Linked List: December 8, 2021

Wednesday, 8 December 2021

Kickstarter Plans to Move Its Crowdfunding Platform to the Blockchain ★

Lucas Matney, reporting for TechCrunch:

Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter is making a big bet on the blockchain, announcing plans to create an open source protocol “that will essentially create a decentralized version of Kickstarter’s core functionality.” The company says the goal is for multiple platforms to embrace the protocol, including, eventually, Kickstarter.com.

Welp, all that’s left after that is to sell the company to Twitter and shut it down.

The Information: ‘Inside Tim Cook’s Secret $275 Billion Deal with Chinese Authorities’ ★

Wayne Ma, reporting for The Information (free article link for non-subscribers, which requires you to share your email address):

Apple’s iPhone recently became the top-selling smartphone in China, its second-biggest market after the U.S., for the first time in six years. But the company owes much of that success to CEO Tim Cook, who laid the foundation years ago by secretly signing an agreement, estimated to be worth more than $275 billion, with Chinese officials promising Apple would do its part to develop China’s economy and technological prowess through investments, business deals and worker training.

Cook forged the five-year agreement, which hasn’t been previously reported, during the first of a series of in-person visits he made to the country in 2016 to quash a sudden burst of regulatory actions against Apple’s business, according to internal Apple documents viewed by The Information. Before the meetings, Apple executives were scrambling to salvage the company’s relationship with Chinese officials, who believed the company wasn’t contributing enough to the local economy, the documents show. Amid the government crackdown and the bad publicity that accompanied it, iPhone sales plummeted.

This is a deeply-researched and seemingly amazingly well-sourced story. Extraordinary work by Ma — particularly the Apple internal documents he was able to obtain. The backstory on that must be something. Long story short, Apple’s relationship with China is every bit as complicated, and delicate, as you’d think. I was skeptical about the headline — both the staggering $275 billion figure and the word “secret” — but Ma’s reporting backs it up.

The Information is subscriber-only, and costs $400 a year. That’s a lot, no question, but you get what you pay for. Reporting like this makes it worthwhile to me. I try always to be respectful when linking to paywalled material, and not quote so much as to spoil the whole thing. But I feel compelled to share this nugget:

Sometime in 2014 or early 2015, China’s State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping told members of the Apple Maps team to make the Diaoyu Islands, the objects of a long-running territorial dispute between China and Japan, appear large even when users zoomed out from them. Chinese regulators also threatened to withhold approval of the first Apple Watch, scheduled for release in 2015, if Apple didn’t comply with the unusual request, according to internal documents.

Some members of the team back at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., initially balked at the demand. But the Maps app had become a priority for Apple, so eventually the company complied. The Diaoyu Islands, when viewed in Apple Maps in mainland China, continue to appear on a larger scale than surrounding territories.

I would venture to say that all members of Apple’s Maps team balked at this request. It’s absurd and offensive. Asking professional cartographers to misrepresent the size of islands for propaganda purposes — even if only to users in mainland China — is like asking writers to misspell words or misstate facts, or asking mathematicians to generate incorrect results. It’s contrary to the nature of the profession.

‘The Media Coverage of Kamala Harris and Bluetooth Is Ridiculous’ ★

Charlotte Clymer:

Last night, the journalists behind Politico’s West Wing Playbook thought it wise to publish a story on the VP’s preference for wired headphones — because she’s concerned over the vulnerability of Bluetooth-enabled devices like AirPods — and then fleshed out the piece with an insinuation that she’s being paranoid.

On Twitter, reporter Alex Thompson, one of the folks on the byline, echoed this part from the piece: that some aides felt VP Harris was being “a bit paranoid” over security and attached it to an anecdote over Harris, then California Attorney General, instructing her staff not to leave visitors alone in her office.

The critical bit about her ordering staff to not leave visitors alone in her office — the Office of the Attorney General of California — seems especially absurd. It’s a legal office. It’s a government office. There are confidential documents. Someone left alone could plant a listening device. So many operational security concerns.

It doesn’t make sense.

I’m not aware of any actual exploits that iPhone/AirPods users should worry about, but it certainly isn’t silly or “paranoid” that the vice president of the United States doesn’t want to take unnecessary risks.

Clymer links to this solid piece from The Daily Beast summarizing infosec concerns around Bluetooth. By its very nature, Bluetooth is a location beacon, for example.

Twitter Acquires Quill; Will Shut Down Service at the End of the Week ★

Quill, yesterday:

Together with Twitter, we will continue to pursue our original goal — to make online communication more thoughtful, and more effective, for everyone.

Quill will be shutting down, but its spirit and ideas will continue on. You’ll be able to export your team message history until 1pm PST, Saturday, December 11th 2021, when we will be turning off our servers and deleting all data. For all active teams, we’re issuing full refunds.

Most new endeavors don’t succeed. Trust me, I get it. The end is never pretty. But four days’ notice is almost bizarrely hostile — especially given that Quill was acquired, and didn’t simply run out of money. This is a service that they asked teams to trust. To say it’s disruptive to give people half a week to export their data and find a new collaboration platform is an understatement. What if someone is on vacation? What if it’s crunch week for a team facing a deadline?

Sebastiaan de With:

Quill was a great product. We rely on it at @luxdotcamera. I’m happy for the very talented team.

However, this is a total service shutdown with a 4 day notice. What an abysmal way to treat your users. Angry and disappointed. 👎

Twitter, where exciting new products go to be shut down.

Apple Music’s Year in Review vs. Spotify Wrapped ★

Chaim Gartenberg, writing last week for The Verge:

Spotify has been eating Apple’s lunch for years now with Wrapped, which has practically become its own internet holiday each year. And yet, it took Apple four full years to even launch its bare-bones Replay feature, which debuted in 2019 and hasn’t been meaningfully updated since. (I’ve been using kludged together Smart Playlists on iTunes for years to try to poorly replicate the Spotify experience.)

2021 is no exception, with Spotify offering what feels like its most lavish recaps yet. My wife (who is a Spotify user) spent the morning showing off her bespoke playlist to me, which included (among other things) specially curated songs for specific moods, rankings of where she placed among global Doja Cat listeners, a color-changing “audio aura,” and an interactive quiz. All of it is designed to be shared and shown off on other social media platforms.

I’m a bit surprised Apple hasn’t upped its year-in-review game for Apple Music, for the simple reason Gartenberg cites: Spotify Wrapped gets a ton of authentic social media action each year. Me, personally, I still wouldn’t care a whit about it. My music taste is old and boring — I neither need to be reminded of what I liked this year, nor want to share it. But it’s quite obvious that many people — especially younger people, whose tastes actually do reflect popular trends in new music — absolutely love it.