Links
People Were Skeptical About the Web Too, You Know
Eric Selfert on Twitter:
Calling out the fact that some other technology at a similar stage was (1) ridiculed and (2) ultimately succeeded has almost nothing to do with the fact that it was ridiculed. There's not a causal relationship there.
Listen, the world is going to be skeptical of all new technology.
Web3's Instant Rush to Centralization
Moxie Marlinspike has written my new favorite piece about the modern crypto bubble. Read the whole thing, but a few choice quotes for me were:
It reuses the same connections, TLS session tickets, etc for all the accounts in your wallet, so if you’re managing multiple accounts in your wallet to maintain some identity
Apple
So, About the MacBook Pro Notch…
I’m here to say that yes, I notice the notch on the 2021 MacBook Pro every single time I
Links
Gear Does Matter
Two Cameras: Two Uses, by Greg Morris:
My smartphone needs to have a good camera to capture all of life's moments. My kids doing things I want to let others know about, or record a memory I want to look back on.
And:
My camera on the other had is for expressing myself.
Links
The Erosion if the Common Good
Anita Sreedhar and Anand Gopal writing about vaccine hesitancy in the U.S.
Public health is no longer viewed as a collective endeavor, based on the principle of social solidarity and mutual obligation. People are conditioned to believe they’re on their own and responsible only for themselves. That means an important source of vaccine
Apple
Fitness+ is Adding the One Feature That Could Bring Me Back!
Apple Newsroom:
Time to Run on Fitness+ is a new audio running experience designed to help users become more consistent
Links
What It’s Like Working at a Large Company
Ask HN: Startup acquired by a large company and it sucks. What to do? | Hacker News
At this point I am in absolute shock. This should take no more than a few days to implement. So I reach out to the manager and ask what is going on. This is a simple task, I said.
newsletter
The Best Book of All Time Is… (Newsletter #97)
Happy Friday! Let's roll into the weekend with a blow-out collection of links and other goodies!
The Links
* Must read: a status page and interactive timeline to follow along with the James Webb Space Telescope.
* Footprints discovered in New Mexico show humans were in North America about 5,000 years earlier than
Links
Dear God, I’m Writing About Star Wars
Spencer Kornhaber for The Atlantic, Why Star Wars Keeps Telling the Same Stories:
Mesmerizing fights and tasty twists will no doubt unfold satisfyingly in the coming episodes. But look to the margins, to the creatures who aren’t saying much, for the saga’s future, because they still hold the promise of stories that, just
Links
When it Works, it's Invisible
Katelyn Jetelina writing for her excellent Your Local Epidemiologist:
One of public health’s biggest challenges is that when it works, it’s largely invisible. This isn’t the case in other fields. For example, in medicine you can see the impact of a surgery. In the drug industry you can see the immediate effect
Solving Solved Problems
Ben Thompson in a subscriber update:
There was an incident with not totally legit NFTs being sold on OpenSea, and OpenSea blocked their sale. However, since the blockchain is not tied to OpenSea, one could go elsewhere to sell these NFTs. The unique power of crypto, right?
This, according to crypto advocates, is evidence of
Links
Apple’s Biometrics Should be Multiple-Choice
Apple’s new iPad Mini is becoming a powerful healthcare tool, by Niel Smith
The Powerful A15 Bionic chip with support for super-fast 5G and the Apple pencil makes this iPad ideal for situations where you can carry it in your palm or your coat pocket and meet the rigorous requirements of the healthcare
So Far, Only the Good Guys are Here
A not so gentle intro to web3 - Koos Looijesteijn
Anybody can ‘mint’ an NFT of any piece of art (whether they made it, own it, or just found a picture online), or sell a token that claims access to a piece of land on the moon. But if you want to buy and sell real
Links
What Will Replace the Smartphone?
John Gruber in response to the sugestion VR headsets will replace smartphones:
VR headsets will never replace phones. I highly
newsletter
🎆 End of the Year Blowout! (Newsletter #96)
Hello and welcome to the first brand new issue of The Birchtree Newsletter! The back end has been swapped out, so there may be some bugs here and there, so let me know if you notice anything and I'll do my best to resolve anything ASAP.
As always, thank you for reading and
movie
Critics vs "Real People": Rotten Tomatoes (and Letterboxd) Data Tells All
A thing I've seen crop up over the past few years has been people lamenting how film critics "just don't get it" when it comes to determining what actually is good. While I would contend that "good" and "popular" often get conflated, I wanted to
