Linked List: May 20, 2019

Monday, 20 May 2019

Facebook’s Creepy Data Sharing With Phone Carriers 

Sam Biddle, reporting for The Intercept:

Offered to select Facebook partners, the data includes not just technical information about Facebook members’ devices and use of Wi-Fi and cellular networks, but also their past locations, interests, and even their social groups. This data is sourced not just from the company’s main iOS and Android apps, but from Instagram and Messenger as well. The data has been used by Facebook partners to assess their standing against competitors, including customers lost to and won from them, but also for more controversial uses like racially targeted ads.

Some experts are particularly alarmed that Facebook has marketed the use of the information — and appears to have helped directly facilitate its use, along with other Facebook data — for the purpose of screening customers on the basis of likely creditworthiness. Such use could potentially run afoul of federal law, which tightly governs credit assessments.

Mark Zuckerberg, last month: “I believe the future is private.”

Pandora for Mac Is an Electron Turd 

Speaking of un-Mac-like apps, Pandora released a Mac client today. I downloaded it just to kick the tires — it’s a bad native Mac app even by the low standards of Electron apps. For example, if you click and drag one of the “buttons” at the top of the window (“Log In”, “Sign Up”, etc.), it both drags the window and gives you a pandora.com URL drag proxy item. I don’t even know how such dysfunction is even possible.

If Marzipan can get more companies to build their Mac apps from their iOS app, that really would be an improvement over these Electron monstrosities. But part of the appeal of Electron is that it gives you an app that works on Windows too. (Pandora’s Windows app isn’t available yet, but is promised soon.) Marzipan won’t solve that problem.

Slack Changed Its Stock Ticker From ‘SK’ to ‘WORK’ Weeks Before IPO 

Becky Peterson, writing for Business Insider:

Slack is not a public company yet, but it’s already gotten tired of its stock ticker.

In an updated version of its IPO paperwork filed on Monday, Slack revealed that it has dumped the proposed “SK” stock ticker it had settled upon a few weeks ago. Instead, in a dramatic pivot, the workplace collaboration company will makes its public market debut with the more descriptive ticker symbol “WORK.”

It’s no big deal, but “SK” was a bad-ass ticker. “WORK” is just corny. I think you ought to be able to look at a ticker and make a good guess what company it belongs to.

(I’ve always wondered why Apple’s ticker is “AAPL”, with two A’s. Searching for an answer, I found this old MacRumors forum thread from 2003. Someone there thought they should change it to “IPOD”.)

Microsoft Edge Preview Builds Now Available for MacOS 

Microsoft:

Last month, we announced the first preview builds of the next version of Microsoft Edge for Windows 10. Today, we are pleased to announce the availability of the Microsoft Edge Canary channel for macOS. You can now install preview builds from the Microsoft Edge Insider site for your macOS or Windows 10 PC, with more Windows version support coming soon.

I’m trying to think how long it’s been since I’ve had a Microsoft web browser running on my Mac. Apple released Safari in 2003, but I was still running classic MacOS on my Power Mac 9600 until 2004 or 2005 I think. So maybe 15 years?

Building a “Mac-like” user experience for Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge for macOS will offer the same new browsing experience that we’re previewing on Windows, with user experience optimizations to make it feel at home on a Mac. We are tailoring the overall look and feel to match what macOS users expect from apps on this platform.

I’m glad they put quotes around “Mac-like” because this is not very Mac-like. It looks and feels a lot like Google Chrome, which makes sense, because it’s a fork from Chromium. But even Chrome uses the Mac’s standard contextual menus (what you see when you right-click) — Edge even fakes those.

The whole thing does feel very fast.