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This is an overall solid guide from The Wirecutter crew. I too think the CODE is one of the best mechanical keyboards you can get, especially for Mac users. I personally hate the Mathis keyboards.

In a rare miss, I think they do a disservice to the Pok3r keyboard, as I find everything they say about it to be incorrect. The build quality is excellent, and I suspect they are seeing a difference in the WASD model it sounds like they tested. Further the high pitch whine is insane, but a firmware update fixes it right away.

When the Snowden leaks started, I spent countless hours setting up PGP (GPG on Mac) email systems so that I could email with privacy. Since then services like Protonmail have sought to make it trivial. But nothing is easier than Signal or iMessage for that matter.

In fact I spend a lot of time lecturing family on sending me private things (like passwords, for some reason they send me passwords a lot) not in email, but in iMessage. I think to many that email feels far more private, but in reality it is the messaging platforms which are actually more private.

A great (and very long) wrap up from Viticci on his use of the iPad Pro over the last year. I don’t think there is a single part of this I disagree with. (Well I guess you could criticize his thinking that Scrivener is needed over Ulysses, but that seems obvious to readers of this site.) I posted my year long wrap up for members, here.

Kara Swisher:

When I could get no really substantive on-the-record statements from the tech leaders, I pinged investor Chris Sacca, because I know he would not let me down.

It’s funny, in every tech deal I’ve ever done, the photo op comes after you’ve signed the papers,” he said. “If Trump publicly commits to embrace science, stops threatening censorship of the Internet, rejects fake news and denounces hate against our diverse employees, only then it would make sense for tech leaders to visit Trump Tower.”

He added: “Short of that, they are being used to legitimize a fascist.”

I think a lot of people became Kara Swisher fans after she published this. Well done.

Good packing list for women looking to travel in one bag.

Which models? Right now it looks like Netgear R7000, R6400 and R8000 routers, but there may be more models that are vulnerable. Should you really take this seriously and unplug your router? You betcha, since US-CERT said it is “trivial” to exploit this vulnerability. Visit a booby-trapped page and whammo! An attacker would be saying hello to root privileges on your router.

My router was among these and I’ll be replacing it right away. Check yours. The R7000 is a model I’ve be recommending to a lot of people.

Matt Gemmell comparing Ulysses and Scrivener:

I like them both, and they both piss me off. Scriv is somebody’s little brother, complete with second-child syndrome. Ulysses wants to go and visit the library, but won’t let itself skip the t’ai chi class.

Really good comparison, and great criticisms.

Jason Fried:

It’s just a simple share of a shopping experience I had recently that surprised me. Best Buy feels simple, Apple Stores feels over engineered, too sophisticated. I get why, but why doesn’t matter to the customer experience. It’s either great or it’s not — the why behind the scenes doesn’t matter. Who’s been teaching me that for decades? Apple.

I agree with his thoughts on the Apple Store, but he’s not even close on Best Buy. I don’t doubt he had a good experience now, but I’ve been to Best Buy far more often than I care to admit, and I’d rather stand in line for pictures with Santa Claus than go to Best Buy.

United has a new ticket fare, where no luggage is included in the price (except what fits at your feet). If you want overhead bin space, or to check, you pay. I actually love this, though I would much rather checked luggage be free and overhead charged for everyone.

If you have been on a flight recently (say last 3-4 years) then you likely know how big of a shit show it is when you board a plane. There’s so many people with bags that are clearly too large to carry on, or people with clearly too many bags. Tons of gate checking — in all I think people not following rules, add tremendously to the overall boarding time.

In the past couple of trips I have taken with United I have noticed something I never saw before: gate agents caring about luggage. I’ve seen them using both luggage sizers at the gate and forcing people to check — and I’ve seen them simply telling people they have too many bags. I know this likely annoys a lot of people, but as someone who packs small and light, I commend United for this.

It’s been far to long where people don’t follow very clear rules. And honestly, if you can’t fit all of your stuff in a properly sized carryon, then why wouldn’t you want to check it? It’s so much easier at that point to not drag it all around.

Again it would be great if they flipped things, where checked is free (for one bag) and carryon is charged for anything more than a personal item. You pay for the convenience of not waiting to get your bags back — seems to make sense to me.

Quincy Larson:

To be clear, everything I recommend here is 100% free and 100% legal. If you bother locking your doors at night, you should bother using encryption.

It’s a good set of first steps to take. I am curious how many people use Signal over iMessage… even I don’t use Signal for any messages (though I do have it setup). I am going to see if my wife will move to it with me though and test it out.

Pretty neat research looking into how people type, and how that impacts typing speed. I’d love to see more done with this research — and across keyboard types.

John Voorhees:

Center Stage is great for casual browsing of media in your timeline, but I expect I will use it most at events like WWDC. When I’m in San Francisco for Apple’s developer conference, I don’t want to miss friends’ photos and videos of the event, but I also don’t have time to read every tweet in my timeline. With Center Stage I can go straight to those photos and videos and dip into my timeline later when I have more time.

Twitterrific really is the best Twitter app you can use. Love it. Neat addition too.