By John Gruber
Little Streaks: The to-do list that helps your kids form good routines and habits.
Linked List: March 3, 2021
Wednesday, 3 March 2021
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Natasha Singer and Kellen Browning, reporting for The New York Times:
Before the University of Idaho welcomed students back to campus last fall, it made a big bet on new virus-screening technology. The university spent $90,000 installing temperature-scanning stations, which look like airport metal detectors, in front of its dining and athletic facilities in Moscow, Idaho. When the system clocks a student walking through with an unusually high temperature, the student is asked to leave and go get tested for Covid-19.
But so far the fever scanners, which detect skin temperature, have caught fewer than 10 people out of the 9,000 students living on or near campus. Even then, university administrators could not say whether the technology had been effective because they have not tracked students flagged with fevers to see if they went on to get tested for the virus. [...]
“So why are we bothering?” said Bruce Schneier, a prominent security technologist who has described such screening systems as “security theater” — that is, tools that make people feel better without actually improving their safety. “Why spend the money?”
Maybe “COVID theater” instead of “security theater”, but these technology purchases look like a whole lot of bullshit, just like the exposure notification apps for phones. We don’t need any of this. What we need are vaccinations, a few months of patience until more of those vaccinations are administered, and good serious plans for future outbreaks. If institutions like colleges want to spend money in the short term, they should spend the money on widespread COVID testing.
- Apple Clarifies When It Locks Your Apple ID Because You Owe Them Money ★
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Statement from Apple to 9to5Mac, regarding yesterday’s much-publicized story about Dustin Curtis getting locked out of his Apple ID:
We apologize for any confusion or inconvenience we may have caused for this customer. The issue in question involved a restriction on the customer’s Apple ID that disabled App Store and iTunes purchases and subscription services, excluding iCloud. Apple provided an instant credit for the purchase of a new MacBook Pro, and as part of that agreement, the customer was to return their current unit to us. No matter what payment method was used, the ability to transact on the associated Apple ID was disabled because Apple could not collect funds. This is entirely unrelated to Apple Card.
Seems like a more reasonable situation than it first appeared, but, still, good to know that this is how it works.
The heart of Curtis’s saga is that he got instant credit for an old MacBook, didn’t send it back to Apple on time, and changed the bank account backing his credit card so Apple’s chargeback for the device trade-in didn’t take. When I, or family members, have sent devices in for trade-in (iPhones, usually), we haven’t been credited for the trade-in until after Apple has acknowledged receiving the old device.
- It’s Now March and Most of Google’s Flagship iOS Apps Still Don’t Have Privacy Nutrition Labels ★
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Speaking of Google and tracking, the saga with Google’s iOS apps and their lack of privacy nutrition labels continues. Remember that (a) Google told TechCrunch back on January 5 they expected to add the privacy labels “this week or the next week”, and (b) because they haven’t added the labels, none of these popular apps have been updated since December. This includes Google Maps, Google Photos, the main Google search app, and Google Chrome. If you look at the version histories for these apps, until January, they were all generally updated at least once per month, and often several times per month.
YouTube, Google Home, and Google Drive, on the other hand, do have privacy nutrition labels. So whatever is going on here is not company-wide.
Correction: I originally had Gmail listed as one of Google’s apps that hadn’t been updated, but it was — just yesterday, after adding the privacy nutrition label a week ago. Google just seems to be adding these labels piecemeal, one at a time.
- Google Claims It Will Replace Tracking With Privacy-Preserving Ads ★
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David Temkin, director of product management for ads privacy and trust, writing on the Google Blog:
Today, we’re making explicit that once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products.
We realize this means other providers may offer a level of user identity for ad tracking across the web that we will not — like PII graphs based on people’s email addresses. We don’t believe these solutions will meet rising consumer expectations for privacy, nor will they stand up to rapidly evolving regulatory restrictions, and therefore aren’t a sustainable long term investment. Instead, our web products will be powered by privacy-preserving APIs which prevent individual tracking while still delivering results for advertisers and publishers.
Honestly, I read this post twice and I don’t really know what it means. It sounds good on the surface, but cynically, it also sounds like an obfuscated way of saying that Google has figured out a way to continue tracking users but doesn’t think that counts as “tracking” because it’s all “first party” on Google properties:
We will continue to support first-party relationships on our ad platforms for partners, in which they have direct connections with their own customers. And we’ll deepen our support for solutions that build on these direct relationships between consumers and the brands and publishers they engage with.
The WSJ is taking Google at its word, with this lede:
Google plans to stop selling ads based on individuals’ browsing across multiple websites, a change that could hasten upheaval in the digital advertising industry.