“The Nürburgring has lost its most famous female racing driver.

Sabine Schmitz passed away far too early after a long illness. We will miss her and her cheerful nature. Rest in peace Sabine!”

Sabine was funny, charming, and—of course—an amazing driver. Her segment on Top Gear, where she took a Ford Transit van around the Nürburgring in just over 10 minutes, was one of my favorites. So sad to hear that she’s passed on so early.

Update March 17, 2021 4:13 PM: Jalopnik has a really nice page about her background and passing.

Update March 17, 2021 4:33 PM: F1 has also posted a page about her.

“As of Ruby 3 (released December 24th, 2020, as is Ruby tradition), DateTime only exists for backwards-compatibility. The date library docs recommend you just use Time instead. (I’m pretty sure this was essentially true from 2.0 forward, but now it’s formally true.)”

“Here are ten more steps I believe Apple could and should take to help nudge the iPad into this exciting next era of computing.”

This is a good article on the implications of the incredible new M1 Macs, and where Apple should focus the iPad in this new computing landscape.

This is the official post about the end of Bike magazine, by editor Nicole Formosa.

It’s a sad day. While Bike has withered for quite some time, getting slimmer and slimmer, its focus on its digital projects has been quite good. I know it’s got to be hard to keep a staff to create such things, and the writing has probably been on the wall for some time, but it’s a real loss.

Bike was the first—and one might argue only—high-quality mainstream mountain bike magazine. Its focus on photography as a showcase for the sport was laudable, and I’ve been a subscriber or newsstand purchaser for its entire run. The Bible of Bike Tests have been particularly entertaining, especially since going digital, and they’ll be missed.

Good luck to all who were on staff at Bike (and the other magazines facing their fate). I hope they all land rubber side down.

Stunning article about the pervasiveness of crazy in our country right now.

This matters not just because of what these voters believe but also because of what they don’t. The facts that should anchor a sense of shared reality are meaningless to them; the news developments that might ordinarily inform their vote fall on deaf ears. They will not be swayed by data on coronavirus deaths, they won’t be persuaded by job losses or stock market gains, and they won’t care if Trump called America’s fallen soldiers “losers” or “suckers,” as the Atlantic reported, because they won’t believe it. They are impervious to messaging, advertising or data. They aren’t just infected with conspiracy; they appear to be inoculated against reality.

“Democracy relies on an informed and engaged public responding in rational ways to the real-life facts and challenges before us. But a growing number of Americans are untethered from that. "They’re not on the same epistemological grounding, they’re not living in the same worlds,” says Whitney Phillips, a professor at Syracuse who studies online disinformation. “You cannot have a functioning democracy when people are not at the very least occupying the same solar system.”

I’m really sorry to hear that so many have lost their jobs at Mozilla. As a Firefox user, I’m also worried for its future. Not only is it a good browser, but I think having a web browser whose main job is servicing me as the user, not a corporate owner whose interests conflict with mine, is of primary importance. It’s a sad day for those employees, and I’m hoping not a data point on a continued slide to oblivion for Firefox.

Yes, it is. “It costs the U.S. government about 2 cents to produce every penny.”

This is a blow of sorts, but I just can’t see where Apple is going with the News app. It’s just not a great experience, especially if you’re not paying for News+. But even if you are, I find the Times is still best consumed on their web site—the Times’ native app is also inferior—to the News experience. And the aggregation hasn’t proven to be anything great, either. I like the idea of News, but the execution just isn’t there, IMO.