Month: April 2018

Eitan Chitayat: There were six individuals sitting down. One on his laptop, the other five all staring at their smartphones. Not one person had their head up. What’s the point of weaning me off this thing so I can enjoy looking around me when all I see are other addicts all looking into their iPhones? […]

It’s hard for me to fathom why people can’t give up Facebook, since I’ve been off of it most of my post-college life. So I found this post eye opening, and sad.

Selina Wang: Twitter Inc. sold data access to the Cambridge University academic who also obtained millions of Facebook Inc. users’ information that was later passed to a political consulting firm without the users’ consent. Not shocking, and I suspect this shit to keep coming out.

This update to Overcast isn’t fucking around on privacy. More of this please.

Ridiculous headline aside, Mohit Kumar: Checkmarx reported the issue to Amazon, and the company has already addressed the problem by regularly scanning for malicious skills that “silent prompts or that listen for unusual lengths of time” and kicking them out of their official store. I’d personally just assume that all Alexa-type devices can and will […]

John Voorhees: Although I wouldn’t suggest purchasing an app based on the promise of future features, it’s also worth noting that the 1Blocker X team says partial site whitelisting is coming soon. When implemented, the feature will allow you to do things like unblock comments and ads for a site, but leave trackers and other […]

Nathan Toups on how to make your smart phone less addicting without going back to a feature phone has this closing thought: This setup will cause you to be less responsive on chats and email, but that’s sort of the point. Your phone shouldn’t dictate to you what you focus your attention on, and the […]

I’ve been trying to figure out how I am going to phase out Instagram and delete that account. Sunlit is a strong contender so I took a bunch of random shots and created a “story” of sorts with them using Sunlit and my micro blog site. The results are interesting. Using Sunlit to create the […]

Good overview of what’s new in 1Blocker X. When I first installed the beta, I was confused by where there were so many extensions for just one app, this post explains the challenge the app faced. I’ve not kept a close eye on the content blocker race, but it sure seems to me that the […]

That’s a pretty fucking tame headline compared to what is in the article. A better more accurate headline might be: ‘Facebook is actively causing people to be lynched.’ Amanda Taub and Max Fisher reporting on this hellacious situation: We came to this house to try to understand the forces of social disruption that have followed […]

Gus Mueller: Here’s an idea I’ve been tossing around lately- Apple should make an Instagram clone for iCloud users. I think Micro.blog’s Sunlit gets you pretty close to a more open Instagram, with the big missing feature being the stories. Worth checking out if you’ve been earning for a better way to share experiences. Sunlit […]

Brittany Kaiser as reported by Jake Kanter: “I believe it is almost certain that the number of Facebook users whose data was compromised through routes similar to that used by Kogan is much greater than 87 million; and that both Cambridge Analytica and other unconnected companies and campaigns were involved in these activities.” I think […]

While I don’t agree with his keyboard (ugly) and stand (clamp stands worry me) choices, he’s got the right idea with the portrait typing perspective — it’s really a better way to write.

After all of my testing of content blockers for iOS, 1Blocker is the app that remains on all of my devices. It’s easy to use, with tons of extra power when you need it. They are coming out with a new version (I’ve been testing it, I’ll have more notes on that soon) called 1Blocker […]

M.G. Siegler: There’s something that has been in the back of my mind for some time now. And while it pre-dates the Facebook fiasco, that situation certainly brings it to the forefront. Increasingly, it feels like people in our industry, the tech industry, are losing touch with reality. Important read.

Matt Gemmell: Whenever I talk about the iPad as a work machine, I get some pushback that essentially says it’s not viable because it doesn’t do such-and-such. That’s fine — as long as you frame it accurately. Is it about a deficiency of modern computing, or is it just that you need something that isn’t […]