Linked List: November 19, 2024

Tuesday, 19 November 2024

Delightfully clever sketch from Tiny Idea.

‘Inside the Rather Bizarre Relaunch of Jaguar’ ★

James Baggott, writing for Car Dealer Magazine:

Jaguar unveiled a new look, logo and direction for its cars at what was quite possibly the most bizarre automotive media launch I’ve ever attended — here’s what happened.

Embargoed until today, the event felt like a hallucinogenic sci-fi movie where the presenters were only allowed to speak in marketing babble. Unveiling a new concept car — the details of which are still under embargo until December 3 — Jaguar’s passionate team spoke for most of the day about how they plan to ‘delete ordinary’ and ‘live vivid’. Whatever that means…

In what, at times, felt like a drunken dream, Jaguar personnel walked journalists through its plans to ‘reimagine’ the much-loved brand over the next few years. Calling it a ‘complete reset’, McGovern at one point told journalists that his team had ‘not been sniffing the white stuff — this is real’.

Translation: they’ve all been sniffing a metric ton of the white stuff. This looks like the identity for a women’s razor brand or something. Certainly not the identity for a longstanding British sports car company.

Lulu Cheng Meservey:

Jaguar already nailed their marketing decades ago, and given the demand for nostalgia, now would’ve been the perfect time to revive it.

Instead, the sad irony is that their “Copy nothing” campaign abandons their own originality in favor of a fad that peaked during the pandemic.

Texas Education Board to Vote on Bible-Infused Lessons in Public Schools ★

Troy Closson, reporting for The New York Times (gift link):

The optional curriculum, one of most sweeping efforts in recent years to bring a Christian perspective to more students, would test the limits of religious instruction in public education.

It could also become a model for other states and for the administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has promised to champion the conservative Christian movement in his second presidential term. [...]

Religion makes up a relatively small portion of the overall content. But the lessons delve into Christianity far more often and in depth than they do into other faiths, religious scholars say and a review of the materials by The New York Times found. In kindergarten, for example, children would be taught that many religions value the Golden Rule, but the lessons would be focused on the Christian version, and introduce students to Jesus and his Sermon on the Mount.

The Times runs an excerpt from the curriculum, which reads:

The Sermon on the Mount included many different lessons. Some of these included do not judge others; do not seek revenge, or try to get even with someone; and give to the needy. Beyond the Sermon on the Mount, there are many rules included throughout the Bible. Jesus said that the Golden Rule sums up all of the important teachings from scripture. “So in everything, do unto others as you would have done unto you.”

“Do not judge others; do not seek revenge, or try to get even with someone; and give to the needy” — the very words that Donald Trump himself lives by.

See Also: Related coverage from The Onion: “Christian Right Lobbies to Overturn Second Law of Thermodynamics”.

Airport – A Typeface Revival ★

Lukas Schneider:

On 13 November 1961, the Oceanic building at London Airport opened to handle long-haul flight departure. In 1979, German publisher Ravensburger brought out a game designed to help children learn to count. Around Christmas 2023, I stumbled across a copy of that vintage game. The type on the box caught my eye, and that’s where this story began.

The letterforms resembled those of Helvetica. As the corners were soft, I initially thought it might be its Rounded version. However, the typeface featured a much larger x-height, the capitals were less wide, and the glyphs also had white bits in some places, yielding a highlight effect. I had never seen this design before. My first suspicion was that it might be a Letraset face, as this would have fitted in well with the release date of the game. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a match in a catalog by this manufacturer of rub-down type, so I contacted Florian Hardwig, who had often helped me with type research in the past. Florian was able to identify the mystery typeface. He found it in a catalog published in 1985 by Layout-Setzerei Stulle, a typesetting service in Stuttgart, Germany. Named Airport Spotlight, it’s a derivative of Airport, a typeface that Matthew Carter had designed in the early 1960s for signs at London Airport.

What a gift that Matthew Carter is still with us today. How’s this tidbit strike you, regarding the speed at which the world worked just decades ago:

In many regards, the adaptations made to Akzidenz echo the considerations made in the design of Helvetica. In an interview for Computer Arts, Carter comments: “[I]f you look at it today, you’d think was a rip-off of Helvetica. But we’d never seen Helvetica in 1961 in London, although it had been produced in Switzerland near Basle at the Haas foundry in 1957. Even if we had seen it, and wanted to have it typeset in London, we’d have had to get on a plane and fly to Basle and have it typeset there, because the British typesetting trade was so conservative that typefaces like that were simply unobtainable.”

Via Typographica.

Android Authority: ‘Google Is Transforming ChromeOS Into Android’ ★

Mishaal Rahman, reporting for Android Authority:

While both Android and ChromeOS have seen huge success in different markets, they’ve struggled to compete in one product category where they overlap: tablets. The high-end tablet market is dominated by the Apple iPad, and no matter what Google has tried, it has failed to change that. However, a source tells Android Authority that Google is working on a multi-year project to fully turn ChromeOS into Android, and the end result could be a platform that finally bests the iPad.

Probably not. Frankly it’s kind of weird that Android is a peer to iOS when it comes to phones, but not at all when it comes to tablets, even though iPadOS remains just a big-screen version of iOS. There are zillions of tablets out there that run Android, but they’re all crap and everyone knows it. “Flagship Android phones” are a thing; “Flagship Android tablets” are not. And iPads are a huge business for Apple, and the iPad is now solidly established as a piece of our cultural firmament. Everyone knows what an iPad is.

To better compete with the iPad as well as manage engineering resources more effectively, Google wants to unify its operating system efforts. Instead of merging Android and Chrome OS into a new operating system like rumors suggested in the past, however, a source told me that Google is instead working on fully migrating ChromeOS over to Android. While we don’t know what this means for the ChromeOS or Chromebook brands, we did hear that Google wants future “Chromebooks” to ship with the Android OS in the future. That’s why I believe that Google’s rumored new Pixel Laptop will run a new version of desktop Android as opposed to the ChromeOS that you’re likely familiar with.

So they’re not “merging” the two OSes as rumored, many times, in the past, but they’re “fully migrating ChromeOS over to Android”. The only way that really makes a lick of sense is that they’re shitcanning ChromeOS and working to make Android not suck on devices other than phones, like laptops and tablets. Good luck with that, given that even Apple has struggled to make iOS/iPadOS a good laptop OS. OS platforms are just hard — hard to design, hard to engineer, hard to evolve. And Apple, for one, seems more committed than ever to the idea that MacOS and iPadOS remain very different platforms.

And, somehow, there’s no mention of Fuchsia in Rahman’s piece. Fuchsia is supposedly Google’s OS of the future, but which more and more is smelling like Google’s Copland or Pink — a sprawling “next-gen” OS project that collapses under the weight of its own ambition and lack of practical focus, spinning its wheels for years “in development” whilst the world moves on.

Inside ISIS’s Graphic Design Team ★

Jason Koebler, writing for 404 Media:

According to the filing, which was first reported by our friends at Court Watch, Said was an aspiring ISIS graphic designer who was working with ISIS’s second-in-command graphic designer. That person told Said that ISIS’s chief designer gave him the nickname The Nightmare because of the extensive notes and revisions that were required before any piece of propaganda he worked on was pushed out. The DOJ document suggested that The Nightmare himself had many revisions for Said’s graphic design work.

“You can call me the Dawlawi [ISIS] designer or you can call me as the brother used to before. He used to send his designs for me to modify and because of the many changes, he used to be scared of me so he would call me ‘the nightmare,’” a message from The Nightmare to Said published by the DOJ said. [...]

The FBI obtained what it says are notes on one propaganda image allegedly created by Said and which The Nightmare tore apart because it had so many design elements that it was not very legible or effective as a piece of propaganda, and suggested that Said should both simplify it and add blood effects to parts of it to better get the point across.

If the Trump 2.0 administration goes full fascist, I think I’ve found my role in the resistance.

Apple Devices May Learn to Ignore ‘Hey Siri’ Command From TV Ads ★

Filipe Espósito, writing at 9to5Mac:

Apple introduced the “Hey Siri” command with iOS 8 to let users easily interact with the virtual assistant without having to press any buttons. However, over the years, this has resulted in Siri being mistakenly triggered when the command is spoken on a TV ad. But Apple is finally working on a fix for this. [...]

The new AdBlocker framework is linked to ShazamKit, which is the API for apps to use Shazam — the song identification platform acquired by Apple in 2018. At the same time, the framework also links to the process responsible for managing the “Siri” and “Hey Siri” voice commands on Apple devices.

Code suggests that “AdBlocker” will download audio fingerprints from Apple’s servers and then use the Shazam API to match them against audio captured by the device’s microphones using the Hey Siri API. When certain audios match, the new framework will temporarily disable Siri’s trigger commands.

Clever clever.