Recent Articles

Title says it all. So next time you think about when/if Twitter will act on all the user complaints about stuff, well remember the above.

Marty Swant reporting on advertising groups being super sad about coming privacy standards in Safari:

In an open letter expected to be published this afternoon, the groups describe the new standards as “opaque and arbitrary,” warning that the changes could affect the “infrastructure of the modern internet,” which largely relies on consistent standards across websites. The groups say the feature also hurts user experience by making advertising more “generic and less timely and useful.”

This would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Update: Nah, it’s funny.

This is an awesome update, and I love the new styling. I forgive them for using Medium.

Jacqui Cheng:

What differentiates Wirecutter from other review sites is the rigor of our review process, the transparency we provide to our readers about that process, and our reader-centric, useful approach to recommendations. The most important thing to us is not to only practice those values when it comes to home and tech, but to hit those values consistently no matter what topic our crack team of researchers, testers, reporters, and just plain curious staffers put their minds to.

It’s more than that though. They really care about every topic they work on. They want feedback from the groups in that area. If/When I criticize a pick, they explain it and remind me: this isn’t the same as what you pick, because it’s the pick “for most people”. I see the Wirecutter as a truly vital resource.

Om Malik:

Every single event leaves me more in awe of Apple’s semiconductor group – and what they seem to achieve with each passing year.

He makes a good case (which I agree with) that Apple’s core strength right now is the silicon which powers iOS. I mean the iPhones are now as “fast” as a MacBook Pro. That’s insane. And nobody is near it, read his entire post.

Napier Lopez:

So yeah, Apple’s apparently built a smartphone that’s faster than a 2017 laptop, at least by GeekBench’s metrics.

Not just a laptop, a MacBook Pro.

Craig Mod, on Twitter:

(the thing that will push professionals to iPad is that it will be the fastest machine available)

Keep in mind, the iPad Pro typically will get a faster version of the iPhone chip. Staggering. I can’t wait.

A really great video round up on knife edge retention between steels. Really like the insight in this video.

Siva Vaidhyanathan:

The audacity of a hostile foreign power trying to influence American voters rightly troubles us. But it should trouble us more that Facebook makes such manipulation so easy, and renders political ads exempt from the basic accountability and transparency that healthy democracy demands.

And profits from it. As much as I dislike Facebook, it’s also important to remember that this is less of a Facebook problem, as it is a technology problem. It won’t be solved by any one company, but rather a global set of standards.

David Sherpardson:

The U.S. House on Wednesday unanimously approved a sweeping proposal to speed the deployment of self-driving cars without human controls by putting federal regulators in the driver’s seat and barring states from blocking autonomous vehicles.

I honestly thought this would not happen this fast. Awesome, hopefully it moves through the Senate easily.

Gabe Weatherhead:

Podcasting provides an outline for ideas but it does not provide much introspection. Several writers that I once respected for their deep insight and critical thinking have become mediocre podcast talkers. It’s not because I think they were phonies. It’s because they traded the ease of recording for the difficulty of writing. Podcasting is fun. Ideas flow unedited and once they are out, they are gone. “Follow up” is not editing.

Well said. Also good thoughts on link posts like this one. And one of the reasons I not only have cut back on the amount of links I post, but also on how I display them.

Great app, but this took a stupidly long time to be added.

This is such a problem, and it is near impossible to deal with privately, it has to be a public push. When I ran a property management firm it was one of the toughest issues for us to deal with. People are assholes.