Rolandt

Apple’s Touch ID and Face ID technologies have long been reliable ways to unlock your iPhone or MacBook. However, a new tweak coming to Safari version 14 will let websites use Face and Touch ID to authenticate users.

The company showed off the new feature in a WWDC session for web developers. Apple boasts it will enable a “frictionless experience” for users.

Touch and Face ID on the web will work just like they do with iOS apps. Developers who choose to implement the technology on their websites can prompt users to choose a biometric authentication method next time they visit their website.

Further, Apple built the feature using the Web Authentication (WebAuthn) API. That API allows developers to build authentication via the FIDO2 specification created by the FIDO Alliance.

Great news! Apple expands support for #FIDO Authentication with Safari 14 (MacOS/iOS)! Websites can use Touch ID / Face ID for secure and frictionless web logins via #WebAuthn API. Great video on how websites can get started: https://t.co/NZ92tEhFaL

— The FIDO Alliance (@FIDOAlliance) June 24, 2020

While Apple isn’t the first to adopt the technology in a browser — Chrome, Firefox and Microsoft Edge all support it — adding support to Safari could push biometrics more into the mainstream. Biometric authentication has long been considered the most secure replacement for passwords, which are inherently insecure. Because Apple does a great job making complex technology user friendly, it could go a long way to helping more people move to biometrics.

Additionally, Apple reportedly built its own secure ‘attestation’ service, which adds extra security for higher-risk services like online banking.

It’s worth noting that Apple joined the FIDO Alliance earlier this year, which suggests the company is on board with replacing passwords with trusted devices and biometrics. Ultimately, we could soon see a more secure web as people move away from passwords.

Source: Apple Via: TechCrunch

The post Apple to bring Face ID, Touch ID to the web with Safari 14 appeared first on MobileSyrup.

The post Microsoft Surface Book 3 Review: It’s time to rethink the hinge appeared first on MobileSyrup.

TOeats @TOEATSca
Toronto’s (Physically Distanced) Patio Season is here. #TOeats pic.twitter.com/f7irwVPJQq

I spent this week spreading myself between a bunch of smaller projects, and finally getting familiar with cookiecutter. I wrote about my datasette-plugin cookiecutter template earlier in the week; here's what else I've been working on.

sqlite-generate

Datasette is supposed to work against any SQLite database you throw at it, no matter how weird the schema or how unwieldy the database shape or size.

I built a new tool called sqlite-generate this week to help me create databases of different shapes. It's a Python command-line tool which uses Faker to populate a new database with random data. You run it something like this:

sqlite-generate demo.db \
    --tables=20 \
    --rows=100,500 \
    --columns=5,20 \
    --fks=0,3 \
    --pks=0,2 \
    --fts

This command creates a database containing 20 tables, each with between 100 and 500 rows and 5-20 columns. Each table will also have between 0 and 3 foreign key columns to other tables, and will feature between 0 and 2 primary key columns. SQLite full-text search will be configured against all of the text columns in the table.

I always try to include a live demo with any of my projects, and sqlite-generate is no exception. This GitHub Action runs on every push to main and deploys a demo to https://sqlite-generate-demo.datasette.io/ showing the latest version of the code in action.

The demo runs my datasette-search-all plugin in order to more easily demonstrate full-text search across all of the text columns in the generated tables. Try searching for newspaper.

click-app cookiecutter template

I write quite a lot of Click powered command-line tools like this one, so inspired by datasette-plugin I created a new click-app cookiecutter template that bakes in my own preferences about how to set up a new Click project (complete with GitHub Actions). sqlite-generate is the first tool I've built using that template.

Improved Datasette plugin documentation

I've split Datasette's plugin documentation into five separate pages, and added a new page to the documentation about patterns for testing plugins.

The five pages are:

• Plugins describing how to install and configure plugins
• Writing plugins showing how to write one-off plugins, how to use the datasette-plugin cookiecutter template and how to package templates for release to PyPI
• Plugin hooks documenting all of the available plugin hooks
• Testing plugins describing my preferred patterns for writing tests for them (using pytest and HTTPX)
• Internals for plugins describing the APIs Datasette makes available for use within plugin hook implementations

There's also a list of available plugins on the Datasette Ecosystem page of the documentation, though I plan to move those to a separate plugin directory in the future.

datasette-block-robots

The datasette-plugin template practically eliminates the friction involved in starting a new plugin.

sqlite-generate generates random names for people. I don't particularly want people who search for their own names stumbling across the live demo and being weirded out by their name featured there, so I decided to block it from search engine crawlers using robots.txt.

I wrote a tiny plugin to do this: datasette-block-robots, which uses the new register_routes() plugin hook to add a /robots.txt page.

It's also a neat example of the simplest possible plugin to use that feature - along with the simplest possible unit test for exercising such a page.

datasette-saved-queries

Another new plugin, this time with a bit more substance to it. datasette-saved-queries exercises the new canned_queries() hook I described last week. It uses the new startup() hook to create tables on startup (if they are missing), then lets users insert records into those tables to save their own queries. Queries saved in this way are then returned as canned queries for that particular database.

main, not master

main is a better name for the main GitHub branch than master, which has unpleasant connotations (it apparently derives from master/slave in BitKeeper). My datasette-plugin and click-app cookiecutter templates both include instructions for renaming master to main in their READMEs - it's as easy as running git branch -m master main before running your first push to GitHub.

I'm working towards making the switch for Datasette itself.

One approach is to anticipate what members are going to do.

You can look at what products you sell, what categories you cater to, what audiences you have, and set up different areas of the community accordingly.

You can anticipate what features they’re going to want and ensure you have them too.

Another approach is to respond to what members are doing.

You can look at what members are talking about in your community and create groups, categories, and features accordingly. This is where we get Twitter’s hashtag and thread features. It’s where we get Facebook memories and StackOverflow’s new thanks button.

Starting with a relatively blank canvas and quickly responding to demand is a lot better than trying to anticipate it.

It is now four years since the Referendum result which convulsed British politics and set the country on a path whose destination remains unknown. In this post I’m not going to review what has happened during those years but instead will suggest that we now need a whole new Brexit debate. No doubt many, probably most, people are heartily sick of hearing about Brexit, so that idea will seem perverse if not downright masochistic. But such a debate is now possible, necessary, and, arguably, inevitable.

Back in October 2018, the leading law and policy commentator David Allen Green made an intriguing and typically elegant argument. It was that – notwithstanding remainers’ disputes about its legitimacy – the 2016 Referendum had created a mandate for Britain to leave the EU. This could only be discharged by doing so, but once Britain had left it would, indeed, have been fully discharged and would (or should) have no further purchase. Then, it would be possible for debate to shift to what kind of relationship Britain should have with the EU.

The Referendum mandate has been discharged in full

On 31 January 2020 we arrived at that point. It is no more, or less, than a truism to say that Britain is no longer a member of the EU. Yet it seems fair to say that political debate has not fully caught up with that fact (perhaps because, almost immediately afterwards, all attention shifted to coronavirus). For example, just a few days ago an opinion poll showed that a clear majority – 56% - would vote to remain in the EU if another referendum were held now. That is an important result, in that it suggests that Brexit is not what the majority want, but it is also strictly speaking a meaningless one. There could be no such referendum because there is no such thing as ‘remaining’ any more. Likewise, there is no such thing as ‘leaving’ any more. Both of those policies ceased to be possible at the end of January. The only thing that could meaningfully be asked is whether to ‘stay out’ or ‘re-join’ – a very different question (and one which would not necessarily yield the same result).

By the same token, as per Green’s original argument, the fact of Britain having left the EU means that it is no longer meaningful for the 2016 Referendum to be invoked as an argument for how the ongoing process of ‘doing Brexit’ should be undertaken. I’d actually go further than that, because since that referendum didn’t specify a form of Brexit it never had any relevance to how Brexit was done. But, even without accepting that, there is now certainly no basis on which ‘the 17.4 million’ have any more say in what happens than the rest of the population or on which that number can be invoked in discussions about what happens.

That includes the question of whether to extend the Transition Period. Recently, the pro-Brexit Bruges Group tweeted, correctly, that it now seems clear that there will be no extension but went on to say, incorrectly, that this will be “a victory for Brexit voters”. That cannot be so, since Brexit voters voted for one thing only, and it has now been done. There can be no further victories or further demands based upon that original vote.

17.4 million is no longer a relevant number

This matters, hugely, because it means that the ‘will of the people’ and the sanctification of the 17.4 million which since 2016 have been used as a cudgel not just to stifle but to stigmatize as undemocratic any debate about Brexit has now gone from being entirely bogus to being entirely redundant. There’s no doubt that, for particular example, the vote to trigger Article 50 was only supported in such numbers, or even passed at all, because of the force with which that cudgel was wielded. But it is now possible, and right, and necessary, to debate and question every single way in which Brexit is being enacted without any reference at all to the Referendum result.

This includes, of course, the terms of any deal which may be done with the EU as well as the possibility of no deal being done at all. It also includes challenging decisions such as refusing to participate in the EU scheme to revive tourism in the wake of the coronavirus or in the EU’s fast track vaccine scheme. Or the idea of setting up a supposed global rival to the Erasmus scheme (mirroring the now failed approach to the Galileo project). Or refusing to create any formal institutional framework for foreign policy cooperation. On all of these, and many other, Brexit issues there is, or should be, an entirely new debate framed not in terms of the referendum result but in terms of what, given that Britain has left, its relationship with the EU should be like.

What about the election?

A potential objection to this argument is that the present scenario is different to that envisaged by Green in that, prior to leaving the EU, a General Election was held. Since the Conservatives won, this gives them a mandate, separate to that of the Referendum, as to how to undertake the Brexit process. Their manifesto stated that this would mean leaving the single market and customs union, ending “the role of the European Court of Justice”, and not extending the implementation period (sic) beyond the end of December 2020. Therefore, all of these are settled matters.

Against that there are several counter-arguments. Unlike a referendum on a single question, a General Election victory does not imply voters endorsed every line of the winning party’s manifesto. In a first past the post system it doesn’t mean majority support. And in a democratic system it certainly doesn’t imply that the enactment of their policies can no longer be discussed and debated. This includes recognizing that changing circumstances mean that governments necessarily do things that run counter to party manifestos, which in this case might mean, in particular, that the force majeure of coronavirus entails a revision of the transition extension policy. On the other hand, if the manifesto is taken to be a rigid and immutable set of commitments, then there is no mandate for no deal, because it makes no mention of that possibility and, instead, states unequivocally that “we will negotiate a trade deal next year”.

Beyond all that, as I discussed at the time, the election campaign was remarkable for the lack of discussion of any detail at all of how Brexit would be done, including and especially any discussion of what the future relationship with the EU would be like. Indeed, the whole message from the Conservatives was that Brexit would simply be “done” by the end of January, obscuring the entire issue of the future terms negotiations. Even the manifesto line quoted above about the ECJ carries no precise meaning as regards, for example, participation in various EU projects. So all the myriad of details about things like, for example, Erasmus lie outside of any mandate that may be claimed from the election. And this goes wider than such details in that it is also legitimate to question the entire tenor in which the government is conducting its relations with the EU.

A new set of issues

In short, it is now entirely reasonable for a new debate to be held, and an ongoing one, too, as circumstances change because of coronavirus or because of emerging global issues such as the evolving/ deteriorating UK-China relationship or the outcome of the US Presidential election. It is entirely reasonable to discuss the clear evidence of the rising costs of Brexit to date (all the more so given the costs of coronavirus). It is entirely reasonable for voters and politicians to demand of the government that it approaches the EU in a positive and cooperative manner rather than with the truculence that has prevailed so far. And it is entirely reasonable to expect that approach to be pragmatic rather than dogmatic.

When Green made his argument, I suggested that, whatever its logic, one flaw in it was that it was highly unlikely that the Brexiters would drop the idea that the Referendum mandated their preferred form(s) of Brexit. And it is, indeed, far too much to expect this ERG-dominated, continuity Vote Leave government to do so, or to heed any of these entirely reasonable requests.

Yet, on the other hand, it could be argued that Boris Johnson has a duty to do so. As Dan Hodges recently pointed out in The Mail, Johnson won the election by pledging to end the culture war of Brexit, not to continue it. The statesmanlike thing to do after all the divisions of the last few years would be to seek to heal rather than inflame them, the more so given that Brexit now only has minority support.

Labour has a key role to play

If – and, really, it’s not in doubt -  such hopes are a pipe dream, then it is still the case that the Labour Party (and others of course, but Labour is the official opposition) can and should be vocal in insisting on this new debate about how to create pragmatic and amicable relations with the EU. It is disappointing and, I think, misguided that Keir Starmer has not called for an extension to the Transition Period (though for a counter-argument, see Professor Tim Bale’s article in the New Statesman). It may well come back to haunt Labour to have been – through silence – complicit in non-extension.

But whether or not that proves true, it will be an even more serious error if he does not start to articulate a new approach to the EU. It is not enough just to ‘hold the government to account’. It’s also necessary, as Andrew Rawnsley argued in last Sunday’s Observer, to show what Labour would do differently. Of course there are many aspects to that, but one would be to show how it champions a better and – Starmer’s calling card – ‘more adult’ approach to the EU. It would be entirely consistent with the growing critique of the government for lacking basic competence (£). Yes, Brexit is happening, but it doesn’t have to be done in this scorched earth fashion which is so reckless of British national interests and international reputation, and which threatens to rip up the cultural fabric and the union itself.

The key to that is, precisely, the recognition that the Referendum mandate has now been discharged. Johnson would no doubt respond to Labour by trying to reprise the ‘will of the people’ line, but it will have less and less traction. And, just from a tactical point of view, those amongst whom it will have traction are voters who are almost certainly already a lost cause for Labour. Whereas, by contrast, there is a large and probably growing constituency of voters, which transcends the leaver-remain distinction, who are appalled at the prospect of no deal and, probably, are out of sympathy with the relentless pathological hatred of all things European that the ERG exhibit.

It is now open to Starmer to find a new kind of ‘centre ground’ encompassing erstwhile leavers and remainers who would welcome a fresh approach, and more specifically a competent approach. At the very least, given that the most important foreign policy question of the moment is relations with the EU it simply can’t be treated as a taboo subject by Labour. With the Referendum mandate now discharged, Brexit should be treated as a political issue just like any other rather than as a culture war shibboleth.

A new approach is needed with or without a deal

This will be true even if, as some well-informed reports this week suggest to be the case (£), a trade deal with the EU is becoming slightly more likely (though, on my reading of Michel Barnier’s comments this week and given those of David Sassoli and David Frost this seems optimistic). On the one hand, it would require intense scrutiny for the damage it is likely to do to manufacturing industry and perhaps particularly to services trade and the wider implications of that for investment generally. On the other hand, any such deal is unlikely to resolve all the many non-trade issues, and even on trade there are likely to be many future, or ongoing, matters to settle. Also in doubt is the extent to which new customs facilities and regulatory systems (for example for chemicals) will be up and running  in time.

For what seems to be in prospect if there’s a deal is, all but inevitably given the time frames, precisely the kind of rushed, can-kicking bodge that happened in January, with numerous, complex, loose ends left to be resolved or disputed later. Moreover, the measures currently being touted as the basis for a deal, whereby a zero tariff regime is adjusted (only) if and when the UK diverges from level playing field provisions, are predicated on a constructive and trusting partnership (£).

So even with such a deal, and certainly in the absence of one, there will be many more years in which the relationship will be under negotiation and, in any case, that relationship will itself evolve, if only through the ongoing operation of the Joint Committee overseeing the Withdrawal Agreement. Even though it has been restricted by what has happened over the last four years, there is still a spectrum of possibilities of what that relationship might evolve into over the coming years, ranging from the minimalist, hostile one to which the ERG is dragging us through to an extensive, cooperative one perhaps along the lines of an Association Agreement.

And to re-emphasize, the issue is as much about the tone as the institutional form of the relationship. With the referendum mandate done and dusted why should we accept that future relations with the EU be conducted in the unremittingly negative, suspicious, accusatory manner of the Vote Leave campaign? They won the right to leave, not to permanently poison and pollute UK-EU relations.

Reframing the debate

To put all this a different way, under the influence of Tory Eurosceptics, UKIP, and their media supporters the entire debate about Britain’s relationship with the EU has for at least 30 years been dominated by a single question: stay or leave? That is a testament to the indefatigability of the Brexiters but also, it should be admitted, due to the supine attitude of pro-EU politicians. They rarely, if ever, made a positive case for membership and when they did it was almost invariably in entirely transactional terms. But all that is past history now and, in particular, that single question has been asked and answered. It can no longer serve as the frame through which UK-EU relations are viewed and it mustn’t be allowed to.

The challenge of ensuring that doesn’t just lie with politicians. It also lies with journalists, academics, business and civic society leaders and perhaps especially grass roots organizations and activists. Those who used to be remainers, when remaining was a possibility, mobilized to a remarkable extent after the Referendum was lost and very nearly pulled off a reversal of the result. In the aftermath of that first, emotionally crushing, loss four years ago (my feelings at the time were recorded on a different blog site, if of interest) and the perhaps even more exhausting tension of last year’s long drawn out battles and hopes it’s not surprising that they are drained and demoralized.

Some continue to revisit the rights and wrongs of the 2016 vote and to re-litigate the Referendum. Others have retreated from the fray, seeing any chance to salvage anything as having gone. Still others have flipped to campaigning to re-join the EU. These three responses are all understandable but they are also all unrealistic. The first is hopeless – and actually panders to Brexiters’ attempts to keep the focus on the Referendum result. The second has too little hope. The third has too much. Rejoining the EU may happen, but if so it is years, very likely decades, away.

But there are still things to argue for, and to do so is both worthwhile in itself and necessary if the ground is to be laid for rejoining in the future or even simply creating an amicable partnership. That has at least three aspects. The first lies at the political level of attempting to influence the evolving shape and tenor of UK-EU relations, as discussed above. The second is to nurture all those remaining ties – be they cultural, academic, familial, or whatever – which will persist despite the wreckage of Brexit. It’s still possible to remind our counterparts in the EU that, despite the noisy voices of the Brexiters, plenty of British people never wanted this and are still their friends and allies. And, third, it means re-engaging in the domestic debate in this new post-referendum mandate world.

In that regard, whereas Johnson’s huge election victory in December seemed like a terminal moment – and was, as regards any hope of stopping Brexit – only a few months later things look different. To a remarkable extent for a new government with a large majority it already feels tired and crisis-ridden. That’s largely because of coronavirus, of course, but also because the virus has only speeded up and made more visible its underlying weakness and ineptitude (as per my last post). The Cummings affair wrecked its dominance of the polls. It almost weekly gets into unnecessary tangles that lead to U-turns and, despite its majority, routinely faces backbench rebellions on everything from Huawei to food standards to Sunday trading. Having reshuffled his cabinet in February, only three months after winning, and losing his Chancellor in the process, it’s reported that Johnson is going to do so again in September.

The point isn’t that government is about to fall. It’s that it isn’t the hegemon it seemed to be in December. It doesn’t control the terms of debate, including debate about Europe. A different debate is now, for the first time since 2016, at least possible. And, since January, the lashing, quasi-fascist whip of the ‘will of the people’ has lost all of its force as their will has now been done. The question is no longer ‘leave’ or ‘remain’ and indeed in that sense is no longer even about Brexit, but about Britain’s relationship with Europe. Which actually makes a different debate not just possible but, sooner or later, inevitable.

mkalus shared this story from moodvintage on Twitter.

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mkalus shared this story from DmitryOpines on Twitter.

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mkalus shared this story from The Omni Group.

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You’ve got an idea—you did the hard work of coming up with an app, website, or brand-new product. Now it’s time to figure out how to share it. Wireframes and prototypes are tools that are relatively easy to create and can help you visualize the functions and possibilities for your concept. Here, we’ll explain what wireframes and prototypes are, the uses for both, and how they differentiate—so you can determine which is best for your project and build a plan to share your idea with the world.

What is a wireframe?

A wireframe is a static, basic sketch of your website, which makes it the perfect visual starting point during the brainstorming process. Rectangles or squares are used as placeholders to show the location of potential graphics, buttons, or text, and the accompanying lines connecting these shapes indicate the order of information shared on each page.

There are two different types of wireframes: low-fidelity (lo-fi) and high-fidelity (hi-fi). A lo-fi wireframe will help you map out the basic schematics of your site in black and white. In contrast, a hi-fi wireframe is typically constructed after a lo-fi wireframe and presented in grayscale—this simulates actual color tones to help you better visualize the final version. Think of the hi-fi wireframe as a more detailed blueprint of your concept that will give viewers a better understanding of the look, feel, and functionality of your site. Hi-fi wireframes often contain no content or some placeholder content, such as lorem ipsum, typeface preferences, and specific dimensions for images.

Both types of wireframes are useful during the creative process and can be produced using design tools like OmniGraffle. If you’re starting from scratch, sketch a lo-fi wireframe to establish the basic layout of your site and hone in on the essential hierography of information. Then, create a hi-fi wireframe to explore more of the UI and UX details. Keep in mind that simplicity is key when creating a wireframe—don’t worry about aesthetics. Your goal is to quickly communicate your idea by constructing a simplified visual representation of your design.

What is a prototype?

A prototype is an interactive model or simulation that demonstrates how the finished website or app will work. The primary goal of a prototype is to test the design and functionality of your concept before moving on to the next phase of development. Creating a prototype might seem like a waste of time, but it’s a crucial step in discovering potential flaws and can save you time and money in the long run.

Like wireframes, prototypes also differ in complexity—lo-fi or hi-fi—based on the level of interactivity that’s possible (e.g., how many buttons can be clicked), visual design, and content. Lo-fi prototypes are often paper sketches with some basic visual attributes (rectangles, boxes, and buttons) representing the order of information, and the interactivity is simulated by a person. More realistic in appearance and with a higher degree of functionality, hi-fi prototypes are computer-generated simulations that look and feel like the final product—all interface elements (animations, graphics, colors, and content) are included with interactive clickable hotspots for users to experience the site.

Creating a prototype allows you to test and tweak the functionality of your design and discover any features you may want to add to your product before entering the final phase of design. Prototypes take more time to construct than wireframes, but the feedback gained through user interaction can be invaluable. The more realistic your prototype is, the more in-depth feedback you’ll gain for future iterations.

Understanding the difference between a wireframe and a prototype will help you determine which one best suits your needs. Using these design tools to map out and communicate the usability and functionality of your concept—and test your product—will save you time and resources and take you one step closer to production.

mkalus shared this story from redhistorian on Twitter.

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mkalus shared this story from wtyppod on Twitter.

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The myth is if members complete their profiles they’re more likely to participate in a community.

The reality is the people who complete profiles are already most likely to participate in a community. Asking them to do it doesn’t change anything.

In fact, asking newcomers to complete their profile is a waste of an ‘ask’.

Profiles represent how someone in a community wishes others to perceive them. If they’re visiting a community to get an answer to a question, they really don’t care how they’re perceived.

However, as they start to participate in a community beyond an immediate need, they do start to care how others see them. This is when they complete their profiles.

You shouldn’t be asking newcomers to complete their profiles. You should be challenging newcomers to figure out what they can contribute to the community – which in turn will make them more likely to complete their profiles.

“What can you contribute to the community?” is a far better ask than “complete your profile”.

In crime shows, they often have this amazing tool that turns a low-resolution, pixelated image of a person’s face to a high-resolution, highly accurate picture of the perp. Face Depixelizer is a step towards that with machine learning — except it seems to assume that everyone looks the same.

There might still be some limitations.

Tags: bias, face, pixels

My friend Allan Rankin is back in the Eastern Graphic after a long hiatus. This week he writes about the devil-may-care attitude of many Islanders toward masks and distancing, echoing feelings I’ve had.

I’ve identified a condition, perhaps unique to we over 50, I call “non-compliance rage syndrome,” characterized by irrationally strong reactions to violations of the social contract: ignoring the hand sanitizer at the entrance, heading the wrong way down the grocery store aisle, riding bicycles on sidewalks, without a helmet, and so on.

The reactions are genuine and rational; the rage, inasmuch as there’s nothing we can do about it, is irrational.

mkalus shared this story from iandunt on Twitter.

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mkalus shared this story from AliceAvizandum on Twitter.

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mkalus shared this story from mrjamesob on Twitter.

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Jason Snell describes on Six Colors how Apple Silicon Macs will handle boot and recovery modes:

With the advent of Macs running Apple-designed processors, things will get a whole lot simpler. As described Wednesday in the WWDC session Explore the New System Architecture of Apple Silicon Macs, these new Macs will only require you to remember a single button: Power. (On laptops, that’ll be the Touch ID button. On desktops, presumably it’s the physical power button.)

Holding down that button at startup will bring up an entirely new macOS Recovery options screen. From here you’ll be able to fix a broken Mac boot drive, alter security settings, share your Mac’s disk with another computer, choose a startup disk, and pretty much everything else you used to have to remember keyboard shortcuts to do.

Supported By

Spark

Download Spark today and begin loving your email.

The new system is based on iOS’s boot process modified to meet the needs of Mac users. I can’t wait for this change. I don’t use the boot-up key combinations often enough to remember what they are. I expect that as we learn more about Apple’s upcoming Macs, other benefits gained by moving to Apple-designed SoCs will become apparent too.

You can also follow all of our WWDC coverage through our WWDC 2020 hub, or subscribe to the dedicated WWDC 2020 RSS feed.

→ Source: sixcolors.com

Given the impact of COVID-19 on organizations' budgets, we extended Drupal 7's end-of-life date by one year. Drupal 7 will receive security updates until November 2022, instead of November 2021. For more information, see the official announcement.

Extending the lifetime of Drupal 7 felt like the right thing to do. It's aligned with Drupal's goal to build software that is safe for everyone to use.

I wish more software was well-maintained like Drupal is. We released Drupal 7 almost a decade ago and continue to care for it.

We often recognize those who help innovate or introduce new features. But maintaining existing Open Source software also relies on the contributions of individuals and organizations. Today, I'd like us to praise those who maintain and improve Drupal 7. Thank you!

Hi, I’m Edurne (Eddie), writer & support intern here at Datawrapper and aspiring data journalist. Today’s Weekly Chart is about a question I’ve frequently asked myself in the last few years: can civil resistance foster social change and revolution?

Between 2017 and 2019, I had the opportunity to work as a foreign correspondent in Kenya, Japan, and Spain. It was not always easy, but I was lucky to learn many interesting things along the way. I was also constantly on the ‘wire’, reading stories from many countries and learning about their past, culture, and daily lives.

Even before that, while I was studying journalism, I found myself reading and writing a lot about protests, like the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong or the Yellow Vests (Gilets Jaunes) movement in France. The images from the Arab spring in 2010 stuck with me the most. And it’s not a coincidence that I read about protests so much: the last few decades have seen an increase in campaigns.

But not all protests are the same: There are violent and peaceful ones. I was wondering: Which of them are successful? To find out, I used data from The Non-violent and Violent Campaigns and Outcomes (NAVCO) project by Harvard University, the first of its kind to collect systematic data on violent insurgencies and non-violent civil resistance around the world:

NAVCO gathered data on 622 campaigns between 1900 and 2019. As we can see in the chart, in this time, half of the 321 non-violent campaigns succeeded, while only a quarter of their 301 violent counterparts did. 56% of violent campaigns failed, compared to 30% of non-violent ones.

Erica Chenoweth, a researcher on violence and co-author of the NAVCO Data Project, found even more evidence that non-violent protests are more successful: “Countries in which there were nonviolent campaigns were about 10 times likelier to transition to democracies within a five-year period compared to countries in which there were violent campaigns – whether the campaigns succeeded or failed”, she explained to The Harvard Gazette.

You can search through all the 622 campaigns that the NAVCO data set contains here:

Data concerns

Because it’s a data set collected by hand instead of measured, it’s important to understand the decisions behind it better.

Launched by Harvard University, the NAVCO Data Project covers different aspects of civil resistance and insurgencies through time. For this article, I decided to analyze the 4th iteration of the project: the NAVCO 1.3 data set, released on March 17 of this year.

While making statements like “non-violent campaigns are more successful”, we need to bear in mind that this data set might not include all campaigns, suffering a so-called underreporting bias. The authors of the NAVCO data set also note in their codebook that the included non-violent campaigns are biased toward success: the large, mature campaigns are most commonly reported. Some non-violent campaigns are crushed in their infancy (and therefore fail) and are not included in this data set.

This bias has, however, been mitigated by looking only at major campaigns with at least 1,000 people participating in the protest. The dataset also only includes protests with a maximalist objective, such as bringing down a government. Despite not being perfect, the NAVCO Data Project is still a reference for many researchers and journalists to analyze the effects of both violent and non-violent protests in global politics.

The process

One thing I like about data visualization (although it can be daunting) is the amount of trial and error that it requires to come up with the right chart type. The table I finally created was not close to my first idea (at the beginning I wanted to create a scatterplot or even a map!), which shows that visualization can be really rich in variety as well!

Before looking at the data set, I started with a blank piece of paper and wrote down my initial questions. I believe this step comes from my journalistic background: I treat data sets as interviewees. The main question – are non-violent protests more or less successful than violent ones? – was easily answered with a pivot table in Google Sheets.

The main work needed to be done on the Datawrapper table. To help readers navigate this big amount of data, I opted for the use of emojis in the “Success” column. Now you just need a glance to know how the campaign ended. I also decided to bring ongoing campaigns to the front of the table, since those are the insurgencies and protests that are happening at the moment and people have likely been reading about them in the last few years. Finally, I decided to highlight the non-violent campaigns that ended up in success.

References

If you’d like to learn more about protests or recreate any of the charts above, have a look at the following sources:

• Visit this Weekly Chart by my coworker Fabian to zoom into the rebellious history of Germans
• You can also check out this article by Erica Chenoweth on how demonstrations are not enough to undermine authoritarian governments
• Some Datawrapper Academy articles on examples of tables, how to format your text in Markdown and how to insert flag icons in tables also helped a lot with this article.

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And that’s all for this week! I hope you enjoyed my first article here at Datawrapper. I would love to hear your thoughts on how to spark a revolution! Do you support any political movement? Is there any civil resistance group that you are particularly interested in? Leave a comment below or send me an email at edurne@datawrapper.de. See you next Thursday!

The privacy commissioners of Ontario and B.C. have found that LifeLabs failed to protect customers’ personal information in the 2019 data breach.

Last year in December, the company disclosed that it suffered a data breach that affected the information of about 15 million customers. The information included names, emails, addresses, health card numbers and lab tests.

The joint investigation has now found that the company failed to implement proper safeguards to protect the personal health information of millions of Canadians, and violated privacy laws in both provinces.

LifeLabs “collected more personal health information than was reasonably necessary,” according to the investigation. It also “failed to take reasonable steps to protect the personal health information in its electronic systems” and “failed to have adequate information technology security policies in place.”

Both of the commissioners have ordered LifeLabs to implement several measures to address these flaws. For instance, LifeLabs must improve its information technology security, and has been ordered to stop collecting specified information.

Further, “LifeLabs is ordered to improve its process for notifying individuals of the specific elements of their personal health information which were the subject of the breach.”

The commissioners have not published their investigation, as LifeLabs claims that the information is privileged. However, the commissioners intend to publish the report, unless LifeLabs takes legal action.

“This breach should serve as a reminder to organizations, big and small, that they have a duty to be vigilant against these types of attacks,” said Brian Beamish, the privacy commissioner of Ontario, in a press release.

B.C. Privacy Commissioner Michael Envoy stated that the investigation has reinforced the need for change to laws in the province that would allow regulators to impose financial penalties on companies that violate privacy laws.

Source: Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario

The post Privacy commissioners say LifeLabs failed to protect personal information in 2019 data breach appeared first on MobileSyrup.

If you’ve grown weary of cables—each day an ouroboros of perpetual plugging and unplugging—wireless chargers are a convenient way to juice up your phone (or other compatible device), even if they’re slower than wired chargers.

The Belkin BoostCharge Pro Portable Wireless Charger Pad with MagSafe is the best wireless charger because it charges iPhones and Android phones faster than the competition. And, despite being one of the cheapest models we tested, it’s equipped with premium features, like MagSafe capabilities, a built-in stand, and a 6.6-foot USB-C power cable.

How do you setup your dev environment? Depending on your language there are many choices of editor, package manager, build tool, linter, on and on. And every article you find will have a different combination of suggested tools, each of which claiming that their list is The Right Way To Do Things.

So which do you choose?

The short answer: it doesn’t matter. Your choice of dev environment is meaningless.

The slightly less flippant answer is that, yes, there are some contraints on which tools you should pick, but otherwise you should just pick something and move on.

Let’s see why dev environments don’t matter that much in the end, and what limited constraints you should apply when choosing your tools.

Learning how to cook

Imagine you’re training to become a chef. You will need to learn how to use a knife correctly, to chop and dice safely and quickly.

And yes, you need a sharp knife. But when you’re starting out, it doesn’t matter which knife you use: just pick something sharp and good enough, and move on. After all, the knife is just a tool.

The people eating the food you cook don’t care about which knife you used: they care how the food tastes and looks.

After six months in the kitchen, you’ll start understanding how you personally use a knife, what cuisines you want to pursue, what techniques you want to vary. And then you’ll have the knowledge to pick a specific knife or knives exactly suited to your needs.

But remember: the people eating your food still won’t care which knife you used.

Choosing a dev environment

When you use a website, you don’t care which build tool the programmer used. When you run an app, you don’t care which editor they used. You want the software to work, to do what it says, to be easy to use, to get out of your way—and you don’t care how they did it.

And that applies just as much to the users of your code: they don’t care which tools you used.

And when you’re starting out, whether programming in general or a new language or framework, you don’t know how you will like to work. So instead of obsessing over finding the ideal development environment and toolchain, just pick tools that are good enough:

• Popular: So you can easily find help.
• Easy to get going: Your goal is ship useful code, and as a beginner time spent fiddling with your dev environment won’t help with that.

Once you have enough experience, you will start developing opinions. You might become choosy about which tools you use, or end up customizing them to your needs. You might even write an article about your particular dev environment and favorite tools.

But however strong your preferences are, chances are that given tools you don’t quite like as much, you will still do just fine. If you know what you’re doing, you can chop vegetables with any sharp knife, even if it’s not your favorite.

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Few developers have as many years of experience building Apple Watch apps or as many Apple Watch apps on the App Store as David Smith. One of Smith’s apps, Sleep++, has been available to users who want to track their sleep since watchOS 2.

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During Monday’s keynote, Apple announced that it was adding sleep tracking to watchOS 7, placing the viability of Smith’s app in jeopardy. But ‘sherlocking’ as it’s called when Apple builds a system feature already provided by third parties, doesn’t necessarily mean a third-party developer’s app is doomed. As Smith explains, his step tracking app Pedometer++ saw increased sales after Apple began tracking users’ step count in the Health app because it raised awareness of the feature. In turn, that led some users to seek out third-party apps that could do more than Apple’s basic feature could.

After trying watchOS 7’s sleep tracking for a couple of days, Smith is optimistic that something similar will happen with Sleep++:

I suppose a good summary of my expectation is that right now (say) 1% of Apple Watch wearers think to try sleep tracking. After this fall, most Apple Watch wearers will be aware of it and (say) 50% will try it out. Apple’s approach will be sufficient for 90% of them, but 10% will want more. Leading to now 5% of Apple Watch wearers looking for a 3rd-party app to augment their experience…so I end up way ahead overall.

This is entirely speculative and it is possible that the market for Sleep++ will completely evaporate, but I’ve been doing this for long enough and have seen this pattern repeat itself often enough that I really don’t think so.

I’m eager to try Apple’s sleep tracking feature and see how apps like Smith’s Sleep++ improve with the availability of new data. There are a lot of third-party sleep tracking apps available, and they all use slightly different tracking methodologies. Hopefully, the addition of sleep tracking to watchOS 7 will raise the quality of them all, allowing developers to focus more on differentiating based on the features that extend the category beyond what Apple offers.

You can also follow all of our WWDC coverage through our WWDC 2020 hub, or subscribe to the dedicated WWDC 2020 RSS feed.

→ Source: david-smith.org

Whether you’re going on a day hike with friends or tackling an ambitious backpacking route, you need a good pair of hiking boots to protect your feet and stabilize your ankles.

Over seven years, we’ve worn 55 pairs of hiking boots while trekking more than 1,400 miles and taking some 2 million steps across all types of terrain.

We chose the Salomon Quest 4 Gore-Tex Hiking Boots (men’s and women’s) as the best hiking boots. They are breathable and waterproof, and they provide solid traction and support.

These boots also have several essential features—including a wide toe box, sturdy heel protection, and a gusseted tongue—that allowed us to hike comfortably for miles.

Reading Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals in the midst of Covid-19, I come across a journal entry dated April 16, 1979. A year after her cancer diagnosis, she writes: “The enormity of our task, to turn the world around. It feels like turning my life around, inside out. If I can look directly at my life and my death without flinching I know there is nothing they can ever do to me again.” I think of how Lorde’s cancer diagnosis cannot be separated from her time spent working at a Keystone Electronics factory, where she ran X-ray machines. Similarly, I look at the statistics on Black communities affected by Covid-19 at disproportionately higher rates — an iteration of the state’s foundational violence. As I write this, the many ways Black life is rendered expendable — from housing insecurity, to medical racism — are all the more apparent in light of Covid-19.

Lorde’s world-building directive sustains, particularly right now as uprisings across the U.S. — continuing the projects of 1967, 1992, 2014 — dream the world anew in the midst of a pandemic. As the emergency state responds to Covid-19 through the heightened surveillance and policing of the same Black communities that have especially borne the virus’s impact, it must be noted we were always well acquainted with death. “There is nothing they can ever do to me again,” Lorde wrote. We have nothing left to lose and everything to gain.

I am also struck by Shaka McGlotten’s words on illegibility in “Black Data,” published in 2016: “A good mask, one resistant to efforts to decode it, may in fact provide us with a little room to maneuver, a little room outside the grasp of our ‘control society.’” I keep coming back to this quote, rereading it in a moment when masks feel so much more prominent in everyday life.

In the context of Covid-19, we see the state absolve itself for the virus’s spread, and blame now placed on individuals who have seemingly ignored the ethical directive to mask. But not everyone can mask so easily. We know that for Black people, wearing a mask will make us appear more threatening than we are always already perceived to be. Still, there are other kinds of masks and even “a little room to maneuver” for Blackness under the surveilling gaze of facial recognition. There are instances when we elude detection, existing outside machines that were never built for us.

Even before Covid-19, for centuries, the deployment of surveillance technologies by the state has criminalized and controlled the movement of Black people across the Americas. Simone Browne’s Dark Matters contextualizes this, taking up the history of “lantern laws.” In New York City, for example, a law dating back to 1713 required Black people to carry lanterns at night, to remain “constantly illuminated from dusk to dawn, made knowable, locatable, and contained within the city.” We can draw a direct line from such lantern laws to present-day carding or stop-and-frisk practices by police departments, where data is routinely extracted from Black communities which must remain knowable to the state. These surveillance technologies authorize the police to regulate, incarcerate, and kill Black people. They also put the idea of contact tracing and other forms of monitoring during the pandemic in a different light. Constant surveillance shapes the contours of everyday Black life — from our mobility on the illuminated street through to the prison cell. For instance, in the context of Covid-19, from March 16 to May 5, 193 out of 374 summonses for social-distancing violations in New York City were issued to Black people.

While some companies are now promising not to sell facial recognition technology to police, Clearview AI has made no such promises as they pitch their facial recognition technology to U.S. agencies for Covid-19 contact tracing. Already used by ICE and police departments around the world, Clearview AI’s technology matches faces to its database of images non-consensually mined from social media. At the same time, the limited ability of facial recognition algorithms to successfully identify Black people is well documented. Joy Buolamwini’s research reported higher rates of error in facial-analysis systems’ attempts to identify darker skinned women. As this technology verifies one’s identity against biometric databases, Black people are dangerously prone to misidentification errors in a system where cameras are calibrated and optimized for whiteness.

Other forms of biometric technology, such as fingerprint scanning, are also not immune to error. As Browne notes, “unmeasurable fingerprints are often those of the elderly and people who come in contact with caustic chemicals and frequent hand washing in their work environments, such as mechanics, health care workers, and nail salon technicians or manicurists.” Still, the answer to misidentification cannot lie in reformist appeals for biometric technology that accurately identifies Black subjects or even temporary refusals to market the technology to police. We must demand nothing short of abolition.

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Miraculously, we build warm shelters as we evade the state’s gaze. Forms of solidarity and kinship may be conceivable along these lines, among manual workers, those engaged in feminized labor, and Black working-class communities whose labor sustains an over-surveilled pandemic world. Kinship is in every Black liberation project toward abolition, felt in uprisings around the world.

This solidarity is especially important in light of the increased police surveillance practices during pandemic times, such as remote temperature screening conducted without a subject’s consent. Police in Westport, Connecticut, for instance, considered testing a drone that could monitor temperature and heart rate, as well as detect sneezes and coughs, from up to 190 feet away. In another context, similar technology under development by the Department of Homeland Security identifies “criminal intent” by detecting elevated heart rates at airports and borders. The categories of criminal and contagion are imbricated, with Blackness in common.

In response to this, we can imagine futures of Black ungovernability. Ungovernability expresses itself in uprisings that demand the undoing of a world predicated on anti-Black violence. It also manifests as a refusal to be tracked by the state. To be ungovernable is to recognize that surveillance regimes cannot be the only answer to a pandemic. By individualizing blame and placing disproportionate burden on individuals surveilled as contagions, the emergency state obscures its utter inability to contain the pandemic.

When we are illegible, when we exist and flourish in the shroud, we can fail at being a governable subject, and thus succeed at evading the biometric identification of “good” vs “bad” citizens, and the carceral surveillance of Black communities. Being “known” to the state — an effect of pandemic surveillance, or 500 years of regulating Black movement — may mark the difference between life and death. As ungovernable, the conditions of freedom become possible in the here and now, while our faces and fingerprints fail to register in biometric systems. The pleasures of being unknown are infinite.

As Mimi Ọnụọha writes, “there are advantages to nonexistence,” and when we evade the essentialism of being violently understood, “there will always be bits that ooze out beneath spreadsheet cells, things that cannot be contained, or that should not.” To invoke Édouard Glissant, “we demand the right to opacity,” and in our illegibility we momentarily thwart surveillance structures. If you can’t see something, you can’t say something. Any one individual’s health is intimately tied to the health of community. Through mutual-aid projects and infinite underground networks of care, we provide food, housing, and medicine for each other — an ungovernable act, because we were not meant to survive here.

As I write this, we mourn (again, always again) Black death at the hands of police across the Americas. Regis Korchinski-Paquet. Tony McDade. D’Andre Campbell. Breonna Taylor. George Floyd. While the state uses Covid-19 as a pretext to expand policing in the name of public health, Blackness is always outside the “public” in “public health.” And as we gather in public space, our masking practices signify so much more than infection control. Worn en masse as we grieve in the streets, engaged in uprisings, masking is the uniform of our solidarity. The mask thwarts surveillance, and some masks even protect against tear gas. The ubiquity of the mask at the scene of the protest illustrates a commons of Black refusal, where we find protection in each other, in our anonymity. It feels as if a Black otherwise might be possible within the ruins of the everyday.

Want to live long and prosper? Here’s a new study from Washington State University showing that walkability has a strong correlation with the likelihood of reaching centenarian age by area.

If you live in a place that has good walking and provides the ability to walk to schools, shops and services, and  has lots of young people working, the correlation is high for a healthy long life.

In a study of close to 150,000 seniors in Washington state, researchers looked at individuals who had lived longer than 75 years up to 100 years and looked for the factors that helped them lead long and healthy lives.

And surprise! As reported in Marketwatch.com

 “Walkable and bikeable streets and clean, accessible parks are linked to increasing physical activity of the surrounding population by 30%. Walkable neighborhoods are especially important for older adults who may have decreased mobility and no longer drive, as they are likely to benefit from easier access to their community afforded by walkable neighborhoods.”

Despite suggestions that the Covid pandemic is providing a short-term shift away from public transport and city living, the study shows that streets that are walkable and cyclable along with park proximity raise physical activity levels by 30 percent. Neighbourhoods planned with good walkability are vital to older adults with mobility issues and who must often walk or take transit to complete basic shopping.

People living in cities do walk more, have good access to nutritious food and health clinics and have lower body weights. There’s one part of the study that is also fascinating~higher education is not necessarily a factor in living to 100 years.

You can download  the original study that was published in the Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health here.

Images:SandyJames

*Mockup by Andrew Walsh

 

Peter Ladner knows how to help restaurants and businesses in Stanley Park thrive in these disrupted times.  He describes his idea in detail in this open letter to Nancy Stibbard, owner of the Prospect Point Café.

Dear Nancy:

You may recall our conversation a couple of weeks ago. You and your management team were surveying the financial wreckage at your Prospect Point Café; I and my fellow pensioner cycling friends were commiserating with you at the top of the Stanley Park Hill. I was recalling my son and daughter-in-law’s similar fate of owning restaurants forced to close but the bills keep coming and the future looks bleak. You looked shaken, uncertain, but with time and curiosity enough to chat with us.

You and your team’s three vehicles were parked outside, and I imagined how, for you and your team, access to your restaurant without a car would just not be possible or practical. The same at Capilano Suspension Bridge.

You said your restaurant would have no hope if the tour buses couldn’t get there, and if cars were backed up in gridlock, which you predicted. You since joined up with 13 other Stanley Park businesses and associations to persuade the Vancouver Park Board—unsuccessfully- to reopen the park to two lanes of motorized traffic.

Your organization’s spokesperson, Nigel Malkin, then told News1130: “Accessibility to Prospect Point for anyone will basically be near zero… You’d have to park across the road…” Malkin, in case you haven’t picked this up by now, has a disturbing aversion to facts and cyclists. It’s not a good look to have a spokesperson who describes the 350,000 cyclists over the first 67 days of the lockdown as “near zero”. That’s around six times the number of cars that used to drive by during the same two months last year.

He also predicted, like you, contrary to traffic engineers’ data, “It’s inevitable you end up with severe traffic issues.” I am reminded of the old quip attributed to Yogi Berra: “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”

According to a CBC report, he foresees “a bicycle lane that’s a velodrome for beyond seasoned cyclists… It’s not being inclusive, this is not something where families and children are going to be able to ride around.”

 

Now that we’re stuck with the six-month bike lane trial and near zero foreign tourists, let me propose another approach: turn those fighting words into a warm embrace.

You have six months to seize an amazing opportunity that has just backed into you.

You sit atop what could be the next new tourist sensation in Metro Vancouver: the Stanley Park Hill.

Just as you learned how to milk the natural splendour of the Capilano Suspension Bridge to attract and please tourists, you could do the same here.

Think about it: this is a hill that’s a 15-minute bike ride from downtown, within 10 km of hundreds of thousands of people. It is just steep enough to be a big sweaty challenge for a lot of people, but easy enough that my five-year-old grandson goes up it with me on his clunky bike, without a rest, past the people pushing their bikes, and is bursting with pride and excitement at the top. Not to mention anticipation of the heart-thumping big downhill ahead.

People in cars don’t notice hills like this, but for cyclists, trust me, it’s a big deal.

This hill could be turned into the cycling equivalent of the Grouse Grind, only way more accessible. It fits into a very manageable 10 km cycling loop of the park. It weaves through the heart of the towering forests of Stanley Park, breaking out into the clifftop vistas of mountains, the Lion’s Gate Bridge, the entrance to our working harbour, views you know so well from your restaurant. It already has a public washroom where many people stop. (I’m including cyclists and hikers when I say people.)

So I am going to offer some gratuitous marketing advice. Now is the time to embrace the hundreds of thousands of cyclists that will be riding past your site. Welcome them, encourage them, love them. They are your new customers who just might save your business.

 

Here are my 12 off-the-cuff ideas for you and your fellow entrepreneurs to make the most of this COVID-released opportunity:

• Make The Stanley Park Hill Climb a thing. Get T-shirts made up saying “Stanley Park Hill Climb Finisher” with a picture of your restaurant and the bridge. The Ferguson Point Teahouse could do the same: their T-shirts could say “Stanley Park Teahouse Two-Wheel Club” on them, never forgetting “Via the Stanley Park Hill Climb”. The Stanley Park Brew Pub could label a “Stanley Park Hill Climb Lager” for people who “conquered The Hill” on their bikes.  Just like the Grind, people’s Stanley Park Hill Climb times could become a badge of honour and cultural touchstone for locals and tourists alike.

• Faster cyclists will immediately start comparing times on their Strava accounts. (Going uphill means they can’t go too fast, but if separating speedy cyclists is a concern, push for them to have priority on the bike lane from, say, 6-9 am daily.) Maybe it could get to the point, like the Grouse Grind, where people who want can log in at the start and finish and have their times automatically tracked and ranked daily on a screen in the Prospect Point Cafe. Kids especially might like this. (Make sure you have a category for biggest family group.)

My five-year-old grandson enjoying riding in the park. He lives nearby and has been doing complete circuits since soon after the park closed to motorized vehicles. He has been cycling for three months.

• Have everyone in the Stanley Park stakeholders association, and especially your employees, ride around the park and up the Stanley Park Hill so they can relate to their new cycling customers. Hire a cyclist to get advice on how to attract, retain and please passing cyclists. Or just ask them directly.

• Milk the finish line. Carve off a few parking spaces at the edge of the “finish line” at the top for a painted archway with ‘Stanley Park Hill Climb Finisher’ on it. Some people will find this kitschy; others will take it seriously and love it. People topping the hill on their bikes for the first time will take their picture under the arch, guaranteed, and send selfies promoting your restaurant around the world.

• Add some bicycle amenities at the top of the hill: a pump, a mobile bike repair service on busy days, a Mobi station so people could hike in, have lunch and ride back on a rented bike.

• Invite all the bike rental businesses within a two km radius of the park entrances (including on the North Shore) to join your Stanley Park stakeholders association. Work with them on package deals for park-and-ride guided tours steering cyclists to park restaurants. Work with them to ensure that the entire park bike gravel trail system is clearly marked with directions to restaurants and other park attractions, especially showing people where to hike up the trail from the seawall to your restaurant.

• Don’t overlook marketing the thrill of riding a bike over the Lion’s Gate bridge. A park-and-bike package from Park Royal (lots of free parking), guiding people over the bridge, stopping for lunch in the park, then back over the bridge, could become a thing to do.

• Post a camera on the causeway overpass pointing at the bridge (beside all the other commercial cameras taking traffic pictures) and figure out a way for people to order pictures of themselves riding south across the bridge. Have an order kiosk in the Prospect Point Café selling T-shirts with their pictures and the slogan: “I’ve been LionsGated”.

• Promote bike safety: push for signs clarifying cycling rules of the road along the bike lane: Keep right except to pass. Don’t swerve. One way only.

• Speaking of safety, recognize that cyclists/your customers don’t like being sprayed by poisonous gas microparticles on their way to your restaurant. Push for a ban on diesel vehicles, incentives for electric vehicles, and promote an electric bus shuttle around the park.

• Do the math: the more active cyclists there are in Vancouver and the more you promote the Stanley Park Hill Climb, the more potential customers you have. So it’s in your interest to promote cycling every way you can. Cross-promote with HUB cycling. Get your Stanley Park businesses included in their member discount program.

• Endear yourself to the cycling community by promoting the importance of being able to cycle through parks: call out the park board everywhere they blithely mix cyclists and pedestrians to the danger of both groups: along the seawall, in Kits Park and in Jericho.

 

I’m sure you can think of more and better ideas, but you probably get my drift.

I’m afraid I don’t see any other options for the next six months.

Sincerely, Peter Ladner

 

PS: And about those seniors who some seem to believe require full two-lane auto access to the park:

 My friend Oleh, who lives near the Capilano Suspension Bridge and cycles four times around the park on Stanley Park Amigo Rides twice a week with fellow seniors. He’s waiting for a double knee replacement   

 

*Mock-up logo by Andrew Walsh of &walshdesign.  He welcomes your suggestions.

 

Facebook is rolling out a new notification to warn users if they are about to share an article that is older than 90 days, in order to prevent the spread of outdated news.

A notification will pop up when users click the share button on old articles, so they can decide if the article is still relevant to them.

The social media giant says that when older stories are shared on social media as current news, it can misconstrue the state of current events. Facebook outlined in a blog post that its goal with this feature is to make it easier for people to identify timely and reliable content.

Facebook notes that some news publishers are already starting to label older articles to prevent outdated news from being used in misleading ways.

The platform’s new feature will likely be helpful when it comes to sharing articles about COVID-19. Since much about the virus was unknown at the start of the pandemic and some facts have since been disproved, some old articles containing outdated information may still be circulating on social media.

Further, Facebook says it’s testing more uses of notification screens over the next few months. It’s exploring the use of a similar notification screen on posts with links mentioning COVID-19 that would provide information about the source of the link.

Facebook says it’s important to provide more context about the content that is being widely shared on its platform.

Image credit: Facebook

Source: Facebook

The post Facebook to notify users before they share an old article appeared first on MobileSyrup.

mkalus shared this story from mrjamesob on Twitter.

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