Linked List: May 21, 2014

Wednesday, 21 May 2014

‘For Me, the Movies Are Like a Machine That Generates Empathy’ 

Trailer for director Steve James’s Life Itself, a documentary on the life and work of Roger Ebert. Can’t wait.

Arcade Story 

Steven Frank:

Like everyone else, I wasted a lot of my parents’ quarters playing Dragon’s Lair and lasting for about 2 minutes before losing all five lives. Fortunately, the local grocery store had a Dragon’s Lair cabinet, as well as a couple of other games, so I got many occasions to practice.

One day I was sitting in our apartment reading a video game magazine (nerd!), and in the back was a little section of classified ads. My eye was caught immediately by the words “Beat Space Ace and Dragon’s Lair!” For a few bucks, you could send away for this random guy’s strategy guide, which listed all the moves and when to make them.

Please realize there was no residential internet. We had a computer, but no modem. There was no just going to Google for an FAQ or walkthrough. If you didn’t know the moves, you just didn’t know them, unless you knew someone else who knew them, which of course you didn’t.

What a great story.

Just What Are ‘Tablets’? 

Timothy B. Lee, writing for Vox, says the Surface Pro 3 shows that Microsoft “doesn’t get the tablet revolution”:

But this makes as much sense as selling a digital camera that also takes film photographs. Anyone who needs the power of a PC can and should just buy a PC. The point of buying a tablet is that it’s cheaper, smaller, lighter, simpler, and more power-efficient than a traditional PC. Those advantages are only possible because tablets don’t try to be all things to all people.

I’ll take the devil’s advocate position here. I think Microsoft now fully understands what the iPad is and why it’s popular. What they’re saying with the Surface Pro 3 is that the tablet form factor isn’t necessarily only for iPad-style devices, but that it’s a good form factor for full-featured PCs as well.

This isn’t new to the Surface Pro 3 in particular — it’s been the point behind the Surface Pro all along. As Harry McCracken noted on Twitter, “Surface Pro 3 seems less like an iPad-era tablet, more like the Tablet PC which Microsoft couldn’t design in 2000.”

In other words, Microsoft’s point is less about Windows 8 vs. iOS, and more about the tablet vs. laptop form factor for full-featured PC users.

Dan Frommer on the Surface Pro 3 

Dan Frommer, writing for his new gig at Quartz:

The main problem is that this is still a Windows 8 machine, missing the elegance of Apple’s iOS, its touch-based app selection, and its accessory and media ecosystem. Really, Microsoft has just made a good argument for Apple to release a larger (and even thinner) iPad Pro sometime sooner than later — that actually sounds great.

Ads Everywhere 

Rolfe Winkler, reporting for the WSJ:

In a December letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which was disclosed Tuesday, the search giant said that it could be serving ads and other content on “refrigerators, car dashboards, thermostats, glasses, and watches, to name just a few possibilities.”

Google made the statement to help justify why it shouldn’t disclose revenue generated from mobile devices, a figure the SEC had requested and that companies like Facebook and Twitter both disclose. Google argued that it doesn’t make sense to break out mobile revenue since the definition of mobile will “continue to evolve” as more “smart” devices roll out.

“Our expectation is that users will be using our services and viewing our ads on an increasingly wide diversity of devices in the future,” the company said in the filing.

What a depressing, oppressive view of the future.

Disneyland’s Original 1953 Prospectus 

Nice find from Boing Boing.

eBay Accounts Compromised 

PayPal:

Later today, eBay Inc. will be asking all eBay users to change their passwords due to a cyber attack that compromised an eBay database containing encrypted eBay passwords and other non-financial information. eBay will notify its user base directly within the next 24 hours with more details.

Seems like weird phrasing, “later today”. Why wait?