Hi geeks! Music, with new King Gizzard and Yôkaï.

On the news,

• [fr] Tu mourras moins bête - Mercredi, babyboomerie.
• Correlating Covid-19 cases and negative reviews of unscented candles (people who lost their sense of smell and haven't realized it yet). Via waxy and HN.
• Good comics! xkcd #2390: Linguists and SMBC: Fisher of men.
• Tech:
  • Vice: Exposing Amazon’s surveillance of labor and environmental groups. Fucking Pinkerton, seriously?! Via DF and HN and r/privacy. Related: Amazon workers to stage coordinated black Friday protests in 15 countries (HN).

    "It’s not enough for Amazon to abuse its dominant market power and face antitrust charges by the EU; now they are exporting 19th century American union-busting tactics to Europe", Christy Hoffman, general secretary of UNI Global Union, a global federation of trade unions that represents more than 20 million workers, told Motherboard. "This is a company that is ignoring the law, spying on workers, and using every page of the U.S. union-busting playbook to silence workers' voices".

    "For years people have been comparing Big Tech bosses to 19th century robber barons", she continued. "And now by using the Pinkertons to do his dirty work, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is making that connection even clearer".

  • Wolfie Christl: Esoteric metrics based on analyzing extensive data about employee activities has been mostly the domain of fringe software vendors. Now it's built into MS 365, and Gizmodo: Microsoft's creepy new 'Productivity Score' gamifies workplace surveillance, and DHH's take on it. HN1, HN2, merci Heinz.
  • NYT: Amazon hires 427,000 people in 10 months, bringing its global work force to more than 1.2 million 🤯. HN.
  • DF: Apple is not backing down on postponed "App Tracking Transparency" feature in iOS 14, good job on this front, Apple.
  • jblow (via Blow Fan): The problem with online communities.
  • NYT: Facebook struggles to balance civility and growth.

Hi frendz. The weekly 🎶 is old Peter Kernel and Lupen Crook.

On the news,

• Happy ten years cancerversary, xkcd people!
• Coronavirus:
  • Kottke: Swiss cheese defense. Good analogy, not specific to the virus.
  • jwz: Taiwan and the coronavirus.
• Tech:
  • Reed Berkowitz: A game designer’s analysis of QAnon, 👍, thx Julien.
  • youtube-dl's repository has been restored (HN), with a good PR move from GitHub (HN) standing upon good EFF lawyer work.
  • WSJ: Parler’s lead investor is Rebekah Mercer, funder of Cambridge Analytica. Slowclap.
  • DF / Vice Motherboard: How the U.S. military buys location data from ordinary apps.
  • Bret Devereaux: Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and the unfortunate (colonialism apologism) implications. HN.

Hi geeks, and music with GIRAFFES? GIRAFFES! (thanks OJ!), BADBADNOTGOOD, and Dario Indjic playing Sanṭūr.

Around the interwebs,

• Donaldese:
  • Zeynep Tufekci: America’s next authoritarian will be much more competent and twitter thread. Via kottke.
  • Kottke: Lessons from the Roman republic about the political collapse and recovery of self-governing communities.
• Tech:
  • Jeffrey Paul: Your (mac / windows) computer isn't yours (r/prog, HN), further clarified by Jacopo Jannone: Does Apple really log every app you run? A technical look (HN1, HN2). This marks the day I stop praising Apple for their laudable stance on privacy (compared to other bigtech). This feature is privacy garbage and, to add insult to injury, a disaster of a technical implementation. Fuck Apple. Passersbys using a Mac and considering migrating to Linux/BSD, here are a few Linux tips.

Hi folks, and music with Martin Heyne, Jorge Abadias, Knocked Loose.

On the news,

• US elections: Visualizing 2016 counties votes vs. population.
• Tech:
  • Copyright attorney Leonard French dissects RIAA's DMCA takedown on youtube-dl: part 1, part 2.
  • tixy, "creative code golfing" is cuuuute. Via waxy.

Hi geeks. This week's music is the !@#$% 👏👏👏 new Zeal and Ardor, which kicks ass and taught me about the Tuskegee syphilis study.

Around the interwebs,

• [fr] Thinkerview et Isabelle Delannoy - Choc économique : Perspectives alternatives ?, une bien belle et riche entrevue.
• El pais: A room, a bar and a classroom: how the coronavirus spreads through the air, excellent visualization.
• Tech:
  • Drew DeVault: What is this Gemini thing anyway, and why am I excited about it?
  • Michael Hobbes on why older people are a vector for misinformation online: cognitive decline, digital illiteracy, and a social media ecosystem of fringe partisan websites. Take care of your older folks and talk to them. Via waxy.
  • Waxy: The house on Blue Lick Road, 😄.
  • The Verge: Inside Foxconn & Trump’s empty buildings, empty factories, and empty promises in Wisconsin, via DF.