Category: Links

A really great video round up on knife edge retention between steels. Really like the insight in this video.

Siva Vaidhyanathan:

The audacity of a hostile foreign power trying to influence American voters rightly troubles us. But it should trouble us more that Facebook makes such manipulation so easy, and renders political ads exempt from the basic accountability and transparency that healthy democracy demands.

And profits from it. As much as I dislike Facebook, it’s also important to remember that this is less of a Facebook problem, as it is a technology problem. It won’t be solved by any one company, but rather a global set of standards.

David Sherpardson:

The U.S. House on Wednesday unanimously approved a sweeping proposal to speed the deployment of self-driving cars without human controls by putting federal regulators in the driver’s seat and barring states from blocking autonomous vehicles.

I honestly thought this would not happen this fast. Awesome, hopefully it moves through the Senate easily.

Gabe Weatherhead:

Podcasting provides an outline for ideas but it does not provide much introspection. Several writers that I once respected for their deep insight and critical thinking have become mediocre podcast talkers. It’s not because I think they were phonies. It’s because they traded the ease of recording for the difficulty of writing. Podcasting is fun. Ideas flow unedited and once they are out, they are gone. “Follow up” is not editing.

Well said. Also good thoughts on link posts like this one. And one of the reasons I not only have cut back on the amount of links I post, but also on how I display them.

Great app, but this took a stupidly long time to be added.

This is such a problem, and it is near impossible to deal with privately, it has to be a public push. When I ran a property management firm it was one of the toughest issues for us to deal with. People are assholes.

I can’t imagine why anyone would publish on Medium after reading this. My take aways from the interview:

1. They are still not sure how to pay writers.
2. They don’t believe all writers should be paid.
3. They will keep changing their minds until something works.

The risk here is: what if you want to be paid, but Medium doesn’t let you? Right now you may not care, but what if you get to the point some time in the future where you want to be paid? Your platform choice should never limit that.

Andy Rubin, explaining how exposing customer emails to other customers is really hard for him to personally face and own up to:

Being a founder in an intensely competitive business means you occasionally have to eat crow. It’s humiliating, it doesn’t taste good, and often, it’s a humbling experience. As Essential’s founder and CEO, I’m personally responsible for this error and will try my best to not repeat it.

Why is it so hard for people with massive egos to actually apologize without making it about themselves? Never mind, my question answered itself.

I took some time this morning to run through Shawn’s new Learn Ulysses course and it’s really well done. This gives you a great foundation for starting to use the only writing app you’ll ever need.

A quick note to let you know I’ve changed the way memberships on the site work ever so slightly. The changes are:

1. There is no more monthly plan option.
2. All plans come with a 7 day free trial. When you sign up you still need to enter a credit card, but you will not be billed for 7 days. If you cancel before the 7 day period is over, you won’t be charged, otherwise charges will commence at that time.
3. There’s now a quarterly plan option, it’s the same price as monthly ($4/mo), but billed every 3 months instead at $12 per quarter.

For Current Monthly Members: Nothing will change for you if you have a current monthly plan, but if you let that plan expire, you will not be able to select the plan again.

There’s many reasons for this change, but the most simple is that I wanted to give someone incentive to check out the members content for free, but the tradeoff for that free look is that I am asking for a longer commitment to being a member.

Thanks again to everyone who is currently a member, I’ve got a lot of great stuff planned for the rest of the year.

Alison Coil:

Given the enormous amount of data to support these findings, and given the field in question, one might think male scientists would use these outcomes to create a more level playing field. But a recent paper showed that in fact, male STEM faculty assessed the quality of real research that demonstrated bias against women in STEM as being low; instead the male faculty favored fake research, designed for the purposes of the study in question, which purported to demonstrate that no such bias exists.

Her conclusion as to why this is, is so embarrassingly on point.

John Gruber:

The accusation comes from Will Strafech, a respected security researcher who discovered the “actual information” by observing network traffic. He saw the AccuWeather iOS app sending his router’s name and MAC address to Reveal Mobile. This isn’t speculation. They were caught red-handed — go ahead and read Strafech’s original report.

AccuWeather is not only a shitty weather app, but a shitty company. I use Hello Weather, and here’s hoping they aren’t pulling shady shit. And the fact I don’t know that, and Apple doesn’t, highlights a real problem Apple needs to address.

Louis Rossetto, in an interview with Om Malik:

I don’t mean, in a Silicon Valley sense, “making a better world” as part of a business plan. If people believed and acted like the relationships they have and the actions they do can directly make things better, the world would get better. I truly believe that. It’s this micro decision-making level of individuals that matters the most.

Great interview, with a ton of insights on the world today. Well worth the read.

Fantastic app.

David Hewson:

For some reason the internet has encouraged us to place little value on the things we use, even the ones we rely on heavily day to day. It’s not just software. Books have been discounted and devalued in many places to the point where the people who write them get a pittance in return for their work. Apps have been driven down to price points where people buy them casually, never use loads of them, then wonder why the things don’t get fixed or improved then disappear a few years down the line.

He hits on a great point: buying ‘casually’ as he puts it is a huge issue. Things you buy causally, you tend not to care about, until you have good reason to care about them. This is why I’ll continue to beat the drum: raise your fucking app price. If you want to have fewer people complain about paying for your app, raise it beyond a price where people buy it casually.

The prime example of this is Omnigroup.

I’d say the bottom end price should be $24.99.

Matt Gemmell:

The important point is that, if you’re able to readily switch to a different app when your current one changes its payment model, then… do it. Just vote with your wallet, and don’t worry about it. To write a pissy review of an app you liked yesterday, in an attempt to vengefully damage their business, is pretty reprehensible, right? It’s like giving one star on Amazon because the delivery was late. Don’t be a child. Move on.

See also his rules for deciding on whether a subscription is worth it on an app by app basis. I love subscriptions, but only for the apps I get the most use out of. I don’t pay for a lot of apps because I don’t need or use them. I’d love for others to be subscription so I can more readily try them out, without feeling like I pissed away $20 on something which ultimately didn’t work out.

Dr Drang talking through subscription based apps, with regard to Ulysses:

If I were interested in Ulysses but hadn’t yet given it a try, I might see the subscription service as a positive. Ulysses used to cost $45 for the Mac and $25 for iOS. Now I could give both versions a good, solid two-month trial for $10. If they don’t fit my way of working, I walk away $60 ahead and knowing exactly why I shouldn’t continue the subscription. This is the sort of in-depth knowledge you don’t typically get with the common 7- or 14-day trials.

This is a must read post for some good old logic.

David Sparks on set reactions to the Ulysses change:

What you shouldn’t do is trash the app in review because you’re not happy with the business model. Here’s Ulysses’s rating as of a few minutes ago. This App deserves so much more than 2.5 stars.

This was inevitable. Ulysses is historically a 5 star app, and it will return to form once the morons stop venting.

A couple times a year, I need to make some closet space and purge things I’m not using often. This is that time, so if you are a member go take a look at what’s up for sale. I’ve got keyboards, bags, knives, and more listed.

Thanks!

Big news from the world’s best writing app, they are switching to a subscription model — which also allow you to pay once and get Ulysses on Mac and iOS. Great change, and reasonable pricing too. I know first hand how expensive it is to develop apps, so I am glad to see my favorite app switching to a more sustainable model.

Now, to the more important news, Ulysses changed their iOS icon. Gone is the gradient on the butterfly. What a fantastic change, kudos.