What pisses me off the most with Google’s Fitbit acquisition is the fact that Fitbit kept the fitness data always private, on their own servers. No way to even sync it with Apple Health. And now the only way to not share it with Google is to lose it all? That’s so wrong.

I intend to blog on each day during the month of November — and as a challenge, I wanted that post to be a flash fiction series. So I am writing a section every day as a response to the “mbnov” prompts. The posts tagged so are part of the larger story, do read along here.

“You don’t always have to be mean to others, Roy”. It was only a couple of weeks back when his fight with Mary got too heated. And nothing has been the same since. Even today he doesn’t remember what exactly happened that day. And even today Mary’s nowhere to be found. #mbnov

“Roy’s Abode is not fancy,” he was known to assert, “but it’s lively.” For a place that he occupied alone since Mary left him forever, it felt uncharacteristically lively even to him. The aura made Roy restless. A sudden, but gentle puff nudged the door closed behind him. #mbnov

He gawked at the unshut door. Was it his fuzzy memory playing games with him again? Wasn’t it only today that he’d locked his home? He stressed his mind to limits, but couldn’t recall. He gave up and entered the home, having missed a small but clear X mark on the door. #mbnov

He checked his pockets again. He was sure he’d locked the main door while leaving the home earlier. “Must have lost it,” he sighed. With pitch dark and drizzling outside, he scrambled up the stairs. And there he saw it. The keys, dangling eerily - with the main door ajar. #mbnov

I recently read through a few of my journal entries from a month back. The experience was refreshing, that too with just a month that’s been passed. It is the content, however, that I find extremely impressive. I had written so freely about everything. Not just the stuff happening with or around me. But thoughts, opinions, views about anything that I find interesting.

As I read through them, I wondered if any of the stuff that I had written was so secret that I cannot share openly. There are some parts which I would not like to talk publicly about. But that is true about only a handful of entries. A majority could very well have been a blog post.

Then why is it that I write a lot more freely in a journal? Is it because I believe no one will read it? And I subconsciously want others to read the blog posts? Maybe.

A quarter in, I had to stop reading Deep Work after another chapter trying to convince me why deep work is necessary. It was getting too repetitive. Sure, I understand the importance of deep work. Can we move on to the ways to be away from the distractions?

I kind of won’t mind if flip phones made a comeback. Not that they are the best form factor for a phone (especially a smartphone). But flat slate devices have gotten boring, common. Only natural that we are seeing more and more devices launched with moving parts.

I wonder what has caused a sudden surge of Bluetooth earbuds being made available in the market. I see almost every player - big and small - launching one of its own. Sure, Airpod’s a success. But it wasn’t the first one. Is it the lack of 3.5mm jack? And so was Apple right?

I am on a journey to consciously reclaim focus from the shambles of the distracting digital world. As part of the process, I have started actively following one more routine - I log out of every social media service once I have used it.

I have, since long, not had any social media apps on my mobile device. This has helped me reduce the subconscious pick-ups of the device. At the same time, it was really easy to access the service in a browser. Especially because it is just one tap away in my favourites. That’s as good as having an app on my device.

To deter these, I now log out of every service from my browser once I have used it. So, every time I am tempted to access any of these services, an additional step of logging in is needed. There’s also an added barrier of two-factor authentications for the services that support it. Cal Newport aptly captures this sentiment of mine.

By removing your ability to access social media at any moment, you reduce its ability to become a crutch deployed to distract you from bigger voids in your life.

All and all, this one step alone of logging in every time is enough to fool my lazy mind to stay away from these “crutches”. And hence not subconsciously spend any time on the services.

Update: I have already gotten rid of every social media platform I do not need (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat). I am active only on Twitter and Micro.blog. To reiterate, my logout routine is applicable to every site that serves feed of some kind. Including email, feed readers, instant messaging platforms etc.

Besides, I have started accessing these social services only at my desktop browser in Private mode (the Incognito mode in Firefox). So even if I forget to logout, it does not matter. Once the window is closed, all my session information is lost.

I believe this change should also help me from a privacy perspective. The belief is the cookies from these data-hungry social media services would not follow me as I browse around the Internet.

Can’t they? Won’t they? That’s a whole different discussion. But overall am spending a lot less time absentmindedly scrolling these stupid feeds. I feel a lot less burdened thanks to that.

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.

Infinite scrolling sucks. I hate that more and more websites are implementing this terrible feature. It fails user-experience wise. I am at your website to read a particular article — don’t try to entice me with another totally unrelated one.

If you do decide to support this feature, don’t plaster it over your existing website design. That footer you have at the end? Yeah, that’s not accessible. Contact information, copyright notices, nothing can be reached. (Update: This article by Adrian Roselli details more such points).

The only publication that I feel has done this well is TechCrunch. They have thought the experience through and designed the interfaces around that.

I understand why publications want this to succeed. It leads to more page views, and hence possibly to more advertising revenue. But I was pretty surprised to see that even Dave Winer felt the need to support it on his simple blog. Completely unnecessary.

Update: Another aspect I did not think of initially was around accessibility. It must be an extreme nightmare. I think it is an issue even bandwidth wise. Especially on mobile devices. So in short, just don’t implement this solution.

It’s so ironic that Google names one of the colours on pixel 4 as “Oh So Orange” and make it not orange at all. They could very well have named it as “Not Orange”. Plus what’s the recent craze of silly names? The “cute” colour names for the devices do not lead to more sales.

📚 Finished reading Sourcery. I usually enjoy the fantastical narration that Terry Pratchett weaves. But with this one, it was a tad bit incoherent. Some characters just weren’t fun, enjoyable. And they all combined failed to work well together. Rincewind to go on pause.

Early morning drive through the nature with a steady drizzle around is always rejuvenating. Especially with the windows rolled down!

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.

Apparently, Google’s face unlock on Pixel 4 can allow access to a user even if he has his eyes closed. This comes around the same time when a critical bug was detected in the fingerprint unlock on Samsung’s Galaxy S10 devices.

Both the companies put out a completely tone-deaf first response. Samsung, naively, suggested using their “authorised” accessories. Google, on the other hand, reiterated that theirs is a “strong biometric” solution.

I am really surprised by this callous attitude towards the user’s security on the devices.

Google preferred to focus on the gimmicks in Project Soli rather than strengthening the face unlock first. They felt a need to differentiate their face unlock feature from iPhone’s. Samsung felt the need to go with a different mechanism of the ultrasonic in-screen fingerprint reader. All others use optical ones.

This need to differentiate for the sake of differentiation is laughable.

A tweet from Rene Ritchie sums it nicely.

If we’ve learned anything over the last couple of days it’s that good biometrics take a lot of consideration.

Smartphones have become critical for many in their day-to-day use-cases, from identity to banking. And the inbuilt biometric solutions are increasingly being depended on to validate that identity. So the OEMs can’t afford a misstep with these solutions.

I hope the smartphone makers realize they can’t deal indifferently with the security of the devices.

I did not watch the Google event yesterday. And almost everyone is saying the actual event was a bit messy, boring. I guess it was good that I did not spend 2 hours then. I think recent events from all the companies have received similar criticisms — must be a trend.

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.

No doubt, pixel 4 looks a lot better than their previous versions - especially from the back. That camera module, especially, is cleaner as compared to the hideous one on iPhone 11. On the front, that top bezel is too big - looks outdated for sure.

With any event from Apple or Google, I made a point to catch it live. Not much for this one, as almost everything - including the buds - was leaked. That’s why you control the leaks - they mar the interest. And with that your best chance to market to masses.

Facebook has launched the next version of the Portal and The Verge has the review. After more than 1700 word, they end with this - “it’s still a camera connected to Facebook inside your home”. I think that is all the review could have read.

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.

I recently had my wisdom teeth extracted. Boy oh boy, if I had known earlier that the road to the recovery from this procedure is not straight forward, I would have never undergone this without much thought.

There are so many precautions to be taken — from keeping the mount clean to monitoring what you eat. This is in addition to easing the swelling and the pain. I would have liked to time this better. With just a day to go to start going to the office again, it would be some difficult times ahead.

Sure, my dentist did explain all the intricacies involved before the procedure. He also mentioned what all I would have to be careful about. But it was only once the teeth were pulled and the gums stitched back that I became cognizant of the complications.

And all this for a set of teeth whose only purpose is to jam up the number 32. Sigh!