricia Callahan and James Bandler and republished under Creative Commons.
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22877338/earpiece_ifixit.png)
