The Brooks Review

Month: October 2017

  • Intrigue in the online mattress review world

    Jason Kottke:

    In five years, Casper will probably have dozens of retail stores and 10 different kinds of mattress at different price points — they already have more than a dozen stores and 3 models ranging from $600 to $1850 — just like the companies they are trying to replace. Their origin story won’t matter…VC-fueled marketing will paper over all of that and, tada, meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

    Unrelated, I have a Tuft & Needle mattress and love it. It may not sponsor every podcast, but it also doesn’t sponsor every podcast. And that’s not an affiliate link, it’s just a link to a fantastic mattress.

  • First Look: Meridian Dress Shirt from Bluffworks

    Currently on Kickstarter for a few more days, the Meridian Dress Shirt is billed as the ultimate travel shirt. It boasts the standard set of travel dress shirt features: multi-day wear (because it is odor resistant), wrinkle free, breathable, and comfortable. Bluffworks sent me a non-final press sample, which arrived just a few hours before I left for a weekend trip. Here’s my initial thoughts on this new shirt.

    I tested this shirt by wearing it while loading my car for the weekend, driving two hours and forty-five minutes, and then unloading the car. I hung it up, and put it back on a couple days later to again load the car, drive the car, and unload the car. Then I wore it for half a day at work (I got too warm with my t-shirt under it) and lastly I wadded it up and stuck it at the bottom of a pile of stinky clothes for the night. So basically, I abused the shirt pretty well in the short time I’ve had it.

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  • One person’s history of Twitter, from beginning to end

    Mike Monteiro:

    Twitter would have you believe that it’s a beacon of free speech. Biz Stone would have you believe that inaction is principle. I would ask you to consider the voices that have been silenced. The voices that have disappeared from Twitter because of the hatred and the abuse. Those voices aren’t free. Those voices have been caged. Twitter has become an engine for further marginalizing the marginalized. A pretty hate machine.

    Note also:

    Actor Rose McGowan, one of the accusers of disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein, has had her Twitter activity suspended. McGowan had earlier tweeted “fuck off” to actor Ben Affleck and accused him of lying about his knowledge of Weinstein’s history of sexual misconduct.

    For me there’s a key line from Monteiro which tells you all you need to know about many things in life:

    But I’ll tell you this: a lot of those people have tried, honestly tried to deal with the abuse on the platform. But when leadership doesn’t want something fixed it’s close to impossible to fix it. And when leadership doesn’t see something as a problem, it’s not getting fixed at all.

  • Severe flaw in WPA2 protocol leaves Wi-Fi traffic open to eavesdropping

    Speaking of security, it looks like WPA2 WiFi security is totally fucked. This will likely need patches on your OS and routers. What a fucking mess.

  • Mobile Internet Security

    Caleb Chen:

    American telcos like AT&T and Verizon sell your personal information: home address, phone number, and cell phone contract details, possibly even down to your current longitude and latitude, to anyone with your mobile IP address. This means that when you use your mobile to browse the internet, each of the sites you visit could easily have your full name, phone number, home address and email address, and even approximate location. AT&T has been actively providing this information to law enforcement for over a decade, also for a profit.

    Looks like I’ll switch to VPN on cell networks.

  • iPad Productivity Report — 10/16/17

    An update on my file storage search, and thoughts on cellular iPads and FaceID for iPads. Also a quick question about a possible new member feature.

    You must be a member to read this article.

  • What Facebook Did to American Democracy

    This is a fascinating read and shows the true dangers of networks like Facebook, and Twitter as well. What’s most interesting, and most dangerous is that these networks themselves don’t know how they impact the world until well after the fact.

  • Ev Williams Wants To Save Media — Again

    At its core, Medium has two good things going for it:

    1. Design, it’s phenomenal and well considered.
    2. Desire to be better. They know what they want to achieve.

    The problem with Medium is that they have no fucking clue how to actually accomplish the second thing, and so they quickly erode the trust of writers. If you are serious about writing, it’s the worst possible choice you can make for publishing your words.

  • Triple Aught Design’s Admin Panel

    When I picked up the Triple Aught Design Azimuth backpack, I also snagged an Admin Panel to try and help organize the otherwise organizationaless Azimuth. It was almost an afterthought of a purchase for me, at $35 it’s hard to put too much consideration and I often just try stuff out at that price. I purchased it because it has a clip and rail system that is designed to work in Triple Aught Design packs (I can’t test this, but I suspect it might work in Outlier packs too).

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  • iPad Productivity Report — 10/9/17

    This week, I want to tackle three areas: home screen layouts on iOS 11, those weird clipboard managers, and what to do when you have a shit ton of files to deal with. Let’s get started, this seems ambitious.

    You must be a member to read the rest of this article.

  • Forget Russian Trolls. Facebook’s Own Staff Helped Win The Election.

    Daniel Kreiss and Shannon McGregor, reporting on another side of Facebook, Google, and Twitter during the elections:

    For example, these firms offer an extensive array of campaign services — including advising campaigns on everything from the content of ads and other communications to the specific groups they might benefit most from targeting, and how best to reach them. Consider the fact that all three of these firms have dedicated partisan teams that work with campaigns. Staffers work with campaigns to guide advertising buys, boost engagement around online ads, and shepherd the use of their platforms.

  • Triple Aught Design Azimuth Backpack

    One of the things I am constantly trying to find is a bag to be my “dad bag” — I’ve mentioned my high standards for such a bag before, but want to recap specifically what I am looking for:

    • Something 10-20L in size.
    • Something which can be packed down to fit inside a GR1/GR2.
    • Something which can carry my kids coats in the winter.
    • Something which is comfortable to carry all day.

    The GORUCK Bullet Ruck 10L, is as close as I have ever come, but it’s hard if not impossible to bring it with you. The Outlier Quadzip came tantalizingly close, but the high price, and some framesheet discomfort left me to sell it too.

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  • iPad Productivity Report — 10/2/17

    Diving into the past a bit this week.

    Update on Google Drive: the app has now been implemented to work with Files.app, and has removed the shady shit it does to register with every file type. Small win there, big results. Though, amusingly, macOS server is not a native Files integration — collectively we can all laugh and cry at the same time now. Also, it looks as though Readdle’s Documents app does the same shit Drive did. So that’s fun.

    You must be a member to read the rest of this article.

  • Zuckerberg’s Preposterous Defense of Facebook

    Zeynep Tufekci:

    In a largely automated platform like Facebook, what matters most is not the political beliefs of the employees but the structures, algorithms and incentives they set up, as well as what oversight, if any, they employ to guard against deception, misinformation and illegitimate meddling. And the unfortunate truth is that by design, business model and algorithm, Facebook has made it easy for it to be weaponized to spread misinformation and fraudulent content. Sadly, this business model is also lucrative, especially during elections.