Linked List: April 30, 2021

Friday, 30 April 2021

The Talk Show: ‘The Sour Grapes Commission’ 

Glenn Fleishman returns to the show to talk about last week’s “Spring Loaded” product announcements from Apple: subscription podcasts, AirTags, AppleTV, colorful Apple Silicon iMacs, and the M1 iPad Pros.

Sponsored by:

  • Yes Plz: Banish bad coffee from your kitchen and give Yes Plz a try today. Use promo code FIREBALL to take 5 bucks off your first shipment.
  • Alex Weinstein: Want to tell a better story? Start with better music.
  • Backblaze: Unlimited cloud backup for just $6/month. Start a free 15-day trial today.
  • Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code talkshow for 10% off your first order.
Hello Weather 

Longtime readers know I have a thing for good iPhone weather apps. I find weather apps to be an evergreen playground for design ideas — and that’s more true than ever now with iOS 14 widgets. One of my very favorites in recent years is Hello Weather. It’s attractive, original, and highly useful. (Good iPad support too.) Free to download and use, but they’ve got a Pro tier that unlocks even more, like Apple Watch complications and additional data sources. No ads, and their privacy nutrition label simply states: “Data Not Collected”. Highly recommended.

Roku-YouTube Dispute Escalates 

Janko Roettgers, reporting for Protocol:

Roku is alleging that Google is using the YouTube TV negotiations to push it to enforce hardware requirements for future Roku products that could make Roku devices more expensive. This allegation bears some extra weight because of Google’s own Chromecast TV streaming device, which is currently selling for $20 more than the cheapest Roku streamer. [...]

Roku also alleges that Google aims to dictate how the streaming device maker treats voice search results. According to those allegations, Google wants to force Roku to only show YouTube results when someone launches a voice search from within the YouTube app. If, for instance, someone browses YouTube and then decides to listen to music, a voice query like “Play ‘Uptown Funk’” would open the song on YouTube, even if the consumer had set Pandora as their default music app.

Roku has removed the YouTube TV app from their store, but it still works for users who already have it installed.

Google, in its response on the official YouTube blog, doesn’t deny the requirements for the new AV1 codec, but flatly denies the rest of Roku’s allegations:

Our agreements with partners have technical requirements to ensure a high quality experience on YouTube. Roku requested exceptions that would break the YouTube experience and limit our ability to update YouTube in order to fix issues or add new features. For example, by not supporting open-source video codecs, you wouldn’t be able to watch YouTube in 4K HDR or 8K even if you bought a Roku device that supports that resolution.

We can’t give Roku special treatment at the expense of users. To be clear, we have never, as they have alleged, made any requests to access user data or interfere with search results. This claim is baseless and false.

This is remarkably contentious. I don’t see any way to square this up without concluding that one of the companies is flat-out lying.

Flu Has Disappeared Worldwide During the COVID Pandemic 

Katie Peek, reporting for Scientific American:

Since the novel coronavirus began its global spread, influenza cases reported to the World Health Organization have dropped to minuscule levels. The reason, epidemiologists think, is that the public health measures taken to keep the coronavirus from spreading also stop the flu. Influenza viruses are transmitted in much the same way as SARS-CoV-2, but they are less effective at jumping from host to host.

As Scientific American reported last fall, the drop-off in flu numbers was both swift and universal. Since then, cases have stayed remarkably low. “There’s just no flu circulating,” says Greg Poland, who has studied the disease at the Mayo Clinic for decades. The U.S. saw about 600 deaths from influenza during the 2020-2021 flu season. In comparison, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated there were roughly 22,000 deaths in the prior season and 34,000 two seasons ago.

These numbers are just ridiculous. It goes to show how much more contagious COVID is than influenza — COVID continued to wreak havoc in the face of precaution that practically eliminated spread of the flu. And it also shows how in the early days of the pandemic — like in New York City here in the U.S. — having no precautions in place allowed COVID to spread like wildfire.

Questions: Will masking during flu season remain a thing here in the U.S.? We know now that COVID spreads primarily through aerosols, but how much of this reduction in influenza is thanks to increased handwashing and sanitizing? I love the idea of making hand sanitizer dispensers at store entrances standard.

Eagerness to Receive Johnson & Johnson Vaccine 

The Washington Post:

There is no government data yet on whether health authorities’ 10-day halt in administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine soured people on the product, and the company declined to discuss the matter. But in spot checks across the country, people seeking vaccines and officials dispensing them appear eager to resume using the vaccine, which is also easier to store and transport.

On Tuesday, for example, 1,355 people at the racetrack chose Johnson & Johnson at the clinic run by Indiana University Health, while 407 took the Pfizer vaccine, according to spokesman Jonathon Hosea. At a homeless program in San Francisco, drugstores in Maine and universities across the country, the same sentiment is largely true.

Great news, if it’s more than just anecdotal — I would love to be proven wrong about this.

ElevationLab’s TagVault 

Sealed, waterproof, durable AirTag case from the fine folks at ElevationLab. $13, cheap!

SolarWinds Renames Itself ‘N-Able’ 

I take it “AirTran” was unavailable.