Notes
The Line I Will Not Cross
Yesterday I wrote about how I’d likely dial-down Twitter use, but not leave the platform. Then this:
Forcing me to give my location AND opt-in to personalised ads is a line that I won’t cross. I’m confident that many people will not do so either for all sorts of reasons, from personal privacy to personal (physical) safety from nefarious actors. Because location information is data, it can be breached and used to profile and locate people physically on the planet. Twitter is not immune to being hacked. Gaining access to this type of data is becoming easier, with one-stop shops for buying and selling hacked data easily accessible, which means almost anyone can do it.
I suspect this is not legal with the GDPR and could not be successfully implemented in Europe and European countries.
14 December 2022 — French West Indies
Not particularly social
According to Insider Intelligence, as reported in the Grauniad, Twitter will likely lose 30 million users over the next two years. To put that into perspective, Twitter’s Q2 2022 DAUs were in the region of 238 million.
Ad revenue is in free-fall to boot.
I, for one, am looking at alternatives, and the recent uptick in posting is partly to do with that.
For the moment, I’m still on Twitter, but I’m no longer engaging, not that I did much previously. I only use an automated bot to post updates on this blog, something that will eventually get turned off I suspect.
I’m on Mastodon, and besides the really quirky way it works, I’m beginning to see more activity from the topics and people I tend to enjoy reading. I anxiously await a decent client and an API for WordPress and other systems to post automatically.
13 December 2022 — French West Indies
Crypto or Criminal?
It is getting harder to tell whether Crypto actually means “Criminal”.
Take this Reuters article, for instance (emphasis mine):
The charges under investigation are unlicensed money transmission, money laundering conspiracy and criminal sanctions violations, the four people said. No final charging decisions have been made, though prosecutors consider Zhao and some other executives to be subjects of the investigation, one source familiar with the situation said.
I don’t think there’s any doubt that Proof of Work Waste blockchains should be considered criminal when considering the substantial environmental impacts. But hey, as long as you have your “unique” profile pic or your magic beans, who cares, right?
12 December 2022 — French West Indies
Experiences and Timelines
I had an odd experience last night. I say odd, but that’s making it sound more dramatic than it is on closer inspection.
I’m an ex-pat and have been for approximately two-thirds of my life. Some years ago, I passed the threshold of living outside my birthplace for more years than in. Some years ago, I passed the threshold of living more years with my mother no longer alive than alive. These are arbitrary datelines, but they have meaning and significance when you are the person directly living them.
Last night, I passed one of those arbitrary thresholds. Through circumstances irrelevant —a birthday party— I caught up with someone I hadn’t seen in more than 15 years. I’ve now crossed the threshold of having acquaintances from long ago in my relatively new life in the French West Indies.
If this had happened whilst I was still in the UK, meeting someone from ten or twenty years ago, I wouldn’t remark upon it. But it happened here, in my adopted home of over 18 years, making life’s timeline more intriguing to me.
11 December 2022 — French West Indies
Hold my beer
The world: “Surely it can’t get much worse than this now?”
SBF: “Hold my beer…”
https://www.axios.com/2022/12/09/bankman-fried-funded-crypto-news-site-block
10 December 2022 — French West Indies
Themes
If you listen to many podcasts in the tech space, particularly where a lot of Apple discussion takes place, you won’t have missed a podcast called Cortex.
It is hosted by Myke Hurley and CGP Grey and touches on several topics where tech has an influence.
One episode I look forward to every year is the Themes episode. This year is no different.
I don’t go all in on the theme journaling they promote —they even sell a physical journaling notebook based on the theme system. It just doesn’t work for my brain that well.
However, the idea of having a theme every year is interesting and does have some slight effect on how I do things during the year.
I’ll let you discover the podcast and how the yearly theme works, but I sometimes find the nudging of it helpful.
Every year I place an all-year calendar event in a dedicated calendar called surprisingly Theme, which runs from the 1st of January to the 31st of December.
The way my brain works, if it’s not visible, it doesn’t exist. It is a simple reminder to keep me on track with a little nudge in the right direction.
Have a listen, and you might find it helpful too.
9 December 2022 — French West Indies
Design is how things work. Not how they look.
In a New York Times article in 2003, Steve Jobs was quoted as saying:
Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like,” says Steve Jobs, Apple’s C.E.O. ”People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.
It is something that seems to have been lost in some architectural design over the last 20 years or so.
According to the British Trust for Ornithology, 100 million birds slam into glass façades of buildings in cities across the UK, with a death rate of approximately 33%.
33 million birds die every year because there’s a building!
The local authorities haven’t conducted risk assessments to determine if this is unavoidable.
I feel that we are innovating ourselves to extinction.
8 December 2022 — French West Indies
Marketing problem
Science doesn’t have an execution problem. Science has a marketing problem.
Conspiracies and fake news don’t have a marketing problem. Conspiracies and fake news have an execution problem.
15 April 2021 — French West Indies
M1 Happy
Oh, my! I’m so happy with the new MacBook Air M1. It is everything that everyone said it was. The processor, the speed, the weight. The quality is outstanding.
But the one thing I appreciate the most? The inverted ’T’ arrows keys.
I fucking hated, hated that piece of crap design on those butterfly keyboards, and I am so glad to see the back of it.
I have no beef with the keyboard itself. Sure it was a little clunky and mistyped now and again. But I forgave it. I could never forgive the abomination of the rectangle arrow keys.
Good. Fucking. Riddance.
13 April 2021 — French West Indies
It’s always them
There’s and old saying in the Information Technology industry to describe the situation when the network is not working properly.
It’s the DNS. It’s always DNS.
I think we now have an Internet equivalent.
It’s Facebook. It’s always Facebook.
8 April 2021 — French West Indies