In addition to the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, the US government is pursuing court orders to force Apple to help bypass the security passcodes of "about a dozen" other iPhones, the Wall Street Journal reports. The other cases don't involve terror charges, the Journal's sources say, but prosecutors involved have also sought to use the same 220-year-old law — the All Writs Act of 1789 — to access the phones in question.

Born 1983.
Dead never.
Cherry MX keyboards forever!

There’s a plenty of reason to believe that Apple complying with the FBI order is bad policy, it’s legally shaky, and at least one of the people who makes the strongest arguments in this direction is now voting on a secret government board? What the heck is going on here?
What’s going on is Justice Antonin Scalia is dead.

Dean Ween:

"My roadie told me that Carlos Santana’s equipment (including his guitars) had arrived via a trucking company that night at their depot. Carlos was recording an appearance on “Good Morning America” the next morning and his equipment was to be delivered to the set in NYC in a few hours."

What follows is kind of bonkers.

On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 mission completed its journey to the moon. Although its crew of Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins were highly trained, there was a significant possibility of disaster, and everyone knew that the astronauts might not make it back.

In case the mission ended in tragedy, President Nixon had a speech on hand to deliver to the nation to address the demise of the astronauts. The speech was written by one of President Nixon’s top speechwriters, William Safire, and sent as a memo to Nixon’s chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, the night before the mission. It was finally unveiled to the public in 1999.

In an unusual tribute, the ashes of well-known Italian coffee impresario Renato Bialetti were placed in a giant aluminum coffee pot at his funeral this week.

"Tim Cook is right, and encryption and privacy experts are all on his side, but where are the other leaders of major U.S. companies? Where is Larry Page? Satya Nadella? Mark Zuckerberg? Jack Dorsey? I hear crickets chirping. Real leaders have courage, and on this very essential issue — in the face of fierce political pushback from law enforcement officials — only Tim Cook is showing any."

"Clarity wins arguments but it may not be where salvation or truth can be found. Good judgement in a cloudy reality is a better compass than a clear road map to a fantasy world."

An insightful assessment of Apple, business in general, and everything else in 21st century life.

An Apple Watch game in which you take advantage of the Digital Crown and haptic feedback to break into a safe.

Charles was the first black photographer at the New York Times. These photos, from 1966, were never published.

"In dismissing the Apple Watch – or in rushing to market with poorly thought out, or obviously overpriced and cynically designed smartwatches – I think the Swiss watch industry is missing something, which is that Cupertino may understand luxury better than Europe right now. If [the Apple Watch's] bracelet had been designed in Switzerland it would probably have added four figures to the cost of the watch it came on, and I'm not sure that there is a watch brand in Switzerland with the imagination to design something like this right now. It's just one part of the most expensive Apple Watch outside of the gold Edition, and the whole watch costs $1,099. I can think of frighteningly few watches at any price, mechanical or quartz, that are as well designed."

Amazon’s releasing their very own game engine. Lumberyard, as they call it, is based on Crytek’s famous CryEngine, and can be used to develop games for both PC and consoles.

The Malware Museum is a collection of malware programs, usually viruses, that were distributed in the 1980s and 1990s on home computers. Once they infected a system, they would sometimes show animation or messages that you had been infected. Through the use of emulations, and additionally removing any destructive routines within the viruses, this collection allows you to experience virus infection of decades ago with safety.

"Remember how I said “I love you.” “I know” was like, seminal for me? Now I realize, that’s the whole of Han. Yes. I know the story about Harrison Ford and forgetting the line and whatever. At first blush, he’s the original romance hero (before love knocks him to his knees). He’s a space pirate, for heaven’s sake. He makes a living on the run, knows all sorts of unsavory people, and is known as the greatest reluctant hero of our time.

Except, he’s not really heroic. He’s dragged kicking and screaming through heroics. Practically the only thing he ever does that’s heroic is not shoot first in that bar (see what I did there?). Let’s be clear. Han fights for himself first, and then everyone else. EVEN LEIA."

SPOILER ARERT

"Consider that half of all the babies born last year in the United States were nonwhite. Not in Iowa, of course, one of the whitest states in the nation. On Monday, if the Republican caucus is anything like the 2012 turnout, 99 percent of the attendants will be white. That’s not even the United States of 1816, let alone this year.

Trump can call for a police state pogrom against 11 million people and be rewarded, because a majority of Republican caucusgoers are white, native-born and believe that electing a demagogue will make American white again."