Favorites: Siri Stumbles, Steel Shenanigans

Boba Guys go BPA-free, Ukraine gets aid back, and the Denver airport

September 2024, Carmel-by-the-Sea

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The full article is very harsh given that it's coming from pretty much the number one Apple blogger. I’m not saying Apple’s stock took a hit because of Gruber’s excoriation here, but it certainly seems plausible. Gruber discussed this all with Ben Thompson, who raised the point that Apple's pre-recorded keynotes (cached) are what made this possible.

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Short version (cached) of these steel tarrifs is that we're setting things up so that it'll be cheaper to import a truck made completely in Canada than to import the steel and make it here. Extremely stupid. Interestingly, there was reporting earlier in the day that while the tarrifs were announced, he had not yet officially signed them. Matthew Zeitlin reminds us of a time during the previous Trump admin where Gary Cohn stopped Trump from doing bad things by literally hiding the paperwork (cached) Trump was trying to sign. I think maybe we didn't give Trump's staff enough credit last time for limiting his ability to implement the absolute worst ideas.

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I spent a few minutes looking into far-uvc. It seems you specifically want the ones that output a wavelength of 222nm. anything higher than that and it's suddenly a tanning bed light instead. If you search amazon and find something that's less than like $400, it's not the right device.

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I had no idea someone had built anything like this, let alone Gemini. Very cool! He also did one where he modified real-world photos (cached) quite effectively. It drew the line at modifying Duchamp though.

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It's 52 square miles, the largest airport in the western hemisphere, compared to SF’s 46.8 square miles.

Flotsam and Jetsam

– Experiment with restoritive justice in a Pennsylvania prison had good results according to John Arnold, who is relatively reliable (cached) here as he's criticised other similar programs in the past for being innefective. (src)(cached)
– Politico reports: “USDA cancels $1B in local food purchasing for schools, food banks” The federal government actually does useful stuff, it’s bad to shut programs like this down. (src)(cached)
– Southwest airlines is ending free checked bags as well as the open seating system, both of which made it possible for them to board planes faster. What a bummer. (src)(cached)
– NYC congestion pricing has massively reduced the amount of honking going on in Manhattan. Interesting side effect! (src)(cached)
– Trump admin now says they're resuming military aid to Ukraine. (src)(cached)
– Russian-owned steel plant in Oregon, falsified quality control test results for military vehicle armor plating for years. (src)(cached)
– ProPublica reports that Trump admin is illegally directing USAID to destroy all their records. Seems bad! Yglesias quips (cached) that Trump's core voter base of people who care a lot about document retention and Hillary's emails will be outraged. (src)(cached)
– There's a recent paper arguing that moderating on policy is less important than policy positions, but strangely no one wants to bet money that Susan Collins is going to be an electoral underperformer in 2026. (Most other evidence on the subject points in the opposite direction). Anyway, I created a manifold market if you want to wager bragging rights on it. (src)(cached)
– Given I linked to The Plasticist’s analysis of plastic in Bay Area foods, it’s worth noting that the worst offender, The Boba Guys, worked to find sources of plastic and remove them, they’re now fully free of contamination. (src)(cached)
– Trump’s staff stopped him from doing the dumbest stuff last time around. With that gone, only the legislature can do anything, but they’d have to want to. (src)(cached)
– A PSA from Devon Zuegel: "PSA: Batteries have gotten so good that you can now get a rechargeable card that works with FindMy & is just slightly thicker than a credit card" (src)(cached)
– "the doge team realized that there weren't billions of social security benefits going to dead people and so instead are planning to get rid of phone service" (src)(cached)
– If you’re wondering, BYD is absolutely crushing Tesla, 2x their sales, despite not selling in the US. (src)(cached)