Every new revelation in the Tyre Nichols case is worse than the one before it:

When Memphis, Tennessee, officers stopped and mortality attacked 26-year-old Tyre Nichols on Jan. 7, 2023, it was not until weeks after Nichols’ death that seven officers were fired, and five were charged with second-degree murder, as well as a slew of other charges. Only six of the officers fired have been named. The former officers charged are Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justin Smith. All five officers charged were Black.

Shortly after video of the Nichols “arrest” became public, it became clear that the sixth officer, not charged, was white. This was due to the visual evidence of a white hand holding a Taser, and then using it on Nichols. That hand reportedly belonged to Preston Hemphill. Why Hemphill was fired but not also charged in the attack has remained a mystery.

Neuralink’s hygiene practices called into question | Boing Boing:

Pesky regulations interfering with Progress…

The alleged violations could have put humans at risk of exposure to hazardous germs, including drug-resistant bacteria and a potentially life-threatening herpes virus.

jwz: New Tech Bingo:

Daring Fireball: Making Our Hearts Sing:

Android enthusiasts don’t want to hear it, but from a design perspective, the apps on Android suck. They may not suck from a feature perspective (but they often do), but they’re aesthetically unpolished and poorly designed even from a “design is how it works” perspective. (E.g., Read You doesn’t offer unread counts for folders, has a bizarrely information-sparse layout, and its only supported sync service was deprecated in 2014. It also requires a frightening number of system permissions to run, including the ability to launch at startup and run in the background.) And as I wrote yesterday, the cultural chasm between the two mobile platforms is growing, not shrinking. I’ve been keeping a toe dipped in the Android market since I bought a Nexus One in 2010, and the difference in production values between the top apps in any given category has never been greater between Android and iOS. And that’s just talking about phone apps, leaving aside the deplorable state of tablet apps on Android.

I’ve tried Android devices many times over the years, mostly as a tablet for the rare things I wanted more control than iOS gave on iPads… iPadOS has largely negated the things I wanted from Android to begin with, but there were 2 things that always kept me from doing more with Android.

1. The software blows. Not just in look-and-feel, but in functionality and stability, and even discoverability. I'd try things many writers said were "best of class" and they were dumpster fires.
2. OS - Most of those tablets never got a major OS update beyond what they shipped with. At least one proposed it would support the next upgrade at the time I bought it, then quietly erased that from the product page when it came time to deliver... Samsung, Lenovo, Acer, major brands that should be able to deliver compelling devices and just ... moved onto the next thing instead. Compare this with Apple who just released OS updates for devices released 13 years ago.

Daring Fireball: Meanwhile, Over in Androidtown:

Google’s Android system software and first-party apps try. (The Chrome Android app in particular is iOS-caliber. Not iOS-style, but iOS-caliber, in terms of fluidity, originality, and attention to detail.) The Instagram app for Android tries. But for the most part, it seems like third-party Android apps don’t even try to achieve the look-and-feel comfort, fun, and panache of iOS apps. It’s a weird thing. The chasm between how iOS and Android apps look and feel is growing, not shrinking. The opposite happened with the Mac and Windows back in the ’90s. Windows itself and Windows software in the Window 3.x era were just awful. Starting with Windows 95, the gap closed significantly. Spending a few hours perusing the state of the art in Android Mastodon clients gives me the distinct impression that Android is forever stuck in its Window 3.x era of UI polish and design. It’s rough.

The Practicality of Art in Software - MacStories:

In bringing this back to software, it’s evident that – again, historically – Apple doesn’t believe in art as a veneer to make something “look good”. Art – whereby “art” we refer to the human care behind the design of software – is intrinsically tied to the technology that powers the computer. It’s the intersection of technology and liberal arts: skew toward one side more than the other, and you risk of losing the balance many of us like about Apple. Art in Apple’s software isn’t some secret ingredient that can just be added at the end of the process, like a spice: great design is the process itself. Case in point: the Dynamic Island.

• via Daring Fireball

We come to bury ChatGPT, not to praise it.:

Unsuspecting users who've been conditioned on Siri and Alexa assume that the smooth talking ChatGPT is somehow tapping into reliable sources of knowledge, but it can only draw on the (admittedly vast) proportion of the internet it ingested at training time. Try asking Google's BERT model about Covid or ChatGPT about the latest Russian attacks on Ukraine. Ironically, these models are unable to cite their own sources, even in instances where it's obvious they're plagiarising their training data. The nature of ChatGPT as a bullshit generator makes it harmful, and it becomes more harmful the more optimised it becomes. If it produces plausible articles or computer code it means the inevitable hallucinations are becoming harder to spot. If a language model suckers us into trusting it then it has succeeded in becoming the industry's holy grail of 'trustworthy AI'; the problem is, trusting any form of machine learning is what leads to a single mother having their front door kicked open by social security officials because a predictive algorithm has fingered them as a probable fraudster, alongside many other instances of algorithmic violence.

• via jwz.org

Daring Fireball: Report It All, See What Sticks:

I am once again reminded of the fact that, two weeks prior to its unveiling, Gurman reported that 2021’s Apple Watch Series 7 would be “all about a new design with a flatter display and edges”, when in fact the Series 7 was more rounded.

I suspect some of these wildly wrong reports are Apple floating differential details to certain parties to see what makes it to the media, to help resolve who’s leaking what.

Mastodon: A New Hope for Social Networking - TidBITS:

Cast your mind back to the first time you experienced joy and wonder on the Internet. Do you worry you’ll never be able to capture that sense again? If so, it’s worth wading gently into the world of Mastodon microblogging to see if it offers something fresh and delightful. It might remind you—as it does me, at least for now—of the days when you didn’t view online interactions with some level of dread.

• via Daring Fireball

Some great compilations of current research about COVID-19 | Boing Boing:

Here are some terrific compilations of the latest research studies on COVID-19, if you want to stay informed, learn more, or share with friends and loved ones.

Recommend clicking through and then clicking through, imporant things to know to gauge your own personal comfort to risk level, because for most people I guarantee they aren’t making good choices about it.

My Favourite Computer, An Old Mac - Muezza.ca:

Surprisingly this Mac can still play with the modern world, at least a little bit. I can load Wikipedia via gopher, I can read Hackernews, I can edit my website and manage my servers from it, I can even chat with friends on it via IRC. It's not much, but it's something and it allows me to be productive whether I be typing a document, or writing a program in Think Pascal.

Usefulness may vary by needs - little to none of the software available to this machine understands any modern TLS requirements, so any https site will be unlikely to be useable. Javascript likewise was very different, so most modern web pages will break even if you can load them… But if your needs are met, this is a perfectly valid and charming setup still.

Daring Fireball: Samsung’s Plans for XR Devices:

Translation: Just waiting to see what Apple launches.

Why Not Mars (Idle Words):

The goal of this essay is to persuade you that we shouldn’t send human beings to Mars, at least not anytime soon. Landing on Mars with existing technology would be a destructive, wasteful stunt whose only legacy would be to ruin the greatest natural history experiment in the Solar System. It would no more open a new era of spaceflight than a Phoenician sailor crossing the Atlantic in 500 B.C. would have opened up the New World. And it wouldn’t even be that much fun.

I thoroughly, fundamentally, disagree with this… Because the point is not only the destination, but the journey, but preferably by public institutions not private companies.

The lead up and execution of the NASA era of space exploration was littered with innovations which found application outside their own mandate, which drove technology forward across industries. This is exactly the kind of thing that should be done for the Public Good.

• via kottke.org

Fairy Tale as MFA Antidote - by Lincoln Michel:

I often start my MFA courses with a discussion of fairy tales. It seems an obvious place to start, since fairy tales are some of humanity’s oldest stories and likely the first stories that my students remember reading as children. But I also love starting with fairy tales because they violate more or less every single rule of fiction writing that is drilled into us in creative writing classes.

Instead of “show don’t tell,” fairy tales prioritize telling over showing. Instead of demanding “round characters,” fairy tales embrace flat ones. Instead of logical “worldbuilding,” fairy tales operate with a surreal dream logic in abstract settings. Instead of starting “in media res,” they start “once upon a time.” Instead of “telling the story only you can tell,” fairy tales ask you to retell stories that have been told for centuries. So on and so forth.

• via kottke.org

jwz: What the Jan. 6 probe found out about social media, but didn’t report:

Congressional investigators found evidence that tech platforms -- especially Twitter -- failed to heed their own employees' warnings about violent rhetoric on their platforms and bent their rules to avoid penalizing conservatives, particularly then-president Trump, out of fear of reprisals. [...]

“The sum of this is that alt-tech, fringe, and mainstream platforms were exploited in tandem by right-wing activists to bring American democracy to the brink of ruin,” the staffers wrote in their memo. “These platforms enabled the mobilization of extremists on smaller sites and whipped up conservative grievance on larger, more mainstream ones.” […]

That focus on Trump meant the report missed an opportunity to hold social media companies accountable for their actions, or lack thereof, even though the platforms had been the subject of intense scrutiny since Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016, the people familiar with the matter said.

Confronting that evidence would have forced the committee to examine how conservative commentators helped amplify the Trump messaging that ultimately contributed to the Capitol attack, the people said – a course that some committee members considered both politically risky and inviting opposition from some of the world’s most powerful tech companies, two of the people said. […]

The Washington Post has previously reported that Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the committee’s co-chair, drove efforts to keep the report focused on Trump. But interviews since the report’s release indicate that Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat whose Northern California district includes Silicon Valley, also resisted efforts to bring more focus in the report onto social media companies.

jwz: Facebook fires worker who refused to do ‘negative testing’:

The practice, known as "negative testing," allows tech companies to "surreptitiously" run down someone's mobile juice in the name of testing features [...]

“I said to the manager, ‘This can harm somebody,’ and she said by harming a few we can help the greater masses,” said Hayward, 33, who claims in a Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit that he was fired in November for refusing to participate in negative testing. […]

“Any data scientist worth his or her salt will know, ‘Don’t hurt people,'” he told The Post.

Killing someone’s cellphone battery puts people at risk, especially “in circumstances where they need to communicate with others, including but not limited to police or other rescue workers,” according to the litigation filed against Facebook.

What is The Most Successful Hollywood Movie of All Time? — Information is Beautiful:

The most common answer to the question What is The Most Successful Hollywood Movie? is of course Avatar. James Cameron’s 2010 masterpiece grossed close to $3bn worldwide, very closely followed by Avengers: End Game at $2.8bn.

It turns out, if you ask better questions you get more useful answers:

ask me how i know – WIL WHEATON dot NET:

“Okay, so. Disclosure: I am the actor who played Wesley. I have spent a great deal of time thinking about exactly this, because angry nerds have been yelling at me about it for 30 years.

“Remember that a being of extraordinary power and ability pulled Picard aside and said, “this kid is special. I can’t tell you exactly why, but it’s really important that you nurture and encourage him to the best of your ability.” And Picard listened. He heard that this being, who had literally just taken them where no one has gone before, and he followed his advice.

“And that eventually leads Wesley to become one of the Travelers.

“I’m sure that there are plenty of officers on the Enterprise who share your opinion. They’re pissed that this kid was promoted. They’re pissed that he’s a nepo baby.

There’s a lot more, go read the rest…

RPS Time Capsule: the games worth saving from 2006 | Rock Paper Shotgun:

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Developer:Bethesda Game Studios Publisher: Bethesda Softworks From: Steam, GOG, Humble, Game Pass

Ed: I am convinced Oblivion’s fantasy setting of Cyrodiil is the closest you can get to a waking lucid dream. Break out of jail and you’re in this lush landscape, with golden hues and soft textures and warm strings that accompany your wanderings. I like how it frames its world through its mundane, little details, too. Dirt paths may simply lead to quaint huts in the middle of the woods or moss-covered ruins pocked with red mushrooms. There’s a sense that you’re exploring somewhere that makes sense for its inhabitants, rather than a showroom for achievement hunters.

Skyrim is in many ways more fun to jump in and play, its certainly more stable, but of the 5 mainline Elder Scrolls entries I think Oblivion was the one that most found the perfect balance of narrative, customization, and control… At the expense of being a bit buggy and wierd.

The real problem with our national debt is nothing like what Republican debt scolds say it is:

In the 1950s, wealthy families had an effective tax rate (what they actually paid, after deductions, etc.) of around 50%. The rich paid about half of what they made. Since Ronald Reagan, and then George W. Bush, and then Trump enacted one Rich Man’s Tax Cut after another, what the wealthiest pay has shrunk drastically, to an average effective tax rate of 8.2% over recent years, less than many middle-class Americans. What does this have to do with the debt ceiling, or the federal debt in general? I’m glad you asked.

In Ohio, a ‘normal’ couple secretly runs a homeschooling network to indoctrinate kids into Nazism:

The central project for most neofascists is to restore the place of unapologetic white supremacism to its former dominance in American (and global) society, so many of their activities and strategies involve finding ways to insinuate themselves as a toxic presence within the functioning components of working democracy so they can hollow them out and displace them with their own. Whether it’s the local police, or local and state politics, or environmental activism, or Republican politics, or even athletic events, the growing ranks of Hitler-loving neo-Nazis keep finding new ways to worm their way into the mainstream mix.

And then there is education. Especially education. Hatred of what they call the “Jewish” or “Communist” public education system in America has long been a cornerstone of neofascist beliefs, and their advocacy for removing the children of movement followers from public schools and homeschooling them dates back to at least the 1980s. And as we can see from the recent exposure of a neo-Nazi Ohio couple’s “Dissident Homeschooling” operation, it’s alive and festering on social media today.

Thought - Apple’s approach to services/Siri is hybrid cloud… Empower devices, though smart software and hardware, to do what is possible local, and only reach out to the cloud when necessary.

Secret Service releases study on mass shootings: It’s economics, misogyny, and conspiracy theories:

The last two weeks have brought back the reminder that mass shootings in the United States continue unabated. In their wake, the Secret Service published a 60-page report on Wednesday that details the data they have about mass attacks. The study, conducted by the U.S. Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center, examines 173 mass shooting incidents that occurred between 2016 and 2020. Each attack included in the report resulted in at least “three or more individuals injured or killed across public or semi-public spaces, including businesses, schools, and houses of worship.”

First off - The fact that there were 173 incidents over 4 years should be a sign we have a problem.

Notable statistics/predictors:

• 96% of the attackers studied were male, 3% were female, and 2% were transgender. (IE This is a dude thing)
• 72% of attackers experienced some kind of financial stressor sometime prior to the attack.
• Just under 20% of attackers had an “unstable housing” situation at the time of the attack.
• While there was a large age range, the average age of an attacker was 34 years old.
• 41% of attackers had a history of “engaging in at least one incident of domestic violence.”
• Less than a quarter of those firearm attacks involved guns acquired illegally.

Demographics wise, the breakdown pretty much represents the racial diversity of the nation: (IE Dude problem not a race problem)

• 57% of attackers were white.
• 34% of attackers were Black.
• 11% of attackers were Hispanic.
• 4% of attackers were Asian.
• 1% of attackers were American Indian.

Remembering Challenger:

37 years ago today, I watched this happen in real time while my class crammed in around a tiny TV. For all intents and purposes it was the end of an era of NASA, and the death of an innocent dream of space exploration for me.

Supreme Court failed to disclose that guy who signed off on leak report is on their payroll:

CNN reports that the court has “longstanding financial ties” with former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who Chief Justice John Roberts tapped to endorse the leak investigation that found no leaker and let the justices and their spouses off the hook. Chertoff has a contract with the court for security consultations that has “reached at least $1 million.”