Linked List: September 30, 2022

Friday, 30 September 2022

The Talk Show: ‘Double-Digit Domains’ 

Paul Kafasis returns to the show to talk about the iPhone 14 Pro, Apple Watch Ultra, AirPods Pro, and Rogue Amoeba’s 20th anniversary.

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Joanna Stern Tests Apple’s Car Crash Detection 

Joanna Stern, at The Wall Street Journal:

The key word is “severe.” In a video explaining the feature, Apple uses the word seven times. So I wanted to know, what is a severe crash? And where’s the line between severe and not-severe?

I crashed some cars to find out. Well, I didn’t crash them. Michael Barabe, a demolition-derby champion from Monroe, Mich., did. As you’ll see in my latest video, after failing to trigger the feature with bumper cars, my video producer Kenny Wassus and I found a way to bump real cars. (Safely, of course.)

Two wrecked cars and four deployed air bags later, we got Apple’s new marketing gem to work. But in order to trigger consistently and reliably, the system in both the phone and watch needs a lot of sensor data and other signals. And about that “s” word: From our tests, there appears to be a “severe” gray area between harmless crashes and deadly ones.

As soon as Apple announced this feature, I knew that Joanna Stern would do her best to test this. Like, within an hour of the keynote ending, I started pestering her that she should get the WSJ to foot the bill (of course) but let me drive the crash test car for her inevitable video. I was more than half serious.

Now that I see the footage ... I’m good, I’m really good, just watching the footage from my desk. Wow.

Shocker: Google Is Shutting Down Stadia 

Jay Peters and Alex Cranz, writing for The Verge:

Google is shutting down Stadia, its cloud gaming service. The service will remain live for players until January 18th, 2023. Google will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchased through the Google Store as well as all the games and add-on content purchased from the Stadia store. Google expects those refunds will be completed in mid-January.

“A few years ago, we also launched a consumer gaming service, Stadia,” Stadia vice president and GM Phil Harrison said in a blog post. “And while Stadia’s approach to streaming games for consumers was built on a strong technology foundation, it hasn’t gained the traction with users that we expected so we’ve made the difficult decision to begin winding down our Stadia streaming service.” Employees on the Stadia team will be distributed to other parts of the company.

A lot of the speculation around Stadia was focused on the technology — streaming. But put that aside, and what to me has seemed clear all along is that Google was never particularly invested in making Stadia a serious platform. If you’re committed to the platform, the underlying technology doesn’t matter.

And there’s a “Boy Who Cried Wolf” factor — except instead of a little boy who lacks credibility, it’s one of the five largest corporations in the world. When Google next launches a platform, how much does this affect their credibility? Frankly, their credibility was already shit on this front. Here’s Jason Scott tweeting back in November 2019 when Stadia launched:

To celebrate the official launch of Google Stadia (@GoogleStadia) tomorrow, I have created a single-purpose website: STADIACOUNTDOWN.COM. It is a countdown timer set for the average lifespan of any Google service/product, which is 4 years.

This “4 years” statistic comes from the Google Cemetery (https://gcemetery.co/), a maintained list of Google services and products that have shut down over the years, over 150 of them and counting (20+ have shut down in 2019 alone).

The joke’s on Scott, because Stadia Countdown still has 413 days remaining.

At this point you’d be a damn fool to get excited about a new Google platform and think, “This is something great that I’ll be able to count on.”

Relay FM for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital 

Today is the last day of September, and thus the last day of Relay FM’s annual fundraising drive for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. St. Jude is simply an amazing institution: they both provide world-class treatment for kids with cancer free of charge and perform research to make those treatments better and more effective for patients around the world.

Relay FM:

Donors who make an individual gift of $60+ or $100+ will receive limited-time Relay FM rewards. See if your employer also offers a matching gift program here. After requesting a match or DAF distribution, fill out this form to have the gift credited to the Relay FM campaign.

Those matching employer funds are no joke, and a lot of companies offer them.

The Relay gang has blown past their goal once again, but as I type this, they’re just a hair short of $600,000 — all raised this month. Let’s give them the old DF boost and push their campaign way over the top. Take a few minutes right now and donate. It’s the best thing you’ll do all day.

NFT Trading Volumes Collapse 97 Percent From Peak Earlier This Year 

Sidhartha Shukla, reporting for Bloomberg:

Trading volumes in nonfungible tokens — digital art and collectibles recorded on blockchains — have tumbled 97% from a record high in January this year. They slid to just $466 million in September from $17 billion at the start of 2022, according to data from Dune Analytics. The fading NFT mania is part of a wider, $2 trillion wipeout in the crypto sector as rapidly tightening monetary policy starves speculative assets of investment flows.

I’m tempted to say this is the least surprising market collapse in memory, but it’s obviously coming as an unpleasant surprise to some people.