Also on the Facebook front, this post from Doc Searls is great:
Giant Irony Alert: the same is true for the Times, along with every other publication that lives off adtech: surveillance-based advertising. These pubs don’t just open the kimonos of their readers. They treat them as naked beings whose necks are bared to vampires ravenous for the blood of personal data, all ostensibly so those persons can be served with “interest-based” advertising.
Now this is a comment on Reddit, so let’s be upfront about that, but the redditor has plenty of sources to back up what he says — quite interesting. I feel like I knew most of this, but never connected the dots on it. (In case you are not a Reddit person, scroll to the LONG comment from Puffin_Fitness.
Speaking of small and expensive keyboards, here’s another good read.
(h/t to Julia.)
A good read, I’m a huge fan of the 60% form factor which eliminates the arrow keys. I can see the argument for them, but 60% is considerably smaller.
Zeynep Tufekci:
Mr. Grewal is right: This wasn’t a breach in the technical sense. It is something even more troubling: an all-too-natural consequence of Facebook’s business model, which involves having people go to the site for social interaction, only to be quietly subjected to an enormous level of surveillance. The results of that surveillance are used to fuel a sophisticated and opaque system for narrowly targeting advertisements and other wares to Facebook’s users.
It’s a breach of the most basic level of trust, hell all levels of trust.
Months ago, Studio Neat sent me a note to ask if I wanted to test their take on a pen — and of course I did. I’ve been waiting for this to see the light of day, because it’s a fantastic pen. I have a prototype that slightly varies from the final production version, but I still waited to post this link until I backed the project on Kickstarter.
This pen is worth your money and time.
I really want to love this bag as it looks really good, but every time I see real world photos I am glad I didn’t buy one. The bags always look dirty, dusty, and covered in dog hair. And that’s not a knock on reviewers, but rather I suspect the face fabric on these bags is a dirt/hair magnet. Too bad, maybe version 2 of them can correct that. Or maybe I’m dead wrong, but the pictures don’t seem to lie.
Dan Mitchell taking Manjoo to task:
After trying, and failing, to get him to own up to the fact that his assertion that he had “unplugged” from social media was not true, I asked him whether perhaps his use of social media was messing with his own self-perception. He didn’t respond to that question.
Reading this is like reading “You can make your Muscle Car More Fuel Efficient—Here’s How” or “You can make Hot Pockets More Healthy—Here’s How”. Because Slack isn’t made to be, and never attempted to be, something which isn’t attention grabbing. The entire point of Slack is to grab attention.
It’s terrible. I’d get a better tool if I were you.
Farhad Manjoo:
Just about every problem we battle in understanding the news today — and every one we will battle tomorrow — is exacerbated by plugging into the social-media herd. The built-in incentives on Twitter and Facebook reward speed over depth, hot takes over facts and seasoned propagandists over well-meaning analyzers of news.
Must read article.
Gabe Weatherhead:
Culture Code has done a good job at designing many of the Things features around input efficiency. I like that. I still worry that Culture Code may stop development or go for years between releases. They lost a lot of credibility in my book with how they managed Things 2. I never thought I’d spend another dime on their software, but I also never thought they’d beat OmniFocus at their own game.
It’s a testament to how good Things 3 is, that they won back so many people.
Joe Cieplinski:
Here’s what I really want out of a virtual assistant: Assistance. Not trivia questions. Not timers. Utility. It needs to actually make my life significantly easier.
Let me give you an example. And there’s no doubt in my mind this will be possible someday.
“Alexa, book me a flight for Peers Conf.”
If I had a human personal assistant, that’s all I’d need to say to get this task done. They would go straight to work, and I’d get on with my day.
Great take on where these devices are right now.
Charles Duhigg, in a long winding post about all the ills facing our society from these massive tech companies, encapsulates the issue really well here:
Put differently, if you love technology — if you always buy the latest gadgets and think scientific advances are powerful forces for good — then perhaps you ought to cheer on the antitrust prosecutors. Because there is no better method for keeping the marketplace constructive and creative than a legal system that intervenes whenever a company, no matter how beloved, grows so large as to blot out the sun. If you love Google, you should hope the government sues it for antitrust offenses — and you should hope it happens soon, because who knows what wondrous new creations are waiting patiently in the wings.
His look at how Microsoft could have (should have?) crushed Google is very telling. Even if you don’t believe the idea that Google is “evil”, then you should at least believe that it’s not in Google’s best interest to help competitors…
This is a brilliant follow up game. It’s absolutely sublime. I’ve seen a few reviews mention how calm it seems, and I think that’s an apt description: calm beauty. Love it.
Om Malik:
That may be a very simplified version of a sequence of events, but the fact of the matter is money and obsession with growth and engagement are what makes Facebook go around. That is embedded in its psyche, its DNA, and it will never change.
Good, short, read.
Nitasha Tiku:
When Facebook launched Messenger Kids, an app for preteens and children as young as 6, the company stressed that it had worked closely with leading experts in order to safeguard younger users. What Facebook didn’t say is that many of those experts had received funding from Facebook.
What’s notable isn’t that they paid experts, that’s rather common, what’s notable is that it looks like the only experts supporting Messenger Kids are the ones Facebook paid.
Sarah Perez:
However, it’s not likely that all Onavo users understand they’re actually feeding Facebook the information that allows it to take on any challenger to its social networking empire. (That empire also includes WhatsApp and Instagram as well as smaller acquisitions like tbh and MSQRD).
Noooo, whaaaaat?
Rick Wartzman writing:
“It’s kind of how we progress as a species,” adds O’Reilly, the author of, most recently, WTF?: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us. “We start out starry-eyed and optimistic with all the possibility of a new technology,” only to realize that there are shortcomings that need to be addressed—and often are addressed, even as some people invariably resist in order “to preserve the profits that they’re making.”
Some really interesting points.
Shawn was kind enough to provide me an early look at this course and it’s really well done, and I mean it’s about the best task manager you can get — what’s not to like?
Oh, and in case you’ve been longing for a podcast like think featuring me and Shawn, he recorded an interview with me about all my nerdy task management ways.
This is a great write up about a new insulation that seems pretty amazing. Yeah it’s got NASA marketing hype around it, but if what all Steve’s research says is true, it’ll change the way “warm” jackets look.
And in case you want more thoughts from me on Outlier, I recently wrote another Outlier shirt review.