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686 lines
148 KiB
686 lines
148 KiB
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
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Date: Sat, 11 Nov 2017 15:35:23 GMT
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Content-Type: application/json; charset=UTF-8
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{
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"version" : "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1",
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"title" : "Daring Fireball",
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"home_page_url" : "https://daringfireball.net/",
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"feed_url" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/json",
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"authors" : [
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{
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"url" : "https://twitter.com/gruber",
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"name" : "John Gruber"
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}
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],
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"icon" : "https://daringfireball.net/graphics/apple-touch-icon.png",
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"favicon" : "https://daringfireball.net/graphics/favicon-64.png",
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"items" : [
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{
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"title" : "Apple Reports Q1 2022 Results",
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"date_published" : "2022-01-27T22:51:34Z",
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"date_modified" : "2022-01-28T01:59:23Z",
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"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/27/aapl-q1-2022-results",
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"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/27/aapl-q1-2022-results",
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"external_url" : "https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/01/apple-reports-first-quarter-results/",
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"authors" : [
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{
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"name" : "John Gruber"
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}
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],
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"content_html" : "\n<p>Apple:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2022 first\nquarter ended Decbber 25, 2021. The Company posted an all-time\nrevenue record of $123.9 billion, up 11 percent year over year,\nand quarterly earnings per diluted share of $2.10.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If record-breaking quarters can be boring, Apple’s recent results qualify. From <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/pdfs/FY22_Q1_Consolidated_Financial_Statements.pdf\">Apple’s balance sheet for the quarter (PDF)</a>, the most interesting year-over-year change I noticed was the divergence between Mac and iPad net sales:</p>\n\n<!-- Markdown Table\n| | Q1 2022 | Q1 2021 |\n| ---------------------------- | ----------: | ----------: |\n| iPhone | $71.63 | $65.60 |\n| **Mac** | **$10.85** | **$8.68** |\n| **iPad** | **$7.25** | **$8.44** |\n| Wearables, Home, Accessories | $14.70 | $12.97 |\n| Services | $19.52 | $15.76 |\n| Total net sales | $123.95 | $111.44 |\n-->\n\n<table>\n<thead>\n<tr>\n <th></th>\n <th align=\"right\">Q1 2022</th>\n <th align=\"right\">Q1 2021</th>\n</tr>\n</thead>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n <td>iPhone</td>\n <td align=\"right\">$71.63</td>\n <td align=\"right\">$65.60</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td><b>Mac</b></td>\n <td align=\"right\"><b>$10.85</b></td>\n <td align=\"right\"><b>$8.68</b></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td><b>iPad</b></td>\n <td align=\"right\"><b>$7.25</b></td>\n <td align=\"right\"><b>$8.44</b></td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td>Wearables, Home, Accessories</td>\n <td align=\"right\">$14.70</td>\n <td align=\"right\">$12.97</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td>Services</td>\n <td align=\"right\">$19.52</td>\n <td align=\"right\">$15.76</td>\n</tr>\n<tr>\n <td>Total net sales</td>\n <td align=\"right\">$123.95</td>\n <td align=\"right\">$111.44</td>\n</tr>\n</tbody>\n</table>\n\n<p><br/></p>\n\n<p>Last year Mac and iPad were very close to even. This year, Mac sales were up 25%, and iPad down 14%. That’s not surprising given the hardware releases last year: a good but uneventful year for iPads vs. the single most transformative year for Mac hardware ever.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/01/apple-reports-first-quarter-results/\">apple.com/newsroom/2022/01/apple-reports-first-quarter…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
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},
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{
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"title" : "iOS 15.4, Now in Developer Beta, Has an Option to Use Face ID With a Mask",
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"date_published" : "2022-01-27T20:33:16Z",
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"date_modified" : "2022-01-27T20:33:17Z",
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"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/27/ios-15-4-face-id-with-mask",
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"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/27/ios-15-4-face-id-with-mask",
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"external_url" : "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/face-id-mask/",
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"authors" : [
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{
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"name" : "John Gruber"
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}
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],
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"content_html" : "\n<p>Nick Heer, Pixel Envy:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>First spotted by <a href=\"https://twitter.com/BrandonButch/status/1486773540577812490\">Brandon Butch</a>, iOS 15.4 will offer support\nfor Face ID while wearing a mask. The text on the setup screen\nimplies that it focuses more on the area around a user’s eyes to\nmake a match. As <a href=\"https://twitter.com/viticci/status/1486783597025579011\">Federico Viticci</a> documented, it allows you\nto add pairs of glasses too, which makes sense for greater\nsensitivity around that specific area.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Today’s OS updates — MacOS 12.2 and iOS 15.3 (in all its device-specific variants) — are seemingly mostly bug fixes. But MacOS 12.3 and iOS 15.4 are feature upgrades. In addition to this welcome new support for using Face ID while wearing a mask, the MacOS 12.3/iPadOS 15.4 betas introduce <a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2022/01/27/universal-control-monterey-12-3-beta/\">the much-awaited Universal Control</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://pxlnv.com/linklog/face-id-mask/\">pxlnv.com/linklog/face-id-mask/</a></strong></em></p>\n"
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},
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{
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"title" : "New ‘Unity Lights’ Face for Apple Watch",
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"date_published" : "2022-01-27T20:28:38Z",
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"date_modified" : "2022-01-27T20:28:39Z",
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"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/27/unity-lights",
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"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/27/unity-lights",
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"external_url" : "https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/01/apple-spotlights-black-voices-during-black-history-month/",
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"authors" : [
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{
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"name" : "John Gruber"
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}
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],
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"content_html" : "\n<p>Apple Newsroom:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The band is complemented by the Unity Lights watch face, which is\ndesigned using 2D ray tracing, a technology never before\nimplemented for a watch face. Each pixel on the screen simulates\nthe light and shadow falling across it and the movement of the\nclock hands simultaneously reveal and hide the light, changing\ndynamically throughout the day. The Unity Lights watch face can be\ncustomized to be a full screen or circular dial, and includes a\nblack and white option, tick marks, and up to four complications.\niPhone, iPad, and Mac users can also show their support for Black\nHistory Month by downloading Afrofuturism-inspired wallpapers\navailable at apple.com.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Very cool watch face.</p>\n\n<p>The wallpapers seem a little hidden to me: go to <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/watch/\">Apple’s main Watch page</a>, and click the “Find out more” button. That reveals a popover with links to download the wallpaper images.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/01/apple-spotlights-black-voices-during-black-history-month/\">apple.com/newsroom/2022/01/apple-spotlights-black-voices…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
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},
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{
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"title" : "Apple Releases iOS 15.3, iPadOS 15.3, MacOS Monterey 12.2, WatchOS 8.4, tvOS 15.3, and HomePod 15.3",
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"date_published" : "2022-01-27T20:14:42Z",
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"date_modified" : "2022-01-27T20:18:45Z",
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"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/27/apple-os-update-bonanza",
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"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/27/apple-os-update-bonanza",
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"external_url" : "https://tidbits.com/2022/01/26/apple-releases-ios-15-3-ipados-15-3-macos-monterey-12-2-watchos-8-4-tvos-15-3-and-homepod-software-version-15-3/",
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"authors" : [
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{
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"name" : "John Gruber"
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}
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],
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"content_html" : "\n<p>Josh Centers, TidBITS:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>It’s time once again to fire up Software Update. Apple has released updates for all of its shipping operating systems with bug fixes and security updates but no new features, apart from Siri on the HomePod learning to recognize two new languages. Apple says that one of the security vulnerabilities addressed may have been actively exploited in the wild, so we recommend updating soon.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://tidbits.com/2022/01/26/apple-releases-ios-15-3-ipados-15-3-macos-monterey-12-2-watchos-8-4-tvos-15-3-and-homepod-software-version-15-3/\">tidbits.com/2022/01/26/apple-releases-ios-15-3-ipados-15-3…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
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},
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{
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"title" : "One More Dunk on Spotify: Their Apps Still Don’t Support AirPlay",
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"date_published" : "2022-01-27T18:10:08Z",
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"date_modified" : "2022-01-27T18:10:08Z",
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"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/27/spotify-airplay",
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"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/27/spotify-airplay",
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"external_url" : "https://www.macrumors.com/2022/01/25/spotify-still-doesnt-support-airplay-2/",
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"authors" : [
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{
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"name" : "John Gruber"
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}
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],
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"content_html" : "\n<p>Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Spotify has still not enabled AirPlay 2 in its iPhone and iPad\napp, nearly six months after last promising to support the\nfeature.</p>\n\n<p>“Spotify will support AirPlay 2 and we’re working to make that a\nreality,” a Spotify spokesperson informed <em>MacRumors</em> in early\nAugust, in response to a Spotify Community forum post that said\nthe company <a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2021/08/06/spotify-pauses-airplay-2-support-for-ios-app/\">had paused plans to support the feature</a>.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.macrumors.com/2022/01/25/spotify-still-doesnt-support-airplay-2/\">macrumors.com/2022/01/25/spotify-still-doesnt-support…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
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},
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{
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"title" : "Big-Name Podcasts Spotify Has Announced Yet Have Never or Seldom Published",
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"date_published" : "2022-01-27T17:38:38Z",
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"date_modified" : "2022-01-27T18:00:35Z",
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"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/27/spotify-missing-podcasts",
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"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/27/spotify-missing-podcasts",
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"external_url" : "https://podnews.net/article/missing-spotify-shows",
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"authors" : [
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{
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"name" : "John Gruber"
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}
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],
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"content_html" : "\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/27/spotify-neil-young-joe-rogan\">Speaking of</a> Spotify’s exclusive podcasts, here’s James Cridland writing for Podnews:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Over the last two years, Spotify have been busy announcing deals\nfor podcasts. But when it comes to the shows themselves, where are\nthey? [...]</p>\n\n<p>With this level of PR activity, it’s no surprise that these deals\nare normally heavily covered by the press, and each of them has a\npositive effect on Spotify’s stock market value. Meghan and\nHarry’s announcement alone contributed to a <a href=\"https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/12/15/prince-harry-and-meghan-sign-podcast-deal-with-spo/\">1.9% rise</a> in\nvalue, worth $836 million.</p>\n\n<p>However, if there <em>is</em> a track record of these announcements never\ncoming to fruition or delivering any value for the company, when\ndo these announcements become a little misleading? Is this a\nstrategy?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/27/22904463/joe-rogan-spotify-neil-young-decision-moderation-podcasts\">Ashley Carman, writing for The Verge</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Still, the takeaway from the skirmish is clear: Spotify can’t\nafford to ostracize Rogan or his audience. The company\nspecifically licensed his show with the goal of both converting\nlisteners to the platform and making money through ad sales. [The\nJoe Rogan Experience] has become the lynchpin to its entire\npodcasting apparatus.</p>\n\n<p>A source previously told me that if marketers buy ads on Rogan,\nthey have to buy ads on the rest of Spotify’s catalog, too,\nmeaning Rogan’s success brings more advertisers to the rest of\nSpotify’s investments. Without him, Spotify has Call Her Daddy and\nArmchair Expert, but neither reaches Rogan’s scale. It’s easy to\nsee why Spotify didn’t cave so easily.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><strong>See also:</strong> Carman, back in August: “<a href=\"https://www.theverge.com/22632213/joe-rogan-experience-spotify-exclusive-audience-reach\">Joe Rogan, Confined to Spotify, Is Losing Influence</a>”. Rogan may well be laughing all the way to the bank, but there’s no question that going Spotify-exclusive has reduced his audience size. People who like podcasts <em>already</em> have a favorite podcast player.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://podnews.net/article/missing-spotify-shows\">podnews.net/article/missing-spotify-shows</a></strong></em></p>\n"
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},
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{
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"title" : "Spotify, Unsurprisingly, Will Remove Neil Young’s Music Instead of Dropping Joe Rogan",
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"date_published" : "2022-01-27T17:19:51Z",
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"date_modified" : "2022-01-27T17:29:30Z",
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"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/27/spotify-neil-young-joe-rogan",
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"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/27/spotify-neil-young-joe-rogan",
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"external_url" : "https://deadline.com/2022/01/neil-young-leaving-spotify-joe-rogan-covid-vaccines-1234920496/",
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"authors" : [
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{
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"name" : "John Gruber"
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}
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],
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"content_html" : "\n<p>Jon Brodkin, writing for Ars Technica:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>With Neil Young having told Spotify that it can keep him or\npodcaster Joe Rogan but not both, the streaming company today said\nit will remove Young’s catalog of music.</p>\n\n<p>“We want all the world’s music and audio content to be available\nto Spotify users,” Spotify said in a <a href=\"https://deadline.com/2022/01/neil-young-leaving-spotify-joe-rogan-covid-vaccines-1234920496/\">statement to Deadline</a>\nand other media organizations. “With that comes great\nresponsibility in balancing both safety for listeners and freedom\nfor creators. We have detailed content policies in place, and\nwe’ve removed over 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID since\nthe start of the pandemic. We regret Neil’s decision to remove his\nmusic from Spotify but hope to welcome him back soon.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://neilyoungarchives.com/news/1/article?id=Spotify-In-The-Name-Of-Truth\">Neil Young</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Spotify represents 60% of the streaming of my music to listeners\naround the world, almost every record I have ever released is\navailable — my life’s music — a huge loss for my record company to\nabsorb. Yet my friends at Warner Brothers Reprise stood with me,\nrecognizing the threat the COVID misinformation on Spotify posed\nto the world — particularly for our young people who think\neverything they hear on Spotify is true. Unfortunately it is not.</p>\n\n<p>Thank you Warner Brothers for standing with me and taking the hit — losing 60% of my world wide streaming income in the name of\nTruth. [...]</p>\n\n<p>I sincerely hope that other artists and record companies will move\noff the Spotify platform and stop supporting Spotify’s deadly\nmisinformation about COVID.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This is all good. Of course Spotify chose Joe Rogan over Neil Young. Everyone knew they would, including Young. Young didn’t do this to try to get Spotify to drop Joe Rogan; he did this to raise awareness that Spotify supports Rogan and Rogan pushes a lot of nonsense about COVID. Young put his money where his mouth was and was rewarded with publicity for a message he clearly feels strongly about.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://deadline.com/2022/01/neil-young-leaving-spotify-joe-rogan-covid-vaccines-1234920496/\">deadline.com/2022/01/neil-young-leaving-spotify-joe-rogan…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
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},
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{
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"title" : "The Talk Show: “Blofeld-69-420”",
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"date_published" : "2022-01-27T01:58:12Z",
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"date_modified" : "2022-01-27T01:58:13Z",
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"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/26/the-talk-show-335",
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"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/26/the-talk-show-335",
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"external_url" : "https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2022/01/26/ep-335",
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"authors" : [
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{
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"name" : "John Gruber"
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}
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],
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"content_html" : "\n<p>Guy English returns to the show to talk about video games, the cold, the <em>Heat</em>, and the state of streaming video services.</p>\n\n<p>Sponsored by:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https://www.drinktrade.com/thetalkshow\">Trade Coffee</a>: Incredible coffee delivered fresh from the best roasters in the nation.</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://squarespace.com/talkshow\">Squarespace</a>: Make your next move. Use code <strong>talkshow</strong> for 10% off your first order.</li>\n<li><a href=\"https://memberful.com/talkshow\">Memberful</a>: Monetize your passion with membership. Start your free trial today.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2022/01/26/ep-335\">daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2022/01/26/ep-335</a></strong></em></p>\n"
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},
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{
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"title" : "Letterman Will Return to Late Night for 40th Anniversary",
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"date_published" : "2022-01-26T21:39:04Z",
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"date_modified" : "2022-01-26T21:39:04Z",
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"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/26/letterman-meyers",
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"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/26/letterman-meyers",
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"external_url" : "https://twitter.com/LateNightSeth/status/1486110448269336578",
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"authors" : [
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{
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"name" : "John Gruber"
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}
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],
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"content_html" : "\n<p>This <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/20/heat-2\">time</a> I really did plotz.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://twitter.com/LateNightSeth/status/1486110448269336578\">twitter.com/LateNightSeth/status/1486110448269336578</a></strong></em></p>\n"
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},
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{
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"title" : "Google Kills FLoC, Unveils ‘Topics’, a New Plan to Replace Tracking Cookies",
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"date_published" : "2022-01-26T02:05:41Z",
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"date_modified" : "2022-01-27T21:46:29Z",
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"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/25/google-kills-floc",
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"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/25/google-kills-floc",
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"external_url" : "https://www.tomsguide.com/news/google-kills-floc-debuts-topics",
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"authors" : [
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{
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"name" : "John Gruber"
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}
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],
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"content_html" : "\n<p>Paul Wagenseil, writing for Tom’s Guide:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Google has ditched its planned user-profiling system, FLoC, and is\ninstead developing a new system called Topics, the company\nannounced today.</p>\n\n<p>Topics, described by Google Senior Director of Product Ben\nGalbraith as “one of the most ambitious efforts we’ve ever\nundertaken” during a conference call with reporters, is meant to\nreplace third-party advertising cookies in Chrome by the end of\nnext year. [...]</p>\n\n<p>Topics seems pretty different from FLoC, which stood for Federated\nLearning of Cohorts. FLoC was intended to analyze your browsing\ndata and place you in one of several thousand “cohorts” made up of\nChrome users with similar interests. By comparison, Topics seems\nmore general and should give websites and advertisers much fuzzier\ndata about individual users.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Here’s the thing I don’t understand about this new Topics proposal: Is it baked into the <em>browser</em>? That’s how I’m reading it, and I suspect that means it will wind up being Chrome-only. Why would any other browser support an ad tech proposal that was designed by Google to primarily benefit Google’s own advertising needs.</p>\n\n<p>What happens if a website is dependent on Topics for advertising revenue and you’re using any browser other than Chrome? Will the site try to block you and tell you to switch to Chrome, the way so many sites today try to block you and tell you to disable your privacy blocker?</p>\n\n<p>(If someone out there understands this proposal and it <em>doesn’t</em> require browsers to support it, let me know.)</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.tomsguide.com/news/google-kills-floc-debuts-topics\">tomsguide.com/news/google-kills-floc-debuts-topics</a></strong></em></p>\n"
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},
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{
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"title" : "German Publishers Run Crying to E.U. Regulators Over Google’s Plan to Remove Third-Party Cookies From Chrome",
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"date_published" : "2022-01-26T00:45:33Z",
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"date_modified" : "2022-01-26T01:50:05Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/25/german-publishers-wah-wah",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/25/german-publishers-wah-wah",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.ft.com/content/eccf5514-8b83-4d85-8305-f882adf5dac3",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Javier Espinoza, reporting for The Financial Times:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Google is facing a fresh complaint from Germany’s largest\npublishers and advertisers, which are demanding that the EU\nintervene over the search giant’s plan to stop the use of\nthird-party cookies. Axel Springer, the publisher of titles such\nas Bild and Politico, is among the hundreds of publishers,\nadvertisers and media groups that have argued to the bloc’s\ncompetition chief, Margrethe Vestager, that Google is breaking EU\nlaw with its move to phase out third-party cookies from its Chrome\nbrowser by next year.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>What a pile of horseshit. Third-party cookies have proven to be a privacy disaster and other major browsers have already removed support for them — including <a href=\"https://www.engadget.com/2020-03-24-safari-blocks-all-third-party-cookies-by-default.html\">Safari</a>, <a href=\"https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/todays-firefox-blocks-third-party-tracking-cookies-and-cryptomining-by-default/\">Firefox</a>, and <a href=\"https://support.brave.com/hc/en-us/articles/360050634931-How-Do-I-Manage-Cookies-In-Brave-\">Brave</a>. Chrome is the most popular web browser in the world and thus the biggest holdout, and these clowns want the EU’s regulators — a group that would have us believe it is concerned foremost with consumers — to force Google to <em>keep</em> third-party cookie support enabled in Chrome. If the EU doesn’t toss this case out, it’s a joke.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The decision blocks advertisers, publishers and intermediaries\nfrom analysing users’ preferences while they browse online content — a critical blow to how the industry generates revenues.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>This editorializing from the FT is simply wrong. Publishers aren’t third parties, so they’re free to analyze users’ preferences <em>while those users are on the publishers’ own sites</em>. But what they’re asking for here is for the EU to force Google to allow them to keep “analyzing users’ preferences” while <em>users are anywhere and everywhere else on the web</em>. Just because publishers <em>have</em> been able to profit from surveillance advertising doesn’t mean they have any entitlement whatsoever to <em>keep</em> profiting from it. <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/05/27/facebook-sponsored-crybabying\">As I quipped last year</a>, it’s like pawn shops suing to keep the police from cracking down on a wave of burglaries.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>“Publishers must remain in a position where they are allowed\nto ask their users for consent to process data, without\nGoogle capturing this decision. Google must respect the\nrelationship between publishers and users without\ninterfering,” said the document, which was also sent to the\nEU’s powerful competition unit.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Publishers aren’t third parties, so publishers are free to use their own cookies.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Google said: “Many other platforms and browsers have already\nstopped supporting third-party cookies but Google is the only one\nto do this openly and in consultation with technical standards\nbodies, regulators, and the industry, while also proposing new,\nalternative technologies.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>True!</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.ft.com/content/eccf5514-8b83-4d85-8305-f882adf5dac3\">ft.com/content/eccf5514-8b83-4d85-8305-f882adf5dac3</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "Google Drops Support for the Pixel 3",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-26T00:06:38Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-26T21:41:42Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/25/pixel-3-adios",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/25/pixel-3-adios",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.vice.com/en/article/dypxpx/google-is-forcing-me-to-dump-a-perfectly-good-phone",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Aaron Gordon, writing for Vice:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Not quite three years ago, I bought a Pixel 3, Google’s flagship\nphone at the time. It has been a good phone. I like that it’s not\ntoo big. I dropped it a bunch, but it didn’t break. And the\nbattery life has not noticeably changed since the day I got it.\n[...] But I have to get rid of it because Google has stopped\nsupporting all Pixel 3s. Despite being just three years old, no\nPixel 3 will ever receive another official security update. [...]</p>\n\n<p>But for the past six years, Google has made the Pixel line of\nphones. They are Google-made phones, meaning Google can’t blame\ndiscontinuing security updates on other manufacturers, and yet,\n<a href=\"https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/4457705?hl=en\">it announced</a> that’s exactly what it would do.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>As Gordon points out, <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/supported-models-iphe3fa5df43/ios\">iOS 15 supports iPhones back to the 6S</a>, which debuted in September 2015, and the original SE, which shipped six months later. (Both the 6S and original SE are based on the A9 chip.)</p>\n\n<p><strong>Update:</strong> My theory for this disparity is simple. A lot of people obsess over “planned obsolescence” — the idea that device makers purposefully make several-years-old devices slower or stop issuing software updates for them to drive users to purchase new devices to replace the existing one. I don’t think that’s what’s going on, at least with Google’s Pixel phones. If it were easy to support older Pixels with the latest version of Android, I firmly believe Google would do it. The problem is it’s <em>not</em> easy. In fact it’s very difficult, on both the hardware and software sides. On the hardware side, the device maker needs to be looking more than half a decade ahead. On the software side, engineers need to be looking more than half a decade behind. It’s not spite that leads to Google (and Samsung, and everyone else) supporting their own phones for only two major OS releases after launch, it’s laziness and indifference. Apple is the only phone maker in the world willing to do the hard work to support their devices for five or more years. That’s a fact.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.vice.com/en/article/dypxpx/google-is-forcing-me-to-dump-a-perfectly-good-phone\">vice.com/en/article/dypxpx/google-is-forcing-me-to-dump-a…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "The New York Times Is Just Fucking With Us Now",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-25T20:20:24Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-25T20:20:25Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/25/nyt-fucking-with-us",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/25/nyt-fucking-with-us",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/business/fast-food-prices-inflation.html",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Julie Creswell, reporting (supposedly) for The New York Times Friday in a story about inflation hitting fast food:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>On a chilly Tuesday afternoon this month, James Marsh stopped by a\nChipotle near his suburban Chicago home to grab something to eat.</p>\n\n<p>It had been a while since Mr. Marsh had been to Chipotle — he\nestimated he goes five times a year — and he stopped cold when he\nsaw the prices.</p>\n\n<p>“I had been getting my usual, a steak burrito, which had been\nmaybe in the mid-$8 range,” said Mr. Marsh, who trades stock\noptions at his home in Hinsdale, Ill. “Now it was more than $9.”</p>\n\n<p>He walked out.</p>\n\n<p>“I figured I’d find something at home,” he said.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Everything about this is just pure bullshit, right down to the dramatic one-sentence-per-paragraph pacing.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/business/fast-food-prices-inflation.html\">nytimes.com/2022/01/21/business/fast-food-prices-inflation…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "NBC Will Not Broadcast This Year’s Super Bowl in 4K",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-25T18:55:42Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-25T23:40:20Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/25/nbc-super-bowl-no-4k",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/25/nbc-super-bowl-no-4k",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/19/22878110/super-bowl-lvi-2022-no-4k-streaming",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Chaim Gartenberg, writing for The Verge:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The 2022 Super Bowl won’t be broadcast or streamed in 4K again\nthis year when the game takes place on February 13th, NBC Sports\nhas confirmed to The Verge. The lack of a 4K stream marks the\nsecond year in a row that the big game won’t be available with the\nhigher level of picture quality. “The game will not be in 4K,” Dan\nMasonson, a spokesperson for NBC Sports, told The Verge.</p>\n\n<p>NBC, which is hosting the big game this year, has never actually\naired an NFL game in 4K or HDR before, despite hosting the\nnationally televised Sunday Night Football game every week during\nthe regular NFL season. NBC, for what it’s worth, isn’t the only\nnetwork: CBS doesn’t produce any of its games in 4K (the network\ncited COVID-19 issues for the lack of a 4K Super Bowl in 2021),\nnor does ESPN with Monday Night Football.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Bonus points to any electronics retailer that runs a promotion encouraging people to buy an 8K TV in time for “The Big Game”.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Update:</strong> <a href=\"https://www.etonline.com/samsung-super-bowl-tv-deals-2022-save-up-to-3500-on-8k-tvs-before-the-big-game-178073\">Samsung scores the bonus points</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/19/22878110/super-bowl-lvi-2022-no-4k-streaming\">theverge.com/2022/1/19/22878110/super-bowl-lvi-2022-no-4k…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "Bloomberg: ‘Nvidia Quietly Prepares to Abandon $40 Billion Arm Bid’",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-25T18:42:35Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-25T22:04:56Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/25/bloomberg-nvidia-arm",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/25/bloomberg-nvidia-arm",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-25/nvidia-is-said-to-quietly-prepare-to-abandon-takeover-of-arm",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Ian King, Giles Turner, and Peter Elstrom, reporting for Bloomberg:<sup>*</sup></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Nvidia Corp. is quietly preparing to abandon its purchase of Arm\nLtd. from SoftBank Group Corp. after making little to no progress\nin winning approval for the $40 billion chip deal, according to\npeople familiar with the matter.</p>\n\n<p>Nvidia has told partners that it doesn’t expect the transaction to\nclose, according to one person, who asked not to be identified\nbecause the discussions are private. SoftBank, meanwhile, is\nstepping up preparations for an Arm initial public offering as an\nalternative to the Nvidia takeover, another person said.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Good news for Intel, if true.</p>\n\n<p><small>* Bloomberg, of course, is the publication that published “<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2018/10/bloomberg_the_big_hack\">The Big Hack</a>” in October 2018 — a sensational story alleging that data centers of Apple, Amazon, and dozens of other companies were compromised by China’s intelligence services. The story presented no confirmable evidence <em>at all</em>, was <a href=\"https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/10/what-businessweek-got-wrong-about-apple/\">vehemently denied</a> by <a href=\"https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/setting-the-record-straight-on-bloomberg-businessweeks-erroneous-article/\">all companies</a> involved, <a href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2018/10/22/your-move-bloomberg/\">has not been confirmed by a single other publication</a> (despite much effort to do so), and has been <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2018/10/09/big-hack-doubts\">largely discredited by one of Bloomberg’s own sources</a>. By all appearances “The Big Hack” was complete bullshit. Yet Bloomberg has issued no correction or retraction, and <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/02/12/bloomberg-big-con\">their only ostensibly substantial follow-up</a> contained not one shred of evidence to back up their allegations. Bloomberg seemingly hopes we’ll all just forget about it. I say we do not just forget about it. Everything they publish should be treated with skepticism until they retract “The Big Hack” or provide evidence that <em>any of it</em> was true.</small></p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-25/nvidia-is-said-to-quietly-prepare-to-abandon-takeover-of-arm\">bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-25/nvidia-is-said-to…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "NBA Hall of Famer John Stockton Has Lost His Mind",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-24T19:04:52Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-24T19:11:20Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/24/stockton-nutjob",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/24/stockton-nutjob",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/jan/23/john-stocktons-refusal-to-comply-with-mask-mandate/",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Theo Lawson, writing for the Spokane Spokesman-Review, after Gonzaga revoked Stockton’s season tickets for refusing to wear a mask:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>During the interview, Stockton asserted that more than 100 professional athletes have died of vaccination. He also said tens of thousands of people – perhaps millions – have died from vaccines.</p>\n\n<p>“I think it’s highly recorded now, there’s 150 I believe now, it’s over 100 professional athletes dead — professional athletes — the prime of their life, dropping dead that are vaccinated, right on the pitch, right on the field, right on the court,” Stockton said in the interview.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>There’s unhinged from reality, and then there’s just floating into the void like Frank Poole in <em>2001</em>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/jan/23/john-stocktons-refusal-to-comply-with-mask-mandate/\">spokesman.com/stories/2022/jan/23/john-stocktons-refusal-to…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "[Sponsor] You.com -- Search Less, Code More",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-24T16:59:36-05:00",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-24T16:59:37-05:00",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2022/01/youcom_--_search_less_code_mor",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2022/01/youcom_--_search_less_code_mor",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://you.com/?utm_source=fireball&utm_medium=ad&utm_campaign=1",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "Daring Fireball Department of Commerce"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>You.com is a private search engine that helps you find and complete any coding query faster. It integrates 100s of apps like StackOverflow, GitHub, Code Complete, and others with web results to find high-quality results without wonky SEO. You.com doesn’t bombard you with ads or steal and sell your data to the highest bidder. Generate, copy, and have AI autocomplete any coding query right in your search results! <a href=\"https://you.com/?utm_source=fireball&utm_medium=ad&utm_campaign=1\">Search on you.com for free today</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://you.com/?utm_source=fireball&utm_medium=ad&utm_campaign=1\">you.com/?utm_source=fireball&utm_medium=ad&utm_campaign=1</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "Netherlands Authority for Consumer Markets Begins Fining Apple for Non-Compliance With Dating App Rules for Third-Party Payments",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-24T15:53:33Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-25T00:56:00Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/24/netherlands-acm-fines",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/24/netherlands-acm-fines",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/apple-fails-satisfy-requirements-set-acm",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>The Netherlands Authority for Consumer Markets:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple has failed to satisfy the requirements on several points. The most important one is that Apple has failed to adjust its conditions, as a result of which dating-app providers are still unable to use other payment systems. At the moment, dating-app providers can merely express their ‘interest’. In addition, Apple has raised several barriers for dating-app providers to the use of third-party payment systems. That, too, is at odds with ACM’s requirements. For example, Apple seemingly forces app providers to make a choice: either refer to payment systems outside of the app or to an alternative payment system. That is not allowed. Providers must be able to choose both options.</p>\n\n<p>What are the next steps?</p>\n\n<p>ACM has informed Apple that its statements do not satisfy the requirements laid down in the order subject to periodic penalty payments. Apple is still obligated to act in accordance with said order. If it fails to do so, Apple will have to pay each week a penalty payment of 5 million euros up to a maximum of 50 million euros.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Apple could just write them a check for €50 million now, from the company’s spare-change-under-the-sofa account. Or they could just pull dating apps from the App Store in the Netherlands. Otherwise, put their napkins on their laps and eat a Dutch shit sandwich.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Update:</strong> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/tolmasky/status/1485663195461210118\">Francisco Tolmasky</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>It must be really frustrating to roll out an entire plan only to be completely at the whim of a reviewer — err, regulator — to find out whether it sufficiently meets a set of vague criteria.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.acm.nl/en/publications/apple-fails-satisfy-requirements-set-acm\">acm.nl/en/publications/apple-fails-satisfy-requirements-set…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "Listen Notes",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-22T23:06:33Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-22T23:06:34Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/22/listen-notes",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/22/listen-notes",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.listennotes.com/",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>My thanks to Listen Notes for <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2021/01/how_i_accidentally_built_a_pod\">once</a> <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2021/09/why_podcasts_are_my_new_wikipe\">again</a> sponsoring Daring Fireball. As of January 2022, there are over 2,750,000 RSS-based podcasts and 123,000,000 episodes on the internet — way more podcasts than the ones you already know.</p>\n\n<p>Basically, there’s a podcast for that. You can learn any topic by listening to podcasts. And it seems like every domain expert has already done some podcast interviews. Listen Notes is a search engine dedicated to podcasts. Search any topic or person at <a href=\"https://www.listennotes.com/\">ListenNotes.com</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.listennotes.com/\">listennotes.com/</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "‘Seriously, I Could Have Done Lasso’",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-22T17:43:56Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-23T14:33:48Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/22/everyone-but-jon-hamm",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/22/everyone-but-jon-hamm",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD3wy3drkyA",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Very funny new commercial for Apple TV+: “Everyone but Jon Hamm”. But it’s funny because it’s true: there’s now quite a bit of original content on TV+, and Apple’s library <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/22/the-sound-of-007\">continues</a> to grow.</p>\n\n<p>The knock against TV+ from the get-go is that its library was so small compared to rival services like Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, etc. “Who’s going to pay $5 a month for just a handful of shows and movies?” But Apple’s TV+ strategy is following the company’s traditional pattern of <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2010/05/this_is_how_apple_rolls\">steady incremental improvement</a>.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://www.macprime.ch/a/news/100-Filme-und-Serien-auf-Apple-TV-Plus\">The Swiss site MacPrime has been counting TV+’s original content</a>, and with the release of Joel Coen’s <em><a href=\"https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/the-tragedy-of-macbeth/umc.cmc.4wpfk1xmi22h3zyv4a10lj1tw\">The Tragedy of Macbeth</a></em> last week, TV+ is up to 100 original movies and series, totaling over 500 hours. And they’re tracking at least 65 upcoming projects. (Safari does a remarkable job translating MacPrime’s site to English.)</p>\n\n<p>Apple excels at these long run games. (See: Apple Pay.) The news media, as a general rule, has no attention span whatsoever.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VD3wy3drkyA\">youtube.com/watch?v=VD3wy3drkyA</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "‘The Sound of 007’",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-22T17:19:13Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-22T23:42:56Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/22/the-sound-of-007",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/22/the-sound-of-007",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://deadline.com/2021/12/apple-documentary-music-of-james-bond-1234891760/",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Justin Kroll, reporting last month for Deadline:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Following the success of a number of documentaries set in the\nmusic industry, Apple is now planning a doc that takes a deep dive\ninto the music of one of the great movie franchises. Apple has\nannounced The Sound of 007, a feature documentary about the\nremarkable history of six decades of James Bond music.</p>\n\n<p>Brought to audiences by MGM, Eon Productions and Ventureland, the\ndocumentary will make its global debut on Apple TV+ in October to\nmark the 60th anniversary of the James Bond film series.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In case you missed it, back in November <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/11/13/switched-on-pop-james-bond\">I linked to</a> a delightful episode of the podcast Switched on Pop: “<a href=\"https://switchedonpop.com/episodes/james-bond-spycraft-sound-billie-eilish-hans-zimmer-daniel-craig\">James Bond’s Spycraft Sound</a>”. A documentary about the Bond franchise’s music is just what Dr. No ordered.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://deadline.com/2021/12/apple-documentary-music-of-james-bond-1234891760/\">deadline.com/2021/12/apple-documentary-music-of-james-bond…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "Twitter Announces NFT Profile Pictures",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-22T00:04:46Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-22T00:17:50Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/21/twitter-nft-profile-pics",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/21/twitter-nft-profile-pics",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://twitter.com/twitterblue/status/1484226494708662273",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
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|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Twitter Blue:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>You asked (a lot), so we made it. Now rolling out in Labs: NFT\nProfile Pictures on iOS.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Such profile pictures will be identifiable by being hexagonal. (Android and web users are still locked out of Twitter Blue.)</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/samfbiddle/status/1484233249786269696\">Sam Biddle</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I predict a browser extension that auto-blocks people with\nhexagonal avatars would become very popular very fast.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://github.com/mcclure/NFTBlocker\">NFTBlocker</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This is a browser plugin that blocks people who use Twitter’s NFT\nintegration.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>See also: <a href=\"https://twitter.com/IndianaPopovich/status/1445225003314663426\">This</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://twitter.com/twitterblue/status/1484226494708662273\">twitter.com/twitterblue/status/1484226494708662273</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "Speculating on the Prospects of the ‘Open App Markets Act’ Becoming Law",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-21T23:48:38Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-21T23:48:39Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/21/open-app-markets-act-prospects",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/21/open-app-markets-act-prospects",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.ped30.com/2022/01/21/apple-klobuchar-antitrust/",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Philip Elmer-DeWitt, quoting from a note from analyst Amit Daryanani:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Relay from Tobin Marcus, EVRISI Senior US Policy and Politics\nStrategist, on the bill: “I think this’ll be a big topic of\ndiscussion through Q1 and has a chance of getting done, but it\nstill looks fairly unlikely. The 16-6 committee vote overstates\nthe level of support for the bill. Some Democrats, including the 2\nSenators from California, voted the bill out of committee in part\nas a courtesy to Klobuchar despite expressing significant\nreservations, and several other Democrats have concerns and\nchanges they want to make. Some of the Republican support looks\nsoft as well, and getting Senate floor time for this bill before\nCongress largely shuts down for the midterms will be harder than\nsome commentators appreciate.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>In the “all politics is local” front, it strikes me as highly unlikely that either senator from California (Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla) are going to vote for a bill that specifically targets Apple and Google. But in a larger sense, the United States Senate has more important matters to address than trying to force Apple to allow sideloading on iPhones.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.ped30.com/2022/01/21/apple-klobuchar-antitrust/\">ped30.com/2022/01/21/apple-klobuchar-antitrust/</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "★ Leaker Sinks Peloton Stock With Confidential Information",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-21T23:35:59Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-23T01:57:04Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2022/01/peloton_leaker",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2022/01/peloton_leaker",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Here’s <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/21/netflix-sky-is-falling\">another one</a> for the “<em>I’d rather be captaining The Titanic than running a publicly-held company</em>” file. Yesterday reporter Lauren Thomas at CNBC published a rather blockbuster report under the headline “<a href=\"https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/20/peloton-to-pause-production-of-its-bikes-treadmills-as-demand-wanes.html\">Peloton to Halt Production of Its Bikes, Treadmills as Demand Wanes</a>”, which began:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Peloton is temporarily halting production of its connected fitness\nproducts as consumer demand wanes and the company looks to control\ncosts, according to internal documents obtained by CNBC.</p>\n\n<p>Peloton plans to pause Bike production for two months, from\nFebruary to March, the documents show. It already halted\nproduction of its more expensive Bike+ in December and will do so\nuntil June. It won’t manufacture its Tread treadmill machine for\nsix weeks, beginning next month. And it doesn’t anticipate\nproducing any Tread+ machines in fiscal 2022, according to the\ndocuments. Peloton had previously halted Tread+ production after a\nsafety recall last year.</p>\n\n<p>The company said in a confidential presentation dated Jan. 10 that\ndemand for its connected fitness equipment has faced a\n“significant reduction” around the world due to shoppers’ price\nsensitivity and amplified competitor activity.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Not good, to be sure. But when I saw this story drop, my first question wasn’t about demand for Peloton’s bikes and treadmills, but simply “Who leaked these documents to CNBC and why?” The obvious answer for <em>why</em> is that they shorted the stock before leaking the documents. <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2022/01/peloton-shares-dive.png\">That Peloton’s share price would take a dive</a> the moment this report hit was as close to a sure thing as you can get on the stock market.</p>\n\n<p>Late yesterday, Peloton co-founder and CEO John Foley released a company-wide memo:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>We have always done our best to share news with you all first,\nbefore sharing with the public. This week, we’ve experienced leaks\ncontaining confidential information that have led to a flurry of\nspeculative articles in the press. The information the media has\nobtained is incomplete, out of context, and not reflective of\nPeloton’s strategy. It has saddened me to know you read these\nthings without the clarity and context that you deserve. Before I\ngo on, I want all of you to know that we have identified a leaker,\nand we are moving forward with the appropriate legal action.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If he’s right, I think Mr. or Ms. Leaker better have a good lawyer.</p>\n\n<p>Foley continues (boldface in original):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>As a public company that is in a pre-earnings “Quiet Period”, we\nare limited in what information we can share. However, we issued a\n<a href=\"https://investor.onepeloton.com/news-releases/news-release-details/peloton-interactive-inc-reports-preliminary-second-quarter\">pre-earnings press release</a> earlier this evening about our\npreliminary Q2 results, in order to offer an initial and more\naccurate picture of our business performance. [...]</p>\n\n<p><strong>Rumors that we are halting all production of bikes and Treads\nare false</strong></p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If you think it’s a coincidence that these documents leaked during the company’s quiet period, I have an NFT for a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.</p>\n\n<p>Is Peloton in trouble? I don’t know. Everyone I know who has one of their bikes — including my wife, and my <a href=\"https://dithering.fm/\">podcast co-host</a> — absolutely loves the damn things. They’re good, well-made bikes, on par with gym-quality bikes, not typical (and significantly lower-priced) home equipment. Like Apple’s hardware products, Peloton’s equipment is expensive but generally not overpriced. But a subscription-based business model might not have a future in the face of competition from companies like, well, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/search/fitness+plus\">Apple</a> — the company that makes what’s almost certainly the most popular fitness-tracking watch worn by Peloton’s existing customers (and potential future customers).</p>\n\n<p>But I wouldn’t count them out yet. I like any company that’s focused on making the best, not the most.</p>\n\n\n\n "
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "Netflix Is Why I’d Never Want to Run a Publicly Held Company",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-21T22:24:07Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-21T23:19:33Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/21/netflix-sky-is-falling",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/21/netflix-sky-is-falling",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/21/media/netflix-stock-drop/",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Frank Pallotta, in a piece for CNN Business headlines “The Sky Is Falling for Netflix”:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>It wasn’t that long ago that Netflix was a stock darling, but\nthose days now feel like eons ago. The company’s stock peaked\njust south of $700 in November, but has since dropped to around\n$400 on Friday.</p>\n\n<p>Netflix ended 2021 with 221.8 million subscribers. That’s\nsignificantly more than others in the streaming marketplace,\nincluding Disney, one of its closest competitors. Disney had 118.1\nmillion subscribers as of October, and it grew subscriptions 60%\nbetween October 2020 and October 2021. During that same period,\nNetflix grew just 9%. [...]</p>\n\n<p>Netflix is struggling to find more people to sign up in the\nmarkets it has been playing in the longest — particularly the\nUnited States — noted Nathanson. The company is going to have to\n“start aggressively going after growth in developing markets,”\nsuch as India and other Asian Pacific countries, to keep moving\nforward, he added.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>220 million subscribers and growing (even if slowly) at $10–20 per subscriber per month is a nice business! That’s <a href=\"https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=NFLX+revenue+2021\">about $30 billion in revenue per year</a>. It’s a good company with good content, good software, an iconic brand, and a loyal base of now several hundred million users (way more people use Netflix than there are paid subscribers, with shared account credentials).</p>\n\n<p>I know, I know, investors don’t trade stocks based on what a company <em>is</em> today, they trade on what they expect it to do in the future. Was Netflix overpriced back in November? I don’t know. But is the sky fucking falling? No.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/21/media/netflix-stock-drop/\">cnn.com/2022/01/21/media/netflix-stock-drop/</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "The Case for ‘Mark as Unread’ in Messages",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-21T21:29:52Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-21T21:29:54Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/21/mark-as-unread-messages",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/21/mark-as-unread-messages",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://matthewbischoff.com/mark-as-unread-for-messages/",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Matthew Bischoff:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>“Mark as Unread” has been so successful and well-loved in email\nthat it’s been copied by many messaging apps like Facebook\nMessenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram. And its utility in a casual\nmessaging context is much the same in the slightly more formal\nemail context.</p>\n\n<p>As Tine Welanly put it <a href=\"https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-point-of-having-mark-as-unread-option-in-Facebook-messenger\">on Quora</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Let’s say you’re riding the bus and you open a message from a\nfriend, maybe asking you about your plans for the weekend. You\nhave to respond to that but maybe it’s your stop already or you\ndon’t know yet. But if you don’t say anything now, you might\nforget to respond and then you’ll look like a bad friend. Not to\nmention you might miss out on some weekend fun.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>But the <a href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-teens-dread-the-green-text-bubble-11641618009\">most popular messaging app on iOS</a>, Messages, has\nnever implemented “Mark as Unread” even though <a href=\"https://twitter.com/search?q=%22mark%20as%20unread%22%20imessage&src=typed_query&f=live\">users have been\nclamoring for it for years</a> and it’s <a href=\"https://twitter.com/rjonesy/status/1237229806963568641\">been rumored that they\ntested it</a>. What’s even wilder is that iMessage doesn’t have\nany other in-app way for the user to signal that they need to\nreturn to a message in order to respond to it.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>A big +1 from me for this request. I love Messages. I know there are a bunch of ways Apple could and should improve it, but I can’t think any single feature that I want more than “Mark as Unread”.</p>\n\n<p>A situation I run into, somewhat frequently: I get a notification from Messages and tap it. Turns out it’s a message that will require a longer reply, or some sort of action on my part that I can’t or don’t want to do right now — like something I need to do on a Mac, but I’m using my iPhone. But the message has already been marked as read.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://matthewbischoff.com/mark-as-unread-for-messages/\">matthewbischoff.com/mark-as-unread-for-messages/</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "The Verge: Google Is Building an AR Headset, Codenamed ‘Iris’",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-21T16:26:08Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-21T16:26:08Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/21/verge-google-ar-headset",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/21/verge-google-ar-headset",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/20/22892152/google-project-iris-ar-headset-2024",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Alex Heath, with a scoop for The Verge:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The search giant has recently begun ramping up work on an AR\nheadset, internally codenamed Project Iris, that it hopes to ship\nin 2024, according to two people familiar with the project who\nrequested anonymity to speak without the company’s permission.\nLike forthcoming headsets from Meta and Apple, Google’s device\nuses outward-facing cameras to blend computer graphics with a\nvideo feed of the real world, creating a more immersive, mixed\nreality experience than existing AR glasses from the likes of Snap\nand Magic Leap. Early prototypes being developed at a facility in\nthe San Francisco Bay Area resemble a pair of ski goggles and\ndon’t require a tethered connection to an external power source.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I enjoy how the way Apple’s AR headset works is just stated as fact.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/20/22892152/google-project-iris-ar-headset-2024\">theverge.com/2022/1/20/22892152/google-project-iris-ar…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "★ Follow-Up on Yesterday’s 1Password Item",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-21T02:49:49Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-23T00:55:30Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2022/01/1password_follow-up",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2022/01/1password_follow-up",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>A few quick follow-up thoughts and tweets following <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/19/1password-funding\">yesterday’s item on 1Password</a> raising an additional $620 million in funding, as they move to the enterprise market.</p>\n\n<p>First, a few readers (and Dithering co-hosts) made the argument to me that the fact that good password management is getting built into OSes and web browsers is exactly why 1Password needs to move to the enterprise. That their traditional personal/family use market is disappearing, and enterprises have needs that consumer OS and web browser feature can’t address. How, for example, does a business share passwords (and similar secrets/tokens) with dozens of employees and contractors who need access to them? Maybe that is a multi-billion dollar opportunity. Honestly, what the hell do I know about the enterprise market? (Seriously.)</p>\n\n<p>But, still, whether what 1Password is doing is smart business or not, there’s no question that the longtime 1Password users I know personally are unhappy. They’re not happy that the new 1Password 8 for Mac is built on Electron. They’re not happy that 1Password is going subscription-only. They’re not happy that 1Password vaults are now only hosted by 1Password. But these are all decisions that make <em>perfect</em> sense for the enterprise <a href=\"https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/what-is-saas/\">SaaS</a> world. It might not be feasible to move to the new model without spoiling what many 1Password users liked best about their old one.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/backlon/status/1483966379061440513\">Dieter Bohn</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I’m with <a href=\"https://twitter.com/gruber\">@gruber</a> here. This much investment and valuation is\ngoing to AWAKEN THE EVIL GOD OF ARPU and I fear 1Password will\nsuccumb to his demands.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>(“ARPU” = Average Revenue Per User.)</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/roustem/status/1483986823345020929\">1Password co-founder Roustem Karimov</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/backlon\">@backlon</a> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/gruber\">@gruber</a> Not sure what to say… I am sorry that our\nteam worked so hard and made 1Password too valuable?</p>\n\n<p>On a plus side, the product has never been better and the new\nfeatures added last year and coming later this year are great.\nAlso, the founders are still majority owners of 1Password and we\nall are huge <a href=\"https://twitter.com/backlon\">@backlon</a> fans — there is no chance for the EVIL\nGOD of ARPU.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/backlon/status/1483990953429848065\">Bohn</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/roustem\">@roustem</a> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/gruber\">@gruber</a> I will say I’ve definitely noticed in the\nlast few months how 1PW makes the best use of what I assume are\nprobably jank APIs in iOS and Android for autofill.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/roustem/status/1484004379611041794\">Karimov</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/backlon\">@backlon</a> <a href=\"https://twitter.com/gruber\">@gruber</a> The new iOS Safari extension was\ndefinitely a game changer. Hope to see the brand new iOS and\nAndroid apps this year after the Mac app is updated.</p>\n\n<p>We might even get @gruber to start using 1Password one day — we\nweren’t successful so far, no matter how much AppKit we used.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>True! I never did use 1Password, personally. I’ve always thought it to be a great product from a great company, but, well, I had my own system for managing passwords from before 1Password existed (which admittedly is a long time ago: <a href=\"https://dteare.medium.com/14-years-of-growth-the-1password-story-fbbf58ebe28b\">they started in 2005</a>) and as the years have gone on, I’ve slowly moved from merely using Apple’s iCloud Keychain to depending upon it.</p>\n\n<p>1Password’s transition reminds me, though, of an app I do use, previously loved, and now can’t wait to eliminate: Dropbox. Used to be just a folder that syncs, with lightweight Mac software that stayed out of the way and just did its job — keeping that one magic folder in sync. Now, well, it’s neither lightweight nor stays out of the way.</p>\n\n<p>I’m rooting for the 1Password team though. If anyone can transition to a VC-backed enterprise model yet remain true to their Mac and iOS roots, maybe it’s them. Solid Safari extension support is a good sign.</p>\n\n\n\n "
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "Stephen Hackett: ‘Apple Should Bring Back Dashboard’",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-20T20:03:39Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-21T01:40:36Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/20/hackett-dashboard",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/20/hackett-dashboard",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://512pixels.net/2022/01/apple-should-bring-back-dashboard/#fnref-23989-fn-you",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Stephen Hackett, writing at 512 Pixels:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple killed off Dashboard at exactly the wrong time. Just one\nyear after Catalina killed Dashboard, Apple started allowing\ndevelopers to bring their iOS widgets over to the Mac in macOS Big\nSur. Sadly, they all got stuffed into the slide-out Notification\nCenter user interface.</p>\n\n<p>Notification Center is a real mess. Even on a Pro Display XDR, you\nget three visible notifications. That’s it. Anything older is\nhidden behind a button, regardless of how many widgets you may\nhave in the lower section of the Notification Center column.</p>\n\n<p>Apple needs to rethink this and let this new class of widgets\nbreathe, being able to use the entire screen like the widgets of\nyore could. Bringing back Dashboard is an obvious solution here,\nand I’d love to see it make a return.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>It’s really interesting that the modern SwiftUI widgets are compatible across MacOS and both flavors of iOS (iPhone and iPad). But forcing them into Notification Center on MacOS is poorly considered. The Mac has bigger displays than any iPad, yet has less screen real estate for visible widgets than an iPhone. I also think today’s widgets are going to get more useful with each successive year (interactive elements, etc.).</p>\n\n<p>Bringing back Dashboard would be one solution. Hackett links to <a href=\"https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/1484231301955792896\">an interesting thread on Twitter</a> where other ideas are being tossed out, like putting them on the desktop or inside Launchpad. Apple really needs to do something on this front. Widgets are good and useful.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://512pixels.net/2022/01/apple-should-bring-back-dashboard/#fnref-23989-fn-you\">512pixels.net/2022/01/apple-should-bring-back-dashboard/…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "Apple Names Kristin Huguet Head of PR",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-20T19:28:34Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-20T21:43:36Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/20/huguet-new-apple-pr-chief",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/20/huguet-new-apple-pr-chief",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/apple-new-head-of-pr-kristin-huguet",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>John Paczkowski, reporting for BuzzFeed News:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple has tapped a new head of PR: longtime company spokesperson\nKristin Huguet. She’ll replace Stella Low, former communications\nchief at networking giant Cisco, <a href=\"https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/apple-taps-stella-low-as-new-communications-chief\">who joined Apple in May\n2021.</a></p>\n\n<p>An Apple veteran, Huguet has been with the company since 2005,\nworking under former SVPs <a href=\"https://www.vox.com/2014/5/7/11626600/codered-apple-pr-guru-katie-cotton-to-retire\">Katie Cotton</a> and <a href=\"https://www.vox.com/2014/10/2/11631524/codered-apple-taps-interim-pr-boss\">Steve\nDowling</a>. She’s worked under CEOs Steve Jobs and Tim Cook,\nand her tenure has included some of the company’s most\nhigh-profile public relations challenges — <a href=\"https://www.buzzfeed.com/badge/applevsfbi\">a pitched battle with\nthe FBI</a> over iPhone encryption and, more recently, a widely\npublicized spat with Fortnite maker Epic Games over its App Store\npractices.</p>\n\n<p>Huguet will report directly to Cook. Her new gig starts\nimmediately.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/05/07/stella-low-apple-comms\">I was slightly surprised</a> they named an outsider last year. And I’m not surprised now that Low didn’t last. May to January is just <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Browett\">1⅓ Browetts</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/apple-new-head-of-pr-kristin-huguet\">buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/apple-new-head-of…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "‘Heat 2’ — Upcoming Novel by Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-20T18:28:18Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-20T18:28:54Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/20/heat-2",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/20/heat-2",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://deadline.com/2022/01/heat-sequel-prequel-novel-michael-mann-august-9-publish-date-william-morrow-al-pacino-robert-deniro-1234914977/",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>I nearly plotzed yesterday when I saw <a href=\"https://twitter.com/MichaelMann/status/1483848098698858498\">Michael Mann tweet a trailer for <em>Heat 2</em></a>, but it’s a novel, not a movie. Still, an insta-buy for me.</p>\n\n<p>Mike Fleming Jr., writing for Deadline:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Michael Mann is ready to rip on <em>Heat 2</em>, a novel he has written\nwith Edgar-winner Meg Gardiner that expands the tapestry of his\n1995 crime classic film. The surprise here: the novel coming\nAugust 9 from William Morrow through the HarperCollins-based\nMichael Mann Books imprint will tell an original story about the\nlives of the characters in that movie both before and after the\nevents depicted in the movie.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://deadline.com/2022/01/heat-sequel-prequel-novel-michael-mann-august-9-publish-date-william-morrow-al-pacino-robert-deniro-1234914977/\">deadline.com/2022/01/heat-sequel-prequel-novel-michael-mann…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "Modular AI — New Startup Co-Founded by Chris Lattner",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-20T18:04:20Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-20T18:04:21Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/20/modular-ai-lattner",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/20/modular-ai-lattner",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.modular.ai/team",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>I saw that <a href=\"http://nondot.org/sabre/Resume.html\">Lattner left SiFive this month</a> — was wondering what was next. (Lattner created the LLVM compiler project before joining Apple and the Swift programming language while at Apple.) From Modular AI’s home page:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The next generation of product breakthroughs will be powered by\nproduction quality infrastructure that brings together the best of\ncompilers and runtimes, is designed for heterogeneous compute,\nedge to datacenter distribution, and is focused on usability.\nUnifying software and hardware with a “just works” approach that\nwill save developers enormous time and increase their velocity.</p>\n\n<p>We believe the fundamental research is done — but we just need\na first-principles re-architecture of our systems. We need a\nteam that is motivated to solve the “big problem” in a\ndisciplined way and an architecture that deploys to both large\nand small systems alike.</p>\n\n<p>Modular AI is that team - solving that problem.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/1484215741113012226\">Lattner, on Twitter</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>After spending years working on AI/ML infrastructure, Modular AI\nis finally going to build it right. It is time for the best SW\narchitects, engineers and product leaders to come together to lift\nthe world’s ML compute.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.modular.ai/team\">modular.ai/team</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "1Password Raises $620 Million in Another Funding Round, Valuing Company at Over $6 Billion",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-20T00:48:56Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-21T20:02:47Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/19/1password-funding",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/19/1password-funding",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/01/19/1password-series-c-funding-round/",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>I know many people who are longtime 1Password users, if not evangelists. I don’t know any of them who are happy about <a href=\"https://mjtsai.com/blog/2021/08/11/1password-8-for-mac-early-access/\">the direction in which 1Password has gone</a>. Going big for the enterprise might be good for the company but it sure doesn’t seem good for the consumer market that formed 1Password’s original base.</p>\n\n<p>(Doesn’t seem like a good investment to me, either. Better password management is getting built into operating systems and web browsers. They’re trying to go enterprise mass market with a niche product that was beloved by nerds who <em>really</em> care about their passwords. As a friend just quipped to me, “Unless they’re factoring in the value of the individual passwords, $6B makes no fucking sense.”)</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/01/19/1password-series-c-funding-round/\">mjtsai.com/blog/2022/01/19/1password-series-c-funding-round…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "Eddy Cue Wanted to Bring iMessage to Android in 2013",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-20T00:43:10Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-20T00:43:11Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/19/cue-imessage-android",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/19/cue-imessage-android",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406303/imessage-android-eddy-cue-emails-apple-epic-deposition",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>With all the recent hubbub about iMessage’s exclusivity, it’s worth revisiting what we know about Apple’s internal debate over whether to make iMessage cross-platform back when they might have had a chance to make it relevant on Android. Emails from April 2013, when rumors were circulating that Google might buy WhatsApp (they probably should have) came out during discovery last year in the Epic v. Apple lawsuit:</p>\n\n<p>Eddy Cue:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>We really need to bring iMessage to Android. I have had a couple\nof people investigating this but we should go full speed and make\nthis an official project.... Do we want to lose one of the most\nimportant apps in a mobile environment to Google? They have\nsearch, mail, free video, and growing quickly in browsers. We have\nthe best messaging app and we should make it the industry\nstandard. I don’t know what ways we can monetize it but it doesn’t\ncost us a lot to run.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Craig Federighi:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Do you have any thoughts on how we would make switching to\niMessage (from WhatsApp) compelling to masses of Android users who\ndon’t have a bunch of iOS friends? iMessage is a nice app/service,\nbut to get users to switch social networks we’d need more than a\nmarginally better app. (This is why Google is willing to pay $1\nbillion — for the network, not for the app.)... In the absence of\na strategy to become the primary messaging service for [the] bulk\nof cell phone users, I am concerned [that] iMessage on Android\nwould simply serve to remove an obstacle to iPhone families giving\ntheir kids Android phones.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I think Federighi is right that it might have been a hard sell to Android users in 2013, but I wish Cue had gotten his way and Apple had at least tried.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406303/imessage-android-eddy-cue-emails-apple-epic-deposition\">theverge.com/2021/4/27/22406303/imessage-android-eddy-cue…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "Jason Snell: ‘Google Has It All Wrong. Apple’s iMessage Is Actually a Failure.’",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-20T00:13:19Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-20T00:13:20Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/19/snell-imessage",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/19/snell-imessage",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.macworld.com/article/606152/imessage-google-green-bubbles-sms-rcs.html",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Jason Snell, guns-a-blazing at Macworld:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The reason that I consider iMessage more of a failure than success\nis all about its slow pace of development and poor choices,\nespecially compared with the WhatsApps and WeChats of the world.</p>\n\n<p>The truth is, at some point Apple realized it was competing with\nthose apps. The result was its introduction of the iMessage App\nStore, which it clearly thought would take the world by storm. It\nwas a flop. Which, fair enough–Apple took its shot and it missed.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The old adage about Microsoft, which has a lot of truth to it, is that they’d come out with a rushed stinker of a 1.0, but doggedly stick with it and by 3.0 have something successful. (That’s 100 percent what happened with Windows, a product that has been somewhat successful for them.) Apple has a tendency to either hit home runs out of the box (iPod, iPhone, AirPods) or come out with a dud and just sweep it under the rug, like iMessage apps and stickers. They even unified Messages on a single code base last year (bringing the iOS app to MacOS 11 via Catalyst — quite successfully) but somehow still haven’t bothered to add iMessage stickers on Mac?</p>\n\n<p>Snell:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>But even when Apple gets a clear iMessage win, it ends up muddy.\nTapbacks are a user-experience problem for people who aren’t on\niMessage, one so bad that Google <a href=\"https://www.macworld.com/article/553222/google-messages-iphone-imessage-expressions.html\">added Tapback translation to\nAndroid</a>. And after introducing the feature with six possible\nemoji-style reactions, Apple has… never touched that feature\nagain. Why not add more reactions? Why not let users tap back with\nany emoji? Or pick favorites? There’s no answer. Nobody’s home.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I’d pay an extra $5/month to Apple for iCloud if it included a middle-finger Tapback. Just that one.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.macworld.com/article/606152/imessage-google-green-bubbles-sms-rcs.html\">macworld.com/article/606152/imessage-google-green-bubbles…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "WSJ Reports Activision Considered Buying Video Game News Sites",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-19T23:51:39Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-19T23:51:39Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/19/activision-kotaku-kotick",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/19/activision-kotaku-kotick",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.wsj.com/articles/activision-blizzard-microsoft-deal-11642557922",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Kirsten Grind, Cara Lombardo, and Ben Fritz, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (<a href=\"https://apple.news/AnGCnWCGVR-6xOp-0dejJhg\">News+</a>):</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Mr. Kotick has been eager to change the public narrative about the\ncompany, and in recent weeks has suggested Activision Blizzard\nmake some kind of acquisition, including of gaming-trade\npublications like Kotaku and PC Gamer, according to people\nfamiliar with him. The Activision spokeswoman, Ms. Klasky,\ndisputed that Mr. Kotick wanted to make the acquisitions. A\nspokesman for G/O Media, the parent company of Kotaku, declined to\ncomment. PC Gamer didn’t respond to a request for comment.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>How desperate was Bobby Kotick? If there’s any truth to this, comically desperate.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/activision-blizzard-microsoft-deal-11642557922\">wsj.com/articles/activision-blizzard-microsoft-deal…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "Bobby Kotick Interview With VentureBeat",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-19T23:36:49Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-19T23:36:49Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/19/kotick-venturebeat-interview",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/19/kotick-venturebeat-interview",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://venturebeat.com/2022/01/18/bobby-kotick-interview-why-activision-blizzard-did-the-deal-with-microsoft/",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Activision Blizzard CEO (until the door hits his ass on the way out) Bobby Kotick, in an interview with Dean Takahashi at VentureBeat, on why they sold to Microsoft:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>And so when Phil called, it happened to be at a time where we were\ngetting ready to start our long range planning process, and\nrealizing that these were going to be issues and challenges. We\nhad the discussion. Phil and I know each other well, and we have a\ngreat relationship, and the company has a great relationship. And\nwhen you start to think about all the skills we need, all the\nresources we need, and what they have, it made a lot of sense.</p>\n\n<p>When they originally called, we said we would we think about it,\nand then they made this offer that was incredibly attractive at\n45% premium over the stock price. And I think it just made a lot\nof sense. And so, the more we spent the time talking about how it\nwould work, and what would happen, what resources were available,\nthey clearly were the best partner.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Translation: <em>Microsoft really had us by the balls.</em></p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://venturebeat.com/2022/01/18/bobby-kotick-interview-why-activision-blizzard-did-the-deal-with-microsoft/\">venturebeat.com/2022/01/18/bobby-kotick-interview-why…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "Who Else Was in the Running to Buy Activision Blizzard?",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-19T23:31:28Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-20T01:56:37Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/19/who-else-was-in-the-running-for-activision",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/19/who-else-was-in-the-running-for-activision",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-19/microsoft-effort-to-buy-activision-spurred-by-misconduct-fallout-at-gamemaker",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
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"content_html" : "\n<p>Dina Bass and Liana Baker, reporting for Bloomberg:<sup>*</sup></p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Yet even as Activision fought to salvage its reputation with\nplayers and investors — the stock dropped about 15% in the month\nafter the Wall Street Journal article — and weighed the potential\ntakeover, Kotick and the board weren’t sold on Microsoft as the\nacquirer, two people familiar with the matter said. Activision\nmade calls to try to find other interested parties, said the\npeople, who asked not to be identified talking about private\nconversations. Those included Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc.\nand at least one other big company. But no other serious interest\nmaterialized. In an interview, Spencer declined to discuss how the\ndeal went down. A Meta spokesperson declined to comment, and a\nrepresentative for Activision didn’t return requests for comment.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I’ve been pondering this since yesterday. Who else even <em>could</em> have been in the running to buy Activision Blizzard? Microsoft is paying just under $69 billion in cash. What other companies have $70 billion in cash <em>and</em> even a vague interest in owning Activision? Apple and Google have the cash, but I can’t see how either of them would have any interest in Activision. Sony? A cursory check suggests <a href=\"https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SONY/sony/cash-on-hand\">they don’t have <em>that</em> much cash</a>, and even if they could swing a $70B deal I don’t think they’d be interested in owning Activision Blizzard anyway.</p>\n\n<p>That leaves Facebook as a company they could plausibly suggest having shopped themselves to. But I just don’t see Facebook having an interest either. Activision Blizzard makes games for PCs, game consoles, and mobile phones. Facebook doesn’t own any of those platforms. Facebook is, obviously, pushing to build a “metaverse” platform and has a VR platform that’s a big part of that, but Activision Blizzard doesn’t really have any major VR games. There’s talk of Microsoft’s acquisition being “metaverse” related but in this context <em>metaverse</em> is just a word investors think they want to hear. Neither <em>Call of Duty</em> nor <em>Candy Crush</em> seems much aligned with Facebook’s “metaverse” vision.</p>\n\n<p>I really think it was Microsoft or bust. Activision knew that but doesn’t want to admit it, and Microsoft knew it and <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/11/18/spencer-msft-activision\">put the screws to Activision</a> to make it happen on their terms. This deal was some Old Testament ass-kicking Microsoft. No wonder Phil Spencer got his title bumped to “Xbox CEO”.</p>\n\n<p><small>* Given the source, take it with a “<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/02/12/bloomberg-big-con\">Big Hack</a>” sized grain of salt, of course.</small></p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-19/microsoft-effort-to-buy-activision-spurred-by-misconduct-fallout-at-gamemaker\">bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-19/microsoft-effort-to…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
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},
|
|
{
|
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"title" : "Opera Launches a Dedicated Crypto Browser",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-19T22:58:38Z",
|
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"date_modified" : "2022-01-27T17:00:41Z",
|
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"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/19/opera-crypto-browser",
|
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"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/19/opera-crypto-browser",
|
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"external_url" : "https://www.engadget.com/opera-is-making-a-dedicated-crypto-browser-112602524.html",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
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|
],
|
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"content_html" : "\n<p>S. Dent, reporting for Engadget:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Opera has <a href=\"https://blogs.opera.com/crypto/2022/01/opera-crypto-browser-project-web3\">launched</a> its Web3 “Crypto Browser” into beta with\nfeatures like a built-in crypto wallet, easy access to\ncryptocurrency/NFT exchanges, support for decentralized apps\n(dApps) and more. The aim is to “simplify the Web3 user experience\nthat is often bewildering for mainstream users,” Opera EVP Jorgen\nArnensen said in statement.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>If it’s ever crossed your mind in recent years, <em>Hey, whatever happened to Opera?</em>”, you now have your answer: cryptocurrency grift.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.engadget.com/opera-is-making-a-dedicated-crypto-browser-112602524.html\">engadget.com/opera-is-making-a-dedicated-crypto-browser…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "Supreme Court Justices Deny Spat on Gorsuch Wearing a Face Mask",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-19T21:40:16Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-19T21:40:17Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/19/supreme-court-denies-mask-spat",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/19/supreme-court-denies-mask-spat",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/neil-gorsuch-sonia-sotomayor-masks-supreme-court/2022/01/19/7977831a-7946-11ec-9102-d65488c31bb1_story.html",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Robert Barnes, reporting for The Washington Post:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in a statement Wednesday that she did\nnot ask Justice Neil M. Gorsuch to wear a mask on Supreme Court\nbench, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. followed up by saying\nhe did not make such a request of their other colleagues either.</p>\n\n<p>The rare statements from the justices seemed aimed at knocking\ndown reporting that Sotomayor, who has health reasons to be\nespecially worried about contracting Covid-19, was participating\nremotely in oral arguments because Gorsuch was not wearing a mask.</p>\n\n<p>The statements did not directly address that, but did refute some\nelements of an NPR report that raised the issue.</p>\n\n<p>“Reporting that Justice Sotomayor asked Justice Gorsuch to wear a\nmask surprised us. It is false. While we may sometimes disagree\nabout the law, we are warm colleagues and friends,” said a joint\nstatement from Sotomayor, one of the court’s most liberal members,\nand Gorsuch, one of its most conservative.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Unusual, to say the least, to directly contradict the reporting of a writer as established as Nina Totenberg at NPR.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/neil-gorsuch-sonia-sotomayor-masks-supreme-court/2022/01/19/7977831a-7946-11ec-9102-d65488c31bb1_story.html\">washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/neil-gorsuch-sonia…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "★ A Five-Letter Word for ‘Rip-Off’",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-19T03:03:02Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-27T18:18:32Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2022/01/five_letter_word_for_ripoff",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2022/01/five_letter_word_for_ripoff",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>Whenever I write about rip-offs, there’s inevitably some amount of <a href=\"https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/whataboutism-origin-meaning\">whataboutism</a> in the arguments from the ripper-offer or their defenders. So it was with <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2022/01/apple_app_store_world_ripoffs\">last week’s brouhaha over blatant Wordle rip-offs appearing in the App Store</a>, and Zach Shakked’s shameless “Wordle - The App” in particular.</p>\n\n<p>Count me firmly in the “<a href=\"https://www.everythingisaremix.info/\">Everything Is a Remix</a>” camp.<sup id=\"fnr1-2022-01-18\"><a href=\"#fn1-2022-01-18\">1</a></sup> George Lucas mashed up <em>Flash Gordon</em> with Kurosawa’s <em><a href=\"https://letterboxd.com/film/the-hidden-fortress/\">The Hidden Fortress</a></em>, built upon VFX innovations from <em>2001: A Space Odyssey</em>, and created something utterly original in <em>Star Wars</em>. Quentin Tarantino obviously loved and drew inspiration from Ringo Lam’s <em><a href=\"https://letterboxd.com/film/city-on-fire/\">City on Fire</a></em>,<sup id=\"fnr2-2022-01-18\"><a href=\"#fn2-2022-01-18\">2</a></sup> but <em>Reservoir Dogs</em> was anything but a rip-off. “Good artists borrow, great artists steal” — <a href=\"https://www.uvu.edu/arts/applause/posts/stealing.html\">or something like that</a>.</p>\n\n<p>Some good rules of thumb, if you’re weighing whether a derivative new work crosses the threshold into ripping off the original: If the derivative steals the original’s title or name, that’s a rip-off. If the derivative is designed to confuse people into thinking it <em>is</em> the original — as Shakked’s Wordle clone clearly was — that’s a rip-off. If the derivative is indistinguishable from the original or brings nothing new to the table, it’s probably a rip-off.</p>\n\n<p>One game that’s come up repeatedly in discussions about Wordle’s originality is <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(American_game_show)\">Lingo</a>, a TV game show that first ran in the U.S. in 1987,<sup id=\"fnr3-2022-01-18\"><a href=\"#fn3-2022-01-18\">3</a></sup> and versions of which remain on the air in a few countries, including the U.K. <a href=\"https://twitter.com/adilray/status/1478635246237241345\">Current U.K. Lingo host Adil Ray posted this snippy tweet on January 5</a> — before the Wordle App Store kerfuffle:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Hey peeps, if you’re going to play a game that looks like ours,\nworks like ours, smells like ours and basically is OURS it’s only\nright you give us a plug. Lingo back today @3pm @itv #lingo\n#Wordle 😍🤪</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>When last week’s controversy erupted, I watched some footage of Lingo, and rolled my eyes at the “Wordle is just a rip-off of Lingo” allegations. Yes, both games are about guessing five-letter words. But a game show where you compete against other contestants and against a clock “smells” quite different from Wordle’s solo gameplay and leisurely “<em>take as much time as you want</em>” pace.</p>\n\n<p>Turns out Lingo isn’t just a TV game show, though. It’s an officially-licensed <a href=\"https://www.twowaymedia.co.uk/#/lingo/\">video game</a> — <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lingo-official-mobile-game/id1564413692\">in both the App Store</a> and <a href=\"https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.twowaymedia.lingo\">Play Store</a>. David Barnard was the first person I saw who pointed to the official Lingo game, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/drbarnard/status/1481115822575824898\">tweeting thus</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The OG Wordle (ahem, Lingo) app is absolutely abysmal. Same game\nmechanics, but with punitive free-to-play BS.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That description is generous. Lingo might not be the worst game on the App Store, but it’s the worst and most oppressively dystopic game <em>I’ve</em> ever played. The mechanics aren’t quite the same as Wordle either: the Lingo game is timed, like the TV show, and the keyboard, bizarrely, doesn’t tell you which letters you’ve already tried. But the official Lingo game is so much worse than that. There are 30-second unskippable video ads between levels, coins <em>and</em> gems to collect <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2022/01/lingo-iap.png\">and of course purchase with real money</a>,<sup id=\"fnr4-2022-01-18\"><a href=\"#fn4-2022-01-18\">4</a></sup> and, inexplicably, a mandatory <em>bingo</em> game between each level of the word game. Corny graphics, terrible music, and even the “how to play” onboarding is frustrating. And of course they admit to a whole slew of data tracking in their App Store metadata and ask to be permitted to track you, and if you grant Lingo permission to send you notifications they send a few per day every day reminding you to play more Lingo.</p>\n\n<p>Yes, both games involve guessing five-letter words, but Josh Wardle’s Wordle is a wonderfully simple, totally free game designed only to bring people a bit of serene enjoyment for a few minutes per day. The official Lingo app is an ugly cacophonous confusing jumble of concepts intended to hook players on in-app purchases, and whose only saving grace is that it’s no fun at all to actually play and thus, although not for lack of trying, not the least bit addictive in practice.</p>\n\n<p>There’s a reason you probably never heard of the official Lingo app.</p>\n\n<hr />\n\n<p>A few other related games:</p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://www.zynga.com/games/words-with-friends-2/\">Words With Friends</a> is a very popular Scrabble-like game, but it is not a Scrabble rip-off. <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scrabble-go-new-word-game/id1215933788\">There’s only one “Scrabble” in the App Store</a> and it’s licensed from Hasbro. (“<a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scrubble-crossy-word-search/id1596418047?mt=12\">Scrubble</a>” might be crossing the rip-off line, though.)</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1481001089264541700\">Andy Baio mentioned Jotto</a>, a two-player paper-and-pencil secret word game from the 1950s.</p></li>\n<li><p><a href=\"https://wordgamehero.com/\">Word Game Hero</a> is an iOS game for iPhone and iPad by Jake Nelson. It’s a 4-to-7-letter-word guessing game, free to play with ads after a five-day trial period, and $3 for a one-time unlock for ad-free unlimited play. It’s well-made, and very iOS-y, including support for SharePlay to play with friends over FaceTime. It’s also clearly inspired by Wordle, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2022/01/word-game-hero-settings.png\">as Nelson graciously acknowledges</a> in the Settings screen, with links to both Wordle <em>and</em> Lingo. I’d say the gameplay is within shouting distance of a Wordle rip-off — the color choices and plain flat graphics are straight from Wordle, and the share-your-results text (<a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2022/01/word-game-hero-share-text.text\">example</a>) is just like Wordle’s but with differently shaped emoji (which different shapes, admittedly, are more accessible) — but to my eyes it doesn’t cross the rip-off line, and more importantly, doesn’t even vaguely attempt to pass itself off as “Wordle”. It’s also doing something Wordle doesn’t want to do: let you play as many levels as you’d like. I’d say it is to Wordle as Words With Friends is to Scrabble.</p></li>\n<li><p>Lastly, <a href=\"https://saltong.vercel.app/\">Saltong</a>, a web-based game by Carl de Guia that bills itself right at the top as “A Filipino Clone of Wordle”, with 4- and 7-letter-word variants. Doesn’t pass itself off as Wordle, gives prominent and full credit to the original Wordle, and uses words from an entirely different language. Not a rip-off.</p></li>\n</ul>\n\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n\n<li id=\"fn1-2022-01-18\">\n<p>Speaking of which, you do know that Kirby Ferguson has relaunched “Everything Is a Remix” and the <a href=\"https://www.everythingisaremix.info/blog/remix-returns\">first</a> <a href=\"https://www.everythingisaremix.info/blog/everything-is-a-remix-part-2-1\">two</a> parts are already up on YouTube, right? So great. <a href=\"#fnr1-2022-01-18\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn2-2022-01-18\">\n<p>I watched <em>City on Fire</em> decades ago on VHS (or maybe DVD?), and thinking about it now made me consider a re-watch. Alas, it <a href=\"https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/city-on-fire\">seems unavailable</a> to buy or stream online in the U.S. It’s bananas that it was easier to find “old” movies on physical media at my <a href=\"https://web.archive.org/web/20120905052707/http://www.citypaper.net/blogs/criticalmass/south_street_tla_video_closes.html\">beloved local video store</a> 20 years ago than it is today on streaming platforms and online stores. Netflix’s old model of renting discs sent through the mail offered <em>way</em> more movies than all streaming services combined do today. Don’t get me started on the general unavailability of James Cameron’s <em>True Lies</em> or <em>The Abyss</em>. <a href=\"#fnr2-2022-01-18\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn3-2022-01-18\">\n<p>Fun fact: the original Lingo <a href=\"https://gameshows.fandom.com/wiki/Lingo\">was hosted by Michael Reagan</a>, whose father was at the time president of the United States. <a href=\"#fnr3-2022-01-18\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 3 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn4-2022-01-18\">\n<p>Lingo’s age rating is “4+”. It strikes me as wrong that any game with in-app purchases should be rated for young children. Real-world casinos don’t have slot machines for children; the App Store shouldn’t either. <a href=\"#fnr4-2022-01-18\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 4 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n</ol>\n</div>\n\n\n\n "
|
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},
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|
{
|
|
"title" : "Army Spouse Uses AirTag to Track Down Shady Moving Truck Driver",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-18T21:48:02Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-18T21:48:02Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/18/airtag-shady-movers",
|
|
"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/18/airtag-shady-movers",
|
|
"external_url" : "https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-airtag-moving-company/",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
|
|
],
|
|
"content_html" : "\n<p>David Roza, reporting for Task & Purpose:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>McNulty attached the tag to a box of her son’s toys, then her\nfamily of four headed out to the east coast. She told Task &\nPurpose that her family had been waiting about a month for\ntheir things to arrive, which surprisingly isn’t that bad\ncompared to what some families go through. “Some families end\nup waiting months upon months to receive their household\ngoods,” she said. [...]</p>\n\n<p>The mover was supposed to drop off the goods on Friday, January 7,\nbut when that didn’t happen, the moving company told McNulty to\nexpect the delivery on Sunday. A few hours after that call,\nhowever, the truck driver transporting their belongings called to\nsay that he just picked up their shipment in Colorado and the\nearliest he could get it to them would be Monday.</p>\n\n<p>McNulty knew better. Using her AirTag, she found out that the\ndriver was not in Colorado, but only a half day’s drive south in\nElizabeth, New Jersey.</p>\n\n<p>“When we brought up the fact that we knew his exact location he\nhung up on us,” McNulty later recalled. “He then called back\nseveral minutes later and said ‘Well the earliest I can get it to\nyou is Sunday.’”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Lost amidst the worrisome stories about AirTags being used by creeps and stalkers are tales like this one, where they’re being put to good use.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-airtag-moving-company/\">taskandpurpose.com/news/army-airtag-moving-company/</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "Mozilla Stops Accepting Cryptocurrency, Wikipedia May Be Next",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-18T21:42:59Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-18T21:43:00Z",
|
|
"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/18/mozilla-cryptocurrency",
|
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"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/18/mozilla-cryptocurrency",
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"external_url" : "https://www.techrepublic.com/article/mozilla-stops-accepting-cryptocurrency-wikipedia-may-be-next-are-dominos-falling/",
|
|
"authors" : [
|
|
{
|
|
"name" : "John Gruber"
|
|
}
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],
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"content_html" : "\n<p>Brandon Vigliarolo, writing for TechRepublic:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The original tweet from Mozilla mentioned three forms of\ncryptocurrency: the two main players, Bitcoin and Ethereum, and\nDogecoin , all three of which use a system called proof of work\n(PoW) in order to add an entry to their respective blockchains.\nIt’s here we find the first big sticking point: what Zawinski\ndescribes as “planet-incinerating” levels of energy use.</p>\n\n<p>The proof of work problem has been known for a while, as has the\never-increasing carbon footprint of the Bitcoin and Ethereum\nblockchain, the cause of which is the growing energy needs of\ntheir PoW networks.</p>\n\n<p>As of this writing, a single transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain\neats up the same amount of energy as the average US household in a\n77.8-day, or roughly two and a half month, period. Ethereum,\nthough nowhere near as large, still eats up the same amount of\nenergy that a US household does in 8 days.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Such numbers seem too bad to be true, but <a href=\"https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/\">take a look</a>.</p>\n\n<p>“<a href=\"https://www.jwz.org/blog/tag/dunning-krugerrands/\">Do your research</a>.”</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.techrepublic.com/article/mozilla-stops-accepting-cryptocurrency-wikipedia-may-be-next-are-dominos-falling/\">techrepublic.com/article/mozilla-stops-accepting…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
|
|
},
|
|
{
|
|
"title" : "NPR: ‘Fissures at the Supreme Court Suggest Justices Are Like a Dysfunctional Family’",
|
|
"date_published" : "2022-01-18T20:40:21Z",
|
|
"date_modified" : "2022-01-19T21:41:02Z",
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"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/18/gorsuch-jerk",
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"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/18/gorsuch-jerk",
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"external_url" : "https://www.npr.org/2022/01/18/1073428376/supreme-court-justices-arent-scorpions-but-not-happy-campers-either",
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"authors" : [
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{
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"name" : "John Gruber"
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}
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],
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"content_html" : "\n<p>Nina Totenberg, reporting for NPR, on discord amongst the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Sotomayor has diabetes, a condition that puts her at high risk for\nserious illness, or even death, from COVID-19. She has been the\nonly justice to wear a mask on the bench since last fall when,\namid a marked decline in COVID-19 cases, the justices resumed\nin-person arguments for the first time since the onset of the\npandemic.</p>\n\n<p>Now, though, the situation had changed with the omicron surge,\nand according to court sources, Sotomayor did not feel safe in\nclose proximity to people who were unmasked. Chief Justice John\nRoberts, understanding that, in some form asked the other\njustices to mask up.</p>\n\n<p>They all did. Except Gorsuch, who, as it happens, sits next to\nSotomayor on the bench. His continued refusal since then has also\nmeant that Sotomayor has not attended the justices’ weekly\nconference in person, joining instead by telephone.</p>\n\n<p>Gorsuch, from the beginning of his tenure, has proved a prickly\njustice, not exactly beloved even by his conservative soulmates on\nthe court.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>More than just prickly, he appears to be a flat-out prick.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Update:</strong> <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/19/supreme-court-denies-mask-spat\">Never mind?</a></p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.npr.org/2022/01/18/1073428376/supreme-court-justices-arent-scorpions-but-not-happy-campers-either\">npr.org/2022/01/18/1073428376/supreme-court-justices-arent…</a></strong></em></p>\n"
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},
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{
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"title" : "[Sponsor] Listen Notes: The Best Podcast Search Engine and Database",
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"date_published" : "2022-01-17T15:18:56-05:00",
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"date_modified" : "2022-01-17T15:18:56-05:00",
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"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2022/01/listen_notes_the_best_podcast",
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"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2022/01/listen_notes_the_best_podcast",
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"external_url" : "https://www.listennotes.com/",
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"authors" : [
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{
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"name" : "Daring Fireball Department of Commerce"
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}
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],
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"content_html" : "\n<p>As of January 2022, there are 2,750,000+ RSS-based podcasts and 123,000,000+ episodes on the Internet. </p>\n\n<p>Yes, there are way more podcasts than those few that you already know.</p>\n\n<p>Basically, there’s a podcast for that. You can learn any topics by listening to podcasts. And it seems that every domain expert has already done some podcast interviews.</p>\n\n<p>Search any topic or person at <a href=\"https://www.listennotes.com/\">ListenNotes.com</a>.</p>\n\n<p class=\"x-netnewswire-hide\" style=\"padding-top: 1.5em;\"><em>Link: <strong><a href=\"https://www.listennotes.com/\">listennotes.com/</a></strong></em></p>\n"
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},
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{
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"title" : "★ Seeing Green",
|
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"date_published" : "2022-01-14T20:10:31Z",
|
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"date_modified" : "2022-01-16T15:24:14Z",
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"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2022/01/seeing_green",
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"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2022/01/seeing_green",
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"authors" : [
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{
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"name" : "John Gruber"
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}
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],
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"content_html" : "\n<p>The Wall Street Journal ran a doozy of a story by Tim Higgins last weekend: “<a href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-apples-imessage-is-winning-teens-dread-the-green-text-bubble-11641618009?mod=djemalertNEWS\">Why Apple’s iMessage Is Winning: Teens Dread the Green Text Bubble</a>” (<a href=\"https://apple.news/Aww_k6f7XTfaxwQr5pMat9w\">News+ link</a>). Few Americans don’t have U.S.-centric blind spots — I’m certainly guilty of that on numerous fronts — but this take is so U.S.-centric it beggars belief. The article’s subhead says it all:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The iPhone maker cultivated iMessage as a must-have texting tool\nfor teens. Android users trigger a just-a-little-less-cool green\nbubble: “Ew, that’s gross.”</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The article’s foundation is a handful of personal anecdotes, starting with the lede:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Soon after 19-year-old Adele Lowitz gave up her Apple iPhone 11\nfor an experimental go with an Android smartphone, a friend in her\nlong-running texting group chimed in: “Who’s green?”</p>\n\n<p>The reference to the color of group text messages — Android users\nturn Apple Inc.’s iMessage into green bubbles instead of blue — highlighted one of the challenges of her experiment. No longer did\nher group chats work seamlessly with other peers, almost all of\nwhom used iPhones. FaceTime calls became more complicated and the\nUniversity of Michigan sophomore’s phone didn’t show up in an app\nshe used to find friends.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>100 words in and already so much to correct. How this ran in the WSJ’s Technology section is beyond explanation. <em>Messages</em> is Apple’s messaging app for iOS and Mac; <em>iMessage</em> is Apple’s proprietary messaging platform. Messages doesn’t render texts from Android green, per se — it renders all <em>SMS</em> messages as green. Messages has no idea what type of device sent an SMS, it just knows it’s an SMS message. An SMS sent from an iPhone user will be green, too.</p>\n\n<p>Until three months ago, FaceTime was exclusive to Apple devices. Starting in October (and announced last June at WWDC), <a href=\"https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212619\">FaceTime users can create web links that Android and Windows users can use to join calls</a>. But yes, Apple’s proprietary voice and audio call platform works more seamlessly on their own devices. Shocker.</p>\n\n<p>Find My for finding iPhone-using friends doesn’t work on Android either. Again, filed under “Duh”. The whole point of Apple — the entire company — is to offer superior products and services to customers willing to pay for them. Higgins quotes from internal emails from Craig Federighi and Phil Schiller — emails made public during discovery in last year’s Epic v. Apple lawsuit — arguing against releasing a version of iMessage for Android as though it’s scandalous, rather than obviously strategic. It’s not like iMessage was at any time cross-platform and Apple dropped Android support (which, even if it had been the case, wouldn’t necessarily be nefarious in the least) — it was conceived as a proprietary platform for iPhones, iPads, and Macs.</p>\n\n<p>Back to the WSJ:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>That pressure to be a part of the blue text group is the product\nof decisions by Apple executives starting years ago that have,\nwith little fanfare, built iMessage into one of the world’s most\nwidely used social networks and helped to cement the iPhone’s\ndominance among young smartphone users in the U.S.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/harrymccracken/status/1479984887306219523\">As Harry McCracken quipped</a> on Twitter, iMessage was not introduced with “little fanfare” — <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrBIgjodpFs\">it was a tentpole announcement from Scott Forstall at WWDC 2011</a>.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>From the beginning, Apple got creative in its protection of\niMessage’s exclusivity. It didn’t ban the exchange of traditional\ntext messages with Android users but instead branded those\nmessages with a different color; when an Android user is part of a\ngroup chat, the iPhone users see green bubbles rather than blue.\nIt also withheld certain features. There is no dot-dot-dot icon to\ndemonstrate that a non-iPhone user is typing, for example, and an\niMessage heart or thumbs-up annotation has long conveyed to\nAndroid users as text instead of images.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The Messages app for iOS has <em>always</em> <a href=\"https://www.macworld.com/article/195599/messages_india.html\">rendered SMS messages as green</a> — going back to the first version, <a href=\"https://www.businessinsider.com/iphone-home-screen-evolution-2013-6\">when the app was named “Text” and its icon had “SMS” in the bubble</a>. The color of SMS messages on iOS was green before iMessage was introduced, and remained green after. And iMessage messages <em>should</em> be visually distinct from SMS — they’re different in important ways, not the least of which is that iMessage is and always has been end-to-end encrypted and SMS isn’t and never will be.</p>\n\n<p>There’s no dot-dot-dot indicator for SMS because the primitive SMS protocol doesn’t support it. Android users sending SMS messages to other Android users don’t get a dot-dot-dot typing indicator either, because it’s not technically possible. Message reactions — hearts, thumbs, ha-has, !!’s, and ?’s — are sent as text via SMS <em>because they have to be</em>. Apple’s only other option would be not to send these reactions at all.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple later took other steps that enhanced the popularity of its\nmessaging service with teens. It added popular features such as\nanimated cartoon-like faces that create mirrors of a user’s face,\nto compete with messaging services from social media companies.\nApple’s own survey of iPhone holders made public during the Epic\nGames litigation found that customers were particularly fond of\nreplacing words with emojis and screen effects such as animated\nballoons and confetti. Avid teen users said in interviews with The\nWall Street Journal that they also liked how they could create\ngroup chats with other Apple users that add and subtract\nparticipants without having to start a new chain.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Higgins paints these features as though they’re the digital equivalent of advertising cigarettes to children with a <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Camel\">cartoon mascot</a>. They’re just fun features, and there’s nothing teen-specific about them. I get confetti and balloon iMessage effects from both my mother and mother-in-law, neither of whom have been — or even lived with — teenagers for a while.</p>\n\n<p>There’s nothing teen-specific about <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/02/12/being-green\">iPhone users being annoyed at Android users in group chats</a>. In fact, such complaints might be far more common among adults, because so many teenagers have iPhones they don’t encounter it as often. Last year <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/07/26/kidd-bucks-blue-bubbles\">I linked to a story</a> from Mirin Fader’s <em><a href=\"https://amzn.to/3zGAVQ6\">Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP</a></em> that claims former Milwaukee Bucks coach Jason Kidd made the entire team run because one player had an Android phone and messed up the team’s group chat. (For what it’s worth, the player in question <a href=\"https://twitter.com/ThonMaker14/status/1417911080165195778\">claims the story isn’t true</a>. It’s the fact that the story resonated that matters.) Here’s a story from October about pro golfer (and well-known <a href=\"https://outsidethecut.com/2019/06/10/the-haters-guide-to-bryson-dechambeau/\">oddball</a>) <a href=\"https://www.golfdigest.com/story/bryson-dechambeau-iphone-ryder-cup-grouptext\">Bryson DeChambeau messing up the U.S. team’s Ryder Cup group chat</a> because he was the lone Android user.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The cultivation of iMessage is consistent with Apple’s broader\nstrategy to tie its hardware, software and services together in a\nself-reinforcing world — dubbed the walled garden — that\nencourages people to pay the premium for its relatively expensive\ngadgets and remain loyal to its brand. That strategy has drawn\nscrutiny from critics and lawmakers as part of a larger\nexamination of how all tech giants operate. Their core question:\nDo Apple and other tech companies create products that consumers\nsimply find indispensable, or are they building near-monopolies\nthat unfairly stifle competition?</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Putting aside broader antitrust arguments and focusing solely on messaging — the point of the WSJ’s story — it’s ridiculous to argue that Apple is in any way “stifling competition”. The complete opposite is the case: via the App Store and APIs in iOS, there is a rich and vibrant global market for messaging apps on iOS. <a href=\"https://www.whatsapp.com/\">WhatsApp</a>, <a href=\"https://telegram.org/\">Telegram</a>, <a href=\"https://www.facebook.com/messenger/\">Facebook Messenger</a>, <a href=\"https://line.me/en/\">Line</a>, <a href=\"https://signal.org/en/\">Signal</a>, and others are all thriving and popular. For teenagers and college students, <a href=\"https://discord.com/\">Discord</a> is <a href=\"https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29900064\">huge</a>, and far more of a hangout than iMessage. Also, a little app called <a href=\"https://www.wechat.com/\">WeChat</a> is <a href=\"https://www.statista.com/statistics/255778/number-of-active-wechat-messenger-accounts/\">somewhat popular</a> in China. And they’re all cross-platform.</p>\n\n<p>In fact, these third-party messaging platforms exemplify the gaping hole in the center of the WSJ’s premise: iMessage’s extraordinary popularity in the U.S. is a global outlier. This story created <a href=\"https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1479786727673839623\">a stir on Twitter over the weekend</a>, and a very common refrain from observers who live outside the U.S. was utter bafflement that iMessage was popular anywhere, because other messaging services are so dominant elsewhere — including with iPhone users. iMessage is obviously only popular where iPhones are popular, but iPhones are popular in countries around the world where iMessage (and SMS) are seldom used.</p>\n\n<p>The U.S. is just different on this front. I like Ben Thompson’s simple theory why, which I’ll <s>steal</s> paraphrase here. Pre-iMessage, the U.S. was an outlier for SMS, because U.S. carriers made SMS text messages free, or included so many SMS monthly text messages in their plans that they were effectively free. Whereas elsewhere around the world, SMS text messages always cost at least 10 cents a pop — <a href=\"https://twitter.com/jasserota/status/1482102740042006543\">often more</a> — to send, which was a big motivation to find alternative messaging services. The original point of iMessage was to make a better messaging service to replace SMS for messages between iPhone users. <a href=\"https://twitter.com/jsmaria/status/1480270547036487681\">Apple asked, “What sucks about SMS/MMS?”</a> and made iMessage to address those shortcomings. So it makes sense that iMessage is most popular here in the U.S., where SMS was (and remains!) widely-used, and is less popular in countries where people started moving to alternative messaging platforms before iMessage even existed.</p>\n\n<p>iMessage is just one proprietary Apple nicety among <em>hundreds</em> for iPhone users. Is it <em>a</em> reason to buy and stick with an iPhone? Of course. Is it <em>the</em> reason, or even near the top of the list, for anyone? No.</p>\n\n<p>Higgins continues:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Apple and other tech giants have long worked hard to get traction\nwith young users, hoping to build brand habits that will extend\ninto adulthood as they battle each other for control of everything\nfrom videogames to extended reality glasses to the metaverse.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Apple has never, and I hope will never, use the word “metaverse” in an ostensibly straight-faced manner.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Globally, Alphabet Inc.’s Android operating system is the dominant\nplayer among smartphone users, with a loyal following of people\nwho are vocal about their support. Among U.S. consumers, 40% use\niPhones, but among those aged 18 to 24, more than 70% are iPhone\nusers, according to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners’s most\nrecent survey of consumers.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>That there’s a significant difference in iPhone market share between younger and older people has been widely known ever since the iPhone hit the market. <a href=\"https://phys.org/news/2012-10-teens-iphones-analyst-survey.html\">Teenagers wanted (and got) iPhones then</a>, and they want (and get) iPhones today.</p>\n\n<p>The crux of Higgins’s report for the WSJ seems to be that this age discrepancy in iPhone market is largely about the color of text messages in the Messages app, and that Apple has created this culture deliberately. What a pile of clickbait horseshit.</p>\n\n<p>Teenagers’ preferences and tastes are different from adults’ across the board. They watch different movies, watch different shows (teenagers watch YouTube videos; adults watch TV), listen to different music, and wear different clothes. This has been the case for everyone alive today when they themselves were teenagers.</p>\n\n<p>A much simpler nutshell explanation is that teenagers have a keener sense of <em>cool</em>, and care more about what’s cool, than adults. And the iPhone always has been and remains today cooler than any Android phone. I don’t think that explains the entire situation very well either — it’s quite a bit dismissive of the fact that teenagers actually use the hell out of their phones and thus are perfectly positioned to want iPhones for the entirely practical and rational reason that they’re <em>better</em>, not just <em>cooler</em> — but it sure as shit is closer to the mark than talking about green vs. blue text bubbles.</p>\n\n<p>If text bubble color was all that mattered, everyone could switch to Android and their SMS messages would all be blue, because most Android phone makers, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2022/01/pixel-blue-sms-bubbles.png\">including Google</a>, have their built-in SMS messaging apps set to render SMS messages as blue, because they’re spooked by the whole <em>green bubbles are lame</em> thing too. It’s silly. In an alternate universe where Apple’s Messages app rendered SMS messages as blue and iMessages as green, the whole thing would be reversed and iPhone users would be looking askance at <em>blue</em> bubbles in their group chats. There’s nothing wrong with green. Green means <em>go</em>. Green is money. <a href=\"https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/\">Green means success</a>. Neither Mr. Pink nor Mr. Brown would’ve complained if they’d been Mr. Green. And most notably — and I’d say <a href=\"https://twitter.com/gruber/status/354364722155499521\">inexplicably</a> — Apple’s own app icon for Messages is green:</p>\n\n<p><img\n src = \"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2022/01/messages-app-icon.png\"\n alt = \"The app icon for Messages in MacOS 12 Monterey.\"\n/></p>\n\n<p>The truth is, SMS sucks and iMessage has features SMS never will or could. That opens the door to the <a href=\"https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/16/22783220/vergecast-podcast-rcs-explainer-google\">whole RCS controversy</a>, of course, but “RCS” never even appears in the WSJ’s article, which is bizarre. It probably should have been the whole thrust of the piece, if they want to argue that there’s something nefarious about iMessage being a proprietary messaging platform that excludes Android users. That was Google exec <a href=\"https://twitter.com/lockheimer/status/1479865157753147395\">Hiroshi Lockheimer’s hamfisted take</a>. (If anyone knows how to make a new messaging platform, <a href=\"https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/a-decade-and-a-half-of-instability-the-history-of-google-messaging-apps\">it’s Google</a>.)</p>\n\n<p>Higgins:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Yet grabbing users so early in life could pay dividends for\ngenerations for Apple, already the world’s most valuable publicly\ntraded company. It briefly crossed $3 trillion in market value for\nthe first time on Jan. 3. “These teenagers will continue to become\nconsumers in the future and hopefully continue to buy phones into\ntheir 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s,” said Harsh Kumar, an analyst for\nPiper Sandler. The firm recently found that 87% of teens surveyed\nlast year own iPhones.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>I’ll go out on a limb here and say that an analyst who’s willing to project which devices today’s teenagers are going to be using <em>50 years from now</em> is not an analyst you should be quoting.</p>\n\n<p>87 percent of U.S. teens using iPhones, though, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/10/08/us-teens-iphones-apple-watches\"><em>that’s</em> interesting</a>. But if you think that number would be significantly different if Apple released a Messages app for Android, or added support for RCS to iOS, you’re nuts.</p>\n\n<p>The clear implication of Higgins’s piece is that teenagers’ decided preference for iPhones is entirely superficial. I posit that it’s anything but. We can argue about the merits of iMessage vs. other top-tier messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram, feature-wise and UI-wise (iMessage “replies” are rather deficient, for example), but there’s no denying that iMessage is leaps and bounds better, more useful, more reliable, more supported on non-phone devices, and profoundly more secure and private than <a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS\">dumb old SMS</a>. But Higgins presents all these differences as things Apple withholds for competitive spite, and that teens are suckers, seduced by a brand, for caring about them.</p>\n\n<p>What, pray tell, should Apple do or have already done differently?</p>\n\n<p>Develop and support an iMessage client for Android? I’m unsurprised that Apple has seriously considered this — and when a rumor dropped in June 2016 that Apple was going to announce iMessage for Android at WWDC that year, <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2016/06/11/imessage-for-android\">I thought it plausible</a>. I’m also completely unsurprised that they ultimately decided against it. iMessage isn’t a standalone service — it’s a part of iCloud, and has hooks into features built into iOS and MacOS. iMessage is a competitive advantage — not just for iPhones, but for iPads and Macs too.</p>\n\n<p>Support RCS? Maybe Apple will! But I can see why they probably won’t, and also why they have remained silent on the question of whether they have any interest in supporting it. Why support a less secure, less featureful protocol than iMessage? Why support a new protocol from <em>phone carriers</em>? We don’t use messaging services from our cable and fiber internet providers — why should we use a messaging service tied to our cell phone providers?</p>\n\n<p>Teenagers are not mindless Apple zealots. The popularity of Nintendo’s Switch, Sony’s PlayStation, Microsoft’s Xbox, and especially gaming PCs running Windows is proof otherwise. Higgins has the whole thing backwards. People — including teenagers — don’t buy iPhones because iMessage is cool or good. People use iMessage because <em>iPhones are cool and good</em>.</p>\n\n\n\n "
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},
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{
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"title" : "★ The App Store Is (Well, Was) Lousy With Blatant Wordle Rip-Offs, but One of Them Takes the Cake",
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"date_published" : "2022-01-12T00:40:45Z",
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"date_modified" : "2022-01-12T04:38:18Z",
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"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2022/01/apple_app_store_world_ripoffs",
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"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2022/01/apple_app_store_world_ripoffs",
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"authors" : [
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{
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"name" : "John Gruber"
|
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}
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],
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"content_html" : "\n<p>A few days ago <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/linked/2022/01/05/wordle\">I linked to</a> a New York Times <a href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/technology/wordle-word-game-creator.html\">profile of Josh Wardle</a>, creator of the delightful and explosively popular web game <a href=\"https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/\">Wordle</a>. Wordle, it’s worth noting, has no ads and is free of charge.</p>\n\n<p>As of today, Apple’s App Store is lousy with Wordle rip-offs. I mean not just the concept — there’s a long history of “guess the word” games, including a defunct game show called “<a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(American_game_show)\">Lingo</a>” that was clearly an inspiration for Wordle — but literally the <em>name</em> “Wordle” and its design. <a href=\"https://twitter.com/gregkarber/status/1481001103328088065\">As observed by Greg Karber</a>, as I write this, the #3, #7, #14, and #15 word games in the iOS App Store<sup id=\"fnr1-2022-01-11\"><a href=\"#fn1-2022-01-11\">1</a></sup> are shameless Wordle clones <em>stealing the name “Wordle”</em>. (Worth noting that #16, “<a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wordle/id1095569891\">Wordle!</a>”, was last updated five years ago, is an entirely different timer-based word game, and is simply coincidentally named. There’s also “<a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wordle-word-puzzle/id1358122111\">Wordle - Word Puzzle</a>”, a three-year-old entirely different $2 game that is also coincidentally named.)</p>\n\n<p><s>Apple, apparently, is just fine with this.</s> [<strong>Update:</strong> As of this evening, all of the following games that used “Wordle” in their name <a href=\"https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/11/22879295/wordle-clones-app-store-removal-online-backlash-copycats\">have been removed</a> from the App Store.]</p>\n\n<p>A perusal of the rogue’s gallery of Wordle rip-offs:<sup id=\"fnr2-2022-01-11\"><a href=\"#fn2-2022-01-11\">2</a></sup></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li>“<a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wordle/id1603184679\">Wordle·</a>”, by Candyblocks, is utterly shameless in its design (and name), but is a free download and apparently has no in-app purchases. Still. (That’s a <a href=\"https://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/00b7/index.htm\">Unicode <code>00B7</code> “middle dot”</a> as a suffix on the app name.)</li>\n<li>“<a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wrdl/id1604078512\">WRDL</a>”, by Cole Dennis, is a free game (no IAP) that doesn’t exactly rip off Wordle’s name but does painstakingly copy Wordle’s design, right down to the colors.</li>\n<li>“<a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wordle-daily-word-games/id1603978681\">Wordle - Daily Word Games!</a>”, by Mediaflex Games, is a free app, no IAP, that starts its name with “Wordle” and completely rips off Wordle’s design, colors, icon, and game mechanics.</li>\n<li>“<a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wordle/id1603184679\">What Word - Wordle</a>”, by Rebecca Skinner, is a free game with a $1 IAP to remove ads that includes “Wordle” in its name, and copies Wordle’s color scheme and game mechanics.</li>\n</ul>\n\n<p>And then we get to the real gem of the bunch. “<a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wordle-the-app/id1604016922\">Wordle - The App</a>”, by Zach Shakked, a free-to-download app with a 30-fucking-dollar-per-year “Pro” unlock. Shakked’s rip-off doesn’t just steal Wordle’s name, design, and mechanics, its “The App” suffix clearly was chosen to make it look like the official App Store version of Wardle’s original.<sup id=\"fnr3-2022-01-11\"><a href=\"#fn3-2022-01-11\">3</a></sup> He even squatted on “@theWordleApp” on Twitter — not <em>a</em> Wordle app — <em>the</em> Wordle app. Shakked then spent the last day on Twitter giddy with excitement, bragging about how much money his utterly shameless rip-off was making:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>This is absurd. 450 trials at 1am last night, now at 950 and\ngetting a new ones every minute. 12K downloads, rank #28 word\ngame, and #4 result for “wordle” in the App Store. We’re going to\nthe fucking moon.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>The <a href=\"https://twitter.com/dejager/status/1481009967310131203\">developer and web community</a> soon caught on — <a href=\"https://twitter.com/cabel/status/1480975980608962560\">Cabel Sasser</a>, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/RebeccaSlatkin/status/1481000230363488261\">Rebecca Slatkin</a>, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/1480994909016498180\">Steven Troughton-Smith</a>, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/jkottke/status/1480971322465435651\">Jason Kottke</a>, and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/1480990948972658689\">Andy Baio</a> all exposed his shameless theft (with screenshots, wisely), and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/gruber/status/1480968877953765377\">I simply asked him</a>, just to be sure, whether he had Josh Wardle’s permission. Within moments, Shakked took his Twitter account (@zachshakked) private. (He left his rip-off app in the App Store, of course, so as not to interrupt its onward trajectory to the moon.)</p>\n\n<p>It gets better, believe it or not. Literally moments before he realized the entire indie developer community was dunking on him and privatized his Twitter account, <a href=\"https://twitter.com/gte/status/1481001654870810626\">this tweet Shakked originally posted back in June surfaced</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>I absolutely despise copycats. Shameless copying is so dumb. Take inspiration from others. Why are they doing that? Why is this a good feature for users? How can we build on top of that?</p>\n\n<p>Shameless copy/pasting ideas/features will get you nowhere.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>in response to one of his other apps having its IAP screen ripped off (and <a href=\"https://twitter.com/cabel/status/1481009138431709184\">it was indeed blatantly ripped-off</a>) by a rival.</p>\n\n<p>Shakked was wrong about that: shamelessly ripping off Wordle has gotten him somewhere, all right.</p>\n\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n\n<li id=\"fn1-2022-01-11\">\n<p>While spelunking the App Store’s list of top word games, I stumbled upon <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-wordament/id580935508\">Microsoft Wordament</a>. Who knew Microsoft had a highly-ranked word game for iOS (and Android)? They’ve got <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mahjong-by-microsoft/id1486892969\">a Mahjong game</a> among <a href=\"https://apps.apple.com/us/developer/microsoft-corporation/id298856275\">their iOS apps</a>, too. <a href=\"#fnr1-2022-01-11\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn2-2022-01-11\">\n<p>What about Google’s Play Store? I didn’t hunt for long, but as far as I can tell, there’s just one Wordle rip-off at the moment, and it isn’t high-ranking on the word game leaderboard: “Wordle - Daily Word Challenge”, by Digital Snacks — a free-to-download game with both ads and in-app purchases. I tried it out and deleted it after it rejected “caned” and “paned” — neither obscure — as invalid words. <a href=\"#fnr2-2022-01-11\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n<li id=\"fn3-2022-01-11\">\n<p>The actual <a href=\"https://www.powerlanguage.co.uk/wordle/\">official Wordle game</a> — on the web — works splendidly as an app on iOS with Safari’s “Add to Home Screen” command in the share sheet. The only downside: web apps on the Home screen don’t share cookies with Safari itself, so if you have saved stats you’ll start over. <a href=\"#fnr3-2022-01-11\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 3 in the text.\">↩︎︎</a></p>\n</li>\n\n</ol>\n</div>\n\n\n\n "
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},
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{
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"title" : "★ The Algorithmic Ad Monster Cometh for Podcasts",
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"date_published" : "2022-01-07T02:00:42Z",
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"date_modified" : "2022-01-07T02:01:56Z",
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"id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2022/01/algorithmic_ad_monster_cometh_for_podcasts",
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"url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2022/01/algorithmic_ad_monster_cometh_for_podcasts",
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"authors" : [
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{
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"name" : "John Gruber"
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}
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],
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"content_html" : "\n<p>Ashley Carman at The Verge, “<a href=\"https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/4/22865034/podcast-programmatic-spotify-ad-network\">Podcasters Are Letting Software Pick Their Ads — It’s Already Going Awry</a>”:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>The podcast industry is working up to something big; you can see\nit in the acquisitions. All the industry’s major players have,\nover the past two years, acquired companies focused on one\nfeature: inserting ads into podcasts.</p>\n\n<p>Of course, podcasting has always primarily depended on ad revenue,\nso this incoming era has more to do with getting podcast ads to\nact like the online advertising we see everywhere else. Wherever\nthere’s a website, there can be a targeted ad, and now wherever\nthere’s a podcast, there’s the potential of inserting a targeted\nad, too. Whichever company can make that transition happen the\nfastest, across the most shows, and with the best data, could not\nonly recoup all those millions of dollars in acquisition costs but\nmake more on top of them.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Carman reports on a few cases of dynamic ads gone wrong — a podcast for kids that was served ads for “The Sex Lives of College Girls”, a science podcast that had explicitly opted out from ads for fossil fuel companies being served ads for Exxon and BP — but the whole idea is shit. Even when the “right” ads are dynamically inserted, the ads are inevitably going to be bad. We know how this story ends because we all use the web and can see with our own eyes the quality (and oppressive quantity) of “ad tech” advertising.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/marcoarment/status/1478545696475303941?s=12\">Marco Arment, on Twitter</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>Old-fashioned podcast ads (baked-in host reads) have had better\nCPMs, stronger response rates, and higher audience trust than\nalmost any other form of advertising for over a decade.</p>\n\n<p>And large podcast companies threw that world away for … a worse\noutcome.</p>\n\n<p>Big platforms and ad-tech companies ALWAYS sell us all on a dream.</p>\n\n<p>You’ll make more money!</p>\n\n<p>It’ll be easier!</p>\n\n<p>It’ll be more accessible to small producers!</p>\n\n<p>And it almost never pans out that way. The middlemen siphon off\nmost of the money, and the platforms become monopolies.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>Look no further than Carman’s own description of the trend: “getting podcast ads to act like the online advertising we see everywhere else”. I don’t know anyone who listens to podcasts — you know, the actual customers — who thinks that sounds like a good idea. There’s never been a form of advertising more despised than today’s online web advertising.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/kocienda/status/1478551040211369986\">Ken Kocienda, retweeting Arment</a>:</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n <p>If I ever get around to making a regular podcast, I would never\n(ever!) give up the right to choose every single ad. The ads are\npart of the product.</p>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p>“The ads are part of the product” succinctly sums up my thinking, and saves me from writing an extended rant. That’s the whole game, the entire reason not to even consider letting some biz-dev “ad tech” company insert ads dynamically into a podcast. The ads are part of the product. I’ve built the entire business model of Daring Fireball around that sentiment.</p>\n\n<hr />\n\n<p>On a related note, it’s long been fascinating to me that “RSS” is widely considered a failure — a half-forgotten technology that lost its relevance when Google pulled the plug on Google Reader — yet the entire podcast universe is built on RSS. Spotify is gaining some degree of traction with their platform-locked shows like Joe Rogan’s, but the overwhelming number of popular podcasts — including <a href=\"https:///dithering.fm/\">subscriber-only paid shows</a> — are delivered via open RSS feeds readable by any client software. All podcasts clients are, at their core, RSS clients — they’re just RSS clients for audio content, not the written word.</p>\n\n<p>The primary reason for this bifurcation, I’m convinced, is simple: most web publishers never figured out how to monetize full-content RSS feeds, by which I mean RSS feeds with the complete articles, not just excerpts. Putting only article excerpts in an RSS feed makes no more sense than putting only audio excerpts into a podcast feed. People who subscribe to a podcast want to listen to the entire shows; people who subscribe to a website’s RSS feed want to read the entire articles. Don’t overthink it. But without a model for advertising in RSS,<sup id=\"fnr1-2022-01-06\"><a href=\"#fn1-2022-01-06\">1</a></sup> most websites — particularly big websites from established media companies — stopped publishing RSS feeds. Podcasts avoided that fate because the sponsorship model, typically with hosts reading the ads, took root across the entire field. It’s a good model for everyone — the hosts earn money, the sponsors get strong response rates, and listeners get ads that are actually relevant to them and not annoying. (According to Apple Podcasts’s analytics, only about 20 percent of listeners to my show skip the ads.)</p>\n\n<p>Trying to move podcasts to web-like “industry standard advertising” is worse than violating the spirit of <em>If it ain’t broke don’t fix it</em> — this is breaking something that definitely works for something we know doesn’t. It’s grift on the part of the ad industry, pure and simple.</p>\n\n<div class=\"footnotes\">\n<hr />\n<ol>\n<li id=\"fn1-2022-01-06\">\n<p>Here’s where I’ve got to take a self-congratulatory footnote. Long ago I had a paid membership program for Daring Fireball, and one of the perks for paying members was a full-content RSS feed. The free-of-charge RSS feed only had article excerpts. The problem was that Google Reader didn’t work with personal RSS feeds, and Google Reader was — by far — the most popular RSS reader. Rather than dig in my heels, I pulled the plug on monetizing full-content RSS feeds through paid memberships, and instead made the full-content feed free for everyone, and tried monetizing it with a weekly sponsorship, where the sponsor got to post a paid entry to the feed. That worked. It’s now <a href=\"https://daringfireball.net/2007/07/regarding_df_feed\">14 years later</a>, and it still works. (I told a longer version of this story <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufKFStaFsZs\">in a talk at XOXO back in 2014</a>.) <a href=\"#fnr1-2022-01-06\" class=\"footnoteBackLink\" title=\"Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.\">↩︎</a></p>\n</li>\n</ol>\n</div>\n\n\n\n "
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}
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]
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}
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