The Daily Dad — Dec 22, 2023

Things you might want to know:

• Warner Bros. Discovery in talks to merge with Paramount
  ❝ CEOs of each company met yesterday in New York City.
• Microsoft is nixing its Windows mixed reality platform
  💭 …to the collective dismay of absolutely no one. Meta and Valve have the Dabbler and Enthusiast segments of the AR/VR market sewn up, and Apple is about to seize the Luxury segment in a big way, so there’s really nothing left for Microsoft.
• Steam’s winter sale is live, offering major discounts on thousands of games
  ❝ Steam’s annual winter sale is upon us, offering discounts on everything from AAA titles to overlooked indie gems. It lasts from today until January 4.
• Apple’s 15-inch MacBook Air M2 falls to a new low of $999
  ❝ The deal knocks $300 off its sticker price.
• UK Supreme Court rules AI can’t be a patent inventor, ‘must be a natural person’
  ❝ The ruling blocks Dr. Stephen Thaler’s years-long attempt to register patents for his AI “creativity machine.”

• Apple reportedly plans Vision Pro launch by February
  ❝ Apple is planning the Vision Pro headset by February, Bloomberg reports. Apple has previously said the device would be released in “early 2024.”
• Sony won’t take away your PlayStation-bought Discovery shows after all
  ❝ Sony has announced that it’s no longer removing shows from Discovery by December 31 like it had previously planned, thanks to updated licensing agreements.
• The Age of Crispr Medicine Is Here
  ❝ The approval of the first Crispr-based therapy is just the beginning. Getting it to patients is the next hurdle.
• Lapsus$: GTA 6 hacker handed indefinite hospital order
  ❝ Judge says hacker remains a high risk through his skills and motivation to carry out cyber-crime.
• Apple wants AI to run directly on its hardware instead of in the cloud
  ❝ iPhone maker wants to catch up to its rivals when it comes to AI.

The Daily Dad — Dec 21, 2023

Things you might want to know:

• Olivia Dunne alleges she’s been ‘shadow banned’ by TikTok as views plummet
  💭 Whenever I see quotes from Livvy Dunne, I’m slightly surprised to remember she has a voice. On my phone, the girl’s always on mute.
• Jonathan Majors Dropped By Marvel After Guilty Verdict, Will No Longer Play Kang The Conqueror In Upcoming Films
  💭 Fuck it, call Eddie Murphy. Kang can be played by literally anyone, while Eddie’s got the balls to step into the middle of a massive franchise-in-motion, the acting chops to deliver solid work, and the ability to bring a winking bit of fun to what would otherwise be an awkward recasting.
• What Happens When Facebook Heats Your Home
  ❝ Big Tech data centers are not only being used to power the internet but also to heat people’s homes. But who’s really winning when Facebook keeps you warm at night?
• Tom Cruise, 61, spotted canoodling with Russian socialite, 36, who has $1M handbag collection: report
  💭 Does a gentleman canoodle before or after finger-banging his lady fair?
• Donald Trump Used to Get Nazi Greeting at Work: Ivana
  💭 I’m less struck by Trump’s everyday fetishization of genocidal lunatics than by the blasé reaction of everyone around him. He was never crazy-rich, after all, and his zero-sum greed was legendary… so kissing his ass wasn’t that profitable. I feel like people just “let it go” because it was impossible to take seriously the actions of such a trivial man.

• The Scott Pilgrim Anime Backlash, Explained
  ❝ Netflix’s Scott Pilgrim Takes Off doesn’t adapt the source material, and reactions have been mixed
• They Didn’t Ask to Go Viral. Posting on Social Media Without Consent Is Immoral
  💭 Mass-media outlets used to conduct themselves with a level of decorum: they’d illustrate a story about obesity with a sidewalk shot of dozens of fat people, but they’d always crop out or blur the heads. Today’s internet prank fucks and click-chasing scolds have no concept of restraint. And this is why we can’t have nice things.
• Suspects can refuse to provide phone passcodes to police, court rules
  ❝ Phone-unlocking case law is “total mess,” may be ripe for Supreme Court review.
• Gossip TikToks Are Carving Away Privacy IRL
  💭 This is super-creepy, and is one of those weird little phenomena that are actually more relevant to day-to-day life than the techno-panic over a half-dozen dumbfucks deliriously jerking off to Bin Laden’s manifesto on TikTok.
• Gen Z falls for online scams more than their boomer grandparents do
  💭 Well of course they do. Boomer grandparents get scammed via phone calls, while the Permanently Online get screwed via text. Into every generation are born a host of dumbasses.

• Lara Croft: The Art of Virtual Seduction is the ultimate cringey relic of late ’90s game advertising
  💭 I can honestly say that nothing about ‘90s Lara Croft ever gave me a boner, but the novelty of the character design did make me play the original game for an hour or two more than I would have if Lara had been replaced by a more masculine set of triangles.
• Twitch immediately rescinds its artistic nudity policy
  ❝ Mere days after Twitch updated its content policy to permit certain kinds of sexual content, the platform has withdrawn the portion of the policy permitting “artistic nudity.”
• The buttons on Zenith’s original ‘clicker’ remote were a mechanical marvel
  💭 We had one of these when I was a kid, and their mechanical nature meant that most primordial dads were super-protective of their Space Commands. It was entirely possible to wear out the mechanism, so no one else was allowed to touch The Precious. Naturally, I clicked the fuck out of it anytime he was gone.
• John Waters and David Lynch really love Lana Del Rey
  ❝ This isn’t the first time Waters has praised Del Rey. “She’s very David Lynch to me,” he added in the RS interview. “She infuriates people, but I think she’s in on it. I really want her to hook up with David Lynch, because he produces great albums these days.”
• Next Beeper Mini Fix Requires Users to Have a Mac – MacRumors
  💭 This whole micro-drama is like watching a bored cat playing with an ambitiously stupid mouse.

• Walton Goggins’ Fallout Role Is Far More Interesting Than It May Seem
  ❝ Nolan also revealed that they intentionally dialed back on The Ghoul’s prosthetics in order to ensure that Goggins’ performance comes through all that makeup. As Nolan explains, the team didn’t want to hinder the reasons they cast Goggins in the first place by burying him in makeup.
• Holly Marie Combs Reveals That ‘Charmed’ Co-Star Alyssa Milano Got Shannen Doherty Fired: “By Today’s Standards, It Wouldn’t F***ing Fly”
  ❝ And he said, ‘We didn’t mean to.’ He said that we’ve been backed into this corner. We’re basically in a position where it’s one or the other. We were told that’s her or me, and Alyssa [Milano] has threatened to sue us for a hostile workplace environment.
• 2023 in social media: the case for the fediverse
  ❝ A new kind of social internet is currently forming. Right now it might still look like “Twitter and Reddit, only different,” but that’s only the very beginning of what’s to come. Hopefully.
• GoodLinks Adds Even Deeper Shortcuts Integration with Ability to Retrieve Current Article, Selections, and More
  💭 I’m experimenting with using this as the basis for my Daily Dad workflow… unlike the previous process, I can write these blurbs outside Tumblr and keep them searchable and organized in a dedicated datastore. We’ll see how it works.

The Daily Dad

Things you might want to know, for Dec 19, 2023:

• 23andMe confirms hackers stole ancestry data on 6.9 million users — It’s probably too late and my warnings are pointless, but please kids… don’t give something as valuable as your DNA to a for-profit company that views security as a cost-center. It’s not just the millions of 23andMe suckerscustomers who have lost control of their genetic identity… their family members are compromised, too. Maybe it’s just me, but finding out you’re actually 8% Neanderthal isn’t worth giving the Russian mob the blueprints to your ancestry.
• COMIXOLOGY, RIP — I was there at the start, with my little iPhone 3GS, ready to plow through a digital comic collection in Guided View mode. I was certain Comixology was going to save the comics business, and revitalize the audience. Now here we are at the end, nothing has been achieved, and a decade of progress has disappeared into the Kndle app, never to be seen again. Fucking A.
• Using the iPad Pro as a Portable Monitor for My Nintendo Switch with Orion, a Capture Card, and a Battery Pack — Okay, I eat this kind of shit up. It’s absurd on a practical level, but it’s the kind of thing I’m likely to try, just for the hell of it.
• Here’s what intentionally crashing a plane for YouTube clicks gets you — To paraphrase Robin Williams: the ability to crash a plane for attention is God’s way of telling you that you’re making too much money.
• Facebook Messenger Rolls Out End-to-End Encryption by Default — About fucking time, Zuck. I guess he figures the petabytes of pre-E2E conversations that they can use to train their LLM will suffice, so it’s time to let the peasants have their privacy.

• Noah Hawley: How ‘Twin Peaks’ Influenced My Work — If you were between 16 and 30 in 1990 and had any sort of creative impulse, Twin Peaks influenced your work.
• What Did It Mean That Howard the Duck Was Trapped ‘in a World He Never Made’? — The ‘80s movie and modern MCU cameos don’t do justice to the comic book Howard of the 1970s. He was dark and weird and absurd and (?) sexy and grown-up in a way that other comics on the spinner rack hadn’t been in decades, and I was enthralled.
• The use and misuse of evolutionary psychology in online manosphere communities: The case of female mating strategies
• The Bizarre Cottage Industry of YouTube Obituary Pirates
• Warner Bros. Reverses Course on ‘Coyote vs. Acme’ After Filmmakers Rebel

• ‘Now and Then,’ the Beatles’ Last Song, Is Here, Thanks to Peter Jackson’s AI — The song is very good, and the technical skill and care that went into its recovery is just as interesting. The video is just goofy fun, very much in keeping with The Beatles pre-breakup sensibilties. Overall, a delightful and unexpected treat in a year that was full of absolute bullshit.
• Apple Now Selling Standalone USB-C AirPods Pro Case for $99
• Texas sues Pfizer with COVID anti-vax argument that is pure stupid — I feel like most headlines featuring “Texas” or “anti-vax” should always include “pure stupid” as well.
• How TV Executives Ruined Everything
• Humane Debuts $700 AI Pin With ‘Laser Ink Display’ — Do I think this will be a success? No. It’s too niche and weird. But as a signal of life beyond the smartphone, it’s an intriguing development.

• DAK and the Golden Age of Gadget Catalogs — As a household, we didn’t receive a ton of mail as a kid… we saw only a fraction of the junk that hits my physical mailbox these days. But every few months, the DAK catalog would arrive, and I knew I was in for at least a night or two of nerdy, consumerist joy. Page after page of discontinued, misconfigured, or too-oddball-for-the-general-market gadgets were waiting to tempt me with deep discounts on things no one really needed. Sheer bliss, I tell you.
• How to Stop Your Kids From Ruining Your Apple Music Recommendations
• Prince’s Purple Rain puffy shirt is up for auction — You’ve gotta figure Prince’s clothes would fit an American Girl doll.
• Audible’s Moriarty podcast understands what makes Arthur Conan Doyle’s arch-villain survive
• The Real Reason You (Still) Watch Reality TV