daring-rss

Eric Lee on Threads:

I was wondering why I haven’t seen websites utilizing Vibration
API when I see more and more apps using it including Arc Search
and AirChat. Safari doesn’t even support it so there it goes 🫠

This exemplifies the broken thinking among many web developers and PWA advocates regarding Safari and WebKit. Just because an API exists and some browsers support it does not mean all browsers should support it. I never ever want a website to be able to vibrate my device. Ever. Nor do I want websites to be able to prompt me with an alert asking for permission to vibrate my device. Not supporting the Vibration API is a feature, not an omission.

If you want web apps to have the same full range of capabilities as native apps, iOS is not the platform for you. PWA advocates treat it as axiomatic that web apps should be peers to native apps, but that’s not true for everyone. I think of native apps as software I carefully consider before installing, even from the App Store. I think of websites and web apps as software I will visit/run without consideration, because they’re so comparatively restricted.

 ★ 

Eric Lee on Threads:

I was wondering why I haven’t seen websites utilizing Vibration
API when I see more and more apps using it including Arc Search
and AirChat. Safari doesn’t even support it so there it goes 🫠

This exemplifies the broken thinking among many web developers and PWA advocates regarding Safari and WebKit. Just because an API exists and some browsers support it does not mean all browsers should support it. I never ever want a website to be able to vibrate my device. Ever. Nor do I want websites to be able to prompt me with an alert asking for permission to vibrate my device. Not supporting the Vibration API is a feature, not an omission.

If you want web apps to have the same full range of capabilities as native apps, iOS is not the platform for you. PWA advocates treat it as axiomatic that web apps should be peers to native apps, but that’s not true for everyone. I think of native apps as software I carefully consider before installing, even from the App Store. I think of websites and web apps as software I will visit/run without consideration, because they’re so comparatively restricted.

Read More 

Bryan Hoch, MLB.com:

The Yankees announced on Monday that Sterling has retired,
effective immediately. The 85-year-old Sterling will be
recognized in a pregame ceremony on Saturday at Yankee Stadium.
He will visit the WFAN radio booth during that afternoon’s game
against the Rays.

“I am a very blessed human being,” Sterling said in a statement.
“I have been able to do what I wanted, broadcasting for 64 years.
As a little boy growing up in New York as a Yankees fan, I was
able to broadcast the Yankees for 36 years. It’s all to my
benefit, and I leave very, very happy. I look forward to seeing
everyone again on Saturday.” […]

Known for his gyrating “Sterling Shake” victory call (“Yankees win
… theeeeee Yankees win!”), humorous phrases tacked onto
play-by-play action (“Back to back, and a belly to belly!”) and
personalized home run calls (“Bern Baby Bern!”), Sterling called
5,060 consecutive games from September 1989 to July 2019 — every
at-bat of Derek Jeter’s career, every inning of Mariano Rivera’s
and more.

The story includes a slew of his all-time great calls; more here on Twitter/X. There’s something different about radio announcing from TV announcing. Some guys can do both. But there was something ineffably radio about Sterling. I will always think of stadium announcer Bob Shephard as “the voice of the Yankees”, but John Sterling was the voice of Yankee fans. He just unabashedly loved the team, and was ecstatic for every win, and crushed with every loss.

And think about this: He called over 5,400 Yankee games over 36 years. He’s legitimately considered a living legend for it. But he didn’t get the job until he was 49 years old.

 ★ 

Bryan Hoch, MLB.com:

The Yankees announced on Monday that Sterling has retired,
effective immediately. The 85-year-old Sterling will be
recognized in a pregame ceremony on Saturday at Yankee Stadium.
He will visit the WFAN radio booth during that afternoon’s game
against the Rays.

“I am a very blessed human being,” Sterling said in a statement.
“I have been able to do what I wanted, broadcasting for 64 years.
As a little boy growing up in New York as a Yankees fan, I was
able to broadcast the Yankees for 36 years. It’s all to my
benefit, and I leave very, very happy. I look forward to seeing
everyone again on Saturday.” […]

Known for his gyrating “Sterling Shake” victory call (“Yankees win
… theeeeee Yankees win!”), humorous phrases tacked onto
play-by-play action (“Back to back, and a belly to belly!”) and
personalized home run calls (“Bern Baby Bern!”), Sterling called
5,060 consecutive games from September 1989 to July 2019 — every
at-bat of Derek Jeter’s career, every inning of Mariano Rivera’s
and more.

The story includes a slew of his all-time great calls; more here on Twitter/X. There’s something different about radio announcing from TV announcing. Some guys can do both. But there was something ineffably radio about Sterling. I will always think of stadium announcer Bob Shephard as “the voice of the Yankees”, but John Sterling was the voice of Yankee fans. He just unabashedly loved the team, and was ecstatic for every win, and crushed with every loss.

And think about this: He called over 5,400 Yankee games over 36 years. He’s legitimately considered a living legend for it. But he didn’t get the job until he was 49 years old.

Read More 

Mike Swanson:

If you’ve read my first post about Spatial Video, the
second about Encoding Spatial Video, or if you’ve used my
command-line tool, you may recall a mention of Apple’s
mysterious “fisheye” projection format. Mysterious because they’ve
documented a CMProjectionType.fisheye enumeration with no
elaboration, they stream their immersive Apple TV+ videos in this
format, yet they’ve provided no method to produce or playback
third-party content using this projection type.

Additionally, the format is undocumented, they haven’t responded
to an open question on the Apple Discussion Forums asking
for more detail, and they didn’t cover it in their WWDC23
sessions. As someone who has experience in this area — and a
relentless curiosity — I’ve spent time digging-in to Apple’s
fisheye projection format, and this post shares what I’ve learned.

Fascinating deep dive.

 ★ 

Mike Swanson:

If you’ve read my first post about Spatial Video, the
second about Encoding Spatial Video, or if you’ve used my
command-line tool, you may recall a mention of Apple’s
mysterious “fisheye” projection format. Mysterious because they’ve
documented a CMProjectionType.fisheye enumeration with no
elaboration, they stream their immersive Apple TV+ videos in this
format, yet they’ve provided no method to produce or playback
third-party content using this projection type.

Additionally, the format is undocumented, they haven’t responded
to an open question on the Apple Discussion Forums asking
for more detail, and they didn’t cover it in their WWDC23
sessions. As someone who has experience in this area — and a
relentless curiosity — I’ve spent time digging-in to Apple’s
fisheye projection format, and this post shares what I’ve learned.

Fascinating deep dive.

Read More 

Struck me as deeply weird that Time would give an award to a product that was, at the time of publication, over five months away from actually shipping. But in this case the footnote seemingly explains it:

* (Investors in Humane include Time co-chairs and owners Marc and Lynne Benioff)

 ★ 

Struck me as deeply weird that Time would give an award to a product that was, at the time of publication, over five months away from actually shipping. But in this case the footnote seemingly explains it:

* (Investors in Humane include Time co-chairs and owners Marc and Lynne Benioff)

Read More 

Alexandra Sternlicht, reporting for Fortune (News+):

Evan Turner, who worked at TikTok as a senior data scientist from
April to September in 2022, said TikTok concealed the involvement
of its Chinese owner during his employment. When hired, Turner
initially reported to a ByteDance executive in Beijing. But later
that year, after the company announced a major initiative to store
TikTok’s U.S. user data only in the U.S., Turner was reassigned — on paper, at least — to an American manager in Seattle, he says.
But Turner says a human resources representative revealed during a
video conference call that he would, in reality, continue to work
with the ByteDance executive. The stealth chain of command
contradicted what TikTok’s executives had said about the company’s
independence from ByteDance, Turner says. […]

Nearly every 14 days, as part of Turner’s job throughout 2022, he
emailed spreadsheets filled with data for hundreds of thousands of
U.S. users to ByteDance workers in Beijing. That data included
names, email addresses, IP addresses, and geographic and
demographic information of TikTok U.S. users, he says. The goal
was to sift through the information to mine for insights like the
geographical regions where users watched the most videos of a
particular genre and decide how the company should invest to
encourage users to be more active. It all took place after the
company had started its initiative to keep sensitive U.S. user
data in the U.S., and only available to U.S. workers.

“I literally worked on a project that gave U.S. data to China,”
Turner says. “They were completely complicit in that. There were
Americans that were working in upper management that were
completely complicit in this.”

Packy McCormick:

It’s astonishing that we don’t have the political will to simply ban TikTok.

 ★ 

Alexandra Sternlicht, reporting for Fortune (News+):

Evan Turner, who worked at TikTok as a senior data scientist from
April to September in 2022, said TikTok concealed the involvement
of its Chinese owner during his employment. When hired, Turner
initially reported to a ByteDance executive in Beijing. But later
that year, after the company announced a major initiative to store
TikTok’s U.S. user data only in the U.S., Turner was reassigned — on paper, at least — to an American manager in Seattle, he says.
But Turner says a human resources representative revealed during a
video conference call that he would, in reality, continue to work
with the ByteDance executive. The stealth chain of command
contradicted what TikTok’s executives had said about the company’s
independence from ByteDance, Turner says. […]

Nearly every 14 days, as part of Turner’s job throughout 2022, he
emailed spreadsheets filled with data for hundreds of thousands of
U.S. users to ByteDance workers in Beijing. That data included
names, email addresses, IP addresses, and geographic and
demographic information of TikTok U.S. users, he says. The goal
was to sift through the information to mine for insights like the
geographical regions where users watched the most videos of a
particular genre and decide how the company should invest to
encourage users to be more active. It all took place after the
company had started its initiative to keep sensitive U.S. user
data in the U.S., and only available to U.S. workers.

“I literally worked on a project that gave U.S. data to China,”
Turner says. “They were completely complicit in that. There were
Americans that were working in upper management that were
completely complicit in this.”

Packy McCormick:

It’s astonishing that we don’t have the political will to simply ban TikTok.

Read More 

My thanks to Pok Pok for sponsoring last week at DF. Pok Pok is a delightful collection of digital toys for kids aged 2–7, for both iPhone and iPad. Designed by parents and educators unhappy with the apps they found, Pok Pok has no ads, no overstimulating sounds, and no addictive gimmicks to get kids hooked. It’s just fun. Each toy is playful and open, letting kids explore and discover at their own pace. Existing toys are expanded and new ones are added regularly to keep play fresh.

Pok Pok has won both an Apple Design Award and an App Store Award for Cultural Impact just last year. Beautiful graphics, fun sound design, and great haptics. Try Pok Pok for free — you and your kid(s) will love it.

 ★ 

My thanks to Pok Pok for sponsoring last week at DF. Pok Pok is a delightful collection of digital toys for kids aged 2–7, for both iPhone and iPad. Designed by parents and educators unhappy with the apps they found, Pok Pok has no ads, no overstimulating sounds, and no addictive gimmicks to get kids hooked. It’s just fun. Each toy is playful and open, letting kids explore and discover at their own pace. Existing toys are expanded and new ones are added regularly to keep play fresh.

Pok Pok has won both an Apple Design Award and an App Store Award for Cultural Impact just last year. Beautiful graphics, fun sound design, and great haptics. Try Pok Pok for free — you and your kid(s) will love it.

Read More 

It’s Sunday at Augusta, the leaderboard is tight at the top, and Augusta National has a pretty damn good VisionOS apps. Some cool VR features like tabletop-style VR maps of the holes, with 3D shot-tracking. All free of charge, too, from one of the only major sporting events in the entire world with a restrained approach to advertising and sponsorships.

 ★ 

It’s Sunday at Augusta, the leaderboard is tight at the top, and Augusta National has a pretty damn good VisionOS apps. Some cool VR features like tabletop-style VR maps of the holes, with 3D shot-tracking. All free of charge, too, from one of the only major sporting events in the entire world with a restrained approach to advertising and sponsorships.

Read More 

Eric Migicovsky (on a different subject), in a post on Twitter/X:

Aspiring consumer HW makers (big and small) – this may sound
obvious, but my rec is to underpromise/overdeliver for your first
version. It’s hard because you want to balance sharing the vision
for what the product category will become, but get customers
adjusted to the reality that you need to ship what’s most likely
an MVP for your first version.

Big or small, old or new — or even hardware or software. It’s always true: underpromising and overdelivering is always the path to delight, but also always devilishly difficult to pull off. That’s the game. The subtext for Migicovsky’s tweet is obviously Humane, whose AI Pin clearly overpromises and underdelivers. Migicovsky links to Nilay Patel’s 2013 review of the original Pebble Smartwatch, which concludes:

After using the Pebble for a few days, I realized that I was
daydreaming about it: I wanted it to do more. That’s unusual — I
rarely trust new products to work correctly, especially new
products from unproven companies. But the Pebble’s charming
simplicity and fundamental competence inspires confidence. It’s so
good at what it does now that it’s easy to imagine all other
things it might do in the future. There’s no reason it can’t
replace a Fitbit or Nike Fuelband, for example, and I’d love to be
able to send replies to emails and text directly from the device.

Pebble obviously didn’t make it, but that’s the sort of 1.0 review you want to see: It’s good at what it already does and I can see how it could do more in the future. The one and only review of the Humane AI Pin that expresses a sentiment like that is Raymond Wong’s for Inverse.

Sidenote: Andru Edwards on Threads:

The fact that people on @hu.ma.ne’s PR team keep leaving, and
those who take over are unresponsive has been making the planning
of this sit-down interview with them that I’ve been working on for
a few months, a challenge to say the least. Just sent another
follow-up 😅🤞🏽

It’s generally considered a bad sign when a company experiences large-scale turnover in their PR/comms teams right around the launch of the company’s first product.

 ★ 

Eric Migicovsky (on a different subject), in a post on Twitter/X:

Aspiring consumer HW makers (big and small) – this may sound
obvious, but my rec is to underpromise/overdeliver for your first
version. It’s hard because you want to balance sharing the vision
for what the product category will become, but get customers
adjusted to the reality that you need to ship what’s most likely
an MVP for your first version.

Big or small, old or new — or even hardware or software. It’s always true: underpromising and overdelivering is always the path to delight, but also always devilishly difficult to pull off. That’s the game. The subtext for Migicovsky’s tweet is obviously Humane, whose AI Pin clearly overpromises and underdelivers. Migicovsky links to Nilay Patel’s 2013 review of the original Pebble Smartwatch, which concludes:

After using the Pebble for a few days, I realized that I was
daydreaming about it: I wanted it to do more. That’s unusual — I
rarely trust new products to work correctly, especially new
products from unproven companies. But the Pebble’s charming
simplicity and fundamental competence inspires confidence. It’s so
good at what it does now that it’s easy to imagine all other
things it might do in the future. There’s no reason it can’t
replace a Fitbit or Nike Fuelband, for example, and I’d love to be
able to send replies to emails and text directly from the device.

Pebble obviously didn’t make it, but that’s the sort of 1.0 review you want to see: It’s good at what it already does and I can see how it could do more in the future. The one and only review of the Humane AI Pin that expresses a sentiment like that is Raymond Wong’s for Inverse.

Sidenote: Andru Edwards on Threads:

The fact that people on @hu.ma.ne’s PR team keep leaving, and
those who take over are unresponsive has been making the planning
of this sit-down interview with them that I’ve been working on for
a few months, a challenge to say the least. Just sent another
follow-up 😅🤞🏽

It’s generally considered a bad sign when a company experiences large-scale turnover in their PR/comms teams right around the launch of the company’s first product.

Read More 

Week-old news I’d been meaning to link to:

In a new interview with Khan that aired late Monday on Comedy Central, Stewart claimed Apple leaned on him to avoid talking to Khan, who took over as head of the FTC in 2021.

“I wanted to have you on a podcast, and Apple asked us not to do it,” Stewart said. He continued: “They literally said, ‘Please don’t talk to her,’ having nothing to do with what you do for a living. I think they just … I didn’t think they cared for you, is what happened.”

Stewart had a brief stint on Apple TV from 2021 to 2023 with a show called “The Problem With Jon Stewart,” which had an accompanying podcast. The partnership ended over creative differences last fall. Stewart returned to Comedy Central as a part-time “Daily Show” host in February.

The thing I don’t understand about this is why Apple ever hired Stewart to do that show, or why Stewart agreed to do that show with Apple. Based on, you know, the entire body of Stewart’s work, it’s obvious that Lina Khan is exactly the sort of person he’d want to interview. It’s not like something changed. My only guess is that the part of Apple that agreed to host The Problem With Jon Stewart didn’t get buy-in from the top of the company. But I find that hard to believe. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s like hiring Martha Stewart to do a show and then asking her not to do any cooking segments.

Personally, I think Apple should put its big boy pants on and gladly host a topical news show that is free to criticize the company or the technology industry as a whole. John Oliver regularly skewered then-HBO owner AT&T and now skewers new owner Warner Bros. Discovery on Last Week Tonight. It’s an age-old tradition. Letterman lambasting NBC execs. Or the time Letterman tried to deliver a welcoming fruit basket to GE headquarters after they bought NBC (stay with that one through the end to learn the official General Electric corporate handshake).

But the real problem with The Problem With Jon Stewart was that the show stunk and no one watched it. I’m a big Jon Stewart fan and watch a bunch of shows in the same basic genre (I never miss Last Week Tonight and most weeks we watch Bill Maher’s Real Time). And now I’m once again enjoying Stewart in his Monday spot hosting The Daily Show. But The Problem With Jon Stewart just wasn’t good. Now, thanks to this outed dirty laundry about a conflict with Apple over political subject matter, there are people who think that’s the sole reason why the show was cancelled. That surely played a part. But the main reason is almost certainly that the ratings stunk. What’s weird about the streaming era of TV is that streaming services are incredibly secretive about ratings — that’s the complete opposite of over-the-air TV and theatrical box office numbers for movies, where viewership numbers were public. If the viewership numbers for The Problem With Jon Stewart had been public, everyone would’ve surmised that Apple cancelled the show because it wasn’t popular, not because he wanted to interview Lina Khan (on the podcast even — not the show itself!) or express misgivings about the tech industry.

It’s just a real head-scratcher why Apple ever wanted to host the show in the first place. Even if it had been entertaining and thus popular, it seems clear Apple wasn’t comfortable with Jon Stewart talking about Jon Stewart topics.

 ★ 

Week-old news I’d been meaning to link to:

In a new interview with Khan that aired late Monday on Comedy Central, Stewart claimed Apple leaned on him to avoid talking to Khan, who took over as head of the FTC in 2021.

“I wanted to have you on a podcast, and Apple asked us not to do it,” Stewart said. He continued: “They literally said, ‘Please don’t talk to her,’ having nothing to do with what you do for a living. I think they just … I didn’t think they cared for you, is what happened.”

Stewart had a brief stint on Apple TV from 2021 to 2023 with a show called “The Problem With Jon Stewart,” which had an accompanying podcast. The partnership ended over creative differences last fall. Stewart returned to Comedy Central as a part-time “Daily Show” host in February.

The thing I don’t understand about this is why Apple ever hired Stewart to do that show, or why Stewart agreed to do that show with Apple. Based on, you know, the entire body of Stewart’s work, it’s obvious that Lina Khan is exactly the sort of person he’d want to interview. It’s not like something changed. My only guess is that the part of Apple that agreed to host The Problem With Jon Stewart didn’t get buy-in from the top of the company. But I find that hard to believe. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s like hiring Martha Stewart to do a show and then asking her not to do any cooking segments.

Personally, I think Apple should put its big boy pants on and gladly host a topical news show that is free to criticize the company or the technology industry as a whole. John Oliver regularly skewered then-HBO owner AT&T and now skewers new owner Warner Bros. Discovery on Last Week Tonight. It’s an age-old tradition. Letterman lambasting NBC execs. Or the time Letterman tried to deliver a welcoming fruit basket to GE headquarters after they bought NBC (stay with that one through the end to learn the official General Electric corporate handshake).

But the real problem with The Problem With Jon Stewart was that the show stunk and no one watched it. I’m a big Jon Stewart fan and watch a bunch of shows in the same basic genre (I never miss Last Week Tonight and most weeks we watch Bill Maher’s Real Time). And now I’m once again enjoying Stewart in his Monday spot hosting The Daily Show. But The Problem With Jon Stewart just wasn’t good. Now, thanks to this outed dirty laundry about a conflict with Apple over political subject matter, there are people who think that’s the sole reason why the show was cancelled. That surely played a part. But the main reason is almost certainly that the ratings stunk. What’s weird about the streaming era of TV is that streaming services are incredibly secretive about ratings — that’s the complete opposite of over-the-air TV and theatrical box office numbers for movies, where viewership numbers were public. If the viewership numbers for The Problem With Jon Stewart had been public, everyone would’ve surmised that Apple cancelled the show because it wasn’t popular, not because he wanted to interview Lina Khan (on the podcast even — not the show itself!) or express misgivings about the tech industry.

It’s just a real head-scratcher why Apple ever wanted to host the show in the first place. Even if it had been entertaining and thus popular, it seems clear Apple wasn’t comfortable with Jon Stewart talking about Jon Stewart topics.

Read More 

Josh Marshall, writing at Talking Points Memo:

Together, Israel, the U.S. and various allied Arab states took down 99% or more of all those devices. Iran launched a massive aerial bombardment and virtually none of it got through. And now the U.S. has managed to get Israel not to launch an immediate and inevitably escalatory retaliation.

It goes without saying that no administration works on its own. It comes to the game with the world’s most powerful military and major power status. It’s operating with Arab allies who have been gravitating toward a de facto anti-Iran alliance with Israel for years. And yet, anyone who knows anything about foreign or defense policy knows that most of it is all the endless number of things that can wrong and the one or two ways they can go right. Navigating the last week to this point today is a tour de force of international crisis management for the Biden White House.

See also: Marshall’s previous post, regarding Iran’s intentions for yesterday’s attack. I’m with him. My first thought was that Iran’s attack was performative, a stunt. But the more we learn the more it looks like Iran really tried to hit Israel hard — and, thankfully, were stopped.

 ★ 

Josh Marshall, writing at Talking Points Memo:

Together, Israel, the U.S. and various allied Arab states took down 99% or more of all those devices. Iran launched a massive aerial bombardment and virtually none of it got through. And now the U.S. has managed to get Israel not to launch an immediate and inevitably escalatory retaliation.

It goes without saying that no administration works on its own. It comes to the game with the world’s most powerful military and major power status. It’s operating with Arab allies who have been gravitating toward a de facto anti-Iran alliance with Israel for years. And yet, anyone who knows anything about foreign or defense policy knows that most of it is all the endless number of things that can wrong and the one or two ways they can go right. Navigating the last week to this point today is a tour de force of international crisis management for the Biden White House.

See also: Marshall’s previous post, regarding Iran’s intentions for yesterday’s attack. I’m with him. My first thought was that Iran’s attack was performative, a stunt. But the more we learn the more it looks like Iran really tried to hit Israel hard — and, thankfully, were stopped.

Read More