Linked List: January 13, 2016

Wednesday, 13 January 2016

The Talk Show: ‘They Sherlocked F.lux’ ★

Special guest Dan Frommer returns to the show to deliver his first-hand report from last week’s CES in Las Vegas. Other topics include Periscope, Peach, why Apple never participated at CES, El Chapo’s re-capture, iOS 9.3, Apple Watch, Apple’s finances (and stock price), and self-driving cars.

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Tech Journalists Tweeted About a Fitness Tracker to Win a $5430 Vacation Voucher ★

Kate Knibbs, writing for Gizmodo:

Some journalists attending CES earlier this month received a pitch from TomTom offering vacation vouchers in exchange for social media coverage — and a disappointing if not entirely surprising number of reporters went for it.

Journalists who tweeted images of their step counts were eligible to receive vouchers worth 5000 Euros (approximately $5430 USD) in exchange for the coverage. TomTom asked them to tweet about how far they walked while using a complimentary Spark. The journalists who tweeted the highest numbers of steps would receive the vouchers, according to emails provided to Gizmodo.

I don’t think this is as cut-and-dried a case of improper behavior as some are making it out to be. They weren’t writing articles about TomTom — they were tweeting from their personal accounts. The tweets themselves made it kind of obvious that they were involved in some sort of contest, too.

That said, I certainly wouldn’t have done it. It’s undignified.

Google I/O Conference Moves to Mountain View ★

Sundar Pichai:

I/O ‘16 coming to neighborhood where it all started 10 yrs ago: Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, May 18-20. More details soon.

That’s an interesting solution to the problem of Moscone West’s 4–5000 attendee capacity. Wikipedia says this facility has 6,500 reserved seats, and room for tens of thousands more on the lawn. But I’m not sure how an amphitheater works for anything other than the keynote(s). Does this turn I/O into a single-track conference? Do they set up temporary structures? And what are they going to do for hotel rooms? Moscone is far from perfect, but downtown San Francisco has hotels, restaurants, and public transit.

Cinematographer Steve Yedlin on Film vs. Digital ★

Jim Coudal:

Check Steve Yedlin’s Film vs. Digital Tests, plus this series of tweets from Rian Johnson who is directing SW Episode VIII with Yedlin as DP, and finally this conversation about the matter.

This is a deep rabbit hole for film nerds, but I ate the whole thing up over the weekend.

NYT Restaurant Critic Pete Wells: ‘At Thomas Keller’s Per Se, Slips and Stumbles’ ★

Pete Wells:

The kitchen could improve the bacon-wrapped cylinder of quail simply by not placing it on top of a dismal green pulp of cooked romaine lettuce, crunchy and mushy at once. Draining off the gluey, oily liquid would have helped a mushroom potpie from turning into a swampy mess. I don’t know what could have saved limp, dispiriting yam dumplings, but it definitely wasn’t a lukewarm matsutake mushroom bouillon as murky and appealing as bong water. […]

Both dishes, though, came at an extra charge: $75 more for the caviar and $175 for the risotto. The supplements at Per Se can cause indignation, among other emotions. When my server asked, “Would you like the foie gras” — $40 more — “or the salad?,” the question had an air of menace. When the salad turned out to be a pale, uncrisp fried eggplant raviolo next to droopy strips of red pepper and carrot, it felt like extortion.

Some of those prices came down slightly when the baseline cost went up. With or without supplemental charges, though, Per Se is among the worst food deals in New York.

Per Se was one of only six restaurants with four stars from The Times; Wells knocked them back down to two stars.

See also: Jordan Weissmann, writing for Slate: “New York Times Food Critic Pete Wells Is a Populist Hero”.