∞ Apple Removes VPN Apps From China App Store
From ExpressVPN's blog:
We received notification from Apple today, July 29, 2017, at roughly 04:00 GMT, that the ExpressVPN iOS app was removed from the China App Store. Our preliminary research indicates that all major VPN apps for iOS have been removed.
We’re disappointed in this development, as it represents the most drastic measure the Chinese government has taken to block the use of VPNs to date, and we are troubled to see Apple aiding China’s censorship efforts. ExpressVPN strongly condemns these measures, which threaten free speech and civil liberties.
∞ Stanford Researchers Find Intriguing Clues About Obesity by Counting Steps via Smartphones
From Stanford News by Tom Abate:
Stanford researchers using smartphones to track the activity levels of hundreds of thousands of people around the globe made an intriguing discovery: In countries with little obesity, people mostly walked a similar amount per day. But big gaps between people who walked a lot and those who walked very little coincided with much higher levels of obesity.
One interesting graph came out from the research, China is so blue:
Average daily steps by country. Credit: Tim Althoff.
Note the graph above is not the point of the paper, which says obesity can be predicted by activity inequality, not average. See their website for more information.
Scan Documents with iOS 11 Notes App
Scan Documents with iOS 11 Notes App
I have scanned 10+ documents with the iOS 11 Notes App (don't ask me why). Even though it feels really slow on my iPhone 6 Plus, it's still much faster than using my scanner. ARKit FTW!
Mission Peak
Summary
Just boring grasslands and hills, there are almost no trees if you need shades to rest. However, the views are still impressive when everything is green. I definitely will not go there in the brown season.
Numbers
Time: 2017-04-02, 3.3 hours.
Distance: 11.2 km (7.0 miles).
Route
See this Google Map for more details.
Photos
Crawfish
I just love Crawfish.
∞ Stream Direct Fee Will Be $100
Since then, we've seen a bunch of great conversations discussing the various pros and cons of whether there should be an amount, what that amount should be, ways that recouping could work, which developers would be helped or hurt, predictions for how the store would be affected, and many other facets to the decision. There were rational & convincing arguments made for both ends of the $100-$5000 spectrum we mentioned. Our internal thinking beforehand had us hovering around the $500 mark, but the community conversation really challenged us to justify why the fee wasn't as low as possible, and to think about what we could do to make a low fee work.
So in the end, we've decided we're going to aim for the lowest barrier to developers as possible, with a $100 recoupable publishing fee per game, ...
I'm in favor of the lower end <3
JSON Feed Is Now Available
Link: https://mangoumbrella.com/posts:json.
It only took me 30 minutes to add. And, I spent half of the time actually upgrading Cloud SDK... JSON FTW!
Zongzi
Zongzi — We made many of them, for the holiday and for the breakfasts in the coming month.
New Enemies, and More Interesting Meteors Coming to VR Planet Defense
I'm working on new enemies for the VR Planet Defense v1.2 update. Also updated the meteor shapes, they are more good looking now.
A New Splash Screen for VR Planet Defense
In preparation of VR Planet Defense v1.2 release, I created this splash screen.