Archives for February 2019

To use the power-sharing feature, you hit a button in the phone’s settings and place another device that supports wireless charging onto the back of the Samsung. I stacked my iPhone and the Galaxy S10 Plus back to back, and it took the Samsung about 15 minutes to replenish 5 percent of the iPhone’s battery. That’s a slow charge rate, though Samsung said the feature was primarily intended for charging accessories like wireless earbuds or smart watches.

An improved fingerprint sensor, but weaker biometrics than the iPhone

I found that the fingerprint reader on Samsung’s Galaxy S10 Plus was an improvement over past models. But the device’s biometrics over all were still weaker than the features on Apple’s iPhone, Samsung’s biggest rival.

In previous Samsung phones, the sensor was a physical button on the back of the phone near the camera, which often led people to accidentally bump the camera lenses when attempting to unlock their phones.

Now the sensor is on the front and embedded in the screen. Its ultrasonic technology uses sound waves that read the ridges and valleys of a finger. This means you can now unlock the phone while it is flat on a table, and the ultrasonic technology will be able to scan your print through water or grease. In addition, because the captured image is so detailed, the print becomes much more difficult to spoof than with past fingerprint sensors.

In my tests, I was able to unlock the phone while my hand was damp.

On the downside, Samsung is behind Apple in face recognition. While Apple uses infrared scanning to create a precise 3-D map of a person’s face, Samsung’s face scanner uses the camera to take your photo and then compares it with an image stored on the device. So a thief could fool the system by holding a photo of your face in front of the camera.

Because a person’s head shape is unique, the likelihood of bypassing infrared-based facial recognition with an incorrect face is one in a million, according to Qualcomm. In contrast, the false-acceptance rate of older face-scanning techniques like Samsung’s is one in 100, and the false-acceptance rate of fingerprint scanning (including the new ultrasonic technology) is one in 50,000.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/technology/personaltech/samsung-galaxy-s10-review.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

The Mail has the second-highest circulation of any British paper, trailing only the down-market Sun and far outpacing liberal favorites like The Guardian, whose editorial page is sharply against Brexit.

One sign of the paper’s shift came in mid-February, when a top adviser to Mrs. May was overheard in Brussels suggesting that the prime minister could extend the Brexit deadline. The Daily Express — which has the slogan “We’re Backing Britain” on its front page — ran the story on its front page, declaring, “Secret Brexit Plot Exposed in Hotel Bar.”

The same day’s Mail placed the news on Page 10, with the relatively subdued headline “May’s Brexit Chief in Bar Blunder.” On the cover, instead, was a celebratory piece about the success of the paper’s anti-litter campaign, the Great British Spring Clean.

As the three-year anniversary of the Brexit vote looms, with no clear resolution in sight, it’s also possible that average British readers simply want to think about something else.

Over tea in the dining hall at Portcullis House, the parliamentary office building, Ian Dunt, the editor of Politics.co.uk, lamented that the marathon machinations of Brexit had left readers numb. Compared with President Trump’s tenure, Brexit “is much more boring,” he said, dryly.

And given falling circulation numbers and the mass digital migration of news, Mr. Dunt questioned if the revised tone at The Mail, or any other paper, would do much to change minds.

He may have a point. Around the corner from The Mail’s headquarters on Kensington High Street, a newsstand vendor, a man in late middle age, was asked if he had noticed anything different about the paper’s Brexit coverage.

“Oh, I wouldn’t know,” he replied, with an apologetic smile. “I just do the crossword.”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/28/business/media/brexit-media-daily-mail.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Complicating matters is that both Mr. Rice and Ms. Walden are weeks away from moving into senior leadership roles at the Walt Disney Company after it closes on its purchase of the bulk of 21st Century Fox’s entertainment properties.

Fox has been under the leadership of its chairman, Rupert Murdoch, who built his media empire over more than six decades. Last year he agreed to sell the majority of his business to Disney for $71.3 billion. As part of the transaction, Mr. Rice is poised to become the chairman of Walt Disney Television and Ms. Walden will become the chairwoman of Disney Television Studios and ABC Entertainment.

Hours after the ruling become public, Disney’s chief executive, Robert A. Iger, defended his incoming senior executives.

“Peter Rice and Dana Walden are highly respected leaders in this industry, and we have complete confidence in their character and integrity,” Mr. Iger said in a statement. “Disney had no involvement in the arbitration, and we understand the decision is being challenged and will leave it to the courts to decide the matter.”

At minimum, the producers and the stars of “Bones” will be awarded $50 million in damages, but it’s unclear who will be on the hook for that payment. The plaintiffs sued Fox’s television studio, which produced the show; the broadcast network, which aired the show; and 21st Century Fox, the studio and network’s parent company.

In the coming weeks, Fox’s television studio will become part of Disney but the broadcast network will remain with Mr. Murdoch as part of a smaller company to be named Fox Corporation. Both Disney and Fox did not offer any explanation for who would be responsible for payment.

The extraordinary award for damages has piqued the interest of the creative set in Hollywood. The entertainment industry has undergone a remarkable change with Netflix, Hulu, Facebook, Amazon and Apple cutting big checks for original content. Older fare has also become incredibly valuable. Netflix paid about $100 million to keep “Friends” for at least another year. The show, a decade-long hit for NBC, went off the air in 2004.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/business/media/bones-fox-arbitration-award.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Indeed, though Mr. Cohen was only brought to testify because Democrats had taken control of the house, some of the most striking exchanges were with the Republicans. It was Mr. Trump’s old attack dog against his new pack.

And oh, was the barking loud. Mostly ignoring Mr. Cohen’s specific charges, the Republicans instead painted him as disgruntled, untrustworthy and out for himself (the phrase “book deal” was uttered more times than in a literary agent’s office), while signaling to the voters at home that they’d be zealous in defending the president.

Representative Jim Jordan, quarterbacking the Republican case in shirt sleeves, taunted Mr. Cohen for being jealous of not being “brought to the dance” with a White House job. Representative Mark Green channeled Mr. Trump by calling Mr. Cohen a “fake witness.” Representative Paul Gosar scolded, “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” bringing a poster in case his oratory was too subtle.

Mr. Cohen, who began his remarks wrung-out and drained, showed the combativeness that had kept him on the Trump payroll. When Representative Mark Meadows rebutted Mr. Cohen’s charges of racism by having a lone African-American Trump official, Lynne Patton, stand silently behind him, Mr. Cohen said to ask her how many black executives the Trump Organization employed.

Toward the end of the hearing, that scene came up again, when Representative Rashida Tlaib denounced the spectacle as “racist.” Mr. Meadows, who is white, took offense, citing his friendship with the committee chairman, Representative Elijah Cummings, who is black, and who stepped in to calm the situation. It all seemed like a mini improv drama on the messy personal-racial dynamics of “Green Book” America.

Other times, Mr. Cohen copped to his flaws in a way that seemed to frustrate his questioners. “You called Donald Trump a cheat in your opening testimony. What would you call yourself?” Representative James Comer asked him. “A fool,” Mr. Cohen said.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/arts/television/president-trump-cohen.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Mr. Giddins said that Mr. Gitler’s liner notes had helped cement his reputation. “Those notes are as much a part of those albums as the sequencing of tracks and the cover art,” he said.

Mr. Gitler had a close association with Mr. Feather, the longtime jazz critic for The Los Angeles Times. He was an assistant on Mr. Feather’s “The New Encyclopedia of Jazz” (1960), and he completed “The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz” (1999) after Mr. Feather’s death in 1994 and was credited as co-author.

On his own, Mr. Gitler wrote “Jazz Masters of the 40s” (1966) and “Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition in Jazz in the 1940s” (1985).

As passionate as Mr. Gitler was about jazz, he was equally passionate about another pursuit: ice hockey. He played for and coached an amateur-league team, Gitler’s Gorillas, and wrote “Blood on the Ice: Hockey’s Most Violent Moments” (1974). He also wrote for the program sold to fans at Ranger games at Madison Square Garden.

Stan Fischler, a longtime hockey writer and commentator and a friend of Mr. Gitler’s, recalled on Twitter that a high point of Mr. Gitler’s avocation was playing defense on a fantasy hockey team in 1984 in Lake Placid, N.Y., with the Hall of Famers Gordie Howe and Bill Gadsby.

Mr. Fischler wrote that Gadsby, also a defenseman, was worried that Mr. Gitler would not be able to help hold their team’s one-goal lead when he skated onto the ice in the final minute of the game. “As Bill skated past Ira,” he wrote, “Gadsby stopped, leaned over and uttered the deathless words: ‘Ira, just get in the way!’ ” The lead held.

In addition to his son, Mr. Gitler is survived by his wife, Mary Jo (Schwalbach) Gitler, an artist, and two grandchildren.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/obituaries/ira-gitler-dead.html?partner=rss&emc=rss