By now, the privacy threats posed by Amazon Alexa and Google Home are common knowledge. Workers for both companies routinely listen to audio of users—recordings of which can be kept forever—and the sounds the devices capture can be used in criminal trials.

Now, there’s a new concern: malicious apps developed by third parties and hosted by Amazon or Google. The threat isn’t just theoretical. Whitehat hackers at Germany’s Security Research Labs developed eight apps—four Alexa “skills” and four Google Home “actions”—that all passed Amazon or Google security-vetting processes. The skills or actions posed as simple apps for checking horoscopes, with the exception of one, which masqueraded as a random-number generator. Behind the scenes, these “smart spies,” as the researchers call them, surreptitiously eavesdropped on users and phished for their passwords.

These horror stories of privacy violations on smart speakers are unending. There are just a few options here.

1. Don’t have anything, that has a mic or camera and is connected to the internet, around you.
2. If that’s too much for you, don’t have any smart speakers in your home. Use your smartphone to connect to a good old Bluetooth speaker.
3. If you do want a smart speaker around, learn you to use it cautiously. Switch it off when not needed. Use the mute option. Do not, do not install any third-party skill on the device. Let only Google and Amazon track you. At the very least, they can be held accountable.

John Gruber wonders what’s holding Instagram back from launching a Instagram for iPad. Especially when they adjusted their app for Galaxy Fold.

Instagram is willing to update their Android app to adjust to the extraordinarily niche Galaxy Fold, but still hasn’t updated their iOS app to adjust to the extraordinarily popular and much-used iPad?

I feel there are a couple points here that might help understand this.

1. Instagram still believes it is a creative photo sharing application first. This is what the first line on their homepage reads - “a simple, fun & creative way to capture, edit & share photos, videos & messages”. They possibly want more creators on their platforms than passive consumers of the stream of photos. For them then, iPad is not a good device for taking pictures.
2. According to them, Galaxy Fold is still a smartphone first with a first rate camera system. So, it deserves providing the first rate experience of using Instagram.

Of course, how true this assumption is, is debatable.

It was exactly a year ago that I had posted an update on my then-recently undertaken no-news experiment. It primarily involved -

• consuming news only through the morning newspaper
• no news related apps on my phone
• no notifications from social apps (including messages, WhatsApp)

I am pleasantly surprised that the things begun then have more or less stayed the same. I still consume my news primarily from the morning newspaper. I still avoid visiting the news website. I still have the notifications from social apps disabled. For that matter, I have become more aggressive in disabling notification access to any app.

The only deviation has been that I have installed a few news apps on my phone. I always had that urge to open some editorial on the browser when my mind was momentarily free. This minor change has quenched that.

Of course, I am still extremely picky about which apps get installed. I have installed only a couple of news curating apps (also known for doing their job well). And The New York Times app.

Digital Detox - No YouTube

I have also recently undertaken a digital detox experiment. I want to check which additional service I can get off my routine. It should be something that I carelessly spend a lot of time on.

I had recently been consuming a lot of stupid content on YouTube. I used to open the app every time I had some free time at hand. Or for that matter even when I was busy doing something else. It garnered a subconscious tap. Such absent-minded behaviour is never healthy.

So I have planned to be off YouTube for at least a month to reset the terms of my relationship with this service. It has been 15 days now and I already feel better. I no longer have that urge to tap into YouTube any more. I have observed am following my routine a lot better.

However, YouTube has become too important a destination for all kinds of videos. That includes videos relevant to my work too. So it is difficult to completely get rid of the access to the service.

Of course, then, I plan to allow access to the app in a controlled manner. This time, however, I will set the terms again consciously. I am also planning to clear the YouTube view history before I do that. I believe this will help me reset the recommendations. I am, however, yet to decide the exact terms under which the service will be allowed back.

During this month of digital detox, I also plan to indulge myself with some analogue activities that I had never done before. I have started doodling more. Sure, am not good at it. But I hit the web for inspiration and try to simply emulate.

I am also spending dedicated time with my daughter without any digital devices around. It can be as less as 15 minutes. Involving simple talks. Or some silly games. But it has to be focused time.

It is too early to see the effects of all this. One thing is for sure, though. I feel a tad less burdened on the inside.

Tik Tok is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on US social networks convincing US consumers, in particular kids, to download and use the app. This is fucking brilliant, by the way.

I have managed to stay away from this “social phenomenon” - but am always impressed with the creativity on display in the app. Everytime that happens, I cautiously move away - I do not want another mindless entertainment fighting for my attention.

And am not even thinking about the political backdrop and its effects - which this essay from John Battelle nicely summaries.

Nice reminder from Dave Winer (who else) on what blogs are not.

You imagine that your blog is lonely and angry that you’re not visiting, but that’s purely a figment of your imagination. The blog doesn’t exist in any corporeal sense. It has no thoughts or feelings. I doesn’t give a shit if you live or die, because it doesn’t have an ego, it doesn’t care about anything.

Yep. There’s no reason to not have a blog. Get some space for yourself on the web - select any platform that lets you do so for free. Write anything. Or just share links and pictures.

Don’t look at numbers. Don’t promote. Don’t yearn for likes or replies. It is a chore that will hamper your interest. Get rid of such mindless distractions. Forget your blog exists if you want. It won’t feel bad. But next time you have a thought, just put it on there. No one will mind.

Derek Sivers recently wrote about how he does not prefer using automation for things that he would better do himself. Or he enjoys doing manually. According to Derek, the decision of whether one wants automation or not comes down to is this.

how much of an expert you are at controlling this thing yourself, how much you still enjoy doing it, if you want the kind of assistance it provides

I believe there is one more aspect that drives this decision for me - how convenient will the automation make my life after all? And what is the the cost associated with automating that?

The price one pays might be in terms of the personal data he or she needs to relinquish. This is relevant primarily when the automation workflows are built and served ready-made by the companies. For example, as part of various functions of the smart assistants.

It can also be in terms of the actual time one has to put in to build the overall automation workflow. This comes into picture when you are linking multiple applications and services to get a use-case handled. For example, while using Shortcuts or IFTT, Zapier and likes.

In both the cases, whether I want the automation or not is a trade-off between the efficiency I gain due to the automation and the price I have to pay for that.

On a recent busy Friday morning, I hopped into my cab on my way to the office. I was about to isolate myself by plugging my ears with an audiobook. Right about that time, I heard a voice in Hindi, a local Indian language, giving directions to my Uber driver. It made me pause and ponder on how ubiquitous the technical solutions have become. A large section of society has learnt to start carrying these powerful devices along. And this change alone has made some complex businesses more accessible.

Many, especially Apple, mock Android for being “a cesspool of cheap, sluggish devices”. But it is Android that has put this change on the fast track. I spent my hour-long ride by being a lot more attentive than isolated. I decided to look around to the individuals, running small and medium businesses, using digital solutions. Almost everyone was flaunting some form of an Android device.

Uber drivers for managing their rides and the routes. Small shop owners for accepting digital payments. Delivery-only restaurants for accepting orders. Food delivery agents running around on bikes to find the next order to be delivered. Part-time “service experts” on the look-out for their next housekeeping jobs. And many more individual or small group ventures.

There is no doubt that the always-connected¹ and accessible Android devices have enabled all these use cases. The two combined have also managed to pull millions of more people into the digital age. Sure, iOS might be the more secure, more private platform that’s better for everyone. But it is not for everyone because it is not affordable to everyone.

We need to credit Google for fostering a platform that attracts more and more OEMs. This makes the platform a lot more usable for the majority section of the world. And they continue to lessen the needs of the platform, recently with the introduction of the Go edition. No doubt, it suits and assists their business model. However, it doesn’t matter. They do that so, in their own words, “even the most affordable Android smartphones are as sweet as can be”. I’ve come to believe that. Kudos!

Yes, let’s make the technology affordable for more people so that they too can benefit from the new-age advances. And while we do that, let’s also make the same affordable technology powerful. Because when we do that, we open more ways the people can earn, can learn, can connect, can be part of the world.

1. Duplex on Chrome? Sorry, not for me. Google wants Chrome to be a platform — but it already runs on another platform, my OS. And in here, I want it to stay a browser. Chrome OS can go as wild as Google wants. Not the regular browser. Another reason I stay a Firefox user.
2. Apple today released iOS 13.1.2 and iPadOS 13.1.2. And users are still reporting on some unfixed bugs, even those that Apple claims they have fixed. Has there been any iOS release that has been buggier than this? I hope introduction of iPadOS hasn’t affected the dev team, that was already thin, further. That, at this point, looks to be a strong possibility.
3. When Apple Arcade and TV+ are priced aggressively as they are, the high subscription cost of Apple News+ sticks out. Is it driven by Apple or the publishers? If we don’t see a course correction soon, I doubt it is the later.
4. Music is priced exactly the same. So may be, it is driven by who owns the primary content that Apple provide subscription for?
5. A couple of Surface devices that Microsoft plans to release in their upcoming event have leaked. More than the Surface laptops (which unfortunately look may too similar to MacBook Pros - so much for differentiating), I am always excited about the 2-in-1 devices from Microsoft. I find the hinge designs in there to be really well done, with some crazy low angles!

I am not a gamer. I cannot play a single-person shooter. I was ok with this particular style of gaming when it was on desktop, with a keyboard and a mouse. On mobile, I am terrible. I just can’t make sense of the direction or speed. And completely pathetic in multiplayer situations.

Same applies to the racing games. It was ok till it was simple lane following games, like Road Fighter. But then they become a lot more real.

Actually, the quest to be more real with the gameplay and the graphics killed this form of media for me. It made the controls a lot more convoluted to be fun any more. Arcade-type games had some breezy liveliness to them. But gradually, gaming became a lot more serious, a lot more pro for my casual taste. These pros ruined the arcade in a way.

Of course, that doesn’t mean there do not exist casual games. There do. However, most of them are ruined by the freemium model. And I am not the first one complaining about this.

But what that meant was even the casual gamer in me had recently died — pushed way back for the fear of the effort it would take to find that one good, clean casual game. Like Monument Valley or Alto’s Adventure.

So I was pretty excited with the announcement of Apple Arcade. I am especially pleased with Apple’s aggressive pricing and push in the non-US markets and the initial reviews of the games. These sound like the games that match my taste.

I hope these stay the way they are currently. I hope the pros do not ruin the Arcade again.

I wonder what the purists think of the recent computational photography trend.

Google started it with its all-in-cloud touch up of the photos. And then they moved it on-device in the camera app. Every photo one took was stitched together from multiple shots with different settings. And eventually each OEM made their cameras smarter, “AI-driven”.

Latest iPhone 11 stitches a single photo from 4 under exposed frames taken before the shutter button is clicked, one normal picture and 1 over exposed frame. They call this process semantic rendering. What follows is some heavy processing. Here’s snippet from the The Verge’s review of iPhone 11 Pro review.

Smart HDR looks for things in the photos it understands: the sky, faces, hair, facial hair, things like that. Then it uses the additional detail from the underexposed and overexposed frames to selectively process those areas of the image: hair gets sharpened, the sky gets de-noised but not sharpened, faces get relighted to make them look more even, and facial hair gets sharpened up. Smart HDR is also now less aggressive with highlights and shadows. Highlights on faces aren’t corrected as aggressively as before because those highlights make photos look more natural, but other highlights and shadows are corrected to regain detail.

What you get as a result is an extremely clear picture with each object in the photo appropriately visible.

But with so much processing of each image, should this even be called photography any more? Here’s Wikipedia introducing the term.

Photography is the art, application and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film.

What we do with our smartphones is neither an art nor is it creating a single image.

All parts of the photos are independently captured (and even pre-captured) with the best suited settings, processed post-capture, with even some live sections including audio recorded. This is not “creating an image” any more.

Someone might say it all started when the digital photography became mainstream - when the physical limitations of the analog methods did not constrain the person with a camera in his hand. However, what we capture is no longer a single image anymore. A more apt term for these might be “visual memories”. Common people are interested in doing just that, they don’t care if they are called photographers.

Let Photography stay an art.