Linked List: November 2, 2015

Monday, 2 November 2015

Activision Buys King Digital, Maker of Candy Crush, for $5.9 Billion ★

They were only going to pay $1 billion, but then they got stuck on a couple of levels, bought some gold bars, and, well, here they are.

Philly Restaurant Inspections to Be Public ASAP ★

Sam Wood, reporting for The Philadelphia Inquirer:

The city Health Department, which has had a long-standing policy of keeping restaurant inspection reports secret for 30 days, announced Monday that it will move to publicly post the reports “as quickly as possible.”

The change follows an Inquirer/Philly.com report that found Philadelphia was the only major city in the United States to withhold its inspection results from the public for any significant length of time.

The 30-day delay meant that diners could unknowingly patronize restaurants cited for serious hygiene problems.

In late February, nearly 100 lawyers and law students became violently ill after attending a banquet at Joy Tsin Lau in Chinatown. Several were treated in local emergency rooms. Seventeen days before the banquet, the restaurant had been cited by the health department for five serious risk factors for food-borne illness, and was deemed to have “unacceptable public health or food-safety conditions.”

This policy change seems obvious when put in such stark terms, but to me it shows the power and importance of strong local newspapers (regardless of whether they’re printed on actual paper).

The Guardian Runs Piece on Apple Written by Mike Daisey ★

Here’s Daisey’s deep conclusion:

It is possible we will look back in a decade and know we couldn’t have seen that this was the moment of Peak Apple because it is always clearer in retrospect when something is past its peak.

Time will tell. It always does.

Brilliant.

But the serious problem is that The Guardian ran this piece (in the Tech section, not Opinion, no less) without any sort of note alluding to the fact that Mike Daisey is a known fabulist who completely made up stories about labor abuses in Apple’s Chinese supply chain.

Mike Daisey doesn’t have zero credibility regarding Apple — he has negative credibility. He’s a liar.

Shame on The Guardian.

ZDNet’s Apple TV Review ★

David Gewirtz’s review of the new Apple TV is rather scathing:

To be blunt, the new remote is terrible. Swiping isn’t nearly as accurate at lean-back distances and as a game controller, it’s mediocre at best. I found it very frustrating attempting to select items. Rubbing a finger (usually a thumb) across the trackpad surface invariably selected the wrong item or overshot what I was aiming for.

I completely disagree with this.

It’s very difficult to tell top from bottom on the remote. It’s almost entirely symmetrical, and the only difference is the top is less shiny, the surface you’re supposed to use as a touch surface. In the dark, I expect people will be pushing the wrong buttons and talking into the wrong end.

I completely agree with this.

Where is Safari? We have a touch screen remote, why not a browser? After all, even the Wii had a browser.

The Wii has a terrible browser that no one uses. It’s possible that Safari for Apple TV will come in a software update, but I think complaining about this is like complaining about the lack of a floppy drive on the original iMac, or that the iPhone needed Flash Player.

Google: ‘Chrome OS Is Here to Stay’ ★

Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google SVP for Android, Chrome OS, and Chromecast:

Over the last few days, there’s been some confusion about the future of Chrome OS and Chromebooks based on speculation that Chrome OS will be folded into Android. While we’ve been working on ways to bring together the best of both operating systems, there’s no plan to phase out Chrome OS.

Take that as you will, but to me it reads as a non-denial denial.

WSJ: ‘Google to Fold Chrome Operating System Into Android’ ★

Alistair Barr, reporting for the WSJ:

Google engineers have been working for roughly two years to combine the operating systems and have made progress recently, two of the people said. The company plans to unveil its new, single operating system in 2017, but expects to show off an early version next year, one of the people said.

I think this was inevitable. Android can (and does) run Chrome. Chrome can’t run Android. And the browser-based web is decreasing in importance.

Kansas City Royals Beat Mets to Win World Series ★

I watch a lot of baseball, including a lot of the postseason games this year. The Royals, to my eyes, deserved this. The best team won, and they did it with a great style — athletic, smart, aggressive — that was fun to watch.