Move fast and break things

Who doesn’t love a rainy Tuesday?

David Leonhardt reports that Covid cases are dropping in the US and worldwide. It could be the end of a peak in the mysterious two-month cycle. Or it could be something more promising. Fingers crossed.

Facebook went down yesterday. Then it came back up. It wasn’t a big deal for me, although I did get one annoying SERVFAIL before moving on. Cloudflare engineers watched in real time how the outage affected the Internet. In the real world, for a few hours there was less partisan cocooning and fewer cute dog videos. And we all survived.

Jonathan Franzen has a new book. It’s the first of a trilogy.

Andrew Yang has changed his party affiliation from Democrat to Independent. But don’t try this at home, kids, he says.

And John Kraus too some photos of the night sky with his iPhone 13 Pro Max. Pretty impressive.

Coming and going

It’s Sunday, 02/02-2020, a rare palindromic day.

Punxsutawney Phil says it will be an early spring. But we already knew that.

Television viewing habits have changed over the years. Streaming has replaced broadcast TV for most people. But as far as ad pricing goes, today’s Superbowl is still overwhelmingly a broadcast event. As for the game itself? Gronk predicts a zero to zero tie score going into overtime.

Stephen King is quitting Facebook. Good for him.

Here’s an example of operant conditioning developed by the Mumbai Traffic Police. It’s unclear how effective it is for reducing noise but I’m guessing it would wreak havoc on any signal coordination system.

And if Jeff Bezos, the head of one of the largest tech companies on the planet, can get his phone hacked, so can you. Here are some basic tips for prevention.

You are the product

A warm and windy Sunday. Happy birthday to Jeff Bezos, Haruki Murakami and Haverhill’s own Rod Zombie.

Complaining can be good. Except when it’s bad.

You know Facebook is tracking you*. Wired describes just how much information is being collected and what you can do to limit how it’s being used.

This WaPo headline on Tom Steyer‘s campaign is a great example of Betteridge’s Law in action.

If you wanted to analyze your Apple Card spending patterns you were out of luck until now. A frustrated cardholder (and developer) came up with a solution, which he is now offering for a small fee.

And science has apparently established what we all know to be true: looks count.

In the uncanny valley

Friday today. RIP Carl Sagan.

According to Mark Gurman, Apple is working on a plan to use satellites to provide connectivity to its devices.

A headline should entice you to want to read the underlying story. But rarely does it explicitly tell you to do so, as it does here with Ty Burr’s review of Cats. But you should. It’s a great read.

What’s next in the impeachment process? Also, speaking of headlines…

Algorithmic bias is a real thing. Science can certainly help to solve crimes but investigators should be wary of too quickly embracing every new advance. Then again, knee-jerk bans on technology often backfire. When San Francisco banned facial recognition technology it also banned the use of Face ID to unlock the phones it issued to city employees. (Since fixed with an amendment.)

And, another day, another data breech. Facebook this time.