Linked List: September 9, 2021

Thursday, 9 September 2021

Biden Issues Sweeping New Vaccine Mandates for 100 Million Americans 

Zeke Miller, reporting for the Associated Press:

In his most forceful pandemic actions and words, President Joe Biden on Thursday announced sweeping new federal vaccine requirements affecting as many as 100 million Americans in an all-out effort to increase COVID-19 vaccinations and curb the surging delta variant.

Speaking at the White House, Biden sharply criticized the roughly 80 million Americans who are not yet vaccinated, despite months of availability and incentives.

“We’ve been patient. But our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us,” he said, all but biting off his words. The unvaccinated minority “can cause a lot of damage, and they are.”

More like this, please. Mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for everything. For getting on a flight, for going to school, for eating in a restaurant, for keeping your job. Yes, mandating anything is an extraordinary use of authority, but this pandemic is clearly the most extraordinary crisis most of us have ever lived through. It’s exactly why the federal government has the far more extraordinary power to draft men into the armed services and send them to war: for the greater good.

L.A. School District Will Mandate Vaccines for Students 

Dana Goldstein, reporting for The New York Times:

Los Angeles is the first major school district in the United States to mandate coronavirus vaccines for students 12 and older who are attending class in person.

With the Delta variant ripping across the country, the district’s Board of Education voted, 6-0, to pass the measure on Thursday afternoon. The Los Angeles Unified School District is the second largest in the nation, and the mandate would eventually apply to more than 460,000 students, including some enrolled at independent charter schools located in district buildings.

More like this, please.

Bloomberg Reports That Kevin Lynch – Who, It Turns Out, Is Not a Bozo but Was Just Being a Solid Team Player for Adobe Back When He Was Staunchly Defending Flash in the Face of the Obvious Fact That Flash Was Crap Technology Holding Back the Entire Web – Is Taking Over All of Project Titan 

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:*

Lynch, an Adobe Inc. veteran who joined Apple in 2013 to run the software group for the company’s smartwatch and health efforts, replaced Doug Field as the manager in charge of the car work, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The executive first started working on the project earlier this year when he took over teams handling the underlying software. Now he is overseeing the whole group, which also includes hardware engineering and work on self-driving car sensors, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the move isn’t public.

I think it’s fair to say that Lynch is second only to Craig Federighi software-wise at Apple, and the two initiatives he’s led in the eight years he’s been at Apple — WatchOS and Health — have been huge successes. Apple Watch is a hit product, WatchOS has gotten steadily better every single year, and a large part of what makes Apple Watch so popular — utterly dominant in a still-growing category — is its integration with Health.

I take this not just as a sign that Lynch is a star at Apple, but that Lynch sees a light at the end of the Project Titan tunnel — something that might actually ship, my jokes be damned. It’s also a sign that WatchOS has largely matured. No platform is ever done until it’s dead, so I’m not saying WatchOS won’t continue iterating year-over-year, but the “shaping and steering a new platform from launch through maturity” period is over.

It feels, however, like Project Titan is somehow cursed. Smart people at Apple believe it’s solvable with the right approach, but the project keeps “pivoting” every few years, and that takes a toll on confidence and stamina. The thrill of shipping is the reward for years of hard work, and to date no one who’s devoted serious effort to Titan has gotten even a hint of that reward.

* Bloomberg, of course, remains the outfit that shit its journalistic pants with The Big Hack — a blockbuster report that no one, including Bloomberg, has ever produced a single shred of evidence to back up — yet not only never retracted it but in fact still “stands behind” it even though it’s rather clear they hope everyone just forgets about it. So take anything they publish with a Big Hack-sized grain of salt, even though Gurman’s reporting on the Apple beat has been nonpareil of late.

Philadelphia’s Plastic Bags Ban 

From the city’s website:

Philadelphians use almost 1 billion plastic bags each year, which litter our streets, waterways, and commercial corridors. Plastic bags account for over 10,000 hours of lost staff time and pose a danger to workers at recycling facilities because they get caught in the equipment. Banning plastic bags will make our city cleaner, reduce waste and save money.

I’ve been reading Millions, Billions, Zillions by Brian Kernighan (who is apparently a computer scientist of some renown). It’s a great book ($11 in hardcover from Amazon; BookShop.org link to indie booksellers), and Kernighan’s writing style is as buttery smooth as ever. One of the things he does is encourage back-of-the-envelope math on numbers like the above, when you encounter them. Does it make sense that Philadelphians use 1 billion plastic bags per year?

Philly has about 1.6 million residents. 1 billion divided by 1.6 million is 625 plastic bags per person per year, about 12 bags per person per week, or 1.7 bags per person per day. When I consider how often stores double-bag anything vaguely heavy, that seems plausible. (There’s also the fact that Philly gets many tourists, and in normal times there are many non-residents who commute into the city daily for work. Feel free to bump 1.6 million to a higher number, but for ballpark “does this figure make sense” purposes, I think the Census figure is fine.)

10,000 annual hours of lost staff time is high, but seems plausible too: That’s about 192 hours per week, or about 5 full-time employees.

Anker’s $20 Nano Pro 20W Charger 

Speaking of stuff you can buy from Amazon — with affiliate links that could make me rich — I highly recommend Anker’s small 20-watt Nano chargers. Basically, they’re the size of Apple’s classic 5-watt chargers, and thus fit almost anywhere, but they charge at the same speed as Apple’s much-larger new 20-watt chargers. These new models from Anker come in four colors: white, black, lavender, and sissy blue. If you or anyone you know is getting a new iPhone soon, I would strongly recommend one of Anker’s chargers over Apple’s — same speed, same price, much smaller, and a few color options to top it off.

Another Anker charger I’ve been meaning to recommend is the Atom PowerPort III Slim. It’s a 30-watt charger currently on sale for $19, and what makes it different is that it’s, well, very slim (including folding prongs). This charger will fit behind furniture that’s pushed up against the wall. It’s small and lightweight too — here’s mine next to a matchbox for comparison.

‘Every Streaming Company Not Named Apple Receives a Lousy Grade on Privacy’ 

Karl Bode, writing for TechDirt:

While streaming providers and hardware companies see significantly higher consumer satisfaction rates than traditional cable TV, their privacy practices still leave something to be desired. That’s according to a new breakdown of streaming service privacy policies by Common Sense Media, which doled out terrible grades to pretty much everybody not named Apple:

Our privacy evaluations of the top 10 streaming apps indicate that all streaming apps (except Apple TV+) have privacy practices that put consumers’ privacy at considerable risk including selling data, sending third‐party marketing communications, displaying targeted advertisements, tracking users across other sites and services, and creating advertising profiles for data brokers.

This privacy report focuses on streaming services, not hardware platforms, but related to the previous post re: Amazon’s new Fire TV Omni Series, it’s also the case that Apple TV is the only platform that makes privacy a priority and doesn’t put ads on your screen.

Amazon Introduces Omni Series Fire TV Sets 

New line of LED TV sets from Amazon, with Fire TV and Alexa built-in. The high-end 65- and 75-inch models ($830 / $1,100) come with Dolby Vision support; the lesser models (43-inch for $410, 50-inch for $510, 55-inch for $560) do not. All models are LED, not OLED.