Adtech is a cancer. It will eventually eat and destroy a business and more often than not its morals. You will only notice when it is too late.

It is disheartening to hear of a wildly successful business focusing more and more on ads and not on the products that made it a good business in the first place.

It will destroy this company.

19 April 2025 — French West Indies

Any online-only survey on the economy that asks how people are fairing is inherently flawed and cannot be taken too seriously.

The ones suffering are the ones that have no access to the internet and smartphones to be able to take part. So these surveys totally miss possibly the most important cohort in their analysis.

29 March 2025 — French West Indies

From Ars Technica:

“It feels like a fake technological solution for a problem that doesn’t exist,” she says. “I don’t think we were ever able to find an instance where people were using blockchain where they couldn’t use existing tools.”

From a technology consultant helping large-scale humanitarian organisations adopt technology.

I’ll say it again, blockchain is a slow, wasteful database that at best is a curiosity and not GDPR compliant.

It’s like inventing a “new” combustion engine that is both slower and 100x less efficient.

26 March 2025 — French West Indies

VIa Apple Insider.

When mere mortals have homes, they pay taxes.

Pay your taxes, Tim.

17 March 2025 — French West Indies

Judging by public reactions, this is not a popular perspective, but I, for one, am grateful that Stage Manager exists, and I use it almost exclusively. To be clear, I only use it on macOS and don’t go near it on an iPad as it is not fit for purpose on that platform, sadly.

On the Mac, it is a tool that I use to help me with distractions, helping me concentrate on the task at hand and avoiding the distractions of the constantly updating timelines, documents open that require edits, or the myriad of other distractions presented by modern computer interfaces.

With ADHD, it is a constant battle to stay on track and to keep enough focus on the current task alone, that any assistance is helpful. For me at least.

It is not without its problems, however. Some applications don’t behave well. Excel is a good example. If you have two workbooks open in two different Stages, operations like undo jarringly flip you to the other stage and the undo is ignored completely. I’m sure that Microsoft are totally on top of this, and it’ll get fixed in about ten to twenty… years!

For now, I’m sticking with it and I turn it off now and again when I don’t have the need to focus as much.

While I think of it, one good example of this is when I present. Presentations don’t sit well with Stage Manager and simply and quickly turning it off makes the presentation work fine.

There are other improvements that could be made, like remembering groups of apps between sessions and reboots. I’d like to be able to designate what goes with what in which Stage to always open the apps concerned like that.

As I said, in defence of Stage Manager.

17 March 2025 — French West Indies

Until I can switch off Apple Intelligence Smart Replies, this setting is going to remain off.

I’d be happy to give it a go on a couple of things —mostly writing tools— but the fact that it suggests replies for my personal text messages to friends and family and that I can’t turn it off is a line I will not cross.

They are so incredibly poor in quality that it is laughable and something that Apple should be ashamed of, rather than promoting and forcing upon its users.

It is such a lack of respect for its user base and something that hints at the start of its demise as one of the world’s leading computing platforms.

One year check in on Apple Vision Pro.

Incredible technology still looking for a problem to solve.

Something the AI boosters are ignoring and working hard to ignore, is that humas intrinsically don’t like liars.

When they have an interaction with a genai chatbot that patently lies to them because “hallucination”, it deeply degrades their experience and devalues your company, product, or service.

The problem is that there is no fix for this. Telling the model not to lie is useless.

28 January 2025 — French West Indies

You’re standing in line.

Believing the lies.

Bowing down to the flag.

You’ve got a bullet in your head.

Apple users, if you haven’t already done so, you should seriously consider turning on iCloud Advanced Data Protection.

You cannot trust Apple to be good custodians currently.

Share your private key (encrypted and password protected) with a friend, or store in a couple of physical secure locations.

/ #technology #tech #privacy #BigTech #surveillancecapitalism

Mark Zuckerberg has recently said that he’s taking Meta back to its roots.

As one commentator pointed out, presumably that means a platform for rating the fuckability of college girls? Or, perhaps it means how he calls everyone “dumb fucks”.

18 January 2025 — French West Indies

I hear all the time about how Meta’s products allow millions of micro and small businesses develop around the world.

If this is true, then that alone should be reason for this platform not to exist in its current form, given that one man has the power to determine who can and who cannot exist.

He is currently showing that if your business is not ‘with us’ then it’s ‘against us’.

18 January 2025 — French West Indies

I remember when the Internet was good. No. It was amazing.

The first time I used the Internet, we could count the number of nodes on the network as less than a 100 000. The web hadn’t been invented yet and as soon as I experienced it myself, through some scrappy tools running on a university Unix box, I was hooked.

I knew it would change our lives. And it did.

I didn’t anticipate it becoming what it is today.

We’ve got all the stuff we dared to dream about, but naively, we believed it would come with none of the mess that humans seem to bring to the party.

I’m not sure how I feel about the Internet today.

I sometimes think that we should switch it off now and again to reset it.

We can’t, of course. And we won’t.

The Internet might switch us off, however.

16 January 2025 — French West Indies

I turned off Apple Intelligence on my Mac.

It’s poor. Really poor.

Very un-Applelike.

23 December 2024 — French West Indies

I missed week 48 as I decided to take the time to do something else that needed to be done at home and take some other work that had slipped by during my trip away.

I finally completed all episodes of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy BBC Radio 4 series I downloaded from Dimsdale. I have to say that it holds up really well still. Despite having some of the sensibilities of a past era, the humour is still funny, and the self-reflection on society is as relevant today as it was then. In fact, there are some things that you hear and think about things happening today. I recommend it.

I’ve been listening to the BBC Reith Lectures, as I do every year, and this year’s have not disappointed me. The main topic has been about Violence.

This topic piqued my interest as I have been thinking about the levels of violence in societies I frequent and know about. From my isolated and anecdotal point of view, it does feel like there is more gratuitous violence than I remember. Is it objectively true, though?

The first lecture is entitled “Is violence normal?” and Dr Gwen Adshead —this year’s lecturer— touches on some cold, hard facts about the human condition and about how we, as essentially animals, use violence to express emotions and control our surroundings, both physically and interactively with our peers. Does that mean it is normal? That is the question she tries to answer. She notes that even primates, of which we share 98% of our DNA, have rules about the use of violence. But that 2% difference accounts for major differences in how we interact in relationships and our actions.

I don’t write reviews, so I’ll leave you to listen to the four episodes—all available now if you live in the U.K. If you don’t, the first two have been released. As a bonus, the BBC provides transcripts of the lectures and the conversation before and after. These are very useful for reference and further reading.

I don’t know if my mind is telling me something, but I’ve been listening to another podcast on a similar topic for the last several weeks. It is called Kill List. It charts the story of a journalist and an ethical hacker who broke into a dark web “hitman for hire” website that was a scam and ripped off its customers to the tune of many tens of thousands in Bitcoin.

What is most interesting about this podcast is what they do with that list of targets, how they contact them, how they try to warn them, and the potential victims’ reactions and surprising responses. It is such a well-told series, and I’m enjoying every episode.

We’re getting to the end of the year, and this year has been more frustrating than I had anticipated. I will need to come to terms with this and work on it for the next year.

I try to write a self-review and then work on next year’s priorities, but this year, I haven’t given myself the time to do so yet.

I would hope to do that in the coming weeks and have something structured before the end of the year.

I live and work in a French territory, and the way Bank Holidays work in France is a little strange for an ex-pat. If the day in question falls on a weekend, it isn’t moved to the following Monday like in the U.K. It falls on that day, so if it is a Sunday, so be it, and it is lost.

Christmas Day falls on a Wednesday this year, and France doesn’t have a Boxing Day, so the week will be split into two parts unless I plan to take time off.

I haven’t decided yet.

9 December 2024 — French West Indies

Many say regulation stifles innovation.

I call bullshit.

Look at Formula 1. It is one of the most regulated sports in the world and also one of the most innovative.

It’s almost like regulation promotes innovation.

4 December 2024 — French West Indies

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy describes the fraternity of Tech Bros as: “A bunch of mindless jerks who’ll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.”

Curiously, an edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica which fell through a rift in the time-space continuum from 1000 years in the future describes the Tech Bros as: “A bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came.”

With apologies to Douglas Adams (RIP). (Please buy the books and read them.)

I’m a couple of days late writing this, but I did say that it might not be as regular as my other writing. I have an excuse: I’ve been travelling. Moving around time zones plays havoc with writing and thinking about writing.

But the worst for me, and what exacerbates the discombobulation, is that I’m not a great sleeper on planes, and long-haul flights generally mean that I lose a whole night’s sleep as I sit (usually uncomfortably) in a metal tube transporting me over an ocean. I’ll nod off for a couple of minutes, maybe even fifteen, but I never get to sleep for a few hours. I’m so jealous of those who have that ability. On this flight, we were two in a 3-seat row. This makes quite a difference to the feeling of not being trapped. My companion on this flight who was a total stranger to me. He sat down, wolfed down his dinner in a couple of minutes as soon as it was served (whilst starting a movie on the in-flight screen), lay back, and then proceeded to sleep for pretty much the entire flight. He didn’t get past the first 30 minutes of the film before snoozing off. That’s a superpower that I don’t possess, but I’d like to have. Sadly, I do not, so I’m constrained to find entertainment and diversion for upwards of eight hours. It’s not an easy task when you have ADHD.

My strategy this time, as pretty much every time, is to load up on a good couple of podcasts —the more narrative, the better— and to read books/papers.

I recently found out about the Dimsdale website, which has links to archived episodes from BBC Radio (only BBC? I need to check), and one particular series stood out to me. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I knew the TV series and had read all five books in the series —“a trilogy in five parts”— and thoroughly enjoyed them. I’d heard snippets of the original radio series broadcast in 1978 but never the entire series. Thirty-three downloads later, I had enough to listen to for several hours. I listened to seven of them.

To fully benefit from the entertainment and not get distracted by the surroundings, I have a pair of AirPods Pro 2. They have decent noise cancellation technology and sound reasonable, so I tend to use them for podcasts and general listening. To listen to music, I have a pair of Focal Bathys over-ear headphones with decent noise cancellation technology, too, and they are an order of magnitude better for music than the AirPods.

Lastly, I tend to read a lot during a flight, even marking up a couple of papers on AI that I wanted to finish and take some notes from. The engagement of reading and writing a couple of notes prevents me from getting too bored and helps the time pass well. I finished two papers and have many notes I want to explore and turn into a couple of posts about the subject.

I’ve tried all the digital note-taking wonkery, but I’ve not had anything stick for reasons I can’t explain. To help me, I’ve gone back to pen and paper, which, for some reason, is just much better for me to get notes written about what I’m reading. I’ve started printing documents and articles for that express purpose. Mindful of the environmental impact, I print double-sided and in booklet form. I get four pages on one A4 sheet which cuts down on paper used. It’s a bit small, but not uncomfortable to read a long article, and it leaves just enough space to write some notes in the margins. My notes are short and direct, which works out great for me.

After over eight hours on the direct flight, I arrive at my destination and then try to get a full day’s work/reading/relaxing to set my internal clock to the new timezone. It’s the best way I’ve found to help me adjust quickly, but I’m not particularly productive for the first few hours.

10 November 2024 — French West Indies