Linked List: July 24, 2023

Monday, 24 July 2023

Single-Letter Second-Level Domain Names 

Wikipedia:

Single-letter second-level domains are domains in which the second-level domain of the domain name consists of only one letter, such as X.com. In 1993, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) explicitly reserved all single-letter and single-digit second-level domains under the top-level domains com, net, and org, and grandfathered those that had already been assigned. In December 2005, ICANN considered auctioning these domain names.

On December 1, 1993, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) explicitly reserved the remaining single-letter and single-digit domain names. The few domains that were already assigned were grandfathered in and continued to exist.

Fascinating bit of domain name trivia. Among the six single-character com/net/org domains in use is X.org, the home of the open source X Window System. My favorite, though, is obviously Q.net. (Via Manton Reece.)

Using AirPods as a Hearing Aid 

Garry Knight:

I spent a lot of time some years ago working with very loud sound while producing music with pro level headphones. Subsequently my ability to hear sounds at 1,000 Hz and above was greatly reduced. Amongst other things this meant that it was difficult to hear consonants in speech, effectively making me partially deaf.

I got a pair of AirPod Pro earbuds and set them up for my personal hearing needs. Later that day I went for a walk in my local woods and literally gasped out loud at hearing the birds I’d been missing for some years!

The way you set them up is buried deep in the Settings, so it’s not surprising that not many people know about it. Here’s where you need to go.

Apple can’t bill them as hearing aids for regulatory reasons, but I keep seeing reports from people who are hard of hearing who find AirPods Pro to be remarkable as audio accessibility devices. (Via Kottke.)

The Yankees Booger Up Their Uniforms With Patches From Starr Insurance 

Speaking of my telling the Yankees what to do, the only way these gross arm patches are acceptable is if they put every dollar from the sponsorship — a reported $25 million per year — toward signing Shohei Ohtani, who, despite the patch, is going to look sharp in pinstripes.

Tony Bennett Sings ‘America the Beautiful’ at Yankee Stadium in 1998 

The Yankees should play this recording during the 7th inning stretch henceforth, in lieu of God Bless America (which they’ve been playing since 9/11). Just perfect.

Summer Updates: iOS 16.6, MacOS Ventura 13.5, WatchOS 9.6, and tvOS 16.6 

Juli Clover, writing at MacRumors:

The iOS 16.6, iPadOS 16.6, macOS Ventura 13.5, watchOS 9.6, and tvOS 16.6 updates that Apple released today address a long list of security vulnerabilities, including two that Apple says may have been actively exploited. Apple today also released iOS 15.7.8, iPadOS 15.7.8, macOS Monterey 12.6.8, and macOS Big Sur 11.7.9 for devices that are not able to run the current release versions of the Mac, iPhone, and iPad software. These updates contain the same security improvements.

It’s thankless work producing these end-of-the-major-version updates, but kind of a shame that they go largely unheralded. Our attention is naturally drawn to the big new .0 updates that introduce major new features, but these .5/.6 updates tend to be the most stable and reliable releases.

‘If Other Media Companies Thought About Brand Equity the Way Elon Musk Thinks About Twitter’s (Er, X’s)’ 

Respect to Joshua Benton for parodying the nearly un-parody-able.

Linda Yaccarino on X 

Twitter/X “CEO” Linda Yaccarino’s comments on the platform’s name change deserve to be quoted in full, for posterity:

It’s an exceptionally rare thing — in life or in business — that you get a second chance to make another big impression. Twitter made one massive impression and changed the way we communicate. Now, X will go further, transforming the global town square.

X is the future state of unlimited interactivity — centered in audio, video, messaging, payments/banking — creating a global marketplace for ideas, goods, services, and opportunities. Powered by AI, X will connect us all in ways we’re just beginning to imagine.

For years, fans and critics alike have pushed Twitter to dream bigger, to innovate faster, and to fulfill our great potential. X will do that and more. We’ve already started to see X take shape over the past 8 months through our rapid feature launches, but we’re just getting started.

There’s absolutely no limit to this transformation. X will be the platform that can deliver, well … everything. @elonmusk and I are looking forward to working with our teams and every single one of our partners to bring X to the world.

Nilay Patel, on Threads, reminds me where I’ve heard similar rhetoric before:

Today we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directive. We have created for the first time in all history a garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thought is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion.

Elon Musk Renames Twitter to X 

Ryan Mac and Tiffany Hsu, reporting for The New York Times:

The tech billionaire, who bought Twitter last year, renamed the social platform X.com on its website and started replacing the bird logo with a stylized version of the 24th letter of the Latin alphabet. Inside Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco, X logos were projected in the cafeteria, while conference rooms were renamed to words with X in them, including “eXposure,” “eXult” and “s3Xy,” according to photos seen by The New York Times.

This is why Tesla’s vehicles are the models S, 3, X, and Y, and listed in that order on the company’s website. It’s like the arrow in the FedEx logo but for 12-year-old boys.

Mr. Musk had long said he might make the name change, but he hastened the process in a tweet early Sunday when he declared that “soon we shall bid adieu to the twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds.” He has said he hopes to turn Twitter into an “everything app” called X, which would encompass not only social networking but also banking and shopping.

Early on Monday, Mr. Musk also shared a photo of a giant X projected on Twitter’s San Francisco office building with the caption: “Our headquarters tonight.”

I hate* to say “I told you so”, but I predicted this exact name change back on May 1. As I wrote when I reiterated this prediction a few weeks later:

The fact that he largely refers to it now as “this platform” makes me think he’s going to rename it X sooner rather than later. Seems crazy to me to throw away the Twitter brand name though, so maybe “X” will just be to Twitter what “Meta” is to Facebook and “Alphabet” is to Google. But also: Musk does crazy things. Throwing away the entire Twitter brand would be less crazy than his buying it in the first place.

The Times piece quotes a branding expert who says the obvious, that the verbification of a brand name is exceedingly rare and exceptionally valuable. When people post to Twitter they tweet. The things they tweet are tweets. Everyone — even people who’ve never once used Twitter, knows what tweet means. And now Musk thinks they’ll be called “x’s”?

Despite the fact that Musk has clearly been moving toward this name change for months — if not since before he even proposed buying the company — the changeover has been utterly (but predictably) slapdash. The new logo, which Musk claims is “interim”, is simply the Unicode character “𝕏” (U+1D54F, MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL X). The company tried replacing the sign on its San Francisco headquarters today but work was halted with the signage only partially dismantled over confusion as to whether the company had a work permit. Neither the iOS nor Android app has been updated, and even the company’s website still says “Twitter” just about everywhere.

* Where by hate I of course mean love, and I’ve been insufferably parading my Being Right Point™ for this prediction all weekend.