Excursions

Notifications are distractions, but they don’t have to be — it calls for an aggressive behaviour on user’s part to manage them. Any app that needs my attention first has to convince me that it is worthy of that. It has to convince me that it deserves the right to break into my life, to barge into whatever am doing and make me acknowledge what it has to say.

What that means is no new app gets a default “Yes” from me for its “Enable Notifications” prompt. They are always disabled first. (Same applies to my privacy too. No app gets access to my location, even while running, or my photos or my contacts. No, always a no.)

Every app, at least on iOS, clearly communicates why it needs that privilege - by prompting at appropriate time, during an appropriate task. It is then that I make the call if that cause is indeed genuine.

And then there are those apps that make me anxious for their notifications, for some instant gratification they deliver (e.g. social media likes). I have realised one thing - these apps should not be allowed to light up my screen or vibrate in my pocket. Because valuable minutes and hours are lost in checking if they indeed have lighten up. It also grants me another incentive to access the app and follow what’s going on there. Of course, on my own terms this time.

Attention is a valuable asset, acquired with extreme difficulty, one that costs dearly to regain when lost. That device in your pocket is there to assist you, to save you time. Don’t let it steal this asset throughout the day.

“Google details how Chrome’s optional ad blocking, which goes live tomorrow, will work: which kinds of ads will trigger it, how Chrome will notify users, more”

It’s naive of Google to believe no will think it is intentional on Google’s part.

Biggest shortcomings of humanity come to fore when we stop appreciating others’ and their time’s worth. I see the behaviour play out way too often, in form of carelessness towards rules or towards ones who are following them.

A cause most often? Entitlement to frivolous stuff.

A great post from @colinwalker explaining his learnings from his Write365 challenge. It reminded me of one of my posts expressing a sentiment similar to one of his lessons — here’s my response.

AMP for Email →

Because AMP for Email is an open spec, we look forward to seeing how other email clients will adopt it, too.

Won’t it be available only on gmail, supported only by Chrome? Is it open in the same way as AMP? Or is it another attempt to break the last open system?

I watched the first season of Black Mirror completely. It took me at least a couple of days to get over the gloomy mood clouding my mind. It’s kept me away from the second season.

It is too dark for my liking, the real world as-is is no cheery place any longer.

I am surprised at the sheer scale of insider information that Gurman has managed to scoop. Especially so given that it is all software. That is one thing that is difficult to get out of Apple.

Information is too specific and too detailed to be just some hints floating around.

It is annoying to watch your hairline recede. It is even more annoying to be a mute spectator of the juggling act that gets payed every day over your head.

Of course, I had to write about the experience of these struggling, surviving fighters left behind.

A receding hairline poses a lot of annoyance for the owner of one. And I won’t even get into how painful it is to watch your forehead span further into your scalp with each passing day. That’s manageable. It’s the juggling act that gets played out everyday on your head that is crazy.

The remaining soldiers battling at fore-front start behaving like sore losers, running helter-skelter. But they are also wired for a sole task to cover the scalp, so they keep curling and furling all over the deserting scalp. Of course, failing terribly at their attempt to cover it to any convenient extent.

The dearth of much competition also makes every individual’s development feel brisk, the troop growing longer rather than denser. Given there remain very few of them, they get caressed more by the owner, pulling few out every time they are.

What this leaves behind is a scene akin to a movie theatre playing any recent M. Night Shyamalan movie. Very few that matter occupying the seats, scattered, with tons of empty spaces peeping all across.

🎵 A great song this - Here I dreamt I was an architect

I need to listen to more from this band - The Decemberists, for their great acoustic.

It’s difficult to maintain, support and improve legacy features. Always better to clean the slate and start fresh with a new design and current technology stack.

Unfortunately, that liberty is not accorded every time.

Alto’s back with a new adventure →

The main evolution is that Alto has learned to embrace his adventurous side: this time he is calling the shots and stepping out into the larger world on his own terms.

Exciting! 🤗

HomePod is speaker first, after all →

Siri on the HomePod doesn’t need to be terribly clever to keep up with Alexa in my house.

A great review by @jack about things that matter to a regular customer. Above statement resonated for me too — what Alexa gets asked is limited.

There is no better way to sign-off the week than enjoying a sumptuous meal with your family, sharing lots of stories & laughs and a cheery time together.

I wish there was a single place where I could see all my paid subscriptions. There is a reason at times I prefer subscribing via App Store, even if it is a buck costly.

I am not sure what the solution is, but there needs one given more services rely on a subscription model now.

Finally managed to document the journey embracing IndieWeb principles on my site built with Hugo. This has been a pretty satisfying project, especially given it has inspired me again to write more - and of course post to and from micro.blog.

I am seriously considering closing my gmail account. I am weary of dumping more and more of my data to Google data farm.

But I wonder what are the alternatives? Preferably hosted ones.

So the timeline is full of individual’s HomePod reviews. And almost everyone’s loving it. Hardly seen anyway complain about Siri yet.

I guess just the experience Apple wanted. I know, the frustrations will slowly trickle in. A good first impression nonetheless.

“Understand humility. Foster dignity. Live memorably. Endure.” →

“The night before I turned 30, I found myself so surprised to have reached an age of indisputable adult that I wrote up a set of”adult principles” that I’ve been trying to live up to.” - John Perry Barlow

RIP.

It’s mesmerising to wake up to some of the most beautiful creations of nature — a lot satisfying if it’s you who’ve nurture them.

Since the day I brought Echo in my home, I always wondered how smart the ecosystem of IOT devices really is. Kashmir Hill’s great post journaling her experience shows there’s a long way to go. I captured some of my observations.

I hate that my Kindle has great battery life — I keep running it for weeks for it doesn’t need recharged. But when I need my books the most, it throws the “battery depleted” message at me. Am just wired to charge my devices every night I guess, that must not be good.

Finally managed to catch up to the Falcon Heavy launch posts/videos. Gosh, it just was an inspiring experience to watch it, and see it being watched by thousands of eyes. More than the launch though, it was the twin landing which was breathtaking. Brilliant! 🚀

In response to a great article by Kashmir Hill on living in smart homes, I have captured some of my observations. Just reiterates, smart homes are still a lot dumb.

This is a really fascinating, and an extremely detailed account from Kashmir hill journaling her experiment of wiring her house to spy on her.

Why? Why would I do this? For convenience? Perhaps. It was appealing to imagine living like the Beast in the Disney movie, with animated objects around my home taking care of my every need and occasionally serenading me (…) But that wasn’t my primary motivation. The reason I smartened up my house was to find out whether it would betray me.

Of course, Kashmir’s being extremely daring (which she is known to be) to open her (and her family’s) life up to be monitored and analysed to such levels. And of course, there are some key findings, some already known (but still appalling), some new. Here are my few key observations.

1. Smart devices are still terrible to setup and keep up. It’s a technology of future, no doubt. But future is still not here.
2. There is still a big void for a single hub that talks to all smart devices. It is a broken bridge with silos all over the place.
3. Majority of the makers of appliances are still dependent on external, barely known solution providers for adding smarts. Dado Labs? Seriously?
4. None of the smart home devices follow any principles around handling the privacy and security of the data they engulf. Rather, no such standard principles are even debated over and agreed upon.
5. Smart home devices tend to ping their original homes, the servers, dial in and report on duty very frequently. Typically, for no good reason.

An exaggerated version of this was seen in the Echo and Echo Dot, which were in constant communication with Amazon’s servers, sending a request every couple of minutes to http://spectrum.s3.amazonaws.com/kindle-wifi/wifistub-echo.html. Even without the “Alexa” wake word, and even when the microphone is turned off, the Echo is frequently checking in with Amazon, confirming it is online and looking for updates.

Finally, your router remains the prominent data collector for your online presence. Your ISP, the prominent data aggregator. And neither are really too keen to protect your data online.

I guess everyone agrees that smart homes are dumb, and there are enough evidences of that pouring in every day. Problem is they are capable of knowing so much about you. And, at times, sending it out there in open without protecting it in any way — lending them a lot of power.

Dumb and powerful, now there’s the super villain from any sane person’s nightmare.