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There’s something very special about this knife.
If there was one knife I spent all of 2018 wanting, it was this knife: the Benchmade Proper. This is a fantastic looking knife and a bit of a modern take on an older knife style.
I’ve been using this knife now for about three weeks and I have fallen in love with it. It is fantastic, so let’s dive in.
Abhimanyu Ghoshal: The ruling is significant because it runs counter to previous interpretations of the law in cases requiring access to data locked on personal devices. With that, biometric methods for unlocking phones are now being viewed similar to alphanumeric passcodes in the eyes of the law in the US.
Abhimanyu Ghoshal:
The ruling is significant because it runs counter to previous interpretations of the law in cases requiring access to data locked on personal devices. With that, biometric methods for unlocking phones are now being viewed similar to alphanumeric passcodes in the eyes of the law in the US.
A little bit sticky.
I am going all out for the snack pick this week, and I have to warn you that this might send you back in time a bit. This week I have a gluten free snack pick, which is always nice and inclusive. So this week it’s Mike and Ike Original Fruits.
Interesting, as it’s not the toolkit or setup I would have expected.
Interesting, as it’s not the toolkit or setup I would have expected.
An iPad is great for ergonomics and work. Also, a bunch of pictures of my old desk setups.
I’ve long struggled with how to layout and ‘design’ my desk area. There’s two competing “best” ways to go about this: looks and ergonomics. And these are nearly mutually exclusive (you can’t have a beautiful desk which is also perfectly ergonomic), but I also have come to realize that I have been thinking about this all wrong. And, contrary to popular opinion, that the iPad is not the ergonomic nightmare most think it is.
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This should surprise no one, and yet I am guessing this will surprise most.
This should surprise no one, and yet I am guessing this will surprise most.
Surprisingly handy pouch.
I have been seeing these pouches for quite some time now and figured it was about time I give one a try to see what the hype is all about. These are a heavy polymer substance (feels like soft non-sticky rubber) and have a single zipper across the top which is a weatherproof zipper with an oversized zipper pull. At each top corner there’s an eyelet to help with clipping the pouches to something.
Nomnomnomnom.
Since I am a day late this week, we have some ground to make up for. Thus, the easily forgotten, but always satisfying Keebler Deluxe Graham’s are the snack pick for the week.
John Porter: Apple tells The Verge that Samsung’s smart TV ad-tracking features cannot track viewing usage within the iTunes Movies and TV Shows app, in another example of Apple’s focus on privacy. Here’s the thing: this means you’ll need to connect your Samsung TV to WiFi in order for this to work. And there’s long…
John Porter:
Apple tells The Verge that Samsung’s smart TV ad-tracking features cannot track viewing usage within the iTunes Movies and TV Shows app, in another example of Apple’s focus on privacy.
Here’s the thing: this means you’ll need to connect your Samsung TV to WiFi in order for this to work. And there’s long been privacy questions over even allowing that to happen.
Some solid iPad apps to recommend, and a teaser of some changes I have been making to my setup.
It’s been a while since I wrote a full iPad Productivity Report, so for the new year I am back at it. This will be the first of many to come over the next couple of months as some big rethinks are in the works for me with my iPad Pro setup(s). Today I want to address a few things I am playing with: font management, space needs, Notion, and Vellum. And then at the end I want to touch on a few upcoming things with my setup.
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Some of the things I tell new GR1 owners to do upon getting their bag.
I see a lot of comments/tweets/posts about people who get a new GORUCK GR1 bag, and then are not exactly sure what they should do with it from there (other than use it). This post walks you through how I take on a new GORUCK bag and the steps I take to make it mine.
No. Just no. I’d also extend this to mobile devices too.
No. Just no. I’d also extend this to mobile devices too.
Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Natasha Singer: In the complaint, the city attorney excoriated the Weather Company, saying it unfairly took advantage of its app’s popularity and the fact that consumers were likely to give their location data to get local weather alerts. The city said that the company failed to sufficiently disclose its data practices when…
Jennifer Valentino-DeVries and Natasha Singer:
In the complaint, the city attorney excoriated the Weather Company, saying it unfairly took advantage of its app’s popularity and the fact that consumers were likely to give their location data to get local weather alerts. The city said that the company failed to sufficiently disclose its data practices when it got users’ permission to track their location and that it obscured other tracking details in its privacy policy.
Some serious bullshit, as weather apps are nearly useless unless you grant location access.
Emily Badger: Surely there is nothing left to fear in New York, a place that already has tall buildings and high rents. But the pending arrival of Amazon in Long Island City, as Vice recently put it, has some residents on edge about “becoming Seattle on steroids.” The specter captures the particular mix of high…
Emily Badger:
Surely there is nothing left to fear in New York, a place that already has tall buildings and high rents. But the pending arrival of Amazon in Long Island City, as Vice recently put it, has some residents on edge about “becoming Seattle on steroids.” The specter captures the particular mix of high housing costs, tall buildings and tech bros.
This whole article, damn.
Suuuuugggggggaaaaarr
This week brings us a new year and there’s only one way you should be ushering in a new year with your snacks. That’s by eating Entenmann’s Softees donuts, the variety pack which you buy for the cinnamon sugar donuts, but suffer through eating the others.
My experiment with not sleeping near my devices.
At the end of October, I started a little experiment. I stopped sleeping with my electronic devices in the same room as me. Specifically, that means my iPhone, and iPad(s). There’s a lot of research/studies/hypotheses around the impact devices have on our health, but there is one thing I believe in all those: the blue light from the devices is terrible for you at night.
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Dr. Nathalie Maréchal in a very damning essay on targeted advertising has this brutal quote: “That’s all ‘AI’ and ‘machine learning’ is for these companies: getting better at guessing what ads to show you,” (Tim) Libert said. “Every tiny bit of data increases the chances they show the ‘right’ ad so they never stop, they…
Dr. Nathalie Maréchal in a very damning essay on targeted advertising has this brutal quote:
“That’s all ‘AI’ and ‘machine learning’ is for these companies: getting better at guessing what ads to show you,” (Tim) Libert said. “Every tiny bit of data increases the chances they show the ‘right’ ad so they never stop, they never sleep, and they never respect your privacy—every single day everybody at Google collectively works to one purpose: getting the percentage of ‘right’ ads shown slightly higher.”
You could add Facebook to Google there too. And one more brutal quote:
This logic of “engagement” is motivated by the twin needs to collect more data and show more ads, and manifests itself in algorithms that value popularity over quality. In less than 20 years, Silicon Valley has replaced editorial judgment with mathematical measures of popularity, destabilized the democratic systems of checks and balances by hobbling the Fourth Estate, and hammered nail after nail into the coffin of privacy.
Having read this, I’m working on a site redesign which will remove custom fonts, which I think is the last bit I can ditch to making this site as free from, tracking as possible.
Here are the best things I reviewed this year.
I reviewed a lot of products this year, and one thing I am always sensitive to is not leading people on a never ending chase towards ‘new and shiny’ for no reason other than it is ‘new and shiny.’ It’s the reason I try to keep my “best page” (for members) up to date: so that members always have a sense of what I find to be the best, no matter what I may be using/reviewing/writing about at any given time. To wrap up 2018, here’s a look back at the items I think were the best new items of the year, as well as other notables which fall into the best.