Month: September 2022

No one is actually boiling chicken in NyQuil

No one is actually boiling chicken in NyQuil:

So not only has NyQuil chicken been on a TikTok for a while — it first started trending on the app last winter — it’s been on the internet for even longer. It was “invented” on 4chan’s cooking board back in 2017, where it was called “sleepytime chicken”. People always forget that the original version includes whiskey. It’s supposed to make you sleepy! Also, if you click through on that link to the whole Imgur album, the 4chan user then takes the sleepytime chicken, wraps it in a tortilla, covers it in cheese, more cough medicine, and finishes it off with a dollop of sour cream.

[Never say “no one” in this crazy world we live in… but folks should understand the history.]

Michael Tsai – Blog – FogBugz Auto-Upgrades Free and Dormant Plans to Paid

Michael Tsai – Blog – FogBugz Auto-Upgrades Free and Dormant Plans to Paid:

Anil Dash:

I don’t recommend anyone do business with them, whether as a customer or anything else; I was CEO of Fog Creek when we decided to sell FogBugz, and if I knew the difference between what we were told ahead of the deal and what happened after, I never would have approved it. I didn’t see that they’d done this latest shitty thing until now but I really lament that they’ve sunk to an even lower new level.

I’ll add this as well… from Marco Arment who called them… “I was concerned about possibly getting sent to collections and affecting credit.

The phone guy, over a VERY laggy, scratchy overseas connection, basically said my data was already deleted and the billing failure would auto-delete the account without any more action.”

[Well, that’s quite a thing. Shame on them.]

MTA to install 2 surveillance cameras on every subway car

MTA to install 2 surveillance cameras on every subway car:

The 13,000 cameras, which cost a total of $5.5 million, will be installed on 6,455 subway cars over the next three years.

Hochul said she hopes the surveillance will result in more people choosing to ride the subway, where ridership remains down 37% on weekdays – despite reaching a post-pandemic high just last week.

“You think Big Brother is watching you on the subways, you’re absolutely right. That is our intent,” Hochul said. “We are going to be having surveillance of activities on the subway trains and that is going to give people great peace of mind. If you’re concerned about this, best answer is don’t commit any crimes on the subways.”

The MTA already has 10,000 cameras in all 472 of its subway stations.

[I recently noted other privacy intrusions in the Subway system. Taking the Subway in NYC might be one of the most intrusive experiences ever soon enough.]

More Bosses Are Spying on Quiet Quitters. It Could Backfire.

More Bosses Are Spying on Quiet Quitters. It Could Backfire. – WSJ:

In some ways, what’s going on here is that companies are conducting a gigantic research experiment on their employees without necessarily being equipped to understand the data their worker-surveillance systems produce. Only about one in three medium-to-large companies has an analytics and data science team capable of parsing the kind of data these systems spit out, says Mr. Kropp of Gartner.

However employees feel about increased monitoring of how they do their work, they may not have much choice about it, as more companies make working from home contingent on employee acceptance of monitoring. One Prodoscore client that recently shifted to remote work specified that employees who wanted to work from home had to use Prodoscore, says Mr. Powell. In the first month, 80% of the company’s employees, or 3,200 of them, opted in, he adds.

[Sure, sure. Hold a gun to people’s head and surprise! They accept the monitoring. If you’re an employer and your staff is (supposedly) quiet quitting… maybe you should try and understand the lack of motivation by… wait for it… talking to them? C’mon. We can do better than surveil everyone.]

The CarPlay Settings Disconnect – 512 Pixels

The CarPlay Settings Disconnect – 512 Pixels:

While we’re here, I’d also like to officially complain about CarPlay’s insistence in treating each car as their own unique butterfly. In addition to CarPlay in my truck, we have it in my wife’s minivan. iOS treats them as individual connections, each with their own settings. That means if I switch podcast apps or change a setting, and want things to be the same between the two cars I drive, I have to adjust things a second time.1 CarPlay should have an option to let the phone drive the experience, so things can be consistent across vehicles.

[Yes, please.]

“And we also”

“And we also”:

If it’s the latter, if you’ve decided that making just enough profit to maximize your real goal is the purpose of the organization, what an extraordinary opportunity. Organizations of humans with a clear measured goal and just enough profit to get there can make a huge impact.

[As I’ve said… priorities are the junk draw of decision making. The clearer you are about your goals the more you are going to accomplish.]

Patagonia Founder Gives Away the Company to Fight Climate Change

Patagonia Founder Gives Away the Company to Fight Climate Change:

Rather than selling the company or taking it public, Mr. Chouinard, his wife and two adult children have transferred their ownership of Patagonia, valued at about $3 billion, to a specially designed trust and a nonprofit organization. They were created to preserve the company’s independence and ensure that all of its profits — some $100 million a year — are used to combat climate change and protect undeveloped land around the globe.

The unusual move comes at a moment of growing scrutiny for billionaires and corporations, whose rhetoric about making the world a better place is often overshadowed by their contributions to the very problems they claim to want to solve.
At the same time, Mr. Chouinard’s relinquishment of the family fortune is in keeping with his longstanding disregard for business norms, and his lifelong love for the environment.

[More on this soon… but I’m not surprised, but deeply impressed.]

The MTA’s switch to OMNY machines is a privacy nightmare

The MTA’s switch to OMNY machines is a privacy nightmare:

Cards like the ones these new machines will be supplying are likely to follow the model of other Cubic Corp. cards, including San Francisco’s Clipper and London’s Oyster cards. The OMNY card will likely have a persistent identifier that makes tracking people throughout the city an easy task.

Tying those journeys to a real name and personal information becomes significantly easier if you link that card, or a phone or credit card, with an OMNY account. Accounts have users’ names, payment information, and every web tracker and cookie the OMNY account management site might decide to deploy—along with data scraped from social media—associated with their method of entry. 

While the MTA’s MetroCard is also run by Cubic, that system was deployed in 1991 and doesn’t have quite the same tracking capabilities. Transit justice organization TransitCenter reported that the MTA has stated OMNY will give the city “near-instantaneous” reporting on rider tap-ins and travel, an improvement from weeklong delays for MetroCard data. Tap-to-pay with a phone leverages near-field communication (NFC) technology, a system with its own issues that exacerbate the OMNY system’s existing privacy concerns. 

Who will they share this new trove of data with? The current legal landscape and previous experience with Cubic tells us that warrantless access to this data is both permitted and commonly exercised.

[It’s gettin’ so that you can’t do nothing in peace anymore…]

Welcome to the new Verge

Welcome to the new Verge:

When you embark on a project to totally reboot a giant site that makes a bunch of money, you inevitably get asked questions about conversion metrics and KPIs and other extremely boring vocabulary words. People will pop out of dark corners trying to start interminable conversations about “side doors,” and you will have to run away from them, screaming.

But there’s only one real goal here: The Verge should be fun to read, every time you open it. If we get that right, everything else will fall into place.

[All I can say for now is “Nice!”]

Apple taking 85% of Globalstar network for Emergency SOS

Apple taking 85% of Globalstar network for Emergency SOS:

The Form 8-K filing, published on September 7, 2022 from the Securities and Exchange Commission shows just how much network capacity Apple will use at 85%.

Globalstar will provide and maintain all resources, including personnel, software, satellite, gateways, satellite spectrum and regulatory rights necessary for the partnership. Apple will receive priority access to these resources.

In addition, Apple will fund 95% of Globalstar’s capital expenditures for it to grow and maintain its satellite network. Apple will also cover certain costs of Globalstar’s borrowings related to the new satellites, and other approved costs as necessary.

[Facinating]