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That Sounds Way More Creepy
Jesse Pujji in a Twitter thread on why Facebook isn’t “always listening” to you and why they don’t have to:
If me and @mrsharma get lunch, FBs systems can figure it out (still anonymously of course) How? Our devices were near each other for about an hour at neither of our houses around
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Why we Argue About Die Hard
Is [REDACTED] a Christmas Movie? - Kaitlyn Tiffany
Because of the dreaded incentives of social media, we force debate upon ourselves all the time, even at the most wonderful time of the year. And we do so even when our arguments hold no promise of a resolution.
“Arguments that hold no promise of a resolution,” is
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Sewing Doubt
Tim Harford on The New Bazaar podcast:
Cigarettes smokers are going to eagerly grab onto any evidence they can to doubt the scientific consensus that's emerging. And so the tobacco lobby would say, "oh well we need more research," which of course is a good idea. They would say, “oh it&
newsletter
🎄 That's a New Look! (Issue #95)
Hello and welcome to the new and improved newsletter! Long story short, the look is a bit different, the name
Links
Where do You Post Ephemeral Thoughts?
Finding the Right Place
There’s a type of content, that I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but for quite a long time, I’ve itched for it to find a place. There might be a word or phrase for it already, but I can only describe it as informal,
Links
Let’s Pretend the Last 20 Years Never Happened
Ben Thompson writing for Stratechery:
Skeptics argued for years that “That’s fine for Ben”, the insinuation being that I was some sort of unicorn. In fact, one of the most exciting stories of 2021 has been the absolute explosion in subscription-based blogs, primarily thanks to Substack, very much a web2 company. Other mediums
Improve Your Pitch, Don't Just Tell People They Don't Get It
Yesterday I tweeted out a remix of a video Elon Musk tweeted out. The original was a video of Jason Calacanis reacting to a clip of Bill Gates explaining the internet to Davin Letterman, and Letterman was skeptical, to say the least. We can now look back on this clip with the benefit of hindsight
Photography Needs to be Fun
I was very high on Glass, a new photo sharing app this summer, but my enthusiasm for it has dropped in perfect sync with the temperature dropping here in the Midwest since then. Not only that, it’s made me appreciate Instagram more.
You may be like “it’s the likes that ruined it!” but
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My Interview with Craft VP of Engineering on Craft 2, Extensions, the Web App, and More
Craft 2.0 released a few weeks ago, and it had some things I really wanted more details about, so
review
AirPods 3 Review
This has been a draft for over a month and I haven't known what to say, so here&
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The Model is Being Pushed to Its Limits
The Verge has some new reporting that includes emails between Microsoft and Apple, negotiating what could be done to bring Xbox games to iPhones and iPads. This bit stuck out to me:
“Our proposal for bringing games through individual apps was designed to comply with App Store policies. It was denied by Apple based on
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Overly-Invasive Employee Work Tracking
Here’s a snippet from Out of Office (I’m listening to the audiobook, so this was transcribed using Draft’s new transcribe feature, and touched up by me, so it may be slightly different from the exact text in the book):
After Satariano put Hubstaff on his computer it began taking hundreds of screenshots
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Glass Added a Like Button!
Me 2 months ago on why Glass should add a like button:
Maybe this is a terrible idea and I'm in the minority here, but I really do think that I would enjoy the app more if I was able to give lower-friction reactions to people's photos. I still like
Maybe It's Just a Product Nobody Wants
Another day, another company (or two) getting into crypto and their users being upset about it.
A few weeks ago I wrote how web3 projects need more product people to make better experiences, but now I'm starting to wonder if the problem here isn't a lack of product people, it'
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Reasonable Precautions
This truly oddly framed article from Politico made the rounds yesterday, talking about how silly it is that she uses them:
But still, should someone who travels with the nuclear football be spending time untangling her headphone wires? The American people deserve answers!
Although they did eventually get close to the point:
While wired headphones
