Category: Links

Kai-Fu Lee:

So if most countries will not be able to tax ultra-profitable A.I. companies to subsidize their workers, what options will they have? I foresee only one: Unless they wish to plunge their people into poverty, they will be forced to negotiate with whichever country supplies most of their A.I. software — China or the United States — to essentially become that country’s economic dependent, taking in welfare subsidies in exchange for letting the “parent” nation’s A.I. companies continue to profit from the dependent country’s users.

Hell of a thought.

Matt Gemmell writing about iPads and the notion of replacing a laptop:

I’m not sure what they’re afraid of.

Fantastic post, especially for people who get real mad at the idea that iPads work well for people.

Justin Searls:

I’ve found that virtually any painful-to-accomplish task can be automated away to some extent with the excellent (and recently Apple-acquired) Workflow app, so I’ve been pretty aggressive in creating an automated workflow as soon as I recognize a certain action is more awkward than necessary

Love that description, and I think for most people it’s not so much needing workflow as it is thinking a tad, shall we say, newly? Hmm, need to think of a catchier phrase there.

Brian Renshaw:

The text is larger enough to read easily and the writing window is plenty sufficient. This is a similar feeling I’ve had with the keyboard. Its just big enough, which, at the end of the day, makes a massive difference.

Apt description of the keyboard size.

What you see, is not what you get.

DHH:

But let’s not kid ourselves. Kalanick didn’t get the boot because Uber’s board had some ethical epiphany. They presided over his misdeeds for years. Fat, golden years steered by toxic leadership and fueled by depraved acts.

It’s great to see Apple going to this length to remove the bullshit.

Matthew Panzarino:

So now here we are, with the ability for just about anyone to spin up an AR window inside their app. I predict that we’re going to see some real crap over the next few weeks and months as people just “put an AR on it.” But aside from that, we’re going to see a plug unstoppered on industries that needed a reliable version of this kind of AR portal in order to execute on a vision.

I can’t wait.

John Naughton linked to this in his post, but this site is worth bookmarking. It’s often annoying (on a good day) to try and explain privacy implications to “normals”, instead send them this site and ask them to take a look.

John Naughton:

The idea that being watched on this scale isn’t affecting our behaviour is implausible, to put it mildly. Throughout history, surveillance has invariably had a chilling effect on freedom of thought and expression. It affects, for example, what you search for. After the Snowden revelations, traffic to Wikipedia articles on topics that raise privacy concerns for internet users decreased significantly.

I love the term “surveillance capitalism” as it is very apt. His post is worth your time if you are among the many who think Google and Facebook tracking your every move isn’t “that big of a deal”.

To answer your question, given my last post, I’ll be using Freedome VPN from here on out. I like Private Internet Access, but Freedome is much faster.

The Cloak Blog:

We will be utilizing Google Firebase and Fabric.io to receive anonymized feedback to help deliver the same exceptional experience on as many devices as possible.

Kudos to them for not burying this info, as they could have, but instead putting it at the bottom of a blog post sure to be popular on pricing changes. I personally will curtail my usage of the service, but would still recommend it for the average user who just wants to protect their shit in general.

Farhad Manjoo:

Don’t do it — at least not without considering the full weight of your decision, and the many alternatives you might turn to instead. Try Lyft. Use a taxi, a bus or a train. Heck, hire a limo and a chauffeur with a golden top hat. To encourage a better Uber, it’s time to play the only card you’ve got: If it backslides or otherwise fails to live up to the promises it’s making now, stop using Uber.

I’ve been using Lyft when it’s an option, and I’ve been really happy with it. If only some more cities would be added — I die a little inside when the only option is Uber or a traditional Taxi.

Alex Sherman , Eric Newcomer , and Alex Barinka:

Buying Slack would help Seattle-based Amazon bolster its enterprise services as it seeks to compete with rivals like Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. The company’s cloud-hosting unit, Amazon Web Services, in February unveiled a paid-for video and audio conferencing service — Amazon Chime — that lets users chat and share content.

I’m inclined to say it might even make for a better Slack, but I dunno.

Matt Birchler:

What this chart really shows is that Box is the worst deal in almost all scenarios. Charging $10/month for 100GB of storage is just terrible in 2017. Paying them $15/month gets you unlimited storage, which is really the only place where they are even competitive.

iCloud, contrary to what nerds bitch about, fairs really well in the aggregate.

This really is a “finally” feature. Day One has long asked that you put some of your most private things in the service, then sync it with them. All without proper encryption.

So yeah, fucking finally.

John Gruber on the new iPad Pros with iOS 11:

It feels like a hand has been untied from behind my back, and this amazing hardware has finally been allowed to run free.

Apt description even for current model iPad Pros.

Federico Viticci:

A common misconception about the leather sleeve is that it can only fit the iPad with no cover attached, but it’s actually the opposite. The leather sleeve is best used when the iPad is attached to a Smart Cover or Smart Keyboard; otherwise, the device will be loose and it might slip out (even when the Pencil is in), which happened to me when I was testing the iPad in the sleeve with no keyboard or cover attached to it.

Ordered.

Matthew Panzarino:

Think of every iPad up to this point as a glass of water set on a shelf — in wait for some future moment of need. This iPad is Apple’s “swing away” moment. It executes on the years of insistence that the iPad is the future of light work computers. But that moment is only telegraphed, shadowed, until you see it through the lens of iOS 11.

Good read. I don’t want to spoil is closing statement, so be sure to read it.

Manton Reece:

But it’s almost exactly what I was hoping for a few years ago. This redesign for iOS 11 is one of my favorite things to come out of WWDC.

It’s fantastic.