Linked List: December 28, 2021

Tuesday, 28 December 2021

For my generation, he and Pat Summerall will forever be the voices of football. Madden made a complex game simple in his commentary, but his everyman demeanor belied the fact that he really understood the game. As a commentator he never lost sight of the fact that football is a game, and games are supposed to be fun.

Update: Nice 5-minute tribute video from the NFL. From that video, here were Madden’s only rules while coaching the Raiders in the 1970s:

Be on time.
Listen.
Play like hell when I tell you to.

Pretty good set of rules — not just for a football team, but life.

Hands-On With Snap’s First AR Spectacles for Early Adopters ★

The bad news: they overheat and they’re ugly.

The good news: they only get 30 minutes of battery life, so they probably won’t get a chance to burn you.

Reuters: Amazon Kowtowed to P.R.C. and Removed All Reviews of Xi Jinping’s Book in China ★

Steve Stecklow and Jeffrey Dastin, reporting for Reuters:

Amazon.com Inc was marketing a collection of President Xi Jinping’s speeches and writings on its Chinese website about two years ago, when Beijing delivered an edict, according to two people familiar with the incident. The American e-commerce giant must stop allowing any customer ratings and reviews in China.

A negative review of Xi’s book prompted the demand, one of the people said. “I think the issue was anything under five stars,” the highest rating in Amazon’s five-point system, said the other person.

Ratings and reviews are a crucial part of Amazon’s e-commerce business, a major way of engaging shoppers. But Amazon complied, the two people said. Currently, on its Chinese site Amazon.cn, the government-published book has no customer reviews or any ratings. And the comments section is disabled.

I don’t know why the Chinese government is so sensitive about this. Even here in the U.S., where we’re free to leave whatever reviews we want on Amazon for Xi’s book, it’s rated 4.7/5 after nearly 2,000 reviews. Seriously, go look.

(That’s an affiliate link that will make me rich.)

Tumblr, the App Store, and Porn ★

“Sreegs”, a former iOS engineer at Tumblr, on Tumblr’s recent problems trying to comply with the App Store’s ban on pornographic content:

Let me be clear about this from the get-go: I think Apple’s censorship policies are wrong and they have no grounds to be policing adult content within apps on the app store. Apple’s power to set content policy over apps is absolutely fueled first and foremost by internal policy that goes back to Steve Jobs. After that, they’re beholden to payment processors wanting to distance themselves from porn. Finally, there’s lawmakers and policy that influence them as well. I think these are the 3 things that shape their policy decisions, in order.

I get the “no grounds” thing from a free speech and consenting adults perspective. But right there in the same paragraph, he lists several grounds: payment processors are distancing themselves from porn, and lawmakers are threatening to regulate app stores.

But the obvious grounds for these policies is brand. Apple’s brand is firmly distant from porn. You might think that’s prudish or outdated, but it’s not your brand. Among major cruise lines, all but one have casinos on each ship. The exception: Disney. It’s perfectly legal; Disney just doesn’t want their brand associated with gambling. For similar reasons, Apple is going to err on the side of overzealousness with porn in the App Store. You can get all the porno you want on the web on iOS devices.

(Sreegs’s post is mostly about frustrations with the App Store review process in general, not Tumblr specifically, and is worth reading.)

Update: Workaround for iOS 15 Autocorrect Turning ‘20’ Into ‘2.0’ ★

Update to yesterday’s piece on iOS 15’s autocorrect:

With the help of several readers, I think I know what’s causing this. If you have an app installed with the string “2.0” in its name, that will cause “20” to autocorrect to “2.0”. I in fact have such an app installed on my iPhone. At least one reader has seen the same thing with “1.0” for the same reason.

The best workaround is to create a do-nothing text replacement in Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement, with the phrase “20” and shortcut “20”. I.e., set both fields to the digits of twenty. You don’t have to set “2.0” as the shortcut — if you do, you won’t be able to type “2.0”. Just set both fields to “20” and iOS autocorrect will prioritize this above the fact that you have an app installed with “2.0” in its name.

Alexa Tells 10-Year-Old Girl to Touch Live Plug With Penny ★

BBC News:

Amazon has updated its Alexa voice assistant after it “challenged” a 10-year-old girl to touch a coin to the prongs of a half-inserted plug. The suggestion came after the girl asked Alexa for a “challenge to do”.

“Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs,” the smart speaker said.

Amazon said it fixed the error as soon as the company became aware of it.

Tell me again how far ahead of Siri Alexa is. These assistants are all deeply flawed.