Romain Dillet reporting:
“I don’t need new shoelaces, I need new shoes. I thought to myself, if I buy new shoes — they are work shoes, I only wear those shoes at work. If I buy new shoes, I’m committing to myself that I need them because I’m going to be there for a while. I’m going to quit my job.”
Congrats to Myke and Stephen on a year in the books.
Dan Moren:
This longevity goes hand in hand with the decline in specs that I wrote about last month. We’ll continue to use our devices as long as they accomplish what we want them to, not simply when specs suggest we “should” upgrade.
I have a 2008 MacBook Pro still in service as a home server, as it replaced my 2005 G4 Mac mini — and that happened just a few months ago. Apple really should be given credit for the longevity of their devices.
His Little Snitch rules for mimicking the ‘overcloak’ feature of Cloak is pretty awesome.
Quickertek has a sweet external battery pack for the new MacBook. It appears to charge the MacBook while it is running and adds 8-48 hours of battery life. The only downside? The price: $300. Still, I would love to get one of these.
You know how, as an American, you just always assume that work cultures like the French just look at American workers and laugh. But thier laugh is both pompous and pitiful? That's how I think most American workers are going to view this article about Amazon workers.
That system is going to implode.
Nice review of what is one of my favorite travel bags.
Son of a bitch, where has this been my entire life?
MG Siegler on using the iPad as an only computer:
If I have to take out my laptop to do even just one thing, why not just use it for everything?
That’s the sticking point for me as well.
Marco Arment:
In a few years, after the dust has settled, we’re all going to look back at today’s web’s excesses and abuses as an almost unbelievable embarrassment. Hopefully, the worst is behind us. And it’s time to stop demonizing people who use tools to bring that sanity to their web browsers today.
Good post. I should note that Marco’s site has 7 scripts that Ghostery needed to block. UPDATED: At the time of pub listing Ghostery did show 7 scripts, however as of 08-13-2015 Marco’s site now shows just one for The DECK ads.
I recently disable Mint analytics from this site and switched to Piwik. Both still owned on my own server, but the latter supports Do Not Track and allows me to provide and opt-out button.
Alphabet
And here I thought that their naming schemes could not possibly get any worse…
This is a really great post on the coming content blockers for iOS. I personally cannot wait to get these. But it is going to be a massive change for the web, and bloggers specifically. For example: currently I run two analytics packages on this site (both in my own database, which I own), in Mint and Piwik. Now Mint doesn't honor “do not track” so every visitor not blocking that script is recorded. Piwik on the other hand does support “do not track” and so it won't track any browser with that option turned on, and it won't track those blocking the script either.
Why does that matter? Let me tell you why. Yesterday was a pretty typical day for the site, Mint tells me I had 949 unique visitors and 1,478 page views. That's a typical day for me. But what does Piwik tell me? It say I had 708 unique visitors and 1182 page views. So fewer unique visitors and fewer page views. Ad payouts are based on page views, by the way. And that's a dramatic difference if you rely on ads for money. The same people using do not track are likely to use content blockers — likely more people.
I'll be moving this site to just Piwik shortly and so my stats are going to drop like crazy, but I don't need those stats to make money with my site. And in fact you can use this site in Apple News (search for The Brooks Review and then scroll until you find it) with channels and everything laid out with no tracking from me.
Content Blockers and privacy in general is going to be a huge shift for every writer on the web. It's going to be fun.
The X30 is a camera that has always intrigued me, and if I didn't already have a Fuji I would be all over this. I'm in the market for a second camera now that my wife is constantly using the X100T, but I think there are better cameras for this price. More on that soon.
BatteryBox Team:
You’ll want to use Safari if you want to get the most battery out of your laptop.
After quitting Instagram when Facebook purchased the service, I have now rejoined with a new account. I have two thoughts to share today:
I'll write more about this later, but hey: go follow me.
Kim Zetter:
“Let’s say you’re running a uranium refining centrifuge plant and you don’t have it connected to any networks, but people bring laptops into it and perhaps they share Ethernet adapters or external SSDs to bring data in and out,” Kovah notes. “Those SSDs have option ROMs that could potentially carry this sort of infection. Perhaps because it’s a secure environment they don’t use WiFi, so they have Ethernet adapters. Those adapters also have option ROMs that can carry this malicious firmware.”
That’s an oddly specific scenario — don’t you think?
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai:
As security expert Cem Paya put it, that was a conscious decision Google made when it created Android. Paya called it a Faustian deal: “cede control over Android, get market-share against iPhone.” Basically, Google was happy to let carriers put their bloatware on their Android phones in exchange to having a chance to fight Apple for in the mobile market. The tradeoff was giving carriers and manufacturers control over their Android releases, leaving Google unable to centrally push out operating system updates.
I think that is giving Google far too big of a pass. Google could have still ceded this control to carriers, while still maintaining a way to push security updates, but they either didn’t think of it, or didn’t care to do that. That would infuriate me even more if I were an Android user.
More:
Let me stress this out once more: the patches are ready to go. They were approved by Google months ago. But you won’t get them for another few weeks (if you’re lucky) or months (most likely) or never (a very solid possibility) depending how old your phone is—if it’s too old manufacturers just stop supporting them—and how lackadaisical your manufacturer and carrier are with regards to updates. Given the open nature of Android, pushing out updates, as Android Central put it, is a “messy, unpredictable business” that requires a lot of “moving parts.”
Good lord.
Jonathan Poritsky:
I understand Marco’s dilemma. He’s opinionated and loves blogging. But he sometimes acts oblivious to his standing in the tech community. His success has bred him an audience; his words hold more weight because of his status. I have trouble believing he didn’t know there would be an “Influential iOS developer Marco Arment says…” narrative thread others would pick up on from his post.
I love this entire post, really well said. Same thoughts I have been having lately.
Tom Simonite:
The text message vulnerability revealed today can’t be fully fixed by upgrading apps. And it’s not unlikely that most vulnerable phones will never get the security patches for Android that Google has developed and will offer up to manufacturers and cellular operators. Joshua Drake, the researcher who discovered the text message flaw, guesses that between 20 and 50 percent of devices will receive the update, based on his past experience with Android updates.
Tobias Tom:
Also, of course everybody seems to know better than Apple. Once their proposed change to the store, the operating system or the platform were to be implemented everybody would be happy. Everyone will get rich. Nobody seems to see that they seem to do something right, at least. Otherwise, why would everyone want to be part of their platform.