Brutal, but we need to look this square in the eye. A lot of this just seems politically unviable in the U.S. Especially so with a president who — despite spending over an hour on TV every single evening — has not spoken in even vague terms about any actionable plan whatsoever. — Read on daringfireball.net/linked/2020/04/10/klein-normalcy-plans
Google Stadia Now Free To Anyone With a Gmail Address - Slashdot — Read on m.slashdot.org/story/369398
Smells like desperation…
Daring Fireball: 2020 iPad Models Now Feature Hardware Microphone Disconnect:
This is the kind of attention to detail around privacy that defines using Apple hardware, and can only come from the deep integrations and control of design they have.
The Times seems unsure how to headline this column. Right now on the web it’s running as “Putting Jared Kushner In Charge Is Utter Madness”. The <title> element in the page’s HTML (which, as I’ve noted several times in the past, often don’t change in many CMSes) is the rather anodyne “Jared Kushner Will Not Save Us From the Coronavirus”.But when it first hit Twitter earlier today, the headline read “Jared Kushner Is Going to Get Us All Killed”. — Read on daringfireball.net/linked/2020/04/03/goldberg-kushner
The only reason Lord Dampnut gives Jared any respect is that he’s got the one thing he can’t have: Ivanka.
There’s certainly a debate to be had regarding the NSO Group and its services, but Facebook’s stated intention for this software was to use it for mass surveillance of its own honest users. That is profoundly fucked up — sociopathic. — Read on daringfireball.net/linked/2020/04/04/facebook-nso-group
Intelligence chief Michael Atkinson first alerted Congress to a whistleblower complaint. — Read on www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-52164706
Obviously nothing to see here…
Daring Fireball: Mossberg on Chrome on Mac — Read on daringfireball.net/linked/2020/04/01/mossberg-chrome
Daring Fireball: Hobby Lobby Reopened Stores in States With Coronavirus Lockdowns — Read on daringfireball.net/linked/2020/04/01/hobby-lobby
Anyone who dies from this should be counted as murdered.
Zoom’s misleading encryption claims are just the latest problem for the popular service - Six Colors:
What Zoom is offering is, at best, “end-to-middle-to-¯\_(ツ)_/¯-to-middle-to-end” encryption.
jwz: Zoom is bad and you should feel bad — Read on www.jwz.org/blog/2020/03/zoom-is-bad-and-you-should-feel-bad/
It’s pretty bad.
The More You Know!
The Prodigal Techbro | The Conversationalist:
Ex-Google lobbyist Ross Lajeunesse left the company in 2019 over its censored search engine for China and also because of homophobic, sexist and racist work practices. He’s now running for a Democratic senate nomination, and recently wrote a classic of the ‘scales have fallen from my eyes’ genre, called “I Was Google’s Head of International Relations. Here’s Why I Left.” Its lede is “The company’s motto used to be “Don’t be evil.” Things have changed.”Really? Has Google really changed? Lajeunesse joined in 2008, years into Google’s multi-billion dollar tax avoidance, sexist labor practices and privacy hostility and continued to work there through the years of antitrust fines, misuse of personal health data, wage fixing, and financially pressuring think tanks. Google didn’t change. It just started treating some of its insiders like it already treated outsiders. That only looks like radical change if you’ve never thought too hard about what you are doing and to whom.
Daring Fireball: ‘Who Would Have Thought an iPad Cursor Could Be So Much Fun?’ — Read on daringfireball.net/linked/2020/03/24/mod-ipad-pointer
See also:
https://sixcolors.com/post/2020/03/in-praise-of-the-ipados-134-cursor/
Further evidence of what I had posted earlier… The new iPad OS pointer is Apple redefining the utility of one of the fundamental interfaces of our time, giving it context and intelligence nobody would expect on the desktop.
Daring Fireball: Convergence on the Laptop Form Factor:
I think Heer gets this right. It’s not about iPad moving closer to Surface conceptually; it’s about moving closer to the laptop ideal. For certain tasks nothing beats the laptop form factor, and quite possibly never will. All computing platforms that are used for such tasks inevitably take on that form. What’s new this decade is the detachable 2-in-1 form — one device that serves as both a laptop with keyboard and trackpad and as a handheld tablet. Microsoft got there from one direction, Apple from another.
I think it’s more than just a direction, but a destination. The iPad was released as an ideal, and for certain things it was perfect on Day One… But for other things, it wasn’t as well suited by itself, and so each release is steering the ship, adding things to make it a little better for edge cases while trying not to lose the spirit…
For Microsoft, the PC was their original ideal, and they’re trying to make it as broad a platform as they can, while truly satisfying nobody.
The fact that today’s iPad OS update is happening on the 19th anniversary of the original GA release of Mac OS X suggests to me that this might be a moon-shot release of sorts.
Daring Fireball: The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What’s Coming — Read on daringfireball.net/linked/2020/03/20/levy-brilliant
Daring Fireball: New Android Malware Can Steal Google Authenticator 2FA Codes — Read on daringfireball.net/linked/2020/02/27/android-malware-google-authenticator
When Pollan decided to write about caffeine, he gave it up — cold turkey. “I just couldn’t focus,” he says. “I was irritable. I lost confidence.” Caffeine reshapes the brain in surprising ways. — Read on www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/02/10/803394030/michael-pollan-explains-caffeine-cravings-and-why-you-dont-have-to-quit
Daring Fireball: Wacom Drawing Tablets Track the Name of Every Application That You Open — Read on daringfireball.net/linked/2020/02/05/wacom-tablets-track-your-apps
Daring Fireball: QAnon Conspiracy Theorists’ Magic Cure for Coronavirus Is Drinking Bleach — Read on daringfireball.net/linked/2020/01/28/qanon-bleach
Daring Fireball: The Obituaries of Republicans Who Opposed Nixon’s Impeachment — Read on daringfireball.net/linked/2020/01/30/republicans-who-opposed-impeachment
I wish I thought this would cause some GOP senators would think this through, but I suspect they’re in an endgame where they know they have no future, and only want to do what they can while they have the reins.
Daring Fireball: Mark Zuckerberg Says Facebook’s Goal Is No Longer to Be ‘Liked’ — Read on daringfireball.net/linked/2020/01/30/zuckerberg-liked
Daring Fireball: Wilbur Ross Says Coronavirus Outbreak Could Bring Back Jobs to the U.S. — Read on daringfireball.net/linked/2020/01/30/ross-ghoul
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Kakistocracy: government by the worst people.
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Daring Fireball: Google Search Results Zip Up Leather Jacket, Strap On Water Skis — Read on daringfireball.net/linked/2020/01/23/google-search-redesign
Daring Fireball: ‘An Embarrassment From Start to Finish’ — Read on daringfireball.net/linked/2020/01/24/ars-galaxy-fold
Brutal