Linked List: January 8, 2014

Wednesday, 8 January 2014

Matt Bai, writing for the NYT on George Yao, who spent six months as the world’s top-ranked player in Clash of Clans:

To grasp the extent of Mr. Yao’s immersion in the game, you have to understand a little more about the strategy of Clash. In order to keep your trophy count high, a premier player has to avoid being attacked by other top contenders. You can do this either by staying constantly online or by the protection of a “shield” that usually lasts for 12 hours. You automatically get a shield when an attacker destroys 40 percent of your village or your town hall. […]

In time, he found another, simpler way to shield himself. When a member of North 44 would quit the game, Mr. Yao would take over his account. Then Mr. Yao would use one of his multiple accounts to attack himself when he needed a shield. In order to pull this off, though, he had to keep all of these other accounts highly ranked, which meant playing as many as five accounts at the same time, around the clock. Another wealthy clan member in the United Arab Emirates bought Mr. Yao three iPads to make this feasible — but even then, it was feasible only in the technical sense. At one point, he was bringing five iPads into the shower with him, each wrapped in a plastic bag, so that none of his accounts would go inactive.

Yao is obviously an extreme case, but in-app purchases are driving game design more towards addiction and less towards fun.

The Markdown File Extension ★

My friend Jonathan Wight tweeted last night:

Really wish @gruber had designated a file extension when he invented Markdown.

https://gist.github.com/schwa/8311179

Too many extensions.

Too late now, I suppose, but the only file extension I would endorse is “.markdown”, for the same reason offered by Hilton Lipschitz:

We no longer live in a 8.3 world, so we should be using the most descriptive file extensions. It’s sad that all our operating systems rely on this stupid convention instead of the better creator code or a metadata model, but great that they now support longer file extensions.

(I personally use “.text” for my own files, and have BBEdit set to use Markdown syntax coloring for that extension, which is why I never saw a need to endorse an official extension.)

Kara Swisher: ‘Microsoft CEO Selection Unlikely to Come in January’ ★

Kara Swisher, writing for Recode:

Gates is a key player in the CEO search, despite the high profile of another director, John Thompson, who is heading the search process. “This is a Gates search, even though the board is very involved,” said one source with knowledge of the situation. “But nothing is going to happen without him, especially since he will be much more involved in the company going forward.”

If he’s going to be “much more involved”, Gates should just take the job himself. Otherwise, he should be much less involved, and let the new CEO run the company.

From the Department of Not-News ★

I’ve linked here to a synopsis at The Next Web; here’s what Jessica Lessin reported behind The Information paywall:

Apple appears to have run into some challenges with the screen technology, according to two people close to the company. Toward the end of last year, Apple considered going in a different direction with the screen due to some battery issues, one of these people said.

The company also halted advanced prototyping of some unknown pieces with one manufacturer late last year, according to an industry executive. That may not mean much. Apple spins manufacturers up and down all the time.

How is this news, other than the implicit confirmation that Apple is working on some sort of wearable device with a small screen? The real news would be if a totally new product from Apple didn’t push the envelope in terms of design, component technology, and manufacturing. That would be a sign of Apple coasting.

Oklahoma High School Student Suspended for Casting a Magic Spell ★

If she’s not a witch, she should prove it.

Update: This story is from 2000; in my defense, I didn’t start Daring Fireball until 2002, and I’m still working through my backlog of good links before that. Also: she lost the suit, and her story was turned into a Lifetime TV movie.