Linked List: May 14, 2020

Thursday, 14 May 2020

Chrome to Start Blocking ‘Resource-Heavy’ Ads 

Marshall Vale, product manager for Google Chrome:

We have recently discovered that a fraction of a percent of ads consume a disproportionate share of device resources, such as battery and network data, without the user knowing about it. These ads (such as those that mine cryptocurrency, are poorly programmed, or are unoptimized for network usage) can drain battery life, saturate already strained networks, and cost money.

In order to save our users’ batteries and data plans, and provide them with a good experience on the web, Chrome will limit the resources a display ad can use before the user interacts with the ad. When an ad reaches its limit, the ad’s frame will navigate to an error page, informing the user that the ad has used too many resources. Here is an example of an ad that has been unloaded.

This is a great idea, and everyone other than scammers and bad programmers should support it wholeheartedly. I hurt myself, however, when I rolled my eyes at the “we have recently discovered” bit. It beggars belief that the Chrome development team hasn’t been fully aware of the gross resource consumption of web ads. They didn’t recently discover this — they recently decided to finally take action.

Your move, WebKit.

‘“I Wish I Could Do Something for You,” My Doctor Said’ 

Mara Gay, writing for The New York Times:

The second day I was sick, I woke up to what felt like hot tar buried deep in my chest. I could not get a deep breath unless I was on all fours. I’m healthy. I’m a runner. I’m 33 years old. […]

I am one of the lucky ones. I never needed a ventilator. I survived. But 27 days later, I still have lingering pneumonia. I use two inhalers, twice a day. I can’t walk more than a few blocks without stopping.

I want Americans to understand that this virus is making otherwise young, healthy people very, very sick. I want them to know, this is no flu.

You don’t want to get this.

Mumbai, Engulfed by Coronavirus 

Jeffrey Gettleman, writing for The New York Times:

As the coronavirus gnaws its way across India, Mumbai has suffered the worst. This city of 20 million is now responsible for 20 percent of India’s coronavirus infections and nearly 25 percent of the deaths.

Hospitals are overflowing with the sick. Police officers are exhausted enforcing a stay-at-home curfew. Doctors say the biggest enemy is Mumbai’s density. Particularly in the city’s vast slum districts, social distancing is impossible. People live eight to a room across miles and miles of informal settlements made of concrete blocks and topped with sheets of rusted iron. As the temperatures climb toward 100 degrees Fahrenheit, many can’t stand to be cooped up anymore and spill into the streets.

For the past eight weeks, Atul Loke, a second-generation newspaper photographer, has been tracking the spread of the coronavirus across his city. Here is what he has seen.

Arresting photography.

Becky Hansmeyer’s WWDC 2020 Wishlist 

Good list from Becky Hansmeyer. Two of her wishlist items:

A complete redesign of Mail. There is no perfect e-mail client, but like, maybe Apple could try or something?

That’s a huge bite to chew. I don’t think a wholesale redesign is what’s called for, personally, but Mail could certainly use a lot of attention. I mean, just look at Mail on iPad. There’s no way to create a smart mailbox. How are we supposed to take iPad seriously as a computer when its built-in email client doesn’t even support smart mailboxes? Compare and contrast with Safari, which I think does an absolutely brilliant job of balancing features across iOS and MacOS. (Web inspector for iPad would be cool though.)

More home screen customization. Let us have an empty row at the top if we want. Give us some widgets. Allow for some chaos. Set us freeeeee.

Fiddling with the home screen on iOS is just awful. Whenever I sit down and try to clean it up — deleting apps I don’t use, moving apps into some semblance of order — it drives me insane. The 1984 Finder was awesome for rearranging icons, right on day one. Yet we’re 13 years into iOS and rearranging apps is still terrible, because the whole thing is based on a home screen design where there’s just one screen and no third-party apps. The concept worked fine when all you could do was rearrange 12 built-in apps on a single screen. It feels like a prank trying to use it today.

Update: Gus Mueller has a single important addition.