Steven Owens checked out a bunch of calendaring apps for the Sweet Setup, and came way with the same result I would have. In fact, the winning app is the one I use every day, after much testing and experimentation.
Among the many books I bought or received in the past month is a copy of Clive Thompson’s Smarter Than You Think. Unfortunately, I haven’t found the time to start it (I’m still working on Why We Build). I’m very much looking forward to starting it, though, for the reasons Tim Wu touches on in the New Yorker:
Our time-travelling friend proves that, though the human-augmentation project has been a success, we cannot deny that it has come at some cost. The idea of biological atrophy is alarming, and there is always a nagging sense that our auxiliary brains don’t quite count as “us.” But make no mistake: we are now different creatures than we once were, evolving technologically rather than biologically, in directions we must hope are for the best.
We are at once more and less capable than ever before, but perhaps we are more capable more often. One hopes.
Nilay Patel, the Verge:
That’s it. That’s the whole mistake. The wrong words. The entire American internet experience is now at risk of turning into a walled garden of corporate control because the FCC chickened out and picked the wrong words in 2002, and the court called them on it twice over. You used the wrong words. The court even agreed with the FCC’s policy goals — after a bitterly fought lawsuit and thousands of pages of high-priced arguments from Verizon and its supporters, Judge Tatel was convinced that “broadband providers represent a threat to internet openness and could act in ways that would ultimately inhibit the speed and extent of future broadband deployment.”
Too bad you used the wrong fucking words.
This happened yesterday, but I’ve been sitting on it and thinking about it more. It’s a heavy, complex issue that I’m sure I don’t fully understand. I do understand this decision, though:
In an opinion written by Judge David Tatel, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found that the network neutrality rules contradicted a previous FCC decision that put broadband companies beyond its regulatory reach.
“Given that the Commission has chosen to classify broadband providers in a manner that exempts them from treatment as common carriers,” Tatel wrote, “the Communications Act expressly prohibits the Commission from nonetheless regulating them as such.”
This decision is a short-term blow to net neutrality, obviously. The court ruled against the FCC on what amounts to a technicality, but I think this could be a long-term benefit to the net neutrality fight. The court basically spelled out to the FCC exactly what they need to do in order to be able to regulate internet providers: designate and treat them as common carriers, like phone companies.
Now all the FCC needs to do is actually implement those rules. Piece of cake, right?
Possibly one of the greatest essays written on the changes in the English language over time, by David Foster Wallace for Harper’s Magazine in 2001:
From one perspective, a certain irony attends the publication of any good new book on American usage. It is that the people who are going to be interested in such a book are also the people who are least going to need it, i.e., that offering counsel on the finer points of U.S. English is Preaching to the Choir. The relevant Choir here comprises that small percentage of American citizens who actually care about the current status of double modals and ergative verbs. The same sorts of people who watched Story of English on PBS (twice) and read W. Safire’s column with their half-caff every Sunday. The sorts of people who feel that special blend of wincing despair and sneering superiority when they see EXPRESS LANE — 10 ITEMS OR LESS or hear dialogue used as a verb or realize that the founders of the Super 8 motel chain must surely have been ignorant of the meaning of suppurate. There are lots of epithets for people like this — Grammar Nazis, Usage Nerds, Syntax Snobs, the Language Police. The term I was raised with is SNOOT. The word might be slightly self-mocking, but those other terms are outright dysphemisms. A SNOOT can be defined as somebody who knows what dysphemism means and doesn’t mind letting you know it.
This essay is infinitely quotable, but deserves to be read in full if you want an idea of the ever-changing possibilities of the English language. True to Sally Kerrigan’s point, it’s a surprisingly readable article for a fairly niche audience; appropriately, it advocates for clarity and contemporaneity in the use of language.
Sally Kerrigan, for A List Apart:
You want to be a friend to your readers here, in the sense that you want to respect their time and attention. Except in rare literary circles, there’s no good reason to make your readers work hard just to understand what you’re trying to say. Each supporting argument or illustrative example you include needs to connect clearly back to your main point; the whole thing is moot if your readers trail off before getting to the cat food.
If you’ve ever attended college or university, you’ll know about a certain brand of opaque writing that’s a pain in the ass to read. It’s a kind of academic speak, which is often unnecessary, and potentially destructive: overly-complex phrasing can create only a surface impression of intellect. While there will always be a place for jargon, an expert in a field should be able to use relatively plain language to explain things to a layperson.
That’s not to say that you can’t or shouldn’t make use of esoteric vocabulary or complex phrasing, but clarity should take precedence.
Dave Pell:
When the deal was first announced, nearly every early adopter in my Twitter stream brought up the issue of privacy. That’s not the knee-jerk reaction Google (or any big Internet player) wants when they announce a deal.
No matter how beloved and cute a company’s origins, there’s an inherent healthy distrust of them once they become large and successful. Microsoft faced this in the early 2000s, Apple has been facing this as of late, and now Google. The honeymoon, as it were, is long over.
Anyway, I’ll shut up about this Nest deal. A search engine bought a thermostat company. It shouldn’t be this huge, but it is, and that’s fascinating.
Ian Betteridge, on the assumption that Google bought Nest to strengthen their investment in hardware:
With the Pixel and Q, Google proved it could design high-end hardware on its own. What it hasn’t been able to do is create high-quality hardware capable of being mass produced at low cost. Of all the tech hardware companies, only Apple and Nest have really nailed that one. And Apple wasn’t available for sale.
Such a good article from Betteridge. Most of the hardware Google has produced so far has been niche and pricey. In addition to the Pixel and Nexus Q — the latter of which, by the way, never shipped — Gruber mentioned the Search Appliance and Google’s custom data centres. The former is enterprise-oriented, while the latter is produced purely for Google’s own needs. This is a serious investment.
Liz Gannes, Recode:
Nest had been close to completing a funding round of upward of $150 million that would have valued it at more than $2 billion, Re/code reported earlier this month. That round never closed, because Google swept in with its huge offer. Sources familiar with details of the acquisition said that Google was the only serious bidder and Apple was not in the mix.
At first glance, it’s a bit of an oddball buy. I’m not surprised that Google bought a hardware company: Google has significantly increased their investment in hardware over the past couple of years. I am a little surprised that it ended up being a tech company that purchased Nest, and not a company like Honeywell or GE.
Paul Thurrott (no, really, I’m linking to something from Paul Thurrott):
In some ways, the most interesting thing about Threshold is how it recasts Windows 8 as the next Vista. It’s an acknowledgment that what came before didn’t work, and didn’t resonate with customers. And though Microsoft will always be able to claim that Windows 9 wouldn’t have been possible without the important foundational work they had done first with Windows 8—just as was the case with Windows 7 and Windows Vista—there’s no way to sugarcoat this. Windows 8 has set back Microsoft, and Windows, by years, and possibly for good.
Thurrott’s right: Windows 8 is the new Vista; what he gets wrong is his assumption that this has set Windows back. Windows, as an entity, was set back largely by the introduction of the iPad. Yes, it’s possible (and not unlikely) that Microsoft could pivot the Windows brand to the tablet future-present. But their dedication to trying to make one operating system that runs legacy apps on the desktop and new (neé Metro) apps on a tablet is really what’s setting them back. They are blinded by their hope that one operating system — Windows, especially, but really any OS — can do it all. It cannot.
What the “Think Different” campaign was to the Mac, this is to the iPad. Using a wonderful audio clip from “Dead Poets Society”,1 the ad is a reminder that the iPad isn’t a toy any more, but a tool for real work. It’s subtle, but it’s Apple’s marketing at its very best. They’ve had a string of great ads lately, each better than the last.
Update: I wasn’t the only one thinking it.
Having Disney a phone call away is certainly nice, isn’t it? ↥︎
Yet another streaming music service is about to launch. If you live in the US, you’ll be able to listen to a giant catalogue of music for $10 a month. With such an enormous breadth of music, how do you find stuff to listen to? It sounds like that’s what makes Beats Music different. Ben Sisario, reporting for the New York Times:
Ian Rogers, the chief executive of Beats Music, argued that these systems inevitably fail because they rely too heavily on computer algorithms and because the people behind them just misunderstand music. He cited one typical, so-obvious-it’s-wrong recommendation as proof of the problem: Paul Simon fan? Check out Art Garfunkel! […]
The difference, Beats executives say, is that their service makes greater use of its editors and guest programmers like Rolling Stone, Rap Radar and Pitchfork, and only recommends the good stuff.
So you can listen to what the critics are digging. Neat, but not enormously innovative. It gets better:
“My phone knows where I’m at, what I’m up to, what temperature it is,” [Trent] Reznor said. “It might even start to recognize locations I visit, patterns of motion. What if music could be collected in little parcels and served up to me effortlessly?”
A byproduct of that concept is Right Now, which in prototype was tantalizingly called “the sentence.” In it, a user generates an ad hoc playlist by completing a musical status update with four variables: a place, an activity, a person and a genre of music. “I’m at the beach & feel like pre-partying with my friends to dance-pop,” for example, yields the Chemical Brothers, Lady Gaga and Janet Jackson. Not bad.
It doesn’t sound radically innovative, but I think it’s a change that will significantly change the way Beats users listen to music. Too bad it’s yet another US-only product.
Remember how wearable tech was supposed to be the “big thing” at CES 2014? Well, the Verge has gave out their awards for the show, and their Biggest Disappointment “award” went to… wearables. Valentina Palladino:
The biggest disappointment, really, is seeing so many companies jump on the wearable bandwagon without bringing anything new to the table.
Despite this, they awarded the Pebble Steel “Best Smartwatch”; though, I suppose if these categories were decided in advance, it was really the only choice.
Adrianne Jeffries, the Verge:
The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) doesn’t track the gender ratio at its annual trade show, but in 2014 it still draws an overwhelmingly male crowd. The number of female attendees is increasing, but CES is still a boys’ club. There’s the Japanese businessman; the bald, white American IT guy; and the nerdy college student, all yearning for a pretty girl to talk to them about technology. […]
I talked to about a dozen booth models at CES 2014 and observed them making small talk with attendees about where they go to school and how often they do things “like this.” The booth models for CES and other Vegas conventions come from all over: some are professional models, some are students, some are locals picking up extra cash, others are actors from LA. They all complained about the same two things: having to stand all day, and getting hit on.
You know, for all the crap that companies get about employing booth babes, I think the criticism is a little misaimed. While it’s pretty sleazy for companies to resort to these kinds of tactics to try to get attention, I think the problem is as much on the male end of this arrangement. There are still men who hit on every woman who is moderately friendly to them — a completely juvenile reaction.
I remain optimistic.
Sad day (via Jason Scott):
On Friday, January 17th, 2014 lists.apple.com will be retired.
List owners are encouraged to move their conversations to http://devforums.apple.com (for developers), http://discussions.apple.com (for users) or create an “Open community” group (via [redacted]). To facilitate this transition, we plan to make the non-confidential Apple Developer Forums readable by all Registered Apple Developers (i.e. the free membership level).
I’m a subscriber to a few Apple-hosted mailing lists, including their security announcement list. It’s been clear for a while that traffic has reached basically zero. The happy byproduct of this is that the Dev Forums will be opened up to a much wider audience — something which, arguably, should have happened long ago.
Perfect article by Don Lehman, published on the Loop:
In retrospect the iPhone is obvious, but from our current vantage point, wearable tech is anything but. We like the idea, but no one has nailed it yet. It sure isn’t for lack of effort, as this CES has demonstrated, but it shows the chasm between idea and execution and how hard it is to marry the two.
There appears to be a bug in the new New York Times site for Retina display-equipped Macs: for some reason, the infinitely-scalable SVG version of the logo isn’t being used. Well, I say “for some reason”, but the actual reason is plain to see:
<script type="text/javascript">
if (/iPad|iPod|iPhone/.test(navigator.userAgent)){
document.write('<img id="mastheadLogo" width="379" height="64" alt="The New York Times" src="http://i1.nyt.com/svg/nytlogo_379x64.svg">');
} else {
document.write('<img id="mastheadLogo" width="379" height="64" alt="The New York Times" src="http://i1.nyt.com/images/misc/nytlogo379x64.gif">');
}
</script>
In fact, I’m surprised that they don’t simply serve the SVG to all WebKit users. It takes care of all MobileSafari users, plus Safari and Chrome on Retina display-equipped Macs (and non-Retina Macs, which also render it fine), plus Chrome on Android. There doesn’t appear to be a downside to this approach:
<script type="text/javascript">
if (/AppleWebKit/.test(navigator.userAgent)){
document.write('<img id="mastheadLogo" width="379" height="64" alt="The New York Times" src="http://i1.nyt.com/svg/nytlogo_379x64.svg">');
} else {
document.write('<img id="mastheadLogo" width="379" height="64" alt="The New York Times" src="http://i1.nyt.com/images/misc/nytlogo379x64.gif">');
}
</script>
Simple enough, right?
Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:
Google is today making a change to Gmail that will further bake in Google+ to its webmail product in a way that’s actually somewhat practical, though also potentially invasive. Going forward, you’ll now be able to directly email your Google+ contacts from Gmail, even if you don’t know their email address. And by default, anyone on Google+ will be able to email you as well, thanks to this new option, if you don’t adjust your Settings.
“Oh come on,” you begin, “wasn’t Google warned by the FTC over a very similar opt-out behaviour when they introduced Google Buzz?”
In its complaint, the FTC alleged that Google used “deceptive tactics and violated its own privacy promises to consumers” when it launched Buzz last year. Google initially made some Buzz users’ contacts, such as the address book, automatically visible to others, angering many users. Google later changed the settings so contacts were kept private by default.
The requirement under the settlement to seek user permission before changing how it shares data with outsiders, known as “opt in,” is unusually strict
I anticipate that this does not violate the FTC judgement because of Google’s unified privacy policy. Seems pretty dickish to me.
Update: This feature defaults to “extended circles“, which is only slightly better than “anyone”:
Your extended circles include people in your circles’ circles.
Which, depending on your friend group, could be pretty much anyone. Or, at least, far too many people who can potentially email you without knowing your address.
I missed this from December, but it appears that the 10.9.1 update will bypass FileVault and automatically login after the system reboots. Thomas Brand has a good guess as to why Apple chose this route:
Power users might prefer the minor inconvenience of entering their password during a software update to complete the update process securely, but FileVault 2 is not just about security. It is about putting the customer’s fears to rest. Automating a required second restart of a customer’s encrypted Mac is just one way FileVault 2 fights the fear of complicated updates commonly associated with Windows. This isn’t a security flaw, this is software by design.
Here’s the thing, though: this behaviour creates a security flaw. The type of person who has FileVault enabled is the type of person who will not mind entering their password after reboot. I’d wager that almost no casual users have FileVault enabled, and that most people with it turned on are developers, hackers, or similar.