The Brooks Review

Month: August 2015

  • Apple’s content blocking is chemo for the cancer of adtech

    Doc Searls:

    On the B2C side, Apple is working on behalf of its paying customers. This is huge. There isn’t a customer on Earth who wants to be tracked like an animal without clear and explicit permission, or to have pages slowed by tracking cookies, beacons and ads fed by unknown and unwelcome servers. Especially on mobile. Apple knows that because they talk on the phone and in stores every day with those customers. They’ve also seen abundant research (some cited above) that makes clear how much people hate having their privacy violated, which Adtech does with abundant impunity. Meanwhile adtech doesn’t talk to those customers. It only follows them. Ain’t the same.

  • AT&T Hotspots: Now with Advertising Injection

    Shit heads.

  • The Fave Knife

    I was recently perusing Huckberry — something I really should not do — and I saw the Fave knife. It’s a 4” fixed blade, full-tang, knife with an interesting tag line:

    With this in mind, we set out to create the perfect take-it-anywhere, use-it-for-anything knife, the one that you would always keep close by – for slicing vegtables, cutting a rope or opening a package. A simple, well-built, useful knife that would be equally at home in the kitchen, a workshop, on your desk or out in the backyard.

    Oh really? So I picked one up because I had to know. I mean I really had to know: could a fixed blade knife really be a true utility knife? I was skeptical if this knife could both be good around my garage, and also good in the kitchen.

    (more…)

  • The Tom Bihn Cadet

    Nice review of the Tom Bihn Cadet from Casey Liss. This is a bag that has always intrigued me, that and the Co-Pilot he also mentions. This looks like a good bag for non-backpack people. (Note I'm testing another shoulder bag that is quite different at them moment, if you are in the market that review should be up in a couple weeks.)

  • What mobile ad blocking looks like in the real world

    The gifs are telling — this blockers are going to be huge. I’ve been testing one for a little bit now and it is extraordinary how much faster things are.

  • The Shinola Pocket Knife

    I have this terrible habit: once I find something I deem to be near perfect enough — such that continuing to find something better would be not worth the extra effort — I just stop looking around. I am now happy and I move on with my life.

    Such was the case with pocket knives.

    Was.

    (more…)

  • You Can’t Do Squat About Spotify’s Eerie New Privacy Policy

    But by all means bitch about the UI in Apple Music instead…

  • Building Better Defaults

    Fantastic post from Shawn. And it fits in with how I am using the Due app to help try and build some of these small habits. One of the things that never seems to get down at my house is emptying the bathroom garbage. So I have created a new task in Due which repeats weekly to empty those.

    Same could be done for a reminder to start something else, like writing, that you want to build a habit of.

  • Acorn 5

    I buy every new version of Acorn, because it is awesome.

  • The FluidStance Level

    (Editor’s note: This product was sent to me at no cost for the purpose of a review.)

    I should start this by saying that I have never been a skateboarder and in general I am not the best at things which require good balance. So it is with that in mind that I met The Level, a product for standing desk users made by FluidStance, with a bit of fear. I was fairly certain that I was going to end up on my ass after standing on the Level for just a day — maybe with a broken hip, or ankle to show for it.

    (more…)

  • Inside Amazon

    Gabe Weatherhead, responding to the Amazon workplace hubbub, and specifically Jeff Bezos’ email regarding the matter:

    Second, sending a company email on the weekend implies that the company culture encourages working on the weekend and considers it completely normal.

  • How Relay FM Proves That Podcasts Aren’t An Overnight Success

    Romain Dillet reporting:

    “I don’t need new shoelaces, I need new shoes. I thought to myself, if I buy new shoes — they are work shoes, I only wear those shoes at work. If I buy new shoes, I’m committing to myself that I need them because I’m going to be there for a while. I’m going to quit my job.”

    Congrats to Myke and Stephen on a year in the books.

  • The increasingly long lives of old Macs

    Dan Moren:

    This longevity goes hand in hand with the decline in specs that I wrote about last month. We’ll continue to use our devices as long as they accomplish what we want them to, not simply when specs suggest we “should” upgrade.

    I have a 2008 MacBook Pro still in service as a home server, as it replaced my 2005 G4 Mac mini — and that happened just a few months ago. Apple really should be given credit for the longevity of their devices.

  • Creating a kill-switched VPN on Mac with PIA and Little Snitch

    His Little Snitch rules for mimicking the ‘overcloak’ feature of Cloak is pretty awesome.

  • Quickertek-USB Type C Products

    Quickertek has a sweet external battery pack for the new MacBook. It appears to charge the MacBook while it is running and adds 8-48 hours of battery life. The only downside? The price: $300. Still, I would love to get one of these.

  • Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace

    You know how, as an American, you just always assume that work cultures like the French just look at American workers and laugh. But thier laugh is both pompous and pitiful? That's how I think most American workers are going to view this article about Amazon workers.

    That system is going to implode.

  • Thoughts on traveling 17,000 miles with the Aeronaut

    Nice review of what is one of my favorite travel bags.

  • Quick Tip: Disconnect from an existing Wi-Fi network on your Mac

    Son of a bitch, where has this been my entire life?

  • Vertical Videos Are the Future…

    Sigh.

  • Crossing the iPad Rubicon

    MG Siegler on using the iPad as an only computer:

    If I have to take out my laptop to do even just one thing, why not just use it for everything?

    That’s the sticking point for me as well.