Linked List: January 18, 2022

Tuesday, 18 January 2022

Army Spouse Uses AirTag to Track Down Shady Moving Truck Driver 

David Roza, reporting for Task & Purpose:

McNulty attached the tag to a box of her son’s toys, then her family of four headed out to the east coast. She told Task & Purpose that her family had been waiting about a month for their things to arrive, which surprisingly isn’t that bad compared to what some families go through. “Some families end up waiting months upon months to receive their household goods,” she said. [...]

The mover was supposed to drop off the goods on Friday, January 7, but when that didn’t happen, the moving company told McNulty to expect the delivery on Sunday. A few hours after that call, however, the truck driver transporting their belongings called to say that he just picked up their shipment in Colorado and the earliest he could get it to them would be Monday.

McNulty knew better. Using her AirTag, she found out that the driver was not in Colorado, but only a half day’s drive south in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

“When we brought up the fact that we knew his exact location he hung up on us,” McNulty later recalled. “He then called back several minutes later and said ‘Well the earliest I can get it to you is Sunday.’”

Lost amidst the worrisome stories about AirTags being used by creeps and stalkers are tales like this one, where they’re being put to good use.

Mozilla Stops Accepting Cryptocurrency, Wikipedia May Be Next 

Brandon Vigliarolo, writing for TechRepublic:

The original tweet from Mozilla mentioned three forms of cryptocurrency: the two main players, Bitcoin and Ethereum, and Dogecoin , all three of which use a system called proof of work (PoW) in order to add an entry to their respective blockchains. It’s here we find the first big sticking point: what Zawinski describes as “planet-incinerating” levels of energy use.

The proof of work problem has been known for a while, as has the ever-increasing carbon footprint of the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchain, the cause of which is the growing energy needs of their PoW networks.

As of this writing, a single transaction on the Bitcoin blockchain eats up the same amount of energy as the average US household in a 77.8-day, or roughly two and a half month, period. Ethereum, though nowhere near as large, still eats up the same amount of energy that a US household does in 8 days.

Such numbers seem too bad to be true, but take a look.

“Do your research.”

NPR: ‘Fissures at the Supreme Court Suggest Justices Are Like a Dysfunctional Family’ 

Nina Totenberg, reporting for NPR, on discord amongst the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court:

Sotomayor has diabetes, a condition that puts her at high risk for serious illness, or even death, from COVID-19. She has been the only justice to wear a mask on the bench since last fall when, amid a marked decline in COVID-19 cases, the justices resumed in-person arguments for the first time since the onset of the pandemic.

Now, though, the situation had changed with the omicron surge, and according to court sources, Sotomayor did not feel safe in close proximity to people who were unmasked. Chief Justice John Roberts, understanding that, in some form asked the other justices to mask up.

They all did. Except Gorsuch, who, as it happens, sits next to Sotomayor on the bench. His continued refusal since then has also meant that Sotomayor has not attended the justices’ weekly conference in person, joining instead by telephone.

Gorsuch, from the beginning of his tenure, has proved a prickly justice, not exactly beloved even by his conservative soulmates on the court.

More than just prickly, he appears to be a flat-out prick.

Update: Never mind?

COVIDtests.gov: Free At-Home COVID-19 Tests 

More good news: the Biden administration’s website to get free at-home COVID tests — four tests per household — has soft-launched a day ahead of schedule. Worked like a charm for me and my extended family.

Omicron: ‘A Flash Flood More Than a Wave’ 

Josh Marshall, with some good news on the Omicron front:

New York City was one of the first parts of the United States hit by the Omicron variant. The trajectory of the city’s surge now appears remarkably similar to the pattern we saw earlier in South Africa and other countries.

Data out of South Africa showed a roughly four week interval between the start of the Omicron surge and its peak. “Peak in four weeks and precipitous decline in another two,” said Fareed Abdullah of the South African Medical Research Council. “It was a flash flood more than a wave.”

New York City numbers appear to match this pattern almost exactly.

How Omicron Symptoms Differ From Delta, Past COVID-19 Variants 

Aria Bendix and Shayanne Gal, reporting for Insider:

Almost as soon as Omicron started spreading, doctors noticed slight differences in their patients’ symptoms relative to prior variants. Mild, coldlike symptoms — such as sore throats, sneezing, and runny noses — were increasingly common. But former hallmarks of COVID-19 — such as fevers, coughs, and loss of taste or smell — had dwindled.

“The most reported symptoms of Omicron are really very much like a cold, especially in people who’ve been vaccinated,” Dr. Claire Steves, a scientist involved with the Zoe COVID Symptom Study, said in a recent video.

Listeners of Dithering are aware that I had pretty strong cold symptoms — sneezing, headache, and a very runny nose — last Thursday. I tested negative for COVID at the time, and again over the weekend, and started feeling much better the very next day. But when we recorded on Thursday night, I was still under the wrong impression that a running nose and sneezing were not common COVID symptoms. That was true with COVID classic, but it’s no longer true with Omicron. This article from Insider has good charts showing the most common Omicron symptoms and the symptomatic differences between variants.

Will the U.S. Government Approve Microsoft’s Acquisition of Activision Blizzard? 

Peter Kafka, writing for Recode:

“When we think about our vision for what a metaverse can be, we believe there won’t be a single, centralized metaverse,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said after announcing the deal on Tuesday.

You can also read that statement as a message to Lina Khan, the head of the Federal Trade Commission, along with the rest of the Biden administration’s antitrust enforcers: I know it seems like we are swallowing up a lot of the games business, but don’t think of this as consolidation in an important industry — think of it as competition against Facebook in a new industry. Competition is good, right?

This deal is certainly going to draw a lot of attention in Washington, which has been focusing on big and small deals made by most of the tech industry — but has largely left Microsoft alone until now. (The irony, of course, is that Microsoft spent a long time fighting federal antitrust charges over its web browser dominance two decades ago; the company averted a forced break-up but lost much of its mojo along the way).

Update: I don’t see why the government would block this acquisition. Some anti-capitalists will oppose it on the ideological grounds of being against big companies getting bigger, but that’s not the law, and that’s not how our system works. If Microsoft were trying to buy Nintendo or Sony, that, in my opinion, should be blocked on anti-competitive grounds, because Nintendo and Sony make platforms that very successfully compete against Xbox. But a game studio, even a big one like Activision Blizzard? No.

Back of the Envelope Math on Microsoft’s Activision Acquisition 

Phil Spencer, announcing Microsoft’s intention to buy Activision for $68.7 billion:

Until this transaction closes, Activision Blizzard and Microsoft Gaming will continue to operate independently. Once the deal is complete, the Activision Blizzard business will report to me as CEO, Microsoft Gaming.

Upon close, we will offer as many Activision Blizzard games as we can within Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass, both new titles and games from Activision Blizzard’s incredible catalog. We also announced today that Game Pass now has more than 25 million subscribers. As always, we look forward to continuing to add more value and more great games to Game Pass.

Game Pass subscriptions cost between $10–15 per month. Let’s just call that about $150/year per subscriber. That’s just under $4 billion per year. Assume that the Game Pass subscriber base will keep growing, and $69 billion for Activision doesn’t seem absurd as a long-term investment. And that’s just counting Game Pass subscription revenue, not traditional game sales.

Microsoft to Buy Activision Blizzard for Nearly $69 Billion 

Maddy Myers, reporting for Polygon:

Microsoft plans to acquire Activision Blizzard, publisher of some of the most popular games on the planet (from World of Warcraft to Call of Duty), as well as the studios currently embroiled in multiple lawsuits related to accusations of gender discrimination in its workplace, the company announced Tuesday. Xbox boss Phil Spencer will serve as the CEO of Microsoft Gaming and oversee Activision Blizzard once the transaction is finalized.

The deal is worth $68.7 billion, Microsoft said, the largest acquisition in the company’s history.

In a blog post about the acquisition, Spencer said that Microsoft “will offer as many Activision Blizzard games as we can within Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass, both new titles and games from Activision Blizzard’s incredible catalog.”

That’s a lot of money. Microsoft spent $26 billion on LinkedIn back in 2016. I’m not saying it’s too much — just that it’s indicative of how dominant video games are in today’s entertainment world. Context: Disney bought Lucasfilm — including the entire Star Wars franchise — for just $4 billion a decade ago.

From the perspective of Activision’s board, this seems like a good face-saving solution to the company’s leadership and culture problems. Let Microsoft clean house at the executive and management level. Even putting aside that Activision’s stock has dipped, I don’t think this acquisition happens if not for the recent controversies.

‘Bob Saget’s Sublime, Filthy Comedy’ 

Penn Jillette, remembering Bob Saget, in a piece for the NYT:

He had a big smile and joy for the world in “Full House” and on “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” Everyone loved and trusted Bob in those roles. You wanted to hug him.

Some people are saying now that the real Bob was very different from that good-guy image, but I disagree. Offstage he was loving, kind, open, funny, a great friend and a great father. He also told filthy, disgusting, offensive jokes.

The Aristocrats — which Jillette produced — is not for everyone, that’s for sure, but I loved it.