Category: Articles

[Andy, at TorrentFreak has a rundown of sites that might be defaulted to “blocked” in the UK.][1] What’s most curious to me is how this may harm the elderly generations. For example: do you think your parents, or grandparents, would be able to find these checkboxes, know what they mean, and be able to turn them off?

Forget for a second trying to decide what should, and should not, be labeled porn — on second thought maybe don’t forget this. How in the hell is this system openly going to be allowed? This is nuts.

[1]: http://torrentfreak.com/uk-porn-filter-will-censor-other-content-too-isps-reveal-130726/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

[Allen Pike on how irrelevant iOS App Store search results are][1]:

> This might make some sort of sense for somebody new to the App Store, but for a person who’s trying to find a specific type of app it’s crazy-making. Suggesting Instagram when I search for Twitter is like suggesting Nickelback when I search for Said the Whale. It’s saying, “Not sure what that means, but statistically people like this thing.”

I cannot tell you how many times I hear about a new app, search for it *by name* and cannot find the app. Then, I drop out to Bing on my iPhone, find it there on the developer’s website, click the App Store link, and then buy it back in the App Store. I’ve always known how ridiculous that process is (especially given that I know the app name already), but having just typed out my process — well it’s making me pissed just thinking about it. What a stupid ass system, Apple.

[1]: http://www.allenpike.com/2013/searching-the-curatorium/

[Jeff Daniels’ character Will McAvoy in The Newsroom][1]:

> We reached for the stars, and we acted like men. We aspired to intelligence; we didn’t belittle it; it didn’t make us feel inferior.

My wife and I just started watching *The Newsroom* last night — it’s a fantastic show — and this monologue from the first episode is insanely great. Take the time to read the entire thing, I missed it when the show came out last year, but I suspect it hits even harder for Americans *this* year.

([Here’s the video][2] if you prefer to listen/watch.)

[1]: http://theriggs.tumblr.com/post/25829999353/jeff-daniels-monologue-from-the-newsroom
[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h__uutzcQXc

[Craig Mod suggesting changes to iMessage][1]:

> We all have an Apple ID. iMessage associated email addresses and phone numbers should sync around it. Let’s get rid of per-device settings. They just confuse everyone. The vast majority of us don’t need that much granularity.

He’s got a great list of suggestions, but I must be alone in the fact that I don’t seem to have issues with message histories. I will say: it’s stupid that iMessage doesn’t revolve around just one ID.

[1]: https://medium.com/how-to-use-the-internet/541a8e904119

[ Cliff Mass ][1]:

> A few days ago, a well known ratings group found Seattle to be the NUMBER ONE city in the U.S. for pleasant summer weather, while Portland followed in second place.  Even major newspapers like the Los Angeles Times seemed to agree.

Cliff Mass breaks down 9 reasons why Seattle has some of the best summer weather in the U.S., including:

> We have practically NO RAIN in the summer.  Really.  Seattle is drier than Phoenix in July. So you can enjoy perfect temperatures without the inconvenience of even thinking about an umbrella or rain gear.

Oddly enough I had been thinking about writing about the actual lack of rainfall in Seattle, but never got around to it. I did manage to put together this chart that shows the average rainfall amounts by month for a random selection of cities that I chose. It illustrates the above point very well.

[1]: http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2013/07/secret-revealed-northwest-has-best.html

[Evgeny Morozov in a great post about all the implications of the NSA and data privacy][1]:

> This is the real tragedy of America’s “Internet freedom agenda”: it’s going to be the dissidents in China and Iran who will pay for the hypocrisy that drove it from the very beginning. America has managed to advance its communications-related interests by claiming high moral ground and using ambiguous terms like “Internet freedom” to hide many profound contradictions in its own policies. On matters of “Internet freedom” – democracy promotion rebranded under a sexier name – American enjoyed some legitimacy as it claimed that it didn’t engage in the kinds of surveillance that it itself condemned in China or Iran. Likewise, on matters of cyberattacks, it could go after China’s cyber-espionage or Iran’s cyber-attacks because it assured the world that it engaged in neither.

This is a really long post, but it is the best summary of all the moving parts and issues they present that I have seen to date. Also, I do love this bit:

> Google could have easily chosen to encrypt our communications in a way that its own algorithms wouldn’t be able to decipher, depriving both itself and the NSA of much-coveted data. But then Google wouldn’t be able to offer us a free service. And who would be happy about this?

Morozov also draws a comparison to energy consumption which is a really good way of looking at digital privacy — that there are consequences we are just now learning about that are far reaching than we ever thought.

[1]: http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/ueberwachung/information-consumerism-the-price-of-hypocrisy-12292374.html?utm_medium=App.net&utm_source=PourOver

[Justin Elliott][1]:

> But ask the NSA, as part of a freedom of information request, to do a seemingly simple search of its own employees’ email? The agency says it doesn’t have the technology.

I call *bullshit*.

[1]: http://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-says-it-cant-search-own-emails?utm_medium=App.net&utm_source=PourOver

[Rhett Allain on battery life and browser tabs — specifically how many do you have to have open to burn your battery to zero in 60 seconds][1]:

> With the same values as above and a time of 1 minute (1/60 hours), I get 24,000 tabs. That’s like having the whole internet open in your browser. Ha. Just kidding.

I can’t wait for [Dr. Drang][2] to refute some or all of this. It’s interesting, but logical, that you get diminishing returns on destroying your battery life with each subsequent tab you open.

I’ve never understood the ‘100s of tabs open’ crowd — what’s the point? If the browser crashes your screwed, and even if it doesn’t crash there is a clear hit on your computing performance. That’s what services like Pinboard.in and Instapaper were made to handle — it’s easy enough to shove those links over to those services, so why not do that?

I get nervous when I have more than four tabs open. (Remember the days before tabs, god that sucked.)

[1]: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/07/browser-tabs-and-battery-life/
[2]: http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/

[David Pozen][1]:

> More broadly, Snowden’s case may clash with certain foreign policy goals. The United States often wants other countries’ dissidents to be able to find refuge abroad; this is a longstanding plank of its human rights agenda. The United States also wants illiberal regimes to tolerate online expression that challenges their authority; this is the core of its developing Internet freedom agenda.

> Snowden’s prosecution may limit our soft power to lead and persuade in these areas. Of course, U.S. officials could emphasize that Snowden is different, that he’s not a courageous activist but a reckless criminal. But that is what the repressive governments say about their prisoners, too.

I know a lot of you are tired of this NSA stuff, but how to “deal” with Snowden is absolutely fascinating to think about. Every option that I see leaves the U.S. bruised in some way, as there seems to be no clear win-win scenario. Pozen’s article is a great read about some of the options for U.S. in dealing with Snowden.

[1]: http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/07/what-happens-when-we-actually-catch-edward-snowden/

[Max Masnick has a nice write up for people looking to switch from Gmail to FastMail][1]. Most importantly Masnick talks about why FastMail is actually better than Gmail (and no, not for reasons like “not Google” that you’ve come to expect from me).

I’ve never used FastMail, but I’ve heard nothing but good things about it. Personally I am using a Mac mini from [Macminicolo.net][2] with the stock OS X Server app supplying the email — I could not be happier with that setup. I also just got *another* Mac mini for my day-job to move that email. Where was that email? Embarrassingly that email was still with Google Apps — and I had been dreading moving the gigs of emails we had there — but we did it last night and man is it great. We used an IMAP syncing service on the Mac to move the email and presto — ask [Rusty Ross to help you][3] (that’s what I did).

[1]: http://www.maxmasnick.com/2013/07/19/fastmail/
[2]: http://macminicolo.net
[3]: https://twitter.com/ConsultantRR

[James Trew on a couple of the features on this new phone][1]:

> With IP67 water and dust protection — it’ll survive three feet of water for up to 30 minutes {…}

I think this is genuinely the first Samsung phone that has some features that really interest me. I have seen the commercials of this phone a lot — I’ve seen it getting rinsed under water when stuff is splashed on it and so forth — if it works as advertised, it’s nothing short of awesome.

I’d love to see this in the iPhone and certainly expect that these kinds of “life-proofing” features are bound to come. My iPhone 5 looks like crap — it’s beat up from my toddler stealing it and then sliding it on tile floors (I cringe writing that).

So be it.

Speaking of life-proofing, there’s a case manufacturer called [LifeProof][2] that makes cases for iPhones that are waterproof, among other things. I bought one of these cases for an employee that works outside and man is it nice, it’s small for what it does and offers some really great protection (and warranty). [The case is on Amazon for $79][3] and though certain aspects of it are bulky, it’s much thinner than others I have seen.

**UPDATE:** [Always too good to be true](http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1j8xsk/a_warning_to_all_galaxy_s4_active_users_upvote/).

[1]: http://www.engadget.com/2013/06/05/samsung-galaxy-s-4-active-goes-official/
[2]: http://www.lifeproof.com/en/
[3]: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00AIH0IAC/ref=nosim&tag=brooksreview-20

[Shawn Blanc has a nice overview of the latest version of Agenda][1]. Agenda is a solid calendar offering and there are some very welcomed additions to version 4. (What’s not welcomed by me is that new icon.)

The best feature though, is one that Shawn seems to have left out, is swiping from the right edge. Doing this brings up a quick date picker that is really well done and unlike anything I have seen before.

I’m sticking with the iOS 7 default calendar app right now, I like it quite a bit, but I’m glad to see continued development of other calendar apps. Still, [none are perfect][2], but the (hopefully coming to iOS) ability to add travel times is what I am really wanting.

[1]: http://shawnblanc.net/2013/07/the-fourth-agenda/
[2]: https://brooksreview.net/2013/05/calendar-app/

[RT.com, a site that apparently hates bylines, writes][1]:

> Congress granted the president the authority to arrest and hold individuals accused of terrorism without due process under the NDAA, but Mr. Obama said in an accompanying signing statement that he will not abuse these privileges to keep American citizens imprisoned indefinitely.

I cannot be the only one that had a hard time stopping their eyes from rolling when they read this.

[1]: http://rt.com/usa/obama-ndaa-appeal-suit-229/?utm_medium=App.net&utm_source=PourOver

[Catherine Crump][1]:

> Automatic license plate readers are the most widespread location tracking technology you’ve probably never heard of. Mounted on patrol cars or stationary objects like bridges, they snap photos of every passing car, recording their plate numbers, times, and locations. At first the captured plate data was used just to check against lists of cars law enforcement hoped to locate for various reasons (to act on arrest warrants, find stolen cars, etc.). But increasingly, all of this data is being fed into massive databases that contain the location information of many millions of innocent Americans stretching back for months or even years.

I’ve long known about these readers, but I had no clue they were saving the data and amassing a database. I like these readers because they are actually a very effective tool.

The scenario that has always been described to me is either during an amber alert and a fugitive situation: cars equipped with this tool can effectively drive around large swathes of areas quickly and be alerted if the license plate they are looking for is driven by. So think about there being an amber alert, one cop car could vet and entire mall parking lot in minutes. That’s pretty great.

However, if license plate data is being stored? That’s shady.

> The primary law enforcement use of these systems is to take pictures of plates to make it possible to check them against “hot lists” of cars of interest to law enforcement. This can be done virtually instantaneously. While plates that generate a “hit” may need to be stored for investigative purposes, *there is no need to store plates for months or years* to achieve this purpose.

Agreed.

[1]: http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-national-security/police-documents-license-plate-scanners-reveal-mass?utm_medium=App.net&utm_source=PourOver

[Philip Bump on new NSA spying information](http://m.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2013/07/nsa-admits-it-analyzes-more-peoples-data-previously-revealed/67287/):

> But Inglis’ statement was new. Analysts look “two or three hops” from terror suspects when evaluating terror activity, Inglis revealed. Previously, the limit of how surveillance was extended had been described as two hops.

That’s a lot of people. I saw a post a while back about this (I can’t find it now, send it to me if you can) of just how many people this ends up being — it’s a massive amount of people. This isn’t just twice the people.

I love that the NSA keeps getting caught in their own lies. “Well we don’t spy, I mean we do, well it’s only on terrorists, well and those that come into contact with people we have a gut feeling are terrorists, oh and those that come into contact with those that come into contact with… ok it’s everyone.”

[Micah Lee on an Google security flaw he found](https://micahflee.com/2013/07/use-android-youre-probably-giving-google-all-your-wifi-passwords/):

> Go to your home screen, press the Menu button, select “Settings”, under “Personal” select “Backup and reset”. Is the “Back up my data” checkbox checked? If so, all of the wifi passwords that your phone remembers are being synced to your Google account.

… and those passwords are in plaintext. I haven’t changed my WiFi password in years, my passwords are changing today.

[Chris Bowler on web typography][1]:

> Overall, Typekit is a slightly easier to use service. Both offer great fonts, decent pricing, and are technically sound. The primary reason a designer would use Cloud.typography is when he/she absolutely needs to use a H&FJ font in a design. Otherwise, the options lean toward Typekit.

Chris’ overview is very accurate. His conclusion that Typekit is better for 90% of the people is correct. But I take issue with the above statement, that one would only use H&FJ if they *need* to — that *needs* to be replaced with “if they want to”.

Then again I’m definitely biased.

[1]: http://chrisbowler.com/journal/cloud-vs-typekit?utm_medium=App.net&utm_source=PourOver

[Conor Friedersdorf on the NSA offering to be Norton Anti-Virus for Big “bailout” Finance][1]:

> Americans shouldn’t trust any of these repositories of power. Government and corporations are both capable of terrible things. To have them colluding with one another in secret, inexorably arranging things so that there’s disincentive for disagreement among them, is terrifying. The people can fight Big Government. The people can fight Big Finance. The people can fight Big Tech. Could the people fight them if they’re all working together with secret law on their side?

A terrifying thought — at least to me — the idea that those three become so dependent on each other that they collectively squash any entity trying to speak up for what is right.

[1]: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/the-nsa-wants-americas-most-powerful-corporations-dependent-on-it/277822/