Month: May 2018

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 […]

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

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 […]

It can be gross, but also very handy.

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 […]

A bunch of impressions on new gear I am testing.

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 […]

I do not like traveling without these.

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 […]

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

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?

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 […]

A $40 keyboard that I expected to be crap, but turns out I am impressed with it.

Over on Everyday Wear, I posted a review of a new short sleeved merino wool Henley that is likely to be a staple this summer.