This isn’t the crazy Silicon Valley prepped post everyone has been sharing, no this is a far more realistic take on the matter. Michael McGrath for GQ on his Bug-Out-Bag:
My BOB organizes my anxiety; it gives shape and focus to my dread. It reminds me not to take things for granted, and underlines the difference between necessities and luxuries.
Humorous post all around.
Jamelle Bouie:
This isn’t just cause for schadenfreude; it is an important revelation: constant, high-profile criticism works. Protest works.
Yep, you should see my two year old freak the fuck out when I just keep telling her “no”.
Ken Case:
One of the ways in which we can do that is to improve the way we interact with the apps to have a more efficient user experience. For example, we can make better use of iPad Pro’s larger screen by replacing some of the popovers in our interface with slide-in panels on the left and right (as in the screenshot above), so you don’t have to keep opening and closing them every time you want to use them. (This will debut later this year in OmniGraffle 3 and OmniOutliner 3 for iOS.)
I am so looking forward to OmniOutliner 3, I think OmniOutliner is the best product The Omni Group makes. It is also, by far the best outlining app on iOS.
But it has quite a way it can go.
Marius Masalar on OmniFocus users:
The second group of people manage their tasks like monks manage their religion. Completing tasks is almost an unhappy occurence for them, because the more they get done, the less they have to tag, file, order, annotate, schedule, and otherwise micromanage.
As far as I can tell, this second group are who OmniFocus works best for.
Spot on.
Kevin Kortum follows up on his tweets to me showing how to reprogram the MiniVan:
I apparently wasn’t the only person as Ben Brooks spoke about his troubles and I offered some assistance knowing how frustrating it can be if you just misunderstand a single step in what is provided by The Van Keyboards programming guide. I decided to put something together that goes into a little more detail than those tweets so hopefully anyone can do it without too much trouble.
Fantastic. As a buddy said to me on Twitter, setting up your computer to reprogram takes more time than anything else. One thing I would add, is that on the MiniVan keyboard hex making tool, you’ll need to right click the keys to change them around. There’s some special options there which I wasn’t aware of, and caused me a lot of frustration.
Dan Provost:
This has the advantage of essentially having two full height iPad apps, side by side.
Now, imagine Apple doing the exact same thing, but with the iPad mini.”
It’s perfectly normal to have three iPads, right?
Kevin Kortum reached out on Twitter and solved the mystery of MiniVan keyboard programming in just three tweets. I just got done reprogramming the keyboard and it worked like a charm. Big thanks to him. (Now I just have to deal with the fact that I not only need a Mac for this, but that I am going to be messing around with this quite a lot.)
It’s never as cut and dry as you assume it is.
Manton Reece on his new project:
I’m writing a book about independent microblogging, and launching a publishing platform called Micro.blog.
I’ve had a lot of chats with Manton, not only about this project, but our general philosophical agreements about many things privacy and “owning your own stuff” related. I backed this project, and in fact (as of this writing) it has nearly doubled its funding goal. Even so, I think you should back it if you can.
This is not another App.net fiasco. His service and the ideas behind it are 1000% better (well that’s not really possible, but it is better, a lot better). It’s the service I use to cross post from here to here.
Sam Gerstenzang:
Apple is quietly getting very good at shipping very small computers that charge very rapidly, and thus can be unanchored ––unlike Google Home or Amazon Echo. Over time, as power and size requirements decrease, a direct internet connection might add value. But for now, Bluetooth allows a connection to your phone (which is still quite obviously and self-consciously a computer) and that’s enough.”
The rapid charging is, to me, the most amazing parts about both the Pencil and the AirPods. How can they last that long, but charge that fast?
A bit of cleverness, not new technology:
“Now when people in Egypt or the United Arab Emirates send a Signal message, it’ll look identical to something like a Google search,” Marlinspike says. “The idea is that using Signal will look like using Google; if you want to block Signal you’ll have to block Google.”
This is so fucking clever. Love it.
John Voorhees:
After a week of heavy use, the Canopy has found a permanent place in my writing kit. I won’t use it every day – many days, the Smart Keyboard will be enough – but when I’m doing a lot of writing, I’m going to carry the Canopy.
This really is a lovely product. I prodded the Studio Neat guys on Twitter to make a version to house the Pok3r keyboard. because if they did that I would be in heaven.
Even without that, I still am really considering buying this because I think it would make a killer travel setup if I can’t figure out a good way to travel with a mechanical keyboard.
Khoi Vinh:
I also discovered something interesting about Google’s much vaunted strength in services: sometimes it’s no better than Apple’s.
I love this comment so much because I think it so succinctly shines a light on something that drives me nuts: often the people complaining about Apple stuff has no real basis for comparison. Sure they read reviews and hear anecdotes, but very rarely do these people try to live on the other non-Apple things.
Like the group bullshitting that they are going to switch to the Surface Studio — without even realizing that that means Windows 10, and that means moving to a mobile processor. No, they just saw something shiny and were pissed Apple didn’t do that.
So Vinh’s post serves as a nice reminder to maybe check out the competition before you threaten to move to the competition.
This is an overall solid guide from The Wirecutter crew. I too think the CODE is one of the best mechanical keyboards you can get, especially for Mac users. I personally hate the Mathis keyboards.
In a rare miss, I think they do a disservice to the Pok3r keyboard, as I find everything they say about it to be incorrect. The build quality is excellent, and I suspect they are seeing a difference in the WASD model it sounds like they tested. Further the high pitch whine is insane, but a firmware update fixes it right away.
When the Snowden leaks started, I spent countless hours setting up PGP (GPG on Mac) email systems so that I could email with privacy. Since then services like Protonmail have sought to make it trivial. But nothing is easier than Signal or iMessage for that matter.
In fact I spend a lot of time lecturing family on sending me private things (like passwords, for some reason they send me passwords a lot) not in email, but in iMessage. I think to many that email feels far more private, but in reality it is the messaging platforms which are actually more private.
A great (and very long) wrap up from Viticci on his use of the iPad Pro over the last year. I don’t think there is a single part of this I disagree with. (Well I guess you could criticize his thinking that Scrivener is needed over Ulysses, but that seems obvious to readers of this site.) I posted my year long wrap up for members, here.
Kara Swisher:
When I could get no really substantive on-the-record statements from the tech leaders, I pinged investor Chris Sacca, because I know he would not let me down.
It’s funny, in every tech deal I’ve ever done, the photo op comes after you’ve signed the papers,” he said. “If Trump publicly commits to embrace science, stops threatening censorship of the Internet, rejects fake news and denounces hate against our diverse employees, only then it would make sense for tech leaders to visit Trump Tower.”
He added: “Short of that, they are being used to legitimize a fascist.”
I think a lot of people became Kara Swisher fans after she published this. Well done.
Good packing list for women looking to travel in one bag.
Which models? Right now it looks like Netgear R7000, R6400 and R8000 routers, but there may be more models that are vulnerable. Should you really take this seriously and unplug your router? You betcha, since US-CERT said it is “trivial” to exploit this vulnerability. Visit a booby-trapped page and whammo! An attacker would be saying hello to root privileges on your router.
My router was among these and I’ll be replacing it right away. Check yours. The R7000 is a model I’ve be recommending to a lot of people.
Matt Gemmell comparing Ulysses and Scrivener:
I like them both, and they both piss me off. Scriv is somebody’s little brother, complete with second-child syndrome. Ulysses wants to go and visit the library, but won’t let itself skip the t’ai chi class.
Really good comparison, and great criticisms.