Excursions

I have finally given up on the hope that Apple will fix their Macbook lineup and have decided to switch to Windows. It was a long time coming, and the decision wasn’t an easy one. But what Apple offers, especially in Indian market, isn’t worth the price. The lineup from its competitors doesn’t allow them and their users to justify their crazy costs. They need a cheaper, better alternative to compete. They needed to replace Air, not launch a new range. They have now failed to do it for 3 years. And I can wait no longer.

Will Apple’s devices be more durable? Sure. Does it justify to pay, for an entry-level Air, twice the cost of a fully loaded Dell? Absolutely not.

So I have got a Dell now. I am not really worried about the switch to Windows 10 — I do use it in office. I had also analysed my software usage, and except for Markdown writers, there’s nothing software-wise that I will miss. My primary need, other than writing, is coding and Microsoft has me covered with VS Code and WSL. Sure, I will miss Terminal, but I think I will manage without it.

I am, however, a bit worried about the out-of-box experience, given OEMs are known for screwing Microsoft up with their customisations. Not sure if there are any must-dos and must-haves on a new Windows device. I will look out for any input I can gather. Overall, I guess I would do fine.

Of course, I will hold my judgement till I use the device regularly and extensively. My current Macbook Pro has served me well. I wish Apple hadn’t forced me with their utter lack of inclination to improve their entry-level offerings. They won’t grow into developing markets unless they stop selling the same old story.

Irrespective of what the popular belief is, the need for social networks is not going away — more so amongst those who are not technology oriented. Sure, some particular services that exist today may die down. But the medium won’t.

Just look at the history of the social media structures on the Internet. There has always existed a network of some form where every person that was connected could hang out. The initial users that adopted the digital life were techies, so their solutions were comparatively tech-savvy. I remember I have spent hours discussing and debating with my friends on IRC channels and on email groups and on XMPP-based IM clients.

I believe even in the world where not everybody and everything was connected, there existed mediums to communicate, to interact, to share. They might have been analog, or of forms that needed one to be in the presence of others. But they existed nonetheless.

In today’s age of smartphones, it’s become a lot simpler to get online and be “connected” with others. As a result, there are more people, more common non-techies, who are always on the look out for simpler ways to share their thoughts once they get online and stay in touch with others. They will sign-up with any service that promises them that. And they did.

Sure, the proponents of the open internet, myself included, dislike the current social networking behemoths - Facebook, and Twitter. But I think it is important to not let the disdain for these specific platforms turn into a complete rejection of the medium itself. There will always exist some structure that can facilitate communication in the form of text, images and other share-worthy stuff. The state became dire when we let a set of private entities wall this structure in their silos.

No doubt, Facebook and Twitter are in decline today. But the terrible scenario can recur if the common, but rising set of connected users is not provided with more open, more interoperable alternatives that are equally engaging and simple to use. And do so before other silos take over the medium again.

I know of the services that already meet the “open and interoperable” characteristic. But the majority contenders reek of “by-the-techies-for-the-techies” fervour. So there’s still a long way to go to meet the “engaging and simple” part — the one closest is Micro.blog. I believe there exists a group of brilliant minds that understands the importance of addressing this. It is incumbent upon this group to work towards that.

I have recently been thinking a lot about making it easier for people to interact on my posts. The commenting systems of yesteryears served well till they were completely ruined by spams and unnecessary hurdles around setting them up and managing them.

Since I embraced the IndieWeb, I realised that webmentions can potentially address this need. One primary reason that I believe they can fare better than the existing commenting system is the required skills barrier to get started.

But I was afraid that the same barrier to “entry” would also mean not everyone could comment on my posts. It could potentially limit the audience, especially one that interacts, to the developer niche that understands IndieWeb. But I was pleased that wasn’t the case. More on why later, first a quick comment on comments.

I am not alone who is fed up of the commenting systems. Dave Winer has since long turned off the responses on his posts. And in recent times he also has been particularly unhappy with Disqus, his selected replacement to the in-built responses. So, he found out his way to enable a commenting mechanism that did not need constant managing. Plus at the same time, had an entry barrier of sorts. He now uses Twitter reposts for comments.

Use the [retweet] feature here on Scripting News more. It’s a way to comment on what’s going on here, without using Disqus.

Sure, it meets the need. You need not manage a separate commenting system. You can follow tweets on Twitter - they are closer to post on Twitter. And Dave publishes RSS feed of all the comments. So he, and the readers, can receive all the comments.

For me personally though, this does not meet the one main criteria - it keeps the responses away from the posts, hence from the context. And inadvertently from the readers too. There’s no way then to inspire any inclination amongst readers to contribute and be part of an ongoing conversation on the post.

So, back to webmentions. I can display mentions along with my post (and with this recent guide I had written, you can too) and that means any reader at my blog is aware of the sort of discussion that’s taking place over the post. If you see my recent posts, they have significant interactions between multiple people.

But where is this discussion taking place? And how can one be part of it? It’s primarily all happening on micro.blog. The platform fosters a pleasant community of many creative and open minds. It also encourages meaningful conversations over mindless reactions. And Manton, the mind behind Micro.blog, is a firm proponent of the open web.

I wish more people become part of the platform - better, support the platform by subscribing to the paid plans. And one of the ways I thought I can advertise the platform and bring it to the attention of many is by prominently displaying it along with posts. So, now for every posts on this blog with conversations at micro.blog, there will be a clear “Discuss on Micro.blog” link that takes you directly to the conversation thread (example). “You want to comment? Please join Micro.blog.”

That would, in addition, be a nudge to post a longer response on one’s own website.

My hope is this will exhibit the biggest asset of the micro.blog platform, it’s community, in context and as a result, inspire more people to join with a ready-to-access link to the place where the conversation is taking place. If a significant section of the platform users, one that can, starts to display the conversations (webmentions) and starts to include such links, we should soon have an extremely diverse set of users joining the platform.

2018, for me, was a year of many firsts. To be frank, I was uncharacteristically active overall — so much so that I startled myself at multiple times throughout the year with the liveliness. I possessed heaps of clarity in terms of what I was working on, both within and outside of the profession.

Sure, if I look outward, 2018 has left the world in complete disarray. There is chaos, unclarity all around. There is an inconspicuous tension building up in every part of the world. A lack of trust, faith in one another. In humanity.

2018 may very well be remembered as the year when the word “true” lost all its meaning. A fight to drum up the perception that my truth is the only truth made one insensitive of everything that was being said by anyone.

And it did get tiring. As Scaachi Koul rightly said, “2018 wore us all the hell out” (h/t Sameer Vasta). I empathise with her when she says

I am usually energized by arguing, by getting aggressive, by putting a name or a face to an enemy, online or otherwise. Not this year.

But then I have decided to remember 2018 for the goods it brought me personally.

I expressed. Kept churning up more longer posts and lots and lots of shorter microposts.

I captured. Snapped a significant part of my life as pictures. Posted them, shared them more.

I learnt. Understood. And got enamoured by IndieWeb.

I developed. Worked on so many new projects - many found useful even by few others.

I experimented. Recorded a first podcast episode. Started a new individual podcast.

Unlike me, I gave up a lot lesser in 2018. Almost everything I noticed above was taken to completion.

And most importantly, I lived. Quality time with people closest to me. Family reunions. Getaways. Holidays. Making new friends, in real and digital life.

Yep. I will remember 2018 as a year of being satisfied. And being alive. It is only fair to welcome 2019 with a clean, untidy slate.

A tale of two grumpy, old souls. And of forming of one unexpected bond, via one unlikely source. A tale of spreading love.

This is such fascinating write up by Sinclair Target on history behind the challenges RSS has faced over the years. And also why it just never managed to succeed — even though it had the backing of all the major publishers, at least everyone adopted and served it.

Today, RSS is not dead. But neither is it anywhere near as popular as it once was. Lots of people have offered explanations for why RSS lost its broad appeal. Perhaps the most persuasive explanation is exactly the one offered by Gillmor in 2009. Social networks, just like RSS, provide a feed featuring all the latest news on the internet. Social networks took over from RSS because they were simply better feeds. They also provide more benefits to the companies that own them.

RSS isn’t dead, yet. It still serves all the podcasts feeds, and there are a large number of users, including me, for whom it is the only source of any timeline of sort. But the fact cannot be denied that it does not draw any attention from big technology companies. With Firefox too recently dropping the built-in feed support, it became clear everyone wants the standard to exists but no one wants to work on improving and maintaining it. Wish it did not stagnate.

RSS might have been able to overcome some of these limitations if it had been further developed. Maybe RSS could have been extended somehow so that friends subscribed to the same channel could syndicate their thoughts about an article to each other. Maybe browser support could have been improved. But whereas a company like Facebook was able to “move fast and break things,” the RSS developer community was stuck trying to achieve consensus. When they failed to agree on a single standard, effort that could have gone into improving RSS was instead squandered on duplicating work that had already been done.

I believe that is the story of how standards proliferate. But I just hope more people realize the importance of the RSS standard for the existence of open web and work on evangelizing and advance it.

If we stay dependent on technology companies to back it, we will always end-up with siloed timelines. For them, achieving consensus and coexisting with other players is costlier. It is cheaper to foster user engagement in a walled platforms controlled centrally by the owners. Companies will always go with the cheaper options.

For them, the walk was supposed to be about finding something that was lost. He, however, had a hidden agenda of his own — that of finding “someone”.

He anticipates this to be the best day of his life. He wants to relive this same day repeatedly. She believes she can help him. Or just herself.

Introducing Third-Person Voice - a weekly microcast, featuring short stories penned and narrated by me. This is a teaser, episode 0 if I may, of what’s to come.

This is such a fascinating read — so detailed on how Andrey Sitnik planned for and went through this arduous experiment.

Then I asked myself if ‘technological fasting’ could do one good in modern society. Technology has changed the world in the blink of an eye, leaving us no time to reflect on it. What if a month without modern technology could ‘travel’ you to the past? What if there is a way you could compare your technology-relying self to what you once were?

It is really curious to read how the analogue tools — for his camera, his watch, a map, a compass and of course a notepad and a pen - were key in taking him through. Of course, it needs planning to keep your brain busy without a stream of digital updates and reads to chomp on. To keep feeding it with activities.

Boredom was the thing that scared me the most, so I did a lot of preparation: took a few thick books, drew up a schedule (when I leave one place for another) and made up several evening rituals to follow every day. The internet-less reality turned out to be a boredom-less one, too. Recreation does not require anything special—in the end, you can always go out and hunt for good photos.

I wish I could undertake such an abstinence from the technology around me. Not because I hate my current state (doesn’t mean I do not even). But because I wish I too could arrive at a conclusion very similar to Andrey’s.

I came to the conclusion that IT hadn’t changed the world around, but created another, a parallel one. The reason we are always nervous and never have enough time is that we are living two lives now. It’s without a doubt difficult, yet how interesting it is to be living two times as much!

Do read this — even though we know most deep down the ills of our constant connectedness, it is eye-opening to read someone record his experiences. If possible, we should take Andrey’s advice. I, for sure, am seriously considering it.

I would not recommend digital fasting to everyone, but a temporary abstinence of some sort seems a very right thing to do

Retweets prey on users’ worst instincts. They delude Twitter users into thinking that they’re contributing to thoughtful discourse by endlessly amplifying other people’s points—the digital equivalent of shouting “yeah, what they said” in the midst of an argument. And because Twitter doesn’t allow for editing tweets, information that goes viral via retweets is also more likely to be false or exaggerated. According to MIT research published in the journal Science, Twitter users retweet fake news almost twice as much as real news. Other Twitter users, desperate for validation, endlessly retweet their own tweets, spamming followers with duplicate information.

This is exactly the reason Twitter needs to eliminate retweet feature first — a lot before their proposed killing of the like button. It doesn’t matter how valuable the retweet option is as a signal to Twitter’s algorithm. It has for long been exploited to make it a hostile platform for every voice that should matter. And it needs to disappear first.

But what is true today is that not all Chinese phone software is bad. And when it is bad from a Western perspective, it’s often bad for very different reasons than the bad Android skins of the past. Yes, many of these phones make similar mistakes with overbearing UI decisions — hello, Huawei — and yes, it’s easy to mock some designs for their obvious thrall to iOS. But these are phones created in a very different context to Android devices as we’ve previously understood them.

The Chinese phone market is a spiraling behemoth of innovation and audacity, unlike anything we’ve ever seen. If you want to be on board with the already exciting hardware, it’s worth trying to understand the software.

What Chinese smartphones offer is the feature parity in hardware with high-end devices from well-known brands, like Apple, Samsung, at a price which is affordable to the mainstream market. It is difficult to convince someone to buy an iPhone when all the devices are presented along with their specs. Doesn’t matter then if the software experience is ripped off.

What I feel is troubling though and a thing that gets neglected is the durability of these devices. The maximum life of these is what the warranty is - typically an year. Most often, these devices start failing at performance or battery or overall system level even before it hits that period. And when it does, there always are new cheaper devices to replace them with.

This will never get covered by reviews — because reviewers move on to the new, shiny devices in a week or two. It’s the mainstream that suffers. However, brands that overcome this behaviour outlive ones that fade away sooner.

This is not a post where I be a tech pundit, read tea leaves scattered all over the internet and predict what Apple is going to launch on the upcoming October Apple event. Nope. These are the things I wish Apple launches. Some because I need them now. Some because I would eventually need them.

1. Non-TouchBar Macbook Pro: I need this, my old MBP is crying out loud at this point. It needs to be replaced. I wish Apple updates this version with new keyboards.
2. Macbook Air: If my first wish is not granted or is granted, but does not solve the keyboard problem, I will go with an Air. Current Air is a mockery with that dated screen and processor and the tiny storage. Just update those, keep everything the same. Don’t touch that keyboard (no pun intended). And don’t make Macbook One the new Air in its current form — one port is not enough.
3. Non-Pro iMac: If you can give me a laptop, give me the updated iMac. Again, change nothing big. Just update the processor and if possible, get rid of that 5400rpm hard drive. Just make Fusion drive the default.
4. Mac Mini: You know there is that tiny device being sold on that tiny corner of your website right? Yeah that, update that. I would love to have it run some side projects.
5. iOS changes for iPad: I know you will refresh iPad Pros. But in the current form, the iOS platform seems underwhelming on these loaded iPad devices. Make it do more. To start with, get rid of that static-grid springboard.

I wish Apple goes crazy a bit. It is ok to be doing the stuff thoughtfully, making things that work well. That sell well. But at times, it is also important to stop being “boring” and do more stuff that you don’t know how people will react to. Things like Pencil. Or AirPods. Or even Surface Studio from Microsoft.

These look like such simple questions, but am sure one can’t get all right. Even when you employ the internet. Is that’s the case, how can complex claims made during election period?

This election season before you share, decide, vote, double-check.

It’s time for Apple product launches. And so is the time for all the talks of -gates and sheeples and reality distortion. There’s so much noise this time with iPhone XR screens. Typical comments from most folks.

• “..just 326 ppl in 2018? WTF?”
• “..not even 1080p screen? How will it play 1080p videos?”

I get it, both are facts. iPhone XR is not a full-HD screen and has a pixel density way lower than it’s better sibling XS. But does it deserve all the brickbats? Am not sure about that. This is the screen configurations of all the lowest configuration iPhones over the year (since Retina displays were introduced).

I hope one can get the trend with this. Since the time retina screens were launched, pixel density of lowest configuration iPhone has always been 326ppi. And iPhone XR is that device this year. So it gets that screen. Sure, Apple always has a Plus size device with a better resolution screens. That need is addressed by XS this year.

So am not sure why there is such a huge pushback on XR devices. If reviews are anything to go by, these screens are just as good as Apple’s LCD screens have ever been. Are there cheaper Android devices that have screens with better resolutions? Of course. There will always exists cheaper devices with better configuration on paper than iPhone. But I think one thing tech nerds should have learnt by now, Apple never plays the configuration game.

I have lately felt hindered by the time I am listening to the same repetitive thoughts from other people on podcasts. Experts talking about, dissecting, the tech news. Or blabbering about something I would not be interested in typically.

I realised it had become a problem when these podcasts kept playing as static noise in the background — irrespective of whether I was working or driving or eating breakfast. In that sense, I agree with CGP Grey’s thoughts on podcasts as he dialled down his consumption on the internet.

But podcasts have taken too much ground in my mind: any moment of idleness can be instantly filled with the thoughts of others.

I firmly believe that boredom is good for brain health, and I’m banishing podcasts for the month from my phone to bring boredom back into my life.

I had cut back on my podcast subscriptions just a week before CGP Grey first talked about his experiment on Hello Internet. And the way, he worded his reasons for why giving up on podcasts was a key part of his experiment to reduction just persuaded me to go ahead with my plan.

So I have 10 subscriptions (down from 35) now, with just 3 technology related podcasts. One releases on Monday, another on Wednesday and the last one on Friday. That’s it, the week’s quota of the technology news is covered. One podcasts is a microcast, arrives on Monday. There four are the only ones that are set to auto-downloads. All the remaining 6 are released without any fixed schedule. I decide whether to listen to them only after I read what they are about and if that interests me.

I have been on this “diet plan” of podcasts consumption for at least a month now and I am already observing significant differences. I am listening to music, a lot more, again. My mind has become curious again - there is space for some thought experiments. There are times when I just don’t carry my headphones with me even when I am going to places alone. Anyway, with nothing to listen to, there is no incentive to carry them along. So I either read on my phone or just talk to people around. Surprisingly, I find it a lot better, more effective use of the time.

However, this also means I have some time to fill during my drive to office or the morning/evening runs. To address that, I have renewed my Audible subscription — listening to Audiobooks would at least be better than podcasts. Or so I think, for now.

No-news Experiment

I was also on an experiment 3 months back where I had decided that the only way I would consume news would be via my morning newspaper. And my hypothesis was I would feel a lot less burdened to know what’s going on and so be a bit more focused on the work at the hand.

As an extension, I had also uninstalled all the related apps. No Twitter. No news apps. No notifications from social apps (Messages, WhatsApp). The idea was it is just better to stay away from the temptation to check what’s going on.

I am glad that I have following the set rules for 3 months now and I thought it would be right moment to update on that experiment.

It indeed is a not less burdensome to be away from the news. I do not think I have missed anything major or urgent in these last few months. Newspaper provides me with the detailed reporting and not just blurbs. Opinion pieces provide better context on the important ones. The useless news, whose whole purpose is to satisfy the need for the news website or TV channels to keep “reporting” something, anything new, get filtered out by the editors. After all, there is a limited pace to fill in the pages on the printed paper.

So I am no longer bludgeoned with a constant stream of everything that’s negative. With that, I think there is a lot less crap in the world than I was made to believe.

Is it bad out there? Sure. But at least I ain’t bogged down by the insignificant drivel that the world is full of.

I don’t understand Google’s call screening feature. How does it solve the spam calls problem? Don’t I have to be equally attentive when the call arrives? I don’t think the problem is I have to receive the call, problem is I get the call in the first place.

Rather I am more distracted reading transcripts and making decisions. It looks to be targeted at the automated machine-driven calls. Human spammers/scammers will still have to be handled.

In most cases, the spam calls I get start with a person, a human, asking if it indeed is me. Then goes on to specify the call is about some information related to my account or a service I am using. And then comes the “offer for you” part. I tend to disconnect right at first step when someone wants to know if me is indeed me.

What’s to say the call screening will transcribe something like “This is xyz from abc bank and this is a service information call.”?

Anyway, no doubt Google has a great technology at its hands and the showcase via this use case sounds a lot coherent than the general duplex demo we saw during I/O. I am just perplexed how everyone seems to be already sold that this solves the problem which it isn’t even targeting.

Update: The post isn’t intended to be judgemental of the feature, rather it was, to be frank, in response to the constant perspective of “this is so useful, I need it now” from all around. But I could hardly understand why. John Gruber’s this comment finally triggered this.

man oh man, do I want that feature (Call Screening) on iOS.

Even Sarah Perez described the problem with scam calls succinctly in her opinion piece at TechCrunch.

Nearly half of all cellphone calls next year will be from scammers. And their tactics have gotten much worse in recent months.

They now often trick people by claiming to be the IRS, a bank, government representatives, and more. They pretend you’re in some sort of legal trouble. They say someone has stolen your bank card. They claim you owe taxes. Plus, they often use phone number spoofing tricks to make their calls appear local in order to get recipients to pick up.

I get it, it’s a problem. But Call Screening solves it how? I could not find the answer to that question in the whole post.

Update: David has added a new function “to step around the issues micro.blog was having with images in Blot’s RSS feeds”. This change should allow using the Blot’s caching feature.

For all the defaults templates, David has already deployed the fix. So you should have the issue sorted without any update. If you have a custom template, to enable this change, wrap the html component around with the function absoluteURLs in your RSS file. For example, if you use html, use the below block in your description feed of your rss file (typically feed.rss).

{ {#absoluteURLs}} { { {html}}} { {/absoluteURLs}}

When you publish a micro post (one without title) on Blot which has images in it, Blot uses a CDN by default to store for these images. Though it may be helpful overall in blog performance, it causes some issues while interoperating with micro.blog. You will find that these images are not visible on its timeline.

It’s a known issue where micro.blog is unable to parse these images. To enable the images posted on Blot to appear on micro.blog timeline, make following changes with the configuration.

1. You can disable the blot cdn. This option is available on the Blot settings page under Settings > Services > Cache And Optimize Images. This makes the images be served directly under your blog’s domain. This change does not take much time to propagate, you will see the change reflect in the url for the images.
2. In addition, by default (in most themes), images may have relative urls. For example, you might just put \_images\<IMAGE_NAME> while adding the image to the post. However,these relative paths are again not parsed by micro.blog well (though most feed readers do it well). Anyway, to overcome this problem just include the complete url of the image while adding it (for example, http://<BLOGNAME>/<PATH>).

These changes should be enough to allow your images to be visible at m.b timeline.

It’s been some time now that I have started again to regularly write, post my thoughts. Long and short. One of the key reason for this change in my behaviour, my returned inclination to write has been the changed follow behavior. I am reading interesting posts that make me think, that make me question my beliefs. And for each such question, I have a reaction — a post.

It is all thanks to the community at Micro.blog for convincing me that every post, irrespective of how short it is, is worth putting out there. It is a way to be social. I was doing so on other social networks like Twitter anyway - through all the likes, tweets and retweets. Why not take it to the next level and do the same on, as Brent Simmons had called it, the social network - the web?

But if you think of the years 1995-2005, you remember when the web was our social network: blogs, comments on blogs, feed readers, and services such as Flickr, Technorati, and BlogBridge to glue things together.

And so that is what I have been doing. Reading from the web, reacting on the web - my website.

IndieWeb also played a huge part in helping me to go social on web though. It allowed me to post to my site my reactions to what I was reading on web. I could easily like a post, reply to it or even repost part of it and that in itself became a new post on my site - I called them the social posts. So as long as I had the posts tagged with appropriate microformats and was able to send a webmention to a site, I was interacting on web.

I need not be part of any siloed platform, I need not shout. All that mattered was I expressed. And just with that, I have been the most social I ever was online.

I am a serial procrastinator, I am not proud of it. Any hint of a distraction and I go crazy running behind that.

I also lack the skill to follow a routine. I lack the drive to not miss the day-to-day “schedule” every day, weekday and weekend alike. I think I have been shaped by the societal dislike for any thing routine. “Routine is boring”, I have been told since childhood. But I am slowly coming to realise that a daily routine may be the best solution to my procrastination problem.

My dad loves his routine. He wakes up at exactly the same time daily, carries out the same morning choir. He goes for his morning walk. Follows that up with his morning tea and a newspaper. He gets ready for his office. He has his lunch and drives to his office. Spends the same amount of time working. Comes back at home at exactly the same time. A serial or two on television, then dinner. Plan and prepare for the next day. Gets his end of day dose of news. Finally, he goes to bed just as he wakes up, at same time daily. And I have seen him following this routine of his at least since I remember. And even being close to sixty, he looks a lot less tired and a lot more fresh than any of us in thirties do.

Procrastination is a blanket idea all problems are swept under. But it’s the lack of routine which causes most of the issues in the first place. A routine may lend that time to procrastinate at that odd moment.

And the current lifestyle of mine is largely at fault. I tend to spend time in office till the work is done, which rarely gets done in time anyway. All that causes is random office hours. I do things which do not fit in the regular schedule - I would watch a live match or binge watch a new series late into the night. Weekends are marked for getaways, that means just lazy around, neither being productive nor relieved. I never go to sleep on time, so I never wake at the same time.

So, on this birthday I decided to stop leading my life so. I am going to follow a routine. I have been sleeping on the same time, getting up on the same time. Reaching office and leaving for home at the same time. I next need to plan the rest of the day too, fit my other interests around the routine tasks.

I need to get inspired by my dad. Doesn’t matter then if I get called a bore. I believe it would be worth it if I am at least a tad more satisfied.

I read this interesting perspective from Bálint where he argues that “Chrome is a Google Service that happens to include a Browser Engine”. I understand where he is coming from, but I believe the thought process needs to be dealt with and curbed before it gets commonly accepted.

Sure, Google would want to believe that Chrome is just one of their many services — it suits their business model. When they can move their trackers (and eventually ads) right to the tool that people access the internet with, they would know what everyone’s doing on the internet. But Google should not be allowed to get away by dumping the idea down its user’s throat. Sure, normal people may not be able to differentiate how logging in to a service and to Chrome is different. Or how login/session cookies for Google may screw up the security model on a shared computer.

But that exactly is the reason why people who understand better need to voice their disapproval. It is easy to say that it’s not a big deal as I am already better informed to not use Chrome. But it is also reckless — Chrome has already become a de facto browser for mainstream users. It’s a wrong precedent then to let people who cannot fully grasp (or aren’t inclined to out of sheer neglect) the basic underpinnings of the open web to drive what’s acceptable for a browser, and on the web. If that was allowed, Net neutrality would already have been a lost battle worldwide. Such decisions tend to be uninformed and harm the community in the longer run.

An internet service is a different entity, it serves a specific purpose. It solves a specific problem that an end user has. Gmail is an email client. YouTube is a video sharing service. Google Search is… well, it has long since stopped being just a search engine. But, one gets the idea. You access a URL and it brings you to the service.

Chrome is not that. Chrome is a tool that allows users access these different services. And it is better if it stays that way. It’s already bad that all browsers come with an incognito mode by default. It would be important that we do not introduce another mode just to go incognito from the owners of the browsers.

I am sure Bálint will agree and his final thought kind of sums it well.

Part of me feels that this Chrome shared computer issue that Googlers mentioned is real, but it’s also just too convenient to solve this by tieing Chrome closer to Google, you know?

A brutal takedown of Facebook from John Oliver, and he still didn’t touch so many of the nasty problems from across the world that Facebook has caused. The platform is indeed shit. Or as John puts it, even worse.

Calling Facebook a toilet is a little unfair to toilets. Because they make shit go away whereas Facebook retains shit, disseminate it amongst your acquaintances and remind you of shit from 7 years ago, allowing corporations to put more shit in front of you. There is a purity and integrity to toilets that Facebook seriously lacks.

There is a fascinating conversation on episode 97 of the Criminal podcast with the now 99 year old Benjamin Ferencz. He primarily talks about his experiences as an investigator of Nazi war crimes after the World War II. There are some gut-wrenching stories about the atrocities he witnessed against Jews, and against humanity. He also shares his experiences of his trial against the “high-ranking members of Nazi Germany’s death squad”, a trial that he called “the plea of humanity to the law”.

But towards the end of the episode, there is this heart-warming tale from Mr. Ferencz. He talks about his wife who is 5 years older than him; whom he has been married to for last 72 years; whom he had never had a quarrel with. And he believes there is a very simple reason for that.

“First of all, I am not suggesting we didn’t have differences of opinion. But we never raised our voice. We never shouted. We never pounded a table. Because it’s mutual respect, and caring for each other. They have a funny word for it that I don’t like - love. I don’t like the word. Because you could love a piece of cheese, you love that lovely day. I could love to go home. I would love to finish this interview. And I say if you say caring for somebody, that reflects better. And my wife now needs my care. This is the pay back time.”

Now and again, it helps to keep things simple - I guess experience must imbue you with such clarity of thoughts. From all the myriad of swanky adulations for the word and the feeling of “love”, I would prefer the simplicity of “caring for somebody”.

I believe “all data is anonymised” has to be the biggest lie all these data hoarding and advertising companies tell its customers. With the amount of data they have, they can build an extremely accurate profile of any user, doesn’t matter if individual data point is anonymised.

This is such a fascinating read — I don’t think it is a stretch to think there would be teens who would be overwhelmed by the burden of being social digitally. The below excerpt made be really ponder how a generation older behaves might me affecting the generation next.

The fact that Gen Z have had their every move documented online since before they could walk, talk, or even control their bowels helps explain their antipathy to social media: it makes sense for them to strive for privacy, as soon as they reach the age when they have a choice over their online image.

“I’ve seen parents post pictures of their child’s first potty online,” says Amy Binns of the University of Central Lancashire. “You think: ’Why are you doing this to your child? They wouldn’t want this to be public.”

This article has left me with so questions to mull over.