Monthly Archives: January 2019

Article note: We're designing technology to pull up the ladder after itself, and that is destructive to culture - though it is starting to teach people to defend themselves against the behavior. Also, on the same day as Microsoft had a widespread xbox one local-function outage because of a network problem, a la "A distributed system is one in which the failure of a computer you didn't even know existed can render your own computer unusable."

Article note: This proposal is one of those "insane proposal to start discussion" things, but the basic idea of "resource-limit web pages by default" is actually really interesting, and sort of appealing.

Article note: That buy would stir shit up. Mellanox-sourced Infiniband is the default "I have more money than sense" option (and hence the dominant species at the high end), and Intel's OmniPath is the credible-est competitor, so this would put Intel in posession of all the conservative-but-expensive semi-COTS networking. I wonder if they'd get into antitrust trouble?

Article note: Expanses of eye-searing whiteness, with no visual cues for what is interactive. Your design language is bad and you should feel bad.

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  The new Gmail. Also, wow, Google remembered that Android tablets exist. [credit: Google ]

Since the launch of Android P, Google has been hard at work rolling out its new "Google Material Theme" design language across all of its products. Desktop Gmail got its big redesign early in 2018, and this week is mobile Gmail's turn. On its official blog today, Google announced the new Gmail mobile design for Android and iOS. We only have a few basic pictures to go on right now, but like every other Google Material redesign, the new Gmail app is best described as "white and round." Google's new design language uses the stark white Google.com homepage as inspiration, so its new apps are almost entirely devoid of color. The big red header from the old Gmail app has been swapped out for a white search bar, so the only touches of color are from contact pictures, labels, and attachments. Besides the new color scheme, Google says you'll be able to "quickly view attachments—like photos—without opening or scrolling through the conversation." The top search bar promotes search more, and it also houses your profile icon on the right side, which lets you change accounts faster.

Article note: I have to say, I think this one is pretty funny, in a "turnabout is fair play" sort of way. Media outlets have been doing the "Your career is obsolete, find a new one, learn to code, that won't collapse like the rust belt" thing to the various blue-collar bases they find to condescend to, being told it as their industry collapses from at least a decade of management decisions and cultural drift ('member "pivot to video"? 'member the 3mb of ads and spyware the average news pageload tries to download? ) seems in keeping.

Article note: The article is basically a "Get over it, after complexity lost with Multics, now complexity has won" argument. Posting partly to test my stupid syndication gadget.

Article note: Shit, that's low-hanging to trigger, and highly abusable. Apple users, disable Facetime until patches are applied.

Enlarge / Apple demonstrates Group Facetime at WWDC 2018. (credit: Valentina Palladino)

Users have discovered a bug in Apple's FaceTime video-calling application that allows you to hear audio from a person you're calling before they accept the call—a critical bug that could potentially be used as a tool by malicious users to invade the privacy of others.

When Ars reached out to Apple for a statement, the company replied, "We're aware of this issue, and we have identified a fix that will be released in a software update later this week." An hour or two after this post went live, Apple disabled Group FaceTime to mitigate the bug.

The bug requires you to perform a few actions while the phone is ringing, so if the person on the other end picks up quickly, they might not be affected. Knowledge of how to use the bug is already widespread. The steps include:

Article note: Article is trading structure for different structure instead of addressing the problem. Are kids having high-quality minimally-supervised interactions with low but extant stakes? Then it's developmentally good. Are kids stuck on a rail with no meaningful influence or ability to explore? Then it's likely developmentally a waste of time. This axis has _nothing_ to do with electronic or not. It doesn't matter much if they're locked-in to electronic content or locked-in to a scheduled-and-monitored sports activity, they're not developing from it. It doesn't matter much if they're on a forum or on a stoop with the other neighborhood kids, if they're organically and independently interacting and learning, they're developing. Put some limited supervision on top to make sure they're not learning anything too egregious. I do agree with the assertion at the end that making sure children have opportunities (and nudges) to find and develop their interests is important; there is an awful lot of evidence in the literature that people are unlikely to get deeply into anything they haven't had a positive exposure to before puberty, so supplies and low-stakes classes ... and websites and communities for lots of different activities are the best kind of stimulus.