Linked List: June 27, 2022

Monday, 27 June 2022

The Talk Show: ‘Your Sack of Meat With Teeth’ 

Jason Snell returns to the show to discuss the biggest threads from WWDC 2022 — in particular, Stage Manager and the M2 MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook “Pro”. No sports talk (unless you count soccer).

Brought to you by:

  • RevenueCat: In-app subscriptions made easy.
  • Linode: Instantly deploy and manage an SSD server in the Linode Cloud. New accounts get a $100 credit.
  • Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code talkshow for 10% off your first order.
  • Kolide: Endpoint Security for teams that Slack. Try Kolide for free today; no credit card required.
Claim Chowder: Kathleen ‘Calm Down’ Parker Edition 

Kathleen Parker, opining for The Washington Post four years ago, on the cusp of Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to replace Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court:

What new justice would want to be that man or woman, who forevermore would be credited with upending settled law and causing massive societal upheaval? As for other conservative justices, only Clarence Thomas would likely vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), one of the most important voices in this discussion, echoed the thoughts of close-to-the-court sources, who told me that neither Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. nor Neil M. Gorsuch would likely want to wade into that swamp and weigh in on a Roe v. Wade reversal.

The headline: “Calm Down. Roe v. Wade Isn’t Going Anywhere.”

This, from the same columnist who wrote on 4 November 2016, “Calm Down. We’ll Be Fine No Matter Who Wins.”

(Via Jay Rosen, who observes, “That scene from Shawshank comes to mind: ‘You don’t seem to be a very good thief. Maybe you should try something else.’”)

Epic’s 95/5 Split for Fortnite Content Creators 

Jay Peters, writing for The Verge:

For the Fortnite groups I talked to, the Creator Codes can be an inefficient way to get revenue, since they have to find ways to convince people to enter the code. In some maps I’ve played, though, there’s a prompt right at the beginning that lets you use the code with just a couple button presses. But creators don’t get much of the share of what’s purchased. In Fortnite, creators earn 5 percent of the value of in-game purchases made using their Creator Code, Epic says on its website.

In an FAQ, Epic spells out a couple examples of how the payouts might work — and explicitly cautions creators to “expect modest results”:

Q: Will This Program Make Creators Rich?

A: Please expect modest results. The amount you earn scales with the number of players who choose to support you. A Fortnite example: If your in-game supporters spend 50,000 V-Bucks in-game, then you would earn $25 USD. An Epic Games Store example: if your supporters purchase $100 of games, you’ll earn $5 (at the base Epic-funded rate).

Sounds like we have a solution to Epic’s years-long complaint about Apple and Google taking a 15–30 percent cut of in-app transactions. They should follow Epic’s lead and take a 95 percent cut instead. Support a creator, indeed.

Or, perhaps, different revenue splits are “fair” in different contexts.

Period-Tracking Apps and Data Privacy in Post-Roe America 

Rina Torchinsky, reporting for NPR on an issue that is now top-of-mind for women across the United States:

For those second-guessing their period-tracking app, Ford says there’s a risk vs. convenience calculation that’s different for each user. It depends in large part on where you live and what the laws are.

“If I lived in a state where abortion was actively being criminalized, I would not use a period tracker — that’s for sure,” she says.

But for those who choose to log their data online, there might be some options that aren’t as risky. Ford says that apps built with a nonprofit model could offer more privacy. Hong says paid apps could be better because they’re less likely to track users, since they don’t need to collect advertising data. Hong also advised users to read Apple’s privacy nutrition labels, which are designed to show users how their data is used in simpler terms.

Apps that store data locally are also preferable, Greer explained, because when data is stored locally, the user owns it — not the company.

The article, unfortunately, does not mention the iOS Health app specifically, but should. Apple’s Health data is only accessible on the user’s device(s). From Apple’s support documentation on health records and privacy:

By default, iCloud automatically keeps your Health app data, including health records, up to date across your devices. To disable this feature, open iCloud settings and turn off Health. iCloud protects your health records data by encrypting it both in storage and during transmission. If you’re using iOS 12 or later and have turned on two-factor authentication for your Apple ID, health records are encrypted using end-to-end encryption through iCloud. This means only you can access this information, and only on devices where you’re signed in to iCloud. No one else, not even Apple, can access end-to-end encrypted information.

In other words, it’s not merely a policy that Apple will keep your health data — all of it — private on iCloud. If you’re using two-factor authentication for your iCloud account — and you most definitely should be — it’s mathematically secure via end-to-end encryption. Apple not only won’t hand it over in the face of a demand from law enforcement in a state where abortion has been criminalized, they can’t.

I don’t mean to glibly suggest that Apple Health is a panacea for this dilemma. It’s certainly worth worrying about which third-party apps you grant access to your Health data, for one thing. And for another, data stored on-device is still accessible to law enforcement if they have possession of the device and can unlock it. But it’s a distinction worth noting. HealthKit was designed from the ground up to be cryptographically secure in this way — a fundamental difference from cloud-based period tracking services that are only now working on “anonymous” modes.

You can check which apps have access to what Health data in Settings → Health → Data Access & Devices.