The Brooks Review

  • About
  • Archive
  • The Best Products
  • Become a Member

Month: May 2018

  • Things Controlled by Keyboard

    This is quite the can of worms.

    Published May 29, 2018
  • Revisiting Standing Desks

    Revisiting standing for work, and some of my favorite EDC and bag sites.

    Published May 29, 2018
  • Ulysses 13

    Some fantastic new features. Both fenced code blocks and a new deadline feature for sheets are tops. I’ve been testing this for a while and the deadline feature has a lot of potential. Since I track all my writing in in Ulysses I’ve been setting deadlines as “at most 1,500 words, deadline DATE” this not […]

    Published May 28, 2018
  • One of My Favorite Lights Available: ReyLight Pineapple Brass AA Flashlight

    I own two, and it’s all I can do to not buy another.

    Published May 27, 2018
  • Here’s Amazon’s explanation for the Alexa eavesdropping scandal

    Weed is legal in Seattle, in case you wondered how they came up with this explanation.

    Published May 25, 2018
  • Travel Bags for People Who Don’t Pack Light

    Because nobody talks about those in between bags, which I think would help a lot of people.

    Published May 24, 2018
  • Obscura 2

    Out today is Obscura 2. I had a chance to play with the beta version and came to like it quite a bit, and it has become a home screen app for me. More information on the blog post here. I don’t know what it is about this app, but it’s really stuck with me, […]

    Published May 24, 2018
  • Instapaper Temporarily Shuts Down

    Nick Statt: Instapaper happens to be owned by Pinterest as of 2016, which does add a bit of a wrinkle to the situation as it’s not entirely clear what type of data on users’ reading habits or any other behaviors Pinterest may have gleaned from its subsidiary. When questioned by Williams on Twitter about the […]

    Published May 24, 2018
  • Castro Podcasts

    There’s a new version of Castro out, which switches the app to the now popular subscription model. Castro, as far as I am concerned, is the best podcasts app you can get. But also don’t take it from me because I so loathe podcasts. One thing to note here is the additional features of the […]

    Published May 21, 2018
  • Tech Optimism Battling Privacy and Ethics

    The magic of tech, the fear of tech, regulation, and the Apple way.

    Published May 21, 2018
  • How Facebook Binds, and Shatters, Communities

    Antonio Garcia Martinez: Facebook is to real community as porn is to real sex: a cheap, digital knockoff for those who can’t do better. Unfortunately, in both instances use of the simulacrum fries your brain in ways that prevent you from ever experiencing the real version again. But we’ll take what we can get. I’m […]

    Published May 18, 2018
  • Handkerchief Everyday Carry Thoughts

    It can be gross, but also very handy.

    Published May 17, 2018
  • Details on a New PGP Vulnerability

    Bruce Schneier: Why is anyone using encrypted e-mail anymore, anyway? Reliably and easily encrypting e-mail is an insurmountably hard problem for reasons having nothing to do with today’s announcement. If you need to communicate securely, use Signal. If having Signal on your phone will arouse suspicion, use WhatsApp. I wondered the same thing, though I […]

    Published May 14, 2018
  • First Impressions

    A bunch of impressions on new gear I am testing.

    Published May 14, 2018
  • Medium keeps killing off blogs in the name of saving the internet

    Cale Guthrie Weissman: It’s true that ad-based digital media is unsustainable, but bringing on journalists and editors and then killing their revenue in the name of a business pivot hardly seems like the appropriate fix. As one person impacted by Medium’s business changes in 2015 told me, the company is “throwing shit at the wall […]

    Published May 10, 2018
  • A Few Travel Essentials

    I do not like traveling without these.

    Published May 10, 2018
  • Subscription hell

    Paywalls are not sustainable, but he’s got everything else in this post wrong. The notion that article size in kbs bloat means there’s a greater cost, is bullshit. Content is the expense, not the hosting. What’s changed is that no one believes any longer that if you put in the sweat equity that you’ll cash […]

    Published May 7, 2018
  • A Potpourri of Thoughts Largely Around iPad

    Some thoughts about Slack, keyboard switches, and more paranoid level security when working on an iPad.

    Published May 7, 2018
  • Facebook accused of introducing extremists to one another through ‘suggested friends’ feature

    Martin Evans: Researchers, who analysed the Facebook activities of a thousand Isil supporters in 96 countries, discovered users with radical Islamist sympathies were routinely introduced to one another through the popular ‘suggested friends’ feature. Move fast and break things?

    Published May 6, 2018
  • The Grim Conclusions of the Largest-Ever Study of Fake News

    Robinson Meyer: And blame for this problem cannot be laid with our robotic brethren. From 2006 to 2016, Twitter bots amplified true stories as much as they amplified false ones, the study found. Fake news prospers, the authors write, “because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.” The conclusion is essentially that social […]

    Published May 4, 2018
  • Older posts

About the Site

  • No Ads.
  • Many Words.
  • Written by Ben.

Follow Along

  • RSS / JSON Feed
  • Member RSS Feed
  • Contact Ben

AN ETERNAL COPYRIGHT©


Powered by ego.

Why are you still reading this? You must be quite the completionist.