suggested reads for December 5, 2021

• The Cost of Context Switching (and How To Avoid It)
• The iPhone experience told by the accessories in the box — “The history of iPhone accessories tells us a lot about the iPhone user experience. Now, the iPhone 13 comes with just one cable in the box.”
• Facebook publishes slides on how Instagram affects teen mental health
• New study reveals iPhones aren’t as private as you think — Android phones collect more data by volume, but iPhones collect more types of data, a study finds;

Why We Should End the Data Economy

Ending the data economy may seem like a radical proposition, but it’s even more extreme to have a business model whose existence depends on violating our right to privacy on a massive scale. In fact, it’s unacceptable.

Carissa Véliz

The data economy depends on violating our right to privacy on a massive scale, collecting as much personal data as possible for profit.

suggested reads for March 14, 2021

• We asked five menstruation apps for our data and here is what we found… — "We asked five menstruation apps to give us access to our data. We got a dizzying dive into the most intimate information about us”;
• Scientists Write ‘Hello World’ in Bacterial DNA With Electricity and CRISPR
• How SEO Is Gentrifying the Internet
• Here’s a Way to Learn if Facial Recognition Systems Used Your Photos — An online tool targets only a small slice of what’s out there, but may open some eyes to how widely artificial intelligence research fed on personal images;
• Why you should care about data privacy even if you have “nothing to hide” — Yes, your data is used to sell you shoes. But it also may be used to sell you an ideology.

suggested reads for February 21, 2021

• Tech Companies Are Profiling Us From Before Birth — la medaglia ha sempre due lati…
• Your most impactful Web Vital — “Google is about to begin using Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor. So here’s a friendly reminder for everyone that network payload a.k.a. page weight a.k.a. page size is the most impactful metric on your Lighthouse report – even if it’s not deemed a Core Web Vital by Google.”
• How To Stop Instagram From Tracking Everything You Do — a Wired article on how the Facebook-owned app doesn’t give users complete control, but shows ways to limit the data it collects and the types of ads you see;

suggested reads for October 25, 2020

• Epic’s battle for “open platforms” ignores consoles’ massive closed market — Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo demand the same platform control—and the same 30% fee;
• The Office Will Never Be the Same (That’s probably a good thing)
• Is Cyberpunk Dead?;
• How to destroy surveillance capitalism – the new book of Cory Doctorow;
• Speed Kills – Fast is never fast enough… an essay by Mark C. Taylor