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The Galaxy-Apart Edition Monday, May 8, 2023

‘It’s Going To Be A While’: No End In Sight For Hollywood Strike, by Brooks Barnes and John Koblin

It’s not just posturing: As screenwriters continue their strike against Hollywood companies, the two sides remain a galaxy apart, portending a potentially long and destructive standoff.

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Writers, however, succeeded in making things difficult for studios over the first week. Apple TV+ was forced to postpone the premiere of “Still,” about Michael J. Fox and his struggle with Parkinson’s disease, because Mr. Fox refused to cross a picket line. In Los Angeles, writers picketed the Apple TV+ set for “Loot,” starring Maya Rudolph, causing taping to halt.

Elite Podcasts Struggle While The Podcast Masses Thrive, by Max Tani, Semafor

The podcast industry is in the midst of a deep transformation, away from expensive brand-name programming and back toward its roots in a wider array of, mostly, talk shows.

On Security

Passkeys: A Loss Of User Control?, by Jeff Johnson

The people driving the adoption of passkeys are mostly big tech companies and banks. I'm not convinced that they have my interests at heart, and "user freedom" is not likely to be in their vocabulary. They're more than happy to lock you in to their ecosystems and set all of the rules for how you can live in the computing world. There are real problems with passwords, of course, but I fear that the elimination of passwords will mean the elimination of freedom, and lead to a password police state, as it were.

What's the solution? As far as Apple is concerned, I would be satisfied if passkeys could be saved in a local, non-iCloud keychain, as normal keychain items with support for export and import. Ideally, the export format would be cross-platform, and I don't see why it couldn't be cross-platform, given that passkeys are just public-private key pairs tied to a domain. In that case, I would be happy to eliminate web passwords, since I already use randomly-generated, keychain-managed web passwords that can't be memorized (by me). Unless and until Apple provides such a solution, though, I remain extremely skeptical of passkeys and feel inclined to fight back against the notion of replacing and eliminating passwords.

Stuff

Worried About Your Local Air Quality? Track It With These Apps, by John Bogna, PC Magazine

Between industrial pollution and climate events like wildfires, it's hard to avoid particulates and unhealthy pollutants in the air. In a 2022 report, the World Health Organization (WHO) said 99% of the world’s population is breathing air that exceeds the recommended pollution guidelines. If you're worried about local air quality, multiple apps collect data from monitoring stations, satellite imagery, and private air monitors that share their data publicly to serve up the Air Quality Index (AQI) in your area. Here's how to track air quality ahead of your next outing or while on the go.

How I’m Using My Notes App As A Wardrobe Hack To Streamline Getting Dressed, by Cait Emma Burke, Fashion Journal

Seeing a selection of your favourite outfits altogether helps you see what styles, colours and silhouettes you gravitate towards. It’s useful information that can help you get a firmer grasp on what you do and don’t like, information you can put to use when deciding what to remove and what to add to your wardrobe.

Bottom of the Page

The more rules you have, the more loopholes you have.

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Thanks for reading.