The Brooks Review

Author: Ben Brooks

  • iPhone XS: Why It’s A Whole New Camera

    Fantastic post and analysis by Halide on what really is going on with the iPhone XS camera system. This post also explains how to override, and work with this new method. If you have an iPhone XS, you should probably at least skim through this post.

  • ‘Pulling a Facebook’

    Matthew Green has this excellent bit in his article about Chrome’s auto-login bullshit:

    This pattern of behavior by tech companies is so routine that we take it for granted. Let’s call it “pulling a Facebook” in honor of the many times that Facebook has “accidentally” relaxed the privacy settings for user profile data, and then—following a bout of bad press coverage—apologized and quietly reversed course. A key feature of these episodes is that management rarely takes the blame: It’s usually laid at the feet of some anonymous engineer moving fast and breaking things. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that these changes consistently err in the direction of increasing “user engagement” and never make your experience more private.

  • Orwell knew: we willingly buy the screens that are used against us

    Henry Cowles:

    Unfettered access to our inner lives begins as a choice, a decision to sign up for a product because we ‘feel the need of it’. When acting on our desires in the marketplace means signing over our data to corporate entities, the erosion of choice is revealed to be the consequence of choice – or at least, the consequence of celebrating choice.

    Good article.

  • A Few Practical Tips for Packing Lighter

    Back in spring of 2016 I started writing about traveling light, and chronicling what I had found and tried as better clothing for traveling. I’ve moved to wearing most of this type of clothing full time now, and write about it often at Everyday Wear with my pal Steve. But there’s more to packing light than just buying the right stuff, there’s three particular tips I’ve learned over the past couple of years of doing this.

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  • Watches for Sale

    I’ve got three watches I am looking to sell, click through to see the details. I’m selling my Gravitymaster, Tissot, and Series 0.

  • Facebook is Abusing its Relationship With Users and Other Items of note

    Facebook recently saw themselves hacked, again, but that’s not what I am here to talk about today — because that’s going to be par for the course with any big tech company now. Instead, we need to talk about something else which seems like a ‘so what’ but is really much more nefarious than it first seems.

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  • GORUCK KR1 (versus the Echo too)

    I’ve been impatiently waiting for the day GORUCK released a new kid backpack, so much so I picked up an Echo for my youngest as I couldn’t wait any longer. So when GORUCK brought out the KR1 I jumped at the opportunity to snag one for my oldest daughter. However, it’s expensive at $155, so you won’t likely want to buy it.

    But should you?

    Yes, I mean clearly, but you already knew that.

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  • Safari Content Blocker Evaluations – 9/26/18 Edition

    I ran another round of content blocker testing for Mobile Safari in order to take a look at which ones are the ‘best’ right now. To be fair: it’s really hard to find these content blockers on the App Store now, so I grabbed the ones which looked the most popular to me (top lists, and top search results) and then did the testing to see which was the best.

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  • Voice Control and Device Addiction

    During the summer, while I had iOS 12 betas on my devices, I never downloaded the beta of Shortcuts, Apple’s revamp of Workflow. I also rarely use Siri unless I am driving in general. But last week I was playing around with Shortcuts and with Siri settings for Shortcuts and found that I wanted to record some voice triggers.

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  • Small Backpacks, How to Pick

    I really like smaller backpacks (sub-18L) for a couple of reasons:

    1. They are less cumbersome to tote with you, and when it is hot they don’t cause as much coverage on your back, which in turn keeps you cooler.
    2. They force you to carry less, which means a lighter bag, and a happier outing. Carrying too much is a disease, next thing you know you’ll be saving all your files to your desktop.

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  • New Mobile Photography Course

    My pal Shawn has a new course out all about mobile photography. I’ve taken a look at it and it is stellar. My wife contributed to the course as well and has some awesome videos on there. If you ever wonder “how do people take great photos with their phone?” start here.

  • Should We Stop Listening to Podcasts?

    This. All of this.

  • A Tale of Three Tablets

    Picture for a moment the three leading tablets on a desk. On the left you have an iPad Pro with Smart Keyboard and a Pencil beside it, next you have a Surface Go, or Pro doesn’t matter, with a Type Cover and Pen, then at the right a Samsung Galaxy Tab S4 with the SPen and associated keyboard cover. They represent the state of the art of tablets made to replace laptops, or more generally “the future of computers”.

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  • The Gerber Dime

    Among the Everyday Carry (EDC) community there’s one stand out of multi-tools which everyone seems to own: Gerber’s Dime. Now, before you read any further we need to talk about the price of this little multi-tool because it is an absurd $16 on Amazon at the time of writing. So when it comes to things I talk about on this site, it would be hard to say this is not among the most affordable.

    But the Gerber Dime is also a very odd multi-tool. For one, it’s not super high quality, it’s not a piece of shit, but it’s not going to last a life time. It’s also tiny, to the point where it will be smaller than anything you think when you get it — taking up about as much volume as AirPods will.

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  • Location Data Being Shared to Make Money

    The GuardianApp team has discovered that a growing number of iOS apps have been used to covertly collect precise location histories from tens of millions of mobile devices, using packaged code provided by data monetization firms. In many cases, the packaged tracking code may run at all times, constantly sending user GPS coordinates and other information.

    Many of these are extreme weather tracking apps. The kind you immediately allow location sharing to, and need to help stay safe when severe weather is incoming. Shameful.

  • An iPad Future

    Last week I chatted with Tim Bradshaw of the Financial Times about the iPad, and more specifically how I use it as my only device and a bit of prognosticating about why more don’t use it. The article, if you can’t read it, gives a good overview of where things are. Of course, reading it, I have many more thoughts I’d like to expand on, so here we are.

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  • Adventures in productivity, notes, habit, and stuff like that

    A couple of weeks ago I talked about a shift in the way I am working on my productivity tools. For those who missed it, the crux was that I no longer felt like my systems were helping me to get things done. I love Things, but some how it had become a database of stress, instead of the normal tool it had been for keeping stress at bay.

    I turned to my buddy Shawn Blanc, and asked him explain his digital-analog system to me. After talking to him I bought a large Baron Fig Confidant, a little ruler from them (why not?) and set out to give this system a go. I also decided that I need to go back to a standard wake up time.

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  • GORUCK Price Increase — Some Thoughts

    It’s September, which means that on average the price of everything GORUCK sells is now 20-30% more expensive than it was last month. This is the first time a lot of the GORUCK stuff is going up in price, notably the GR1 and GR2. Because of this a lot of people have been asking for my thoughts.

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  • GORUCK Bag Organization Guide

    Note: this is a guide and thus much longer than most posts. Some gear in here was provided as review items, others were bought with my own money. See individual gear reviews on each to know which is which.

    One of the biggest knocks against my firm stance that there exists no better backpack than the GORUCK GR1 is: “but GORUCK bags have no organization at all and it is so terrible that one should not even consider them.” For those who have emailed, DMed, and tweeted me something along those lines, you likely received a very unsatisfactory answer: ’that’s what makes them great, they are a blank canvas for you to make them whatever you want.’ This is unsatifying because I don’t actually give any advice on how to make them what you want.

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  • Put your phone in Do Not Disturb mode forever

    It takes a good bit to get me to link to a site like The Outline, but this post from Paris Martineau is interesting. Martineau states:

    Yes, Do Not Disturb mode, that underused feature on your Android or Apple device that silences all notifications and vibrations and was ostensibly designed to help you sleep better. Turn it on. Forever. Never turn it off.

    It’s not a bad idea at all, and I’ve been thinking about being far more aggressive with notifications than I already am. What’s neat about this trick, is that you still see the notifications when you do check your phone. This is really how smartphones should work out of the box.

    You should have to work to get these things to interrupt your day.