onfocus

A growing list of businesses I appreciate that are willing to break with the status quo to send a message. List includes REI, North Face, Patagonia, and Ben & Jerry’s. Since this was published, Verizon has said they’ll stop advertising on Facebook:

"We found an advertisement for Verizon appearing next to a video from the conspiracy group QAnon drawing on hateful and antisemitic rhetoric," the letter read, "warning that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is planning to bring on civil war with concentration camps and coffins at the ready and claiming Americans are already quarantined in militarized districts."

Appearing next to hateful conspiracy garbage is not a good look for brands.

Update: Unilever joins: Driving a Responsible Digital Ecosystem in These Polarized Times.

"At every crucial moment, American officials were weeks or months behind the reality of the outbreak. Those delays likely cost tens of thousands of lives."

The weakness of positive thinking visualized.

"Since most of the time WebP is used alongside JPEG fallback, by using WebP you will essentially double your storage costs with little benefit."

ah-HA! Unless all of your images < 500px you don't get a big benefit moving to WebP when you can use MozJPEG for encoding.

"The election is in 160 days. That's usually not enough time to pass new laws, let alone build new voting infrastructure, and it’s certainly not enough time to test any of these systems before they are implemented. And most state legislatures are now working remotely, slowing them down even more."

Throw another log on the anxiety fire.

"On June 15, Apple rejected an update to a previously-approved iOS app called Hey. The app is for a new email service created by a company called Basecamp.

The rationale for said rejection was that Hey offered a subscription via-website without also offering a parallel subscription via Apple's in-app purchase (IAP). Apple takes a 30% cut of IAP revenues during an app's first year, and 15% thereafter."

This site has dozens of examples of apps that you can download from the iOS app store that don't work without a subscription you purchase elsewhere. This makes the rejection of the new email app Hey seem like Apple is singling out a potential direct competitor rather than evenly enforcing an existing policy.

More background: Apple doubles down on controversial decision to reject email app Hey.

Update (6/23): We're all good here? Apple, HEY, and the Path Forward.

"The main reason is obvious: the respiratory droplets thought to carry the virus have a much greater opportunity to disperse harmlessly outside, particularly if there are breezes to carry them away."

Indoors is still cancelled.

"What matters is not only how many votes candidates get, but where they get them. Because electoral-college votes are assigned by state rather than by the country as a whole, and because smaller states receive a disproportionately high number of votes, it is possible for smaller states to overrule the majority of voters."

Time to get rid of the electoral college.

"Browse and download high-resolution, public domain artworks."

Endless art scrolling.

"In the last two weeks, American voters’ support for the Black Lives Matter movement increased almost as much as it had in the preceding two years."

"On top of that, experts said antifa isn't even a group; it's more of a diffuse movement of leftists who share a similar ideology in opposition to fascism."

How do you demonize an authentic public movement that a majority of people support? Make up an imaginary terrorist organization and say they are behind it.

"They were designed to fit inside existing firearms as an alternative to shooting someone with a real bullet, often as a way for authoritarian regimes to control a free-speaking, free-protesting populace. And that’s exactly what we’ve seen happen yet again today. As protesters have taken to the streets across the U.S. to protest the murder of George Floyd, they’ve been shot, indiscriminately, with military technologies that are known to maim and kill."

There are some graphic images in this article but it has a good history of how not-as-lethal weapons became ubiquitous. It gives important context to gut-wrenching stories like this: Activist who trained officers on bias ‘heartbroken’ after San Jose police seriously injure him with rubber bullet at protest.

Some impressive investigation using cell phone footage from the scene of the Lafayette Square protest.