Linked List: September 11, 2017

Monday, 11 September 2017

‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Oral History ★

I knew the basic story that Curb Your Enthusiasm started life as a brief mockumentary for a Larry David standup special, but reading this, it’s clear that the show is an amazing accident. I can’t wait for the new season to start.

On Facebook’s Role in Trump’s Win ★

Margaret Sullivan, writing for The Washington Post:

We don’t know everything about Facebook’s role in the campaign. What we do know — or certainly ought to know by now — is to not take Facebook at its word. It always plays down its influence, trying for a benign image of connecting us all in a warm bath of baby pictures, tropical vacations and games of Candy Crush.

Stephen Hackett’s St. Jude Fundraiser ★

Stephen Hackett:

A week ago, I announced that once again this year, I’d be taking the revenue from 512 Pixels and donating it to St. Jude, and would be encouraging you to donate to the hospital that has saved the lives of thousands and thousands of kids with cancer, including my son.

I’m humbled and blown away that in just a week, we’ve met our goal of $9,000.

It’s now over $10,000 as I type this. Let’s keep it going.

CNN’s Text-Only Site ★

Add photographs and links to videos, and this should be CNN’s regular website. So fast, so simple. (Via SwiftOnSecurity.)

Are Top US ‘Startups’ Really Startups? ★

Om Malik, on a list of top U.S. “startups” that includes Uber, Airbnb, Pinterest, and Palantir:

So can we stop calling them startups — and instead maybe call them VC-backed private companies — otherwise the label startup loses its meaning.

Google Buying HTC? ★

CNBC:

A report from a Taiwanese news outlet called Commercial Times says Google is in the final stages of acquiring all or part of smartphone maker HTC.

The news follows a separate story from late August that suggested Taiwan-based HTC was interested in some sort of sale.

HTC, once one of the more popular smartphone makers in the United States, has fallen off of most carrier store shelves after several consecutive unsuccessful smartphone launches. It recently launched a separate division that sells virtual reality headsets.

This isn’t shocking — Google is obviously interested in making its own hardware. But I wonder how they think this will go differently from their Motorola fiasco?

Faviconographer: Tab Favicons in Safari for Mac ★

Daniel Alm (developer of the excellent time-tracking app Timing):

Faviconographer asks Safari.app for a list of all visible tabs (and their positions) in the current window, and for the URLs of those tabs.

It then uses that information to fetch the corresponding icons from Safari’s Favicon cache (WebpageIcons.db), and draws them above the Safari window.

It’s a “hack” — the cleanest solution would be Apple implementing Favicons in Safari — but it works surprisingly well.

Note: Faviconographer does not “hack” your system. It does not inject code into other apps or manipulate system files. In fact, it doesn’t even require Administrator access!

Daniel sent me a beta of this a few weeks ago, and I was dubious, to say the least. But it really does work surprisingly well. It’s not as good as true per-tab favicon support in Safari would be, but it’s closer than you think. And, importantly, it really is a clean hack, insofar as it doesn’t inject code or anything like that. And it’s free. If you use Safari you should try it.