Linked List: January 14, 2022

Friday, 14 January 2022

Top Three States for Legal Sports Betting: Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania ★

I swear I have nothing to do with Pennsylvania’s high ranking.

Also from Molly White is this splendid new blog, documenting grift in the world of “Web3”. Here’s one recent gem:

A SolSea-verified NFT project on the Solana blockchain, Doodled Dragons, touted that they would distribute all profits “straight to charities protecting animals on the brink of extinction”. They announced on Twitter that they would be donating $30,000, “our first donation”, to the World Wildlife Fund. Two hours later, they tweeted, “actually. fuck that. our charity will instead now be... my bank account. cya nerds.” They deleted the Twitter account shortly after.

I couldn’t subscribe to this RSS feed fast enough. Good little glossary too.

Molly White: ‘Blockchain-Based Systems Are Not What They Say They Are’ ★

Molly White:

If you go out seeking to learn from their proponents why blockchains and the systems built atop them are apparently the future of our web, you’ll begin to see some common themes. Two of the ones I see most frequently are:

Decentralization: data in blockchains are distributed across innumerable servers run by innumerable people and organizations, rather than stored on servers controlled by one organization

Immutability: what is written to a blockchain cannot be changed or deleted, unlike more traditional databases

These fall apart under further scrutiny. [...]

Blockchain technologies have somehow managed to land in the worst of both worlds — decentralized but not really, immutable but not really.

A cogent read.

Update 15 January: And another one, “It’s Not Still the Early Days”:

The more you think about it, the more “it’s early days!” begins to sound like the desperate protestations of people with too much money sunk into a pyramid scheme, hoping they can bag a few more suckers and get out with their cash before the whole thing comes crashing down.

Minimator ★

Fun, deceptively simple drawing app from Maxwellito:

Minimator is a minimalist graphical editor.

All drawings are made of lines in a grid based canvas. The lines are limited to vertical and horizontal lines, and quarter circles.

The editor was built with touch tablets in mind. Providing undo/redo/zoom/move in a simple gesture. An info tooltip is available in the editor to list the shortcuts available.

It’s a web app but designed for tablets, stores all data locally, and works well on iPads via the Add to Home Screen command in Safari. Nothing but circles and horizontal/vertical lines sounds limiting, but the results can be quite rich.

(Via Andy Baio.)

From the DF Archive: ‘On iMessage’s Stickiness’ ★

Yours truly, five years ago:

As an iOS/MacOS exclusive, iMessage is a glue that “keeps people stuck to their iPhones and Macs”, not the glue. iMessage for Android would surely lead some number of iPhone users to switch to Android, but I think that number is small enough to be a rounding error for Apple. Apple wins by creating devices and experiences that people want to use, not that they have to use. Apple creates desire, not obligation. If the iPhone isn’t thriving simply by being the best, then Apple is already in deep trouble. I would argue that in some ways Apple might be better off releasing iMessage for Android, simply to remove a crutch.

Evergreen topic.

Google, Throwing Stones From Its Glass House ★

Ron Amadeo, in a piece for Ars headlined “After Ruining Android Messaging, Google Says iMessage Is Too Powerful”:

Even if Google could magically roll out RCS everywhere, it’s a poor standard to build a messaging platform on because it is dependent on a carrier phone bill. It’s anti-Internet and can’t natively work on webpages, PCs, smartwatches, and tablets, because those things don’t have SIM cards. The carriers designed RCS, so RCS puts your carrier bill at the center of your online identity, even when free identification methods like email exist and work on more devices. Google is just promoting carrier lock-in as a solution to Apple lock-in.

Despite Google’s complaining about iMessage, the company seems to have learned nothing from its years of messaging failure. Today, Google messaging is the worst and most fragmented it has ever been. As of press time, the company runs eight separate messaging platforms, none of which talk to each other: there is Google Messages/RCS, which is being promoted today, but there’s also Google Chat/Hangouts, Google Voice, Google Photos Messages, Google Pay Messages, Google Maps Business Messages, Google Stadia Messages, and Google Assistant Messaging. Those last couple of apps aren’t primarily messaging apps but have all ended up rolling their own siloed messaging platform because no dominant Google system exists for them to plug into.

Tesla’s Dogecoin FAQ ★

This support document makes cryptocurrency seem wonderful: network fees, no refunds, no cancellations, and processing times of up to six hours. How did we ever live before? (Via Kevin Jones.)

David Sparks Goes Full-Time on MacSparky ★

David Sparks:

A few months ago, I wrote about a good book, Ikigai. one of my takeaways from that was that some very old, very happy people in Japan all had one thing in common, a sense of purpose, their Ikigai. The book explained how their actual purpose evolved during their lifetimes for many of these folks, yet they still did each have a strong sense of purpose. So I started with a simple question.

“What is my purpose? What am I here to do?”

Simple question, right? Simple, but also not easy to answer. Rather than get lost in the big question, I moved on to consider the law practice and MacSparky.

I’ve been reading MacSparky for a long time; glad to know there’s going to be even more of it.

Bloomberg: Apple VR Headset Might Be Pushed to Next Year ★

Mark Gurman, Takashi Mochizuki, and Debby Wu, reporting for Bloomberg:^*

Apple Inc. is considering pushing back the debut of its mixed-reality headset by at least a few months, potentially delaying its first major new product since the Apple Watch in 2015, according to people familiar with the situation. [...]

The delay would mark a setback for a product seen as one of Apple’s famous “next big things” — a new category that can keep sales growing and help justify the tech giant’s nearly $3 trillion market valuation. The company hasn’t discussed the headset publicly, but the product has been years in the making and already delayed before.

It’s a semantic argument, but “pushed back” feels fair for an unannounced product. Shipping is hard, COVID makes everything harder. “Delayed” and “setback” don’t feel fair, though. When it actually does get announced, do we get a “finally”?

* You know.

I Need a Five-Letter Word for ‘This Story Is Fantastic’ ★

Steven Cravotta, in a brief but fantastic Twitter thread:

Here’s how a mobile game I built 5 years ago suddenly got blown up by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Jimmy Fallon.

Stay until the end, trust me. If the story this week about that shithead rip-off bro bummed you out a little, Cravotta’s tale will pick you right up.

Fortnite Is Returning to iOS as a Web App to Be Played in Safari ★

Nvidia:

Starting next week, Fortnite on GeForce Now will launch in a limited-time closed beta for mobile, all streamed through the Safari web browser on iOS and the GeForce Now Android app. [...]

Alongside the amazing team at Epic Games, we’ve been working to enable a touch-friendly version of Fortnite for mobile delivered through the cloud. While PC games in the GeForce Now library are best experienced on mobile with a gamepad, the introduction of touch controls built by the GeForce Now team offers more options for players, starting with Fortnite.

If this works and Fortnite inside iOS Safari — as a web app! — works as well, or is even in the same ballpark, as the native Fortnite app did, this will be a landmark achievement and a technical marvel. If it’s not even in the same ballpark as native Fortnite, I don’t understand why Epic would put the Fortnite name on it.