Recent Articles

Annalee Newitz:

Despite Facebook’s commitment to globalism, here we learn that the default norms for what you view will be set not by your global interests but by “whatever the majority of people in your region selected.” Yes, you can update your settings, but if you’ve ever tried to mess with your privacy settings on Facebook you know that won’t be easy. The vast majority of people will never escape the filter bubbles of their local regions.

This sounds like a terrible idea, people already have enough trouble getting out of their own bubbles. This seems like a way of amplifying just that.

This is a tragic and sickening post about the treatment Susan J. Fowler faced at Uber (along with the other women who work/ed there). I think this also warrants a reminder that this is far from the first allegation of a nefarious nature to surface about Uber. They have a track record of being sleazy.

Uber’s CEO did respond to these claims, saying:

I have just read Susan Fowler’s blog. What she describes is abhorrent and against everything Uber stands for and believes in. It’s the first time this has come to my attention so I have instructed Liane Hornsey our new Chief Human Resources Officer to conduct an urgent investigation into these allegations.

Well, bullshit, but let’s say it was the first time he heard this: you don’t task your Chief Human Resources Officer with investigating. you out right fire that person and everyone in senior positions within HR. I mean, that is, if you truly believe the behavior is “abhorrent”. If you don’t feel that way, you start a bullshit investigation and pass some quotes to the press.

So, Lyft then? Yeah…

Great post from Viticci going over the power aspects of DEVONthink — aligns well with how I am using the tool thus far. I’ll dive into my thoughts on it more later after I get a better handle on things.

Also, I should note, Viticci is now going to be doing weekly-ish posts on his iPad usage — so that should combine nicely with the weekly posts I do for members here on iPads — if you are looking for more iPad content.

And really, who isn’t looking for more iPad content?

Michael Shear:

In record time, the 45th president has set off global outrage with a ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries, fired his acting attorney general for refusing to defend the ban and watched as federal courts swiftly moved to block the policy, calling it an unconstitutional use of executive power.

The president angrily provoked the cancellation of a summit meeting with the Mexican president, hung up on Australia’s prime minister, authorized a commando raid that resulted in the death of a Navy SEAL member, repeatedly lied about the existence of millions of fraudulent votes cast in the 2016 election and engaged in Twitter wars with senators, a sports team owner, a Hollywood actor and a major department store chain. His words and actions have generated almost daily protests around the country.

Support our curriculum and workshops for San Diego Girl Scouts to create an epic platformer game for Scratch, web, iOS & Android!

Sounds like a great cause to back. I’ve pledged and am sad to see the general lack of funding for this project.

Swati Khandelwal:

Signal has already been providing fully end-to-end encrypted chat and voice calling features, but the newly added feature will make it even easier for privacy conscious people to convey their information face-to-face through video calling without compromising security.

There are a lot of options out there, but Signal is by far the easiest and most respected in encrypted communications. But what I still find most shocking is that I can’t passcode protect the app on iOS.

Jason Kottke, writing about Ian Bogost’s post on Apple design (which is a shit show of a post):

Who makes all the apps that people want to use on their iPhones to chat/connect/flirt/collaborate with their loved ones? Facebook, Snap, Google, Slack…not Apple, who initially wasn’t even going to provide a way for 3rd parties to build apps for the iPhone. Almost every attempt by Apple to build services to connect people — remember Ping?! — has failed. Even iCloud, which promised to unite all Apple devices into one fluid ecosystem, was plagued for years with reliability problems and still isn’t as good as Dropbox.

I’d argue iMessage is a killer app for the platform, and has a better implementation than any of those listed above. Slack on iOS is a turd — Facebook’s app has been known to spy on you. If the argument that design is the the details (which is what Bogost bangs on and on about), then the detail being overlooked in those other message apps is respect for users — both in privacy and ease and reliability.

iCloud v. Dropbox is an interesting issue — for a long time iCloud Drive was not as good as Dropbox, but I’d argue that in the past 6 months it has surpassed Dropbox. The issue here is everyone has a sour taste in their mouth for iCloud. (I also argue that Dropbox no longer has a sustainable business, but to each his own.) But the truth is that I saved this post to Ulysses from my small iPad, with Ulysses open on my large iPad. Set down the small iPad and selected this post to write my comments. It was there, no sync indicator, just seamless interoperability.

Manton Reece:

Owning your content by having a microblog at your own domain is empowering. Maybe you’re writing about what you had for lunch. Maybe you’re photo-blogging an important trip. Maybe you’re posting from your iPhone at a protest outside the White House.

It’s certainly a step better than the arbitrary Twitter “verification” bullshit.

Aliya Sternstein:

Typically, a device takes anywhere from a day to a month to break into, depending on whether Secret Service computer engineers need to disassemble the device and software to figure out how it was programmed.

Interesting article.

There appeared to be eight people at the rally.

Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman, in the second paragraph of the article:

Aides confer in the dark because they cannot figure out how to operate the light switches in the cabinet room. Visitors conclude their meetings and then wander around, testing doorknobs until finding one that leads to an exit. In a darkened, mostly empty West Wing, Mr. Trump’s provocative chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, finishes another 16-hour day planning new lines of attack.

You read that paragraph and you think, wow that’s insane, and then you read the rest of the article and you think: I wish it was just the second paragraph — that seemed better.

Good lord, this is a perfect article.

Andrew Restuccia, Marianne Levine, Nahal Toosi:

Fearing for their jobs, the employees began communicating incognito using the app Signal shortly after Trump’s inauguration. Signal, like WhatsApp and other mobile phone software, encrypts all communications, making it more difficult for hackers to gain access to them.

Hard to blame them. I should note here that of WhatsApp/Signal/iMessage — Signal is the one to trust.