Either Rotten Tomatoes was destroying the film industry, or it didn't matter much at all, writes The Ringer, noting competing storylines about the influence of the film review-aggregating web site. But they've now performed a statistical deep dive to try to answer the question, and concluded that "The truth likely lies in the middle: Rotten Tomatoes wasn't tanking the industry or single-handedly exposing that Baywatch was bad, but it wasn't irrelevant, either." In fact, our analysis reveals that Rotten Tomatoes scores are reliably correlated with box office performance, especially for certain genres. But the aggregator's influence may have been on the wane before the coronavirus struck, and it may matter less than ever in the present uncertain circumstances... Our first finding is that the average Rotten Tomatoes critic score has increased over time. Maybe movies have improved — or at least grown closer to critics' liking — or maybe the rise reflects changes in the makeup of Rotten Tomatoes' pool of reviewers... Whatever the reason(s) for the increasing scores, there's no evidence of greater negativity that could be turning off ticket buyers (which probably doesn't displease Fandango). The site bestows a "Fresh" rating on any movie with a 60 percent score or higher, and the average movie now clears that threshold.... Action movie earnings are the least closely associated with review scores, maybe because when people just want to see stuff blow up, they're willing to lower their standards in certain respects. Comedies and horror movies — particularly the latter — are far more consistent with the critical consensus. A perfectly scored action movie's earnings might double its budget, but a perfectly scored comedy can quadruple its budget, while a perfectly scored horror flick can beat its budget by 10 or 20 times... The mystery of most interest to studio execs is whether Rotten Tomatoes has strengthened the relationship between the critical consensus and box office performance, which also existed in the pre-internet age. The evidence suggests that the studios were a tad too intimidated in 2017... However, there are some signs that increased attention to the critical consensus may have affected whether movies' earnings got out to fast or slow starts, even if it didn't dramatically lower or raise their final ticket tallies.

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"California is exempting about two-dozen more professions from a landmark labor law designed to treat more people like employees instead of contractors, under a bill that Gov. Gavin Newsom signed on Friday," reports the San Diego Union-Tribune: The amendments, which take effect immediately, end what lawmakers said were unworkable limits on services provided by freelance writers and still photographers, photojournalists, and freelance editors and newspaper cartoonists. It includes safeguards to make sure they are not replacing current employees. The new measure also exempts various artists and musicians, along with some involved in the insurance and real estate industries. Vox Media had already cited the earlier version of California's AB-5 law as the reason it fired hundreds of freelance writers in December. But the state's fight against gig-worker companies is still ongoing, reports CNN Wire: According to William B. Gould IV, a law professor at Stanford University, it "certainly makes a lot of sense for the Attorney General to put a lot of their marbles in the Uber basket. You're dealing with a company that has thumbed its nose at the rule of law for some time now and thinks there's no restriction that they can't evade," added Gould IV, a former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board. Jenny Montoya Tansey, policy director at the Public Rights Project, a public interest legal nonprofit that has been involved with enforcement efforts in California, said another factor is that "drivers have organized in numbers and are doing a really compelling job in getting their stories out, letting regulators, enforcers and policy makers understand some of the experiences that drivers go through." And Tansey adds that the law's enforcers are also eyeing food delivery services: Prior to AB-5, San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliott filed a suit against Instacart, the on-demand grocery delivery startup valued at $14 billion, over worker classification; the case is on-going. More recently, in June, San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin filed a suit against DoorDash, the food delivery startup valued at $16 billion. "Food delivery is in demand now more than ever. Multi-billion dollar corporations that deliver food are profiting off this crisis while they exploit their drivers and deny them a living wage, unemployment insurance, sick leave and other basic workplace protections," said Assemblywoman Gonzalez of San Diego in a statement to CNN Business, adding praise to Elliott and Boudin's actions. "I hope other officials follow their lead. These companies need to be held to the same standards as any other law-abiding business in the state," Gonzalez added.... The threat to the combined on-demand business model is evident. Uber, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash and Uber-owned Postmates have funneled more than $110 million into passing a referendum in November, known as Prop 22, that would exempt them from the law while providing drivers with some additional benefits. Additionally, Uber and Lyft are facing lawsuits from California's Labor Commissioner's Office over allegedly committing wage theft by misclassifying their on-demand workers as independent contractors instead of employees.

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"Fans have flocked to a church in Germany to hear a chord change in a musical composition that lasts for 639 years," reports the BBC. "It is the first change in the piece, As Slow As Possible, in seven years." The Guardian reports: The performance of the composition began in September 2001 at the St Burchardi church in the eastern town of Halberstadt and is supposed to end in 2640 — if all goes well. The music piece by the American composer John Cage is played on a special organ inside the medieval church... A compressor in the basement creates energy to blow air into the organ to create a continuous sound. When a chord change happens, it's done manually. On Saturday, soprano singer Johanna Vargas and organist Julian Lembke changed the chord. The BBC notes the score for the 639-year composition is just eight pages long. But though the piece was written in the 1980s, it wasn't until nine years after the composer's death in 1992 that anyone dared to attempt playing it. That performance then began — with a pause that lasted nearly 18 months. The next chord change is scheduled for February 5 of the year 2022.

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That Covid-19 reinfection in Hong Kong was followed by similar reports in Belgium and the Netherlands. It was announced today that a 27-year-old woman in Karnataka, India also tested positive for the disease a second time (though the government is still seeking confirmation), and now researchers in Nevada are also reporting a "likely" case of reinfection. The health-news site Stat reports: What caught experts' attention about the case of the 25-year-old Reno man was not that he appears to have contracted SARS-CoV-2 (the name of the virus that causes Covid-19) a second time. Rather, it's that his second bout was more serious than his first. Immunologists had expected that if the immune response generated after an initial infection could not prevent a second case, then it should at least stave off more severe illness. That's what occurred with the first known reinfection case, in a 33-year-old Hong Kong man. Still, despite what happened to the man in Nevada, researchers are stressing this is not a sky-is-falling situation or one that should result in firm conclusions. They always presumed people would become vulnerable to Covid-19 again some time after recovering from an initial case, based on how our immune systems respond to other respiratory viruses, including other coronaviruses. It's possible that these early cases of reinfection are outliers and have features that won't apply to the tens of millions of other people who have already shaken off Covid-19. "There are millions and millions of cases," said Michael Mina, an epidemiologist at Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The real question that should get the most focus, Mina said, is, "What happens to most people...?" Researchers are finding that, generally, people who get Covid-19 develop a healthy immune response replete with both antibodies (molecules that can block pathogens from infecting cells) and T cells (which help wipe out the virus). This is what happens after other viral infections.

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Car and Driver magazine explores what gives Tesla's vehicles their comparatively long range. And apparently one factor is just "big batteries. This may be obvious, but a battery that holds more energy should translate to more range, and Tesla has the largest battery packs out there... What isn't always obvious is how much of a battery pack's energy is usable versus its maximum theoretical or gross capacity... Based on the limited data we have, it seems that Tesla allows its cars to use more of a pack's capacity than other manufacturers do. We suspect that's partially because the company puts some of the responsibility on the driver to choose how high to charge the battery, noting that anything above a 90 percent charge should be reserved only for trips, not everyday use. Tesla's largest battery pack carries the energy equivalent of just 2.9 gallons of gas when fully charged. The key to extending EPA range is to use less electricity to propel the vehicle and to recapture as much energy as possible using the electric motors to slow the vehicle whenever the driver lifts off the accelerator during the EPA cycles' many slowdowns. Tesla's aggressive regenerative braking alone nets it a 13 percent gain in range versus the Porsche Taycan, which waits until the driver presses the brake pedal before initiating meaningful regen. This is one piece of Tesla's holistic approach to efficiency that also includes its vehicles' ability to roll down the road with less friction than their competitors. Tesla also obtained more efficiency through the engineering of its all-wheel-drive. But there's also another interesting wrinkle: [T]he EPA allows automakers the option to run three additional drive cycles and use those results to earn a more favorable adjustment factor. Currently, only Tesla and Audi employ this strategy for their EVs, and Tesla scores the most advantageous results, with adjustments that range from 29.5 percent on the Model 3 Standard Range Plus to 24.4 percent on the Model Y Performance. If Tesla had used the standard adjustment factor of 30 percent, the Model Y Performance's window-sticker range would drop to 292 miles. But because Tesla takes advantage of the EPA's alternate methodology, the company can instead claim a 315-mile range. This is all within the regulatory rules. Among EV makers, Tesla has been at this game longer than most, so it's not surprising that it has figured out the tricks to maximizing its EPA numbers. And the magazine shares this tip for prospective Tesla customers. "Based on the road-load data it has submitted to the EPA, opting for 21-inch wheels on a Model S Long Range Plus will cut the range by nearly 80 miles.

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I wish Bloomberg was keeping his promise.

Braintrust query: Less expensive Biden lawn signs.

I've only paid for a magazine subscription once in my life — to Jack Rickard's Boardwatch magazine, which through the late 1990s was the geekiest read in town. You can still read 70 issues of the magazine from more than 25 years ago at Archive.org. But this week the small Southeast Missourian newspaper reported that the magazine's original editor/publisher Jack Rickard has died at age 65: Following his graduation in 1973, Jack enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He proudly served aboard the USS Midway as an aviation support equipment technician. Following a distinguished tour in the Navy, Jack enjoyed a career as a technical writer in the defense industry. Jack was a Mensa member and an early adopter of new technologies. His keen intelligence helped him to see the value of the internet as early as the 1980s. He started Boardwatch... Supported by a strong team, Jack developed Boardwatch into a successful magazine, which he sold in 1998. Following his initial professional success, Jack proudly returned to his hometown of Cape Girardeau, Missouri. While in Cape Girardeau, Jack continued to pursue his interest in innovative technologies, including aviation and electric cars. In 2008, Jack established EVTV, an internet-based platform that taught individuals methods to convert gasoline-powered vehicles into electric-drive vehicles. As electric cars became popular, Jack expanded EVTV to focus on solar power storage. Jack always felt like an old friend, even as his role in the tech community kept evolving. (Rickard's editorials at EVTV always featured a black-and-white sketch of the author — a tradition he'd continued through more than three decades of writing.) Even Boardwatch "began as a publication for the online Bulletin Board Systems of the 1980s and 1990s," explains Wikipedia, "and ultimately evolved into a trade magazine for the Internet service provider (ISP) industry in the late 1990s... Boardwatch spawned an ISP industry tradeshow, ISPcon, and published a yearly Directory of Internet Service Providers. In 1998, Rickard sold a majority interest in Boardwatch and its related products to an East Coast multimedia company, which was then acquired by Penton Media in 1999 and moved to other ventures... This week fans left testimonals on his funeral home's web site. "What an inspiration to mankind," read one. "Always enjoyed his views on any subject. We could use more people in this world with his wit and knowledge." And another just wrote "Jack you were the most insightful speaker on the topic of electric vehicles. I enjoyed every second of your wisdom and videos and will continue to watch them for years to come. Rest In Peace my YouTube friend."

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Something weird about this.

1. At least in the US, if I link to an article on FB, the text of the article isn’t on FB, it’s on the original site.
2. Any text from the article that appears in FB is in the metadata put in the file specifically so it can be quoted by FB. Totally voluntary. There's no requirement you include that data.
3. If the news org wants to stop FB, just don’t include that metadata.

To be clear, the metadata is saying FB, please include this information when someone links to this story. It's kind of pissy to then complain that they included the information you asked them to include. If you want them to not include the information, mate, stop asking them to. It's really fucking simple. I'm sure there are plenty of Australian programmers who can explain it to you.

For example, view the source code of this article. Near the top of the page look for <meta> tags with the og: prefix. Those are put there for Facebook. There are others, with the same info, for Twitter. It's smart to put those in there, they're kind of like ads.

PS: I'm not a big fan of Facebook. Really. But I'm also not a big fan of bullshit.

I know I'm an outlier, but I thought the Kaufman movie was not interesting, entertaining, thoughtful, funny, colorful, artistic, whatever. I've read the explainers, but please, any story that needs that much explaning isn't much of a story imho.

SF Chron review: "It goes on for 134 minutes without ever giving viewers a reason to keep watching. Few Netflix customers will make it all the way to the end, and even fewer will be glad they did."

The press repeats their blaming Facebook for the terrible state of our political system. In such damning terms. I wish they'd find a way to take their share of that responsibility. On The Media is the worst.

People ask what if Trump refuses to leave. He watches TV all day. I assume he’ll continue to do that. I suppose we‘ll have to sign loyalty oaths to him. Penalties very harsh for not doing so. What else?

Forbes reports: Firefox is exploring subscriptions and other "value exchange" services to ease its financial dependence on rival Google, according to the browser's lead developer. Firefox maker, Mozilla, is in the uneasy position of being financially dependent on its search deal with Google, which accounts for the majority of the organization's revenue. Although Mozilla only last month renewed the search deal, ensuring Google remains the default search engine for Firefox in the U.S. and other territories, the company is keen to explore other ways of raising revenue, including charging users for services. Mozilla's partnership with Google is an uncomfortable alliance, not only because the companies distribute rival browsers, but because their values are markedly different. While Google generates the vast bulk of its revenue from online advertising, Firefox's developers expend much of their effort creating tools that thwart advertisers, including the automatic blocking of third-party tracking tools and social-media trackers. "At Mozilla, we tend to believe things are at their best when users have this transparent value exchange," said Dave Camp, senior vice president of Firefox at Mozilla. "The advertising model has become a default way to fund things on the internet and to fund products, and we're pretty interested — not just for financial reasons, but actually for health of the internet reasons — to explore how can we do better for users than advertising." Mozilla recently began charging users $4.99 per month for its VPN product and Camp says the company is exploring other subscription products. "We don't have any immediate plans in the Firefox team to do add-on services or anything like that at the moment, but we're going to look at other ways to get some value exchange going on," said Camp.

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"Arm has announced its first 64 bit, Linux-capable Cortex-R processor, designed for computational storage solutions," reports Electronics Weekly. SiliconAngle calls it "a chip designed to enable a new generation of storage devices that will not only hold data but also help process it." Such devices are part of an emerging hardware category known as computational storage. The technology promises to provide a speed boost for latency-sensitive workloads such as machine learning and real-time analytics applications. Normally, the task of storing data and processing it is relegated to separate components inside a system. The disk or flash drive holds onto the information while a separate processor does the processing. Data has to travel from the storage drive to the processor and back every time an operation is carried out, which creates delays that can slow down performance. The emerging computational storage devices Arm targets attempt to do away with these delays to speed up applications. Instead of sending information to a separate chip for processing, the storage drive processes it locally using its built-in controller. A controller is a tiny computing module inside flash and disk drives that normally performs only low-level tasks such as writing and reading data. Arm's new Cortex-R82 is designed to serve as the controller for computational storage devices. It's available as a chip design that hardware makers can license and customize based on their needs. "The extra computing power allows the chip to run a full Linux distribution as well as applications, all directly inside a storage drive."

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