Linked List: July 24, 2014

Thursday, 24 July 2014

Executions Should Be by Firing Squad, Federal Appeals Court Judge Says ★

The LA Times:

“Using drugs meant for individuals with medical needs to carry out executions is a misguided effort to mask the brutality of executions by making them look serene and beautiful — like something any one of us might experience in our final moments,” U.S. 9th Circuit Court Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote in a dissent in the Arizona death penalty case of Joseph Rudolph Wood III.

“But executions are, in fact, brutal, savage events, and nothing the state tries to do can mask that reality. Nor should we. If we as a society want to carry out executions, we should be willing to face the fact that the state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf.”

Agreed.

Josh Topolsky Leaving The Verge for Bloomberg ★

A lot of musical chairs being played in tech journalism lately.

‘But Even the Home Screen Is Confusing’ ★

David Pierce, reviewing the Amazon Fire Phone for The Verge:

You can’t even see the time without tilting your phone just so. An errant buzz is your only indication that you have a notification, prompting you to cock your wrist or swipe down from the top bezel to open the notification windowshade. None of this is explained, none of it is intuitive. Dynamic Perspective makes everything look cleaner, but makes actually using your phone a lot harder. I don’t need my phone to be clever, or spartan. I need it to be obvious. The Fire Phone is anything but.

Rough.

Related: Josh Topolsky:

My quick personal take on the Fire Phone: it is functionally and aesthetically awful.