Finally good news.
Apple and Google partner on COVID-19 contact tracing technology
Good news, Apple and Google are partnering to implement system-level APIs for a privacy friendly contact tracing done via bluetooth (which, as we were discussing the other day, seems the most sensible approach): Apple and Google will work to enable a broader Bluetooth-based contact tracing platform by building this functionality into the underlying platforms. This […]
imisstheoffice.eu
An office noise generator
A moment of silence for Yahoo! Pipes 🙏
Surveilling encounters
Here’s Carol Yin detailing how her movements have been tracked across China since the lockdown came into place. Upon entering a train station, she has been having to share her location data of recent weeks. When booking a taxi, she needs to scan a QR code generated by WeChat or Alipay to “check-in”. The same […]
Google’s mobility reports
A view on how we’re moving these days, based on aggregated data from Google Maps.
Little to do with hoarding
We can stop blaming the shortages on the rest of us. It’s a supply chain problem: If you’re looking for where all the toilet paper went, forget about people’s attics or hall closets. Think instead of all the toilet paper that normally goes to the commercial market — those office buildings, college campuses, Starbucks, and […]
The robots are ready
Brookings Institution: As virus-related recession fears escalate, it is important to stress that while automation is likely to surge in general, not everyone is equally vulnerable. As our 2019 assessment of automation trends suggests, it is low-income workers, the young, and workers of color who will be vulnerable if this pandemic shoves the nation into […]
Tubesnake
Snake for the Apple Watch.
10 years ago, Samsung made a deck detailing 126 things that iOS did better than the original Samsung Galaxy S operating system
And they were very meticulous about it (via Benjan Mayo)
Expect regulatory barriers to automation to be lifted
Reuters: Fresh fruit and vegetables will become increasingly scarce in Europe, suppliers warn, as the coronavirus pandemic hampers the global movement of produce and of the people needed to gather crops. BBC: Due to ever growing travel restrictions aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus, we are now facing a shortfall of almost 80% […]
We live in Zoom now
NY Times: Zoom has been preparing for this moment since the new coronavirus began spreading in China in January. Even then it was easy to see that Zoom’s primary customer base — videoconferencing desk workers — would become more reliant on its services while quarantined at home. So the company began closely monitoring its capacity […]
Mozilla Design Journey, 2006-2020
Sean Martell, designer at Mozilla, goes through some of the FireFox related projects he got to work on at Mozilla over the last 14 years.
A talking mouth chanting algorithmically generated prayers. Given they’re nonsense to begin with, why not?
The end of trust
The EFF and McSweeney’s have teamed up to produce The End of Trust, an issue of McSweeney’s dedicated to technology, privacy, and surveillance. It can be read online for free.
A new Classicbot retro toy figure
Something really nerdy to distract ourselves with. I have the Mac Classic one on my desk, and it sparks continuous joy.
How will we know when we’re through this?
Larry Brillant, an epidemiologist who helped eradicate smallpox: The world is not going to begin to look normal until three things have happened. One, we figure out whether the distribution of this virus looks like an iceberg, which is one-seventh above the water, or a pyramid, where we see everything. If we’re only seeing right […]
Normal is not an option
Arnold King: In the long run, I don’t expect normal either. Pre-crisis, our patterns of specialization and trade were optimized for efficiency at the expense of fragility. Expect supply chains in the future to have a lot more redundancy and to be less driven by cost minimization. The Chief Risk Officer’s approval will now be […]