Link: Siri, Privacy, and Trust

Accidental interactions occur when the button is pressed too long accidentally, or when a device incorrectly hears “Hey Siri” even though you said no such thing. All recorded Siri interactions should be treated by Apple with extraordinary care, but accidental invocations, when identified, should be deleted immediately unless the user has expressly agreed to allow it — each and every time. Having Apple contractors listen to random conversations or audio is the nightmare scenario for an always-listening voice assistant.

Amen.

Link: Laziness Does Not Exist

For decades, psychological research has been able to explain procrastination as a functioning problem, not a consequence of laziness. When a person fails to begin a project that they care about, it’s typically due to either a) anxiety about their attempts not being “good enough” or b) confusion about what the first steps of the task are. Not laziness. In fact, procrastination is more likely when the task is meaningful and the individual cares about doing it well.

Definitely worth a read. Still processing on this one.

Metaprogramming? Not good enough!

In this talk, you’ll make that difference smaller, building a totally extensible object model on top of Ruby, using less than a dozen new classes and methods.

Good talk, just bookmarking it here. :-)

Link: The New York Times Best-Seller List: Another Reason Americans Don’t Trust the Media

As a writer (who, for the record, had a previous book on that list), I have long known it isn’t a best-seller list, and I don’t pay attention to it. But I paid attention last week to see if my recently published book, which opened up on Amazon as the second best-selling book in America, was on the list. It wasn’t.

The older I get the more the media seems completely biased and completely ridiculous. Is that just wisdom?

Link: Good News: Apple No Longer Is The iPhone Company

When the iPhone grew to represent more than 50% of Apple’s revenue, critics worried that the company was overly dependent on the device. Now, critics fret because the percentage fell to 48% in the quarter ending in June. The decline isn’t bad news; it’s the mark of a neatly maturing business that benefits from its ecosystem’s network effects.

Critics are so dumb. You just can’t win.

Link: Apple locked me out of its walled garden. It was a nightmare

This kind of stuff scares the daylights out of me when I read it. I had a similar experience once with Gmail where they purposely locked my account for half a day. No rhyme. No reason. No explanation.

That was a free service though. So much worse when it’s something you’ve paid for (either directly or with numerous Apple hardware purchases).

Top Gun

It’s now several decades later and I still remember this movie review word-for-word. I have no idea who the author was, or how many similar gems were hidden in the pages of that weekly TV guide over the years. But I credit this tiny act of defiance with inspiring me in multiple ways.

No Thanks vs. Later

And “Set as Default Later in Wallet” doesn’t even look like a button.

I don’t think this is quite as bad as everyone is making it out to be. The buttons look pretty clear to me and the “non button” is really a common style we’ve seen elsewhere since iOS 7.

Apple Employees Listen to Siri Audio Samples

100% agree. Recordings bad.

Bottom line: It doesn’t matter to me if this is Amazon or Apple. I don’t want human beings listening to the audio these devices record. In fact, I don’t want recordings made of my audio, period—I want the audio processed and immediately discarded.

Fast Software, the Best Software

Worth a read for sure. Wish we had more “fast” software in the world.

I love fast software. That is, software speedy both in function and interface. Software with minimal to no lag between wanting to activate or manipulate something and the thing happening. Lightness.

Slug: how-the-retweet-ruined-the-internet

Some real food for thought here.

But the button also changed Twitter in a way Wetherell and his colleagues didn’t anticipate. Copying and pasting made people look at what they shared, and think about it, at least for a moment. When the retweet button debuted, that friction diminished. Impulse superseded the at-least-minimal degree of thoughtfulness once baked into sharing. Before the retweet, Twitter was largely a convivial place. After, all hell broke loose — and spread.

Apple, meet WYSIWYG; it’s the way Macs used to work

This does seem confusing and wrong.

…rather than TextEdit using the colour you selected, it chose the light lilac instead, but just to fool you, when a dark background is enabled, it changed the display colour to what you thought you were using.

WSJ: Apple Planning to Buy Intel’s Modem Business

Rapidly headed to a world where Apple owns almost ALL its core chip technology. First for their phones, then everything else (ARM laptops, etc).

It seems like Intel’s new CEO didn’t have interest in being in this business, and Apple is reportedly staffing up a major effort to build its own modem chips in the long term. So, at least from this outside perspective, this transaction seems to make an enormous amount of sense.

Rumor: 2020 Apple Watches to move from OLED to microLED screens

How come I’m just now hearing about MicroLED?

Unlike an OLED display, a microLED screen doesn’t rely on organic compounds to make light. They should also should offer perfect blacks, excellent color, and near-perfect off-angle viewing, but be even brighter, slimmer, immune to burn-in, offer better battery life, and, in the long run, less expensive to make than OLED.

We Tested 5G Across America. It’s Crazy Fast—and a Hot Mess

The headline just about sums it up. The original headline also (from the slug): “all-the-reasons-not-to-buy-a-5g-phone-right-now”

After nearly 120 tests, more than 12 city miles walked and a couple of big blisters, I can report that 5G is fasten-your-seat-belt fast…when you can find it. And you’re standing outdoors. And the temperature is just right.

Ruby 2.7.0-preview1 Released

What popped to me:

  • Pattern Matching - This should be fun if it turns out well.
  • Multi-line editing in REPL
  • Enumerable#tally [“a”, “b”, “c”, “b”].tally #=> {“a”=>1, “b”=>2, “c”=>1}

No, You Can’t Make a Person Change

Perhaps worth a read if you’ve been trying to change someone you care about.

You can’t make somebody change. You can inspire them to change. You can educate them towards change. You can support them in their change. But you can’t make them change.

So good:

People who have survived trauma, who have been abandoned or shamed or felt lost, they’ve survived that pain by latching onto worldviews that promise them hope. But until they learn to generate that hope for themselves, to choose their own values, to take responsibility for their own experiences, nothing will truly heal. And for someone to intervene and say, “Here, take my value system on a silver platter. Would you like fries with that?” only perpetuates the problem, even if done with the best of intentions.

Link: How I practice at what I do

Great short little read.

A few of you were skeptical, but it is long since established that practice improves both your writing and your memory, so surely it can do much more than that for your thinking.

Link: Why does APT not use HTTPS?

Interesting. Worth a quick read if the title strikes your fancy. Seems sometimes HTTPs isn’t all the shizzle.

Link: WWDC Feedback.md

I am definitely an introvert, and for a number of reasons I was already incredibly nervous going to pick up my badge this year already, and this was nearly overwhelming, I was shaking by the time I got my badge and got out of there. Having badges, pins or lanyards that indicate level of interaction desired would be great.

Color-coded badges for this is a great idea. This kind of makes me glad I don’t attend WWDC. I am NOT an introvert in the least but the way they describe all this cheering and excitement describes makes it sounds all VERY ridiculous and over the top.

So while I likely wouldn’t find it “overwhelming” personally I feel for those who do - and pretty sure I’d find it at the very least super annoying.

Mauve:

If you go looking for the truth, get the whole thing. It’s like a good fuck. Half is worse than none at all.

Link: Apple Is Sending Out Another Silent Update To Fix the Webcam Flaw in Zoom’s Partner Apps

Gruber: I also think Apple is doing the right thing by going to the press and explaining when they issue such updates. If I could tweak anything, it would be to have these updates show up in the regular list of pending software updates if you have “Install system data files and security updates” turned off.

Yes, feels right to me.

Fernando Corbató, a Father of Your Computer (and Your Password), Dies at 93

My, my… how far we’ve come. Once upon a time computers had no passwords…

In the course of refining time-sharing systems in the 1960s, Dr. Corbató came up with another novelty: the computer password.

C.T.S.S. gave each user a private set of files, but the lack of a login system requiring a password meant that users were free to peruse others’ files.

Link: Why did moving the mouse cursor cause Windows 95 to run more quickly?

Sometimes things that make no sense are actually true for the strangest reasons.

Thus wiggling the mouse causes the application to process I/O messages faster, and install quicker. The effect was quite pronounced; large applications that could take an hour to install could be reduced to 15 minutes with suitable mouse input.

Makes me want to pick it up again and see what I might find in it as an adult.

Finally, I’m not sure what compelled me to pick Fahrenheit 451 back up but I’m so glad I did because I was able to see the book in a very different context. Bradbury’s message (made explicit in his 50th Anniversary Afterword) is much less a warning against government control and much more about a road to hell paved by people attempting to rid the world of offensive speech and conflicting ideas. In a world of microaggressions and outrage porn, this is an important idea to see in such a timeless work of fiction.

thoughtcatalog.com/ryan-holi…