Recent Articles

MG Siegler:

I’ve been thinking about this recently when wondering why I like to write on my iPad so much more than my computer. It’s not that the iPad is “better” for writing, it’s that it’s decidedly less distracting. Yes, you still have access to Twitter, Facebook, and the like.

Read the entire post, I'm right there with him. Now all I need to do is figure out how to use this setup comfortably at my office.

I’ve long struggled with developing the journaling habit, but I love this method from Jasdev Singh:

I also set out with the goal of attaching an image to each day that passed. While this seems hard, I’ve found that screenshots are an easy way accomplish this. Small digital moments make great memories.

Maria Konnikova:

The researchers found that each trait was moderately heritable: about forty-six per cent of the tendency to procrastinate, and forty-nine per cent of the tendency toward impulsiveness, was attributable to genes. But the estimated genetic correlation between the two traits was one—that is, perfect—or at least as close to perfect as you can get. What’s more, Friedman’s team found that both traits could, in turn, be linked to goal-management ability: the same shared genetic variation overlapped substantially (at sixty-eight per cent) with a tendency toward goal failure.

So basically if you are prone to procrastination you are like impulsive as well. I do like the advice near the end:

“The problem with a goal we’re avoiding is that we’ve already built into our minds how awful it’s going to be,” he [Steel] said. “So it’s like diving into a cold pool: the first few seconds are terrible, but soon it feels great.” So, set the goal of working on a task for a short time, and then reassess.

In other words just getting started, and using realistic goals is a massive help.

Joshua Brustein:

Cory Tschogl, the Airbnb host who rented out the condo, told Business Insider that she was surprised to learn that, legally, she has gone from being an Airbnb host to a normal old landlord. She says she hired a lawyer to try to get the reluctant guest to move along but was told that because he had already stayed in the place for 30 days, his term had aged into all sort of tenant protections granted under California law.

There’s all sorts of laws that protect tenants, and laws that make “guests” tenants after certain time periods. That’s why many motels will hire people to do everything just short of dragging people out if they stay too long.

As a landlord myself, I can tell you that removing a tenant from a property is a long and expensive process — even if they owe you thousands of dollars. It can take 60-90 days of legal proceedings and paying lawyers to get them out, and then you have to store their stuff (usually) for a period of time.

I’d never use AirBNB, either as a host or guest.

From the FiftyThree announcement:

The FiftyThree SDK lets you take advantage of industry leading features such as palm rejection, advanced touch classification, and effortless Bluetooth pairing.

They’ve thus far announced that Procreate, Noteshelf, and Squiggle are initial SDK partners and I am actually really pumped about this. The Paper app has always been good, but I recently got the Pencil to go with it and it takes the app to the next level. These features, like palm rejection, actually work.

I cannot wait to see this integrated into more apps.

New European Commission ruling:

These include not using the word “free” at all when games contain in-app purchases, developing targeted guidelines for its app developers to prevent direct exhortation to children as defined under EU law and time-framed measures to help monitor apparent breaches of EU consumer laws. It has also adapted its default settings, so that payments are authorised prior to every in-app purchase, unless the consumer actively chooses to modify these settings.

Essentially you can’t say a game is free if there are in-app purchases. This is smart, and I hope to see this make it’s way to the U.S. for both Google and Apple. I don’t think any app should be able to be called free if there are things you can pay for in the app — of course that has pretty wide reaching implications for apps like Amazon.

Jude Webber:

Attending a business conference in Paraguay, Mr Slim said it was time for a “radical overhaul” of people’s working lives. Instead of being able to retire at 50 or 60, he says, we should work until we are older – but take more time off as we do so.

He thinks we should be working three days a week, but 11 hour days. Fascinating considering the aforelinked post on the true motivations of a 40-hour work week.

I personally think that something has to give. There’s too many people working and not spending money because they are always working, and too many people not working and thus having no money to spend for the system not to change. I’ve always hated working on Friday because nothing ever seems to get done as no one seems focused. I usually only work a few hours on Fridays because of this, but I may just eliminate them altogether.

A must read for anyone who uses words and a means of communication. Fantastic post about creating a great reading experience for your readers. I learned some tips that I will apply here over the coming weeks.

Mike Johnston:

But why is that? I can’t quite put my finger on it. I don’t quite get why a Fuji X-T1 is “more fun” than a full-frame DSLR. Yet somehow…it is. The Panasonic GX7 is even more fun than that. Why?

Is it possible that a premium fixed-lens compact—Sony RX1, Ricoh GR, Nikon Coolpix A, or Fuji X100s—is even more fun? Somehow, it seems so.

David Cain:

The ultimate tool for corporations to sustain a culture of this sort is to develop the 40-hour workweek as the normal lifestyle. Under these working conditions people have to build a life in the evenings and on weekends. This arrangement makes us naturally more inclined to spend heavily on entertainment and conveniences because our free time is so scarce.

Fascinating read, looking at how our lack of free time leads us to spend more freely.