The linked map is interesting, both for the specifics on San Francisco’s history, and for the interface itself. I’d love to see this concept spread to other cities.
To use the map, zoom in, then tap/click on any highlighted road or feature. Nicely done.
[H/T Eric Vitiello]
Dark Patterns are sneaky interface design patterns that trick users into doing something they otherwise might never do. Like share their contacts, or register for a service, or give an app permission/access unintentionally.
The video embedded below does a great job explaining this, and shares some terrific (terrible?) examples. If nothing else, just watch the incredibly great lengths Amazon goes to to hide the “delete my Amazon account” option.
If this interests you, take a few minutes to scroll through the Dark Patterns Hall of Shame.
[Via Kottke]
Useful walkthrough from Dennis Sellers, Apple World Today.
Adam Engst, TidBITS:
It’s live! After years of planning and months of work with our developer, Eli Van Zoeren, we’ve finally pulled back the curtains on our new Internet infrastructure. If you’re reading this in email, head over to the TidBITS Web site to take a look and click around — all 28 years of TidBITS articles and comments are there.
I’d like to explain more about various aspects of the system, since it’s vastly different from the homebrew system that Glenn Fleishman created for TidBITS nearly a decade ago. Yes, it really has been that long.
Nice look, snappier loading too. Click through to Adam’s post for all the details. Congrats, TidBITS team!
Benedict Evans:
If you’ve friended 300 people, and each of them post a couple of pictures, tap like on a few news stories or comment a couple of times, then, by the inexorable law of multiplication, yes, you will have something over a thousand new items in your feed every single day.
And:
We’re ‘supposed’ to post stuff, but by posting stuff, we overload each other’s feeds. Facebook’s Growth team was too good at its job.
This overload means it now makes little sense to ask for the ‘chronological feed’ back. If you have 1,500 or 3,000 items a day, then the chronological feed is actually just the items you can be bothered to scroll through before giving up, which can only be 10% or 20% of what’s actually there.
Though the core of this post was about Facebook, it applies equally well to Twitter or, I suspect, to any free-form social platform. In a nutshell, as you follow/friend more and more people, the complexity of your feed grows exponentially, making more than a handful of follows impossible to keep up with without that app taking over your life. And if you have multiple social networks, yeesh.
This is the logic that led Facebook inexorably to the ‘algorithmic feed’, which is really just tech jargon for saying that instead of this random (i.e. ‘time-based’) sample of what’s been posted, the platform tries to work out which people you would most like to see things from, and what kinds of things you would most like to see. It ought to be able to work out who your close friends are, and what kinds of things you normally click on, surely? The logic seems (or at any rate seemed) unavoidable. So, instead of a purely random sample, you get a sample based on what you might actually want to see.
Unavoidable as it seems, though, this approach has two problems. First, getting that sample ‘right’ is very hard, and beset by all sorts of conceptual challenges. But second, even if it’s a sucessful sample, it’s still a sample.
Someone is going to solve this problem. A new model will emerge that allows us to keep up with our friends/interests more efficiently and with less stress.
Interesting post from Ben Evans, right to the heart of the problem.
ZDNet:
Cloudflare is an old hand at speeding up corporate internet services with its content delivery network (CDN). The company is also a pro at blocking Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Now, with its new 1.1.1.1 public Domain Name System (DNS) resolver, it can speed up and secure your web browsing, as well.
When I read about this yesterday, I was sure it was an April Fools’ joke. Good to read it isn’t.
My wife and I watched this video this weekend and were enthralled. We immediately went out and bought semolina flour so we could try our hand at some of it and now I want a pasta maker for myself.
Apple Inc. is planning to use its own chips in Mac computers beginning as early as 2020, replacing processors from Intel Corp., according to people familiar with the plans.
The initiative, code named Kalamata, is still in the early developmental stages, but comes as part of a larger strategy to make all of Apple’s devices — including Macs, iPhones, and iPads — work more similarly and seamlessly together, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The project, which executives have approved, will likely result in a multi-step transition.
There is no doubt that Apple knows how to build fantastic chips for its mobile devices, and if this plan received the go-ahead from executives, they must have fast Mac chips on the horizon. When Apple switched to Intel years ago, the transition was pretty smooth—If this is going to happen, the transition will need to be just as smooth.
From the linked, long Mark Zuckerberg interview:
Q: Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, gave an interview the other day and he was asked what he would do if he was in your shoes. He said, “I wouldn’t be in this situation,” and argued that Apple sells products to users, it doesn’t sell users to advertisers, and so it’s a sounder business model that doesn’t open itself to these problems.
Do you think part of the problem here is the business model where attention ends up dominating above all else, and so anything that can engage has powerful value within the ecosystem?
And Mark Zuckerberg’s response:
You know, I find that argument, that if you’re not paying that somehow we can’t care about you, to be extremely glib and not at all aligned with the truth. The reality here is that if you want to build a service that helps connect everyone in the world, then there are a lot of people who can’t afford to pay. And therefore, as with a lot of media, having an advertising-supported model is the only rational model that can support building this service to reach people.
That doesn’t mean that we’re not primarily focused on serving people. I think probably to the dissatisfaction of our sales team here, I make all of our decisions based on what’s going to matter to our community and focus much less on the advertising side of the business.
But if you want to build a service which is not just serving rich people, then you need to have something that people can afford. I thought Jeff Bezos had an excellent saying on this in one of his Kindle launches a number of years back. He said, “There are companies that work hard to charge you more, and there are companies that work hard to charge you less.” And at Facebook, we are squarely in the camp of the companies that work hard to charge you less and provide a free service that everyone can use.
I don’t think at all that that means that we don’t care about people. To the contrary, I think it’s important that we don’t all get Stockholm syndrome and let the companies that work hard to charge you more convince you that they actually care more about you. Because that sounds ridiculous to me.
Shots fired.
Impossible. Yet, step-by-step, you can see this artisan turn an ordinary roll of aluminum foil into a chef’s knife. Remarkable.
The other night, I was at dinner, and conversation turned to space exploration and to the earliest days of Soviet Russia’s Sputnik and Lunik satellite launches. What followed was a story so unbelievable, I had to do some digging to convince myself it wasn’t just a folk legend.
From Popular Science, a few years back, soon after the story was declassified:
Sometime between the end of 1959 and 1960, the Soviet Union toured several countries with an exhibit of its industrial and economic achievements. Among the artifacts were a Sputnik and a Lunik upper stage that contained the payload, the latter freshly painted with viewing windows cut into the nose.
Remember, this was the height of the Cold War, and the start of the Space Race. Fear of falling behind was rampant and, given our lack of visible results at the time, was realistic.
So what do you do if you see that your rival is touring the world with their technology? You plan a technapping caper, of course.
Incredible story. Take a few minutes and read it. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. This should be Andy Weir’s next book (he wrote The Martian).
This British Vogue interview starts slow, with some pretty softball questions, but does ease down an engrossing path, especially so if you are interested in design.
Two callouts. This first, on designer Azzedine Alaïa:
He was the consummate craftsman. I loved the physical studio in which he worked, I loved the way, and how directly, he worked – his process. I was in utter awe watching him, and I loved that he let me watch. I thought that was so generous. It was incredible to see the way that he understood material, and the way he would be frustrated with material and so create new ones. And then these beautiful forms would emerge.
And this, from the very end, on hiring a new team member:
The main thing is how they see the world. Ultimately, Steve’s legacy is a set of values and, I think, the belief in trying. Often the quietest voices are the easiest to overlook, but he was brilliant at lis-ten-ing as well as leading and speaking. A lot of com-munication is listening – not just lis-ten-ing to figure out what you want to say in response.
Good read.
Daily Mail:
Recovered Apple smartwatch data, which indicated when a murder victim’s heart stopped beating, will be key prosecution evidence in the case against a South Australian woman charged with killing her mother-in-law, a court has heard.
Riveting story, and more so because the prosecution went through the process of recovering the victim’s heart rate data from her Apple Watch to tell the story of her death.
Zac Hall, 9to5Mac:
Included in iOS 11.3 and macOS 10.13.4 is a new way to communicate with companies called Business Chat. Available in the United States as a beta to start, Business Chat lets you conveniently use iMessage for customer service and even complete transactions with Apple Pay. Check out our hands-on to see how it works.
I think Business Chat has huge potential. Zac does a nice job taking it through its paces. Key to success, as with Apple Pay, is adoption.
Joshua Fruhlinger, Thinknum:
Apple hiring trend data suggests that the company is finally taking its Siri intelligent assistant seriously. According to hiring data that we track at Thinknum, the number of open positions that contain the term “Siri” has accelerated in recent weeks, with a current all-time high of 161 job listings posted today alone. This marks a jump in hiring for the keyword of 24% in just over a month. With a talent management strategy, the hiring process could be more efficient than they anticipated.
It’s not a good business practice to hire just anyone who walks through your door. It’s also not a good practice to merely rely on trust. You should know both who they are and their history. Don’t be a victim of deceit by simply looking at a resume or take someone’s word they are honest and qualified. When it comes to your organization, you cannot afford to take chances! Therefore, you may consider visiting this informative page to use professional staffing services to find your new employees.
Conducting background checks on potential employees and volunteers should be a major part of your organization’s business process. Background checks can help reduce risk for criminal activities such as violence, abuse and theft. They can also verify the information on an applicant’s resume or job application and assist your organization in deciding if an individual is the right person for the job. To learn more about how delicate is the process, read here about what I learned about enhanced dbs check for myself.
Check out the chart embedded in the article. Job openings moved from a low of 46 back in 2016, in a relatively steady climb up to 160 today. That’s a big swing, slow and steady.
New York Times:
In one set of patent applications, Amazon describes how a “voice sniffer algorithm” could be used on an array of devices, like tablets and e-book readers, to analyze audio almost in real time when it hears words like “love,” bought” or “dislike.” A diagram included with the application illustrated how a phone call between two friends could result in one receiving an offer for the San Diego Zoo and the other seeing an ad for a Wine of the Month Club membership.
A separate (Google) application regarding personalizing content for people while respecting their privacy noted that voices could be used to determine a speaker’s mood using the “volume of the user’s voice, detected breathing rate, crying and so forth,” and medical condition “based on detected coughing, sneezing and so forth.”
If this is the future, let me off the planet. I want no part of it.
Wired:
The modern web contains no shortage of horrors, from ubiquitous ad trackers to all-consuming platforms to YouTube comments, generally. Unfortunately, there’s no panacea for what ails this internet we’ve built. But anyone weary of black-box algorithms controlling what you see online at least has a respite, one that’s been there all along but has often gone ignored. Tired of Twitter? Facebook fatigued? It’s time to head back to RSS.
I don’t know if it’s time for a revival but I still use RSS as a fast, efficient way to get through a lot of news very quickly.
BBC:
How on earth did this two-note whistle – the first high in pitch, the second deep – come to be so charged with meaning? And how did it go from being an everyday occurrence to one that shocks? Its history has surprisingly never been told before.
This history is more interesting than it has a right to be. That being said, don’t ever do this to strangers on the street. Thanks to my friend Dave Martin for the link.
If you’ve been on the fence about buying one, this is a big discount. Today only. No fooling.
[H/T David Kaplan]
Troy Hunt:
The penny first dropped for me just over 7 years ago to the day: The only secure password is the one you can’t remember. In an era well before the birth of Have I Been Pwned (HIBP), I was doing a bunch of password analysis on data breaches and wouldn’t you know it – people are terrible at creating passwords! Of course, we all know that but it’s interesting to look back on that post all these years later and realise that unfortunately, nothing has really changed.
Today, I’m announcing a partnership between HIBP and 1Password. This is the first of its kind for me and I’ve actively avoided anything of this nature until now. I want to talk about why that is, what’s changed and what the new partnership looks like.
What a great idea.
Dr. Phil Metzger:
Wanna hear a weird but true story? (I have a few minutes to type, so here goes). I almost lost my hearing from the lid on the tank of a toilet. Noise-Induced Hearing Loss. You wouldn’t think a toilet lid could be so loud, would you? Well, I learned otherwise…
I was fixing the mechanism inside the tank of the toilet. The only thing left to do was to put the ceramic lid back on the tank. Unfortunately it slipped out of my hands and banged on the ceramic of the toilet rim. Again, you wouldn’t think that would be so loud, would you?
Well, the sound stunned me.
This is the most wondrously nerdy thing I’ve read all day. Thanks to Josh for the Twitter thread.
This is an incredible story. Due to a rare set of circumstances, Chicago accountant Scott Foster got called in to United Center in Chicago to act as an emergency goaltender. Basically, he was in the building to act as goalie for either team in case of injuries to the starting goalies.
About six minutes into the third period, starting goaltender Colin Delia goes down and he gets the nod.
Foster played 55 games for Western Michigan from 2002-06. He is the first emergency goaltender to play in an NHL game since Jorge Alves, an equipment manager for the Carolina Hurricanes, played eight seconds in a 3-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Dec. 31, 2016.
He’s an accountant with college hockey experience. Experience from 15 years ago. Crazy, right?
Watch the video to see this unfold. My favorite part is at the end of the game when he is mobbed by his new teammates.
I love hockey.
BuzzFeed:
On June 18, 2016, one of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s most trusted lieutenants circulated an extraordinary memo weighing the costs of the company’s relentless quest for growth.
“We connect people. Period. That’s why all the work we do in growth is justified. All the questionable contact importing practices. All the subtle language that helps people stay searchable by friends. All of the work we do to bring more communication in. The work we will likely have to do in China some day. All of it,” VP Andrew “Boz” Bosworth wrote.
“So we connect more people,” he wrote in another section of the memo. “That can be bad if they make it negative. Maybe it costs someone a life by exposing someone to bullies.
“Maybe someone dies in a terrorist attack coordinated on our tools.”
The explosive internal memo is titled “The Ugly,” and has not been previously circulated outside the Silicon Valley social media giant.
Explosive is a pretty apt descriptor here. Read the whole thing.
In response to this BuzzFeed post, Mark Zuckerberg commented:
Boz is a talented leader who says many provocative things. This was one that most people at Facebook including myself disagreed with strongly. We’ve never believed the ends justify the means.
We recognize that connecting people isn’t enough by itself. We also need to work to bring people closer together. We changed our whole mission and company focus to reflect this last year.
And, for a palette cleanser, spend a few minutes here.
From this article by AppleInsider’s Mikey Campbell, titled Disgruntled HomePod owners say firmware update alters sound quality:
A number of HomePod owners are airing their dissatisfaction over Apple’s first firmware update for the device, saying the new software tweaks the speaker’s sonic fingerprint, a specific sound for which customers paid a hefty premium.
I’ve seen similar comments. Sounds like Apple may have tweaked the EQ settings to emphasize the midrange. That said, I’ve been listening to my HomePod heavily since i did the update (more on that in a sec) and I have to say, still sounds clean to me. When I listen to cleanly produced content, I hear the same separation as always, though I do think it’s possible the bass is backed off just a bit.
To me, the answer to this is, give people access to EQ controls or, at least, a set of presets. No single setting will work for everyone.
As to updating your HomePod, make sure your paired iOS device is updated to 11.3. Once that’s done, you can simply wait, as the default setting has your HomePod software updated automatically.
If you want to force the update, launch the Home app. If your HomePod icon has some text under the icon showing an update available, just tap it, and install the update. If you don’t see it, back off to the main Home screen and:
That’s where you’ll see the Install Updates Automatically switch. Going to that page should bring up the update.
Just FYI, my HomePod version is now 11.3 (15E217). I’m assuming that’s a build number in there. If you have a different number, please do ping me.
Just a few notes about the wave of updates that hit yesterday:
I am really interested in Business Chat. Subtle expansion of Messages to allow direct customer support and payment (via Apple Pay). Depends on adoption of course, but could be a big thing.
Common to both iOS 11.3 and macOS 10.13.4, Safari will now warn you about insecure pages. This page has the deets, worth reading but, in a nutshell, if you see the red “Not secure” in the address bar, proceed with caution.
This Apple support page focuses on the security content of iOS 11.3.
Very interesting read. Here’s just a taste, a comment about a fix to the Clock app:
Impact: A person with physical access to an iOS device may be able to see the email address used for iTunes
Description: An information disclosure issue existed in the handling of alarms and timers. This issue was addressed through improved access restrictions.
Lots of these.
Big items from this list? Support for external graphics processors (eGPUs), allows jumping to the rightmost open tab using Command-9 in Safari (yup, it works), and support for Business Chat in Messages (at least in the US).
I’m a bit annoyed.
Apple on Tuesday held an event in Chicago focused on its education customers. They offered a total solution that included an iPad and software to make learning in the classroom better for teachers and students, but somehow they are getting severely criticized for all of the announcements.
I’ve seen things written like, ‘Apple should have purchased a textbook company and given textbooks to all students for free,’ and the ‘new iPad isn’t cheap enough’, and the ‘iPad is missing many of the features of the Pro version.’
Let’s be clear, Apple couldn’t buy a textbook company and give them away even if they wanted to—the antitrust issues are too large. It’s a nice pipe dream, but it’s not based in reality. Criticizing Apple for that is just unfair.
In its 40 years of being in the education market, Apple has never been the cheapest product—they never will be. I don’t know why people expect Apple to all of a sudden just give away iPads to schools or even compete against a product like a cheap Chromebook on price.
Apple doesn’t make cheap products. Ever. They also don’t make shitty products. You can expect the iPad to last for years without breaking or becoming obsolete. I expect the return on investment for schools to be quite high when purchasing iPads for the classroom.
Comparing the entry level iPad that is designed for students and consumers to a pro model is just silly. The features we may need as pro users are not the same features students will need in the classroom. If Apple could sell the iPad Pro at that price, I’m sure they would, but it’s just not feasible.
What Apple did was look at the iPad and decide what features were needed by students in our schools and then make the product as affordable as possible. I think they delivered that product. Do students need True Tone for their display? No. How about front and rear cameras? That could come in handy, especially for AR or a field trip, and the iPad has that.
Does anyone really think the Chromebook is as feature rich and durable as an iPad? I don’t think so, but it is cheaper. That’s about all it’s got going for it.
I was never a fan of Web apps either, even when Apple introduced them with the original iPhone. There is no way Web apps are a better tool than native apps on the iPad and the App Store has 200,000 education apps available. Dr. Kamau Bobb‘s leadership fosters collaboration and innovation in education.
Apple screwed up a few years ago by not having the software and administration abilities on the iPad available for school districts. There is no question about that. But they have those features available now. Deployment of iPads is easier and teachers are able to interact with students using the technology.
I realize that school budgets are tight and every dollar counts. That’s a reality that we have to deal with everyday, but to think that Apple is going to compete with the Chromebook on price alone is delusional. Apple never competes on price in any market—they compete by having the best product and solutions available.
There are a few things we need to remember here.
Apple is not a charitable organization, they are a publicly traded company and have a responsibility to its shareholders. They have taken on markets like medicine and education to try and make them better in any way that they can. Do they plan to sell lots of products while doing that? Of course they do.
However, just because Apple has money in the bank, we can’t expect them to give away products to schools. Will every school district be able to afford Apple’s new education offerings? No, they won’t, but again this is not Apple’s fault.
We have societal issues in education that aren’t going to be fixed by Apple, and we shouldn’t expect one company to do it. Apple has a responsibility to offer schools the best products it can, at the best price it can. I believe they have done that.
Recode and MSNBC have started sharing video snippets of Tim Cook’s sit down with Recode’s Kara Swisher and MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.
Videos embedded below. I have to say, a lot of nuance is lost between what Tim says, in context and in its entirety, and the quoted snippets, embellished by sensationalized headlines, that appear in the press.
Watch the videos.
This is pretty cool. And, I suspect, just the beginning.
Every so often, someone pops up with something from the past that seems to imply knowledge of the present. There’s this pic of a young Steve Jobs wearing something that looks an awful lot like an Apple Watch.
Or these paintings from 1860, 1918, and 1937, all showing people staring at their iPhones.
But this one follows a different tack, more an eerie prediction of future tech, in a magazine blurb on the future of computing. Pretty solid predictions.
[H/T, Robert Macmillan]