Linked List: March 20, 2020

Friday, 20 March 2020

Some people would like to thank Jason Kottke for writing this.

The Doctor Who Helped Defeat Smallpox Explains What’s Coming ★

Absolutely full-stop must-read interview by Steven Levy with Larry Brilliant, the epidemiologist who helped eradicate smallpox:

Now the unthinkable is here, and Brilliant, the Chairman of the board of Ending Pandemics, is sharing expertise with those on the front lines. We are a long way from 100 million deaths due to the novel coronavirus, but it has turned our world upside down. Brilliant is trying not to say “I told you so” too often. But he did tell us so, not only in talks and writings, but as the senior technical advisor for the pandemic horror film Contagion, now a top streaming selection for the homebound. Besides working with the World Health Organization in the effort to end smallpox, Brilliant, who is now 75, has fought flu, polio, and blindness; once led Google’s nonprofit wing, Google.org; co-founded the conferencing system the Well; and has traveled with the Grateful Dead.

We talked by phone on Tuesday. At the time, President Donald Trump’s response to the crisis had started to change from “no worries at all” to finally taking more significant steps to stem the pandemic. Brilliant lives in one of the six Bay Area counties where residents were ordered to shelter in place. When we began the conversation, he’d just gotten off the phone with someone he described as high government official, who asked Brilliant “How the fuck did we get here?” I wanted to hear how we’ll get out of here. The conversation has been edited and condensed.

Read this and you’ll come out the end more informed than if you read 20 other articles on this pandemic. I found this exchange particularly salient, for perspective:

Are you scared?

I’m in the age group that has a one in seven mortality rate if I get it. If you’re not worried, you’re not paying attention. But I’m not scared. I firmly believe that the steps that we’re taking will extend the time that it takes for the virus to make the rounds. I think that, in turn, will increase the likelihood that we will have a vaccine or we will have a prophylactic antiviral in time to cut off, reduce, or truncate the spread. Everybody needs to remember: This is not a zombie apocalypse. It’s not a mass extinction event.

This is not just idle talk; Brilliant has spent his career truly contemplating extinction-event pandemics.

Jason Snell’s 2020 MacBook Air Review: ‘No News Is Good News’ ★

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors:

If you don’t really need a new Mac laptop, maybe you should wait to see what happens with ARM. But if you’re someone who has been holding out for a new MacBook Air — and ideally one without that infamous keyboard — I wouldn’t recommend that you wait. This is the MacBook Air that you’ve been waiting for.

Netflix Creates $100 Million Coronavirus Relief Fund ★

Brent Lang, reporting for Variety:

Netflix has created a $100 million relief fund to help members of the creative community who have been left unemployed and without a way to earn an income during the coronavirus crisis. The streaming giant said the bulk of the funds will go toward supporting laid-off crew members.

“The COVID-19 crisis is devastating for many industries, including the creative community. Almost all television and film production has now ceased globally — leaving hundreds of thousands of crew and cast without jobs,” Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos said in a statement. “These include electricians, carpenters and drivers, many of whom are paid hourly wages and work on a project-to-project basis. This community has supported Netflix through the good times, and we want to help them through these hard times, especially while governments are still figuring out what economic support they will provide.”

Great move from Netflix. We need more like this from big companies that are well-positioned to financially weather this extended storm.

Unread 2 ★

Speaking of iOS feed reader apps, John Brayton’s Unread 2 recently shipped too:

If you are frustrated by feeds that include only article summaries, you will love Unread 2. Unread 2 takes Unread’s Readability view to the next level.

Unread 2 automatically determines which feeds contain only article summaries. When displaying articles from such feeds, Unread displays the full article text from the webpage. For any given feed, you can override Unread’s determination of whether to show feed text or webpage text.

In addition, Unread 2 can cache webpage text ahead of time. This gives you fast offline access to the webpage text and embedded images of such articles.

Unread is gorgeous, and takes an entirely different course than NetNewsWire on how to design a great iOS feed reading app. Unread is focused on eliminating chrome — it is a pure reading app. It’s like reader mode all the time, and the assortment of color themes is nicely curated.

There’s never been a better time to get back into RSS. My RSS subscriptions are largely about tech and design, and I keep political feeds in their own folder. It’s an oasis apart from general world news.

NetNewsWire 5.0 for iOS ★

Speaking of Brent Simmons, the reborn NetNewsWire is now out for iOS (both iPhone and iPad):

It’s free and open source, and it includes support for Feedbin and Feedly syncing.

Just as the Mac version looks like a Mac app, this is very much an iOS app. It supports Dark Mode, context menus, multiple windows, Siri Shortcuts, and other iOS features.

iOS-assed iOS app doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as Mac-assed Mac app, but that’s what NetNewsWire is. I raved about NetNewsWire 5 for Mac when it shipped back in August, and I’ll rave equally about NetNewsWire 5 for iOS now. It’s exactly what I want in an RSS reader, and it has changed my daily reading habits significantly.

Mac-Assed Mac Apps ★

Brent Simmons:

A few people have asked me, “What’s a Mac-assed Mac app?”

Answer: it’s a phrase I stole from my friend Collin Donnell to describe Mac apps that are unapologetically Mac apps. They’re platform-specific and they’re not trying to wow us with all their custom not-Mac-like UI (which often isn’t very accessible).

I consider NetNewsWire to be a Mac-assed Mac app, and it’s a point of pride.

Slack, on the other hand, is most definitely not — though it’s not only Electron apps that miss the mark of Mac-assed-Mac-app-ness.

I love this term. It’s better and more clear than just saying “native”. Native is ambiguous. Not to pick on Slack, but you can definitely argue that however odd Slack for Mac is UI-wise, it is a “native” app. But it sure as shit is not a Mac-assed Mac app.

Brent’s post is in the context of Proxyman, which I hadn’t heard of. It looks very cool — it’s a Mac-assed Mac alternative to tools like Wireshark or Charles for observing and debugging HTTP/HTTPS requests.