Linked List: January 30, 2020

Thursday, 30 January 2020

Nintendo Switch Overtakes SNES With More Than 52 Million Sold 

Sam Byford, The Verge:

Nintendo had its strongest Switch quarter ever this holiday season, moving 10.81 million units to reach a total of 52.48 million sold as of the end of 2019. That means it’s now overtaken the Super Nintendo Entertainment System to become Nintendo’s third best-selling home console of all time behind the Wii and the NES.

Daniel Ahmad:

Also worth pointing out that according to our estimates the Nintendo Switch passed the Xbox One in hardware shipments during the holiday quarter last year.

The Xbox One is not too far behind, but it has only taken Switch 34 months to achieve what the Xbox One did in 74 months.

The Switch is a triumph. It’s a great TV console and a great portable system. So great to see Nintendo with another hit platform.

Update: I was just chatting with a friend about the Switch and I said that I wish tvOS were a lot more like the Switch, and he responded, “YES”. But the Switch is also a great touchscreen interface. Nintendo really did square the circle: they created a single interface that works great both as a touchscreen UI and an up-down-left-right remote-in-your-hand TV UI. The Switch is a hit because the games are great, but the OS is also a triumph, and contributes to the joyfulness of using it.

Matthew Butterick on Ligatures in Programming Fonts 

Matthew Butterick:

Ligatures in programming fonts are a terrible idea.

And not because I’m a purist or a grump. (Some days, but not today.) Programming code has special semantic considerations. Ligatures in programming fonts are likely to either misrepresent the meaning of the code, or cause miscues among readers. So in the end, even if they’re cute, the risk of error isn’t worth it.

After kicking the tires with JetBrains Mono a few days ago (and taking a peek at Fira Code, another coding font with ligatures), I quickly came to the same conclusion as Butterick. It’s a bad idea that works contrary to the idea of how ligatures are supposed to work in typography.

If you’d rather see ≠ than != in your source code, your programming language should support the actual UTF-8 [NOT EQUAL TO] glyph in its grammar. As Butterick writes:

So in a source file that uses Unicode characters, how would you know if you’re looking at a => ligature that’s shaped like ⇒ vs. Unicode character [0x21D2], which also looks like ⇒? The ligature introduces an ambiguity that wasn’t there before.

The Super Bowl 54 Uni Watch Preview 

Paul Lukas, writing for InsideHook:

Unless you’ve been living under a very large rock, you know that the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs will be facing off this Sunday in Super Bowl LIV. The Chiefs will be making their first Super Bowl appearance in 50 years, while the Niners have appeared in six Super Bowls during that span, winning five of them.

From a uniform standpoint, the party line for this game is that both teams have classic, great-looking designs that have gone largely unchanged over the years. That’s generally true, although there are loads of additional uniform-related subplots and storylines to consider if you know where to look. And the best place to look is in the column you are reading right now.

All of which is a longwinded way of saying welcome to the annual Uni Watch Super Bowl Preview, where we’ll break down everything you need to know about the aesthetics of the two teams competing this Sunday. Armed with the information presented herein, you can watch the game with a higher level of nuance and sophistication, while also annoying impressing your friends with your knowledge of assorted Super Bowl uniform arcana.

I’m pulling for the Chiefs, but no argument that both teams have truly classic, top-tier unis.

Wilbur Ross Says Coronavirus Outbreak Could Bring Back Jobs to the U.S. 

Kenya Evelyn, reporting for The Guardian:

The US commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, said in an interview on Thursday that the coronavirus outbreak could bring back jobs to America.

In controversial comments on morning TV, Ross remarked that the deadly illness that has broken out in China and is spreading internationally could lead to job growth for businesses in the US and Mexico. He was speaking during a segment on Fox Business Network.

Ross began by saying he did not “want to talk about a victory lap over a very unfortunate, very malignant disease” before discussing the potential economic benefits of the virus.

Ross is, at heart, every bit the ghoul he looks like. Kakistocracy: government by the worst people.

Mark Zuckerberg Says Facebook’s Goal Is No Longer to Be ‘Liked’ 

Kaya Yurieff, reporting for CNN Business:

“One critique of our approach for much of the last decade was that because we wanted to be liked, we didn’t always communicate our views as clearly because we were worried about offending people,” Zuckerberg said on a call with analysts.

He said his goal for the next decade “isn’t to be liked, but to be understood.” That’s because in order to be trusted, “people need to know where you stand,” Zuckerberg said.

The more you understand Facebook, the less you like or trust them. So: mission accomplished. Congrats, Zuck.

Redesigned Apple Maps Now Available for All Users in the United States 

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced that all users in the United States can now experience a redesigned Maps with faster and more accurate navigation and comprehensive views of roads, buildings, parks, airports, malls and more, making it easier and more enjoyable to map out any journey. Apple completed the rollout of this new Maps experience in the United States and will begin rolling it out across Europe in the coming months.

The new map tiles are just great. I haven’t used Google Maps in forever. I know that’s not feasible worldwide, but Apple is closing the gap. If you haven’t looked at Apple Maps recently, you should.

Update: Justin O’Beirne, as usual, has copiously documented the changes.

Knewz Launches, Burns Eyes 

Remember Knewz — a “news aggregation source” announced by News Corp back in August? It launched this week, and the visual design is worse than the name. It’s like the design brief was “Coked-up Drudge Report”.

The Obituaries of Republicans Who Opposed Nixon’s Impeachment 

Ryan Goodman, Just Security:

In that summer of 1974, seven Republicans joined the Democrats to vote for at least one article of impeachment, including Toni Railsback (Ill.), Hamilton Fish Jr. (N.Y.), Lawrence J. Hogan (Md.), M. Caldwell Butler (Va.), William S. Cohen (Maine), Harold V. Froehlich (Wis.), and Robert McClory (Ill.)

Ten Republicans voted against all three articles of impeachment: Edward Hutchinson (Mich.), David Dennis (Ind.), Delbert Latta (Ohio), Trent Lott (Miss.), Joseph Maraziti (N.J.), Wiley Mayne (Iowa), Carlos Moorhead (Calif.), Charles Sandman (N.J.), Henry Smith (N.Y.), and Charles Wiggins (Calif.).

Regardless of whether the congressmen voted for or against the articles of impeachment, their legacies were largely defined by this one moment. So much so that newspapers titled their obituaries with reference to this vote.

Regardless how Trump’s impeachment trial turns out, those Republicans who vote to acquit him — which may well be one and all of them — will forever be defined by that vote. To say that corruption is acceptable is itself a form of corruption.

My prediction: the most likely scenario is that the entire Republican Senate caucus votes unanimously to acquit. But the nature of Trump’s mob-style rule over the Republican Party is such that no dissent is allowed. None. If any Republicans stand up to Trump — even just a handful — the odds increase significantly that the whole dam will burst.

Obsessive Astros Fans Documented Their 2017 Cheating 

Tony Adams:

My name is Tony Adams. I’m an Astros fan. In November 2019, when the videos of the banging during some Astros 2017 games came out, I was horrified. It was clear within a minute of watching it was true — my team had cheated. To understand the scope of the cheating and the players involved, I decided to look at each home game from that season and determine any audio indicators of the sign stealing.

I wrote an application that downloaded the pitch data from MLB’s Statcast. This data has a timestamp for every pitch. I then downloaded the videos from YouTube and, using the timestamp, created a spectrogram for every pitch. A spectrogram is a visual representation of the spectrum of frequencies in an audio file. I could then playback the video of the pitches and, helped by the visual of the spectrogram, determine if there was any banging before the pitch.

I initially thought it would be quick work, and the application did make it pretty straightforward, but there are a lot of pitches in an MLB season. I ended up watching and logging over 8,200 pitches. And some more than once to be sure I was as accurate as possible.

I love everything about this. The obsession, the presentation of the data, and most of all, the fact that Adams is an Astros fan, and rather than make excuses for his team’s cheating, he’s upset by it.

One bit that came of this. David Spampinato:

On August 4th, the game with the most trash can bangs, the Astros scored 16 earned runs. Mike Bolsinger, a Blue Jays reliever, allowed 4 earned runs in 0.1 IP. He never pitched in the big leagues again.

What a disgrace. MLB should strip the Astros of their World Series title.