Good article on the NYT about the price of avoiding the cesspool that is the web. And by cesspool they are referring to the ads, noise, comments, distractions, etc I’m definitely one who pays to avoid the ads eg YouTube Premium is a no brainer for me. My wife and I also pay for many subscriptions to content (eg SMH) in order to avoid annoying banners, and limited views, as well as avoiding...
I don’t normally write about phone issues, but this is kinda unbelievable: Samsung says that it plans to release a patch for its phones’ in-display fingerprint sensors as early as next week, after reports emerged that the biometric security method could be rendered useless by certain screen protectors. The issue relates to some “silicone screen protecting cases,†according to...
A good reminder of two things in this article in The Spectator: Things are so much better now than they were decades agoTry to rethink and improve, rather than just rehash In particular I learned the phrase: paving the cow paths which basically means automating something without actually thinking about whether it’s the right thing to do. The phrase’s origins appear to be: When the...
I know I’ve been linking to WeWork stories a lot, but there’s still more. Part of the reason I’m adding them is because it will be interesting to look back in 10 years and reflect on what I was thinking about… So, about WeWork: Zero Hedge dive into the fraud that is WeWorkThe Atlantic dives into the unicorn delusionScott Galloways dives into an autopsy on the collapse The...
I know I’ve linked to plenty on We in the past, but here’s another one, this time more of a profile of Adam Neumann. Some examples: When Mr. Neumann announced in July 2018 via video call from Israel that the company was banning meat, executives in New York were caught off guard. With little explanation from Mr. Neumann, a group huddled to determine a rationale—they settled on...
Interesting insights from Andreessen Horowitz around the rise of Group Chats as a path to transactions. The article predominantly covers WeChat trends in China, but is applicable to many messenger apps including WhatsApp and FB Messenger, albeit with some privacy differences. In a nutshell, the Group Chat approach involves dedicated ‘concierge’ admins who help members with questions...
Well this was a surprise to me.
Google today launched Chrome 76 for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS. The release includes Adobe Flash blocked by default, Incognito mode detection disabled, multiple PWA improvements, and more developer features.
I had no idea people were still using Flash.
Incredibly thorough investigation and research into YouTube channel creation and viewership by Pew Research Centre. Pew Research Center used its own custom mapping technique to assemble a list of popular YouTube channels (those with at least 250,000 subscribers) that existed as of late 2018, then conducted a large-scale analysis of the videos those channels produced in the first week of 2019...
From Bloomberg: Millions of young people are turning their personal Instagram accounts into “business†profiles to learn more about how their posts are performing. The trend has an unintended privacy consequence. And further: “I’ll talk to parents and say, ‘Did you know that if your 13-year-old turns their Instagram account into a business account, more than 1 billion people have access...
Very thorough analysis of the Nacho Analytics demise by Ars Technica (a reminder of what good investigative tech journalism looks like btw). If you’re not familiar with the whole situation, here’s the summary: Chrome Browser extensions (perhaps deceptively) get your permission to track everything you do (recording URLs you visit, content that is on the page etc) and then on-sell that...