In a little over two weeks it will be December. For those who have followed my work for a year or more, you know what that means: I go ‘dark’. No personal email, blogging, or newsletter from me for the entire month.
I’ll still be working, so remain available via my consultancy, Dynamic Skillset, as well as via my We Are Open co-op email address. You may see the occasional article that clients have paid me to write popping up via various channels, too. The important thing is that I step out of the stream for a while, going more ‘read-only’.
While I’ve got your attention, I’d like to give you a quick heads-up that things will be changing with my weekly newsletter. I’ve enjoyed putting together Thought Shrapnel during the last few years, but Issue #239, going out on 27th November 2016 will be the last in its current format.
Why? Well, I’ve currently got over 1,500 subscribers and have attracted sponsorship over the last 18 months, but list growth has plateaued and I’m itching to do something different. If you’re subscribed my newsletter, don’t worry, I’ll let you know what’s coming next. It might involve several ‘pop-up’ newsletters; I’m not quite sure yet.
Also, given how out-of-touch I’ve felt with such a large part of the world after the results of the EU referendum and US election, I may do something fairly dramatic with my use of social networking. I’m unlikely to quit anything completely, but I can envisage unfollowing everyone I currently follow on Twitter and starting again in that regard. We’ll see.
The great thing about disconnecting for a while — over and above spending more time with family and avoiding showing my grumpy side — is that it provides the time to reflect on my current ‘ways of being’ in digital spaces. I always contemplate not coming back at all after my time away but, when I do return, feel that I tend to use technology more intentionally.
Anyway, I’ll be around for the next couple of weeks. Let me know if you need anything before then!
Kevin Drum points out that if you search on Google to find out whether Hillary won the popular vote (she did) that one of the top results lies, right in the headline.
How does 70news, a right wing site fond of claiming Trump protests are being funded by prominent Jewish banker George Soros, get to the top of this Google result?
While I don’t know how this manifests in the algorithm, I am going to guess that the ranking this story gets is a result of attention and audience given to the story by Facebook. Let’s go to the Facebook API and take a look at the shares of these three top stories>
Heavy.com (“Are There Still Uncounted Ballots?”): 202 shares.
New York Times (“Clinton’s Substantial Popular Vote Win”): 65,398 shares.
70news (“Final Election 2016 Numbers: Trump Won Both Popular and Electoral College Vote”): 252,158 shares.
Yes — you’re reading that right. A story from a site the specializes in various forms of alt-right conspiracies outperformed the New York Times on shares on this issue; in fact they got 300% more shares than the story from New York Times.
And Twitter? If you go to the 70news article now you’ll find that the writer got these numbers “off of Twitter.” The mind reels. It’s Facebook at the center of a whole conspiracy clickbait ecosystem.
One other thing to note here: most people get their news from headlines, not articles. So the minute you see that headline in a search result, the fake news is validated and becomes part of what people know. You can check out Lisa Fazio’s work on this if you want, on exposure to wrong information. We don’t really know what’s true — we only know what “sounds more familiar”. Facebook, Google, and Twitter have made the false many degrees more familiar than the true.
You might also check out this related story on the relative virality of fake versus real stories..
In operation from 1854 to 1941, the London Necropolis Railway was the spookiest, strangest train line in British history. It transported London’s dead south-west to Brookwood Cemetery, near Woking, in Surrey, a cemetery that was built in tandem with the railway. At its peak, from 1894 to 1903, the train carried more than 2,000 bodies a year.
It also transported their families and friends. Guests could leave with their dearly departed at 11:40am, attend the burial, have a funeral party at one of the cemetery’s two train stations (complete with home-cooked ham sandwiches and fairy cakes), and then take the same train back, returning to London by 3:30pm.
Amazing.
And guess what else? The station still operates today (only with less dead people).
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THING TWO: FINNISH EDUCATION
This week in interesting education news, Finland is looking like the first country to completely abolish school subjects.
The head of the Department of Education in Helsinki, Marjo Kyllonen, explained the changes:
“There are schools that are teaching in the old-fashioned way which was of benefit in the beginning of the 1900s — but the needs are not the same, and we need something fit for the 21st century.“
Instead of individual subjects, students will study events and phenomena in an interdisciplinary format. For example, the Second World War will be examined from the perspective of history, geography, and math. And by taking the course ”Working in a Cafe,” students will absorb a whole body of knowledge about the English language, economics, and communication skills.
Beagle 2 landing craft disappeared on Christmas Day. Space. Mars
The lost British Mars lander that failed to do, well, anything after attempting to land on our distant red cousin of a planet back in 2003? If you’ve been following the story you may even recall that ten years later, NASA spotted it on the surface and the little lander had finally been discovered.
Well, the work didn’t stop there. After studying NASA’s images, and recreating what they could see using 3D printers, it turns out Beagle 2 was much closer to success than we originally thought.
Work in social? Getting hassled by your clients to tell them / convince about Instagram stories [and why they should/shouldn’t partake]? Then you need this really useful help manual, from Instagram itself, that you should lift freely from and pretend your amazing overview deck is all your own work.
I said back in edition #194 that I thought the first hardware from Snap Inc., aka ‘Spectacles’, would be an interesting swerve for media creation and now, at last, they’re out for people to purchase. Alas, you can only purchase them in person and via Snap’s own travelling vending machine.
The Verge has a ton more on this (with a few good videos too), so you should go read that.
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THING SEVEN: SNAPCHAT / FACEBOOK FLASH
I’m not kidding. Facebook has made Snapchat. Like, actually and properly. WHAT.
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Bonuses this week are about the state of the world today:
Jonathan Pie is an acquired taste at the best of times. This on ‘Trump: How and Why?’ is actually really good. Give it a watch.
Azeem Azar’s always excellent Exponential View has a really good provocation this week re: Facebook’s role on the election. My favourite thing on this topic of Facebook’s ongoing mission to convince brands they can influence purchaser decisions through content / Facebook advertising is directly contradicted by its claim that they had no influence on the election result whatsoever (eloquently put in this tweet).
My writing partner at Ogilvy, Marshall Manson, put these reflections together – they’re well worth a read.
Thurs. 11.10.16 – This is a very rocky week. Starting the day of the election, Scruffy’s back end and legs stopped working for him and by yesterday morning he was unable to walk or even raise up and stabilize his legs. We had already planned to visit Erika and Lukas today so that Lukas could... Read more »
At any point did anyone ask for 6-second videos featuring your brand presented in a comical way?
Probably not.
They probably wanted a better site navigation structure, or quicker answers to their questions, or to feel better connected with people who can solve their problems etc…etc….
I can’t think of a time when what’s trendy and what matters have diverged so far apart. Skip all the cool social tools (Instagram, Twitter etc…) and focus on the fundamentals.
Popularity is never a good enough excuse to divide your time and the audience’s attention into smaller and smaller chunks.
Focus on doing the things that matter really well.
How to Post Your Bike on Craigslist. This post explains exactly how to advertise your bike on Craigslist, so that you can successfully sell your bike online for a good price.
I think financial thin ice will force LeEco out of automotive.
LeEco has hit a major stumbling block meaning that something has to change to prevent what could become a disastrous unravelling of its financial structure.
I think that this will force it to refine its strategy resulting in the ending of its ambitions in automotive.
LeEco’s founder, Jia Yueting, has spent 6 years and something like $5bn in building a company that wants to be Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Tesla all rolled into one.
The problem is that only the Netflix-like business (mainland China video streaming) is profitable meaning that everything else, including a huge expansion into Silicon Valley, is burning cash.
This has been financed by a series of collateralised loans where Jia Yueting has pledged his shares in LeEco in exchange for cash which he has then lent to LeEco.
LeEco is listed as Leshi Internet Information & Technology Corporation in Shenzhen meaning that its share price is hostage to the fortunes of the regular market.
Consequently, if sentiment sours and the share price goes below a certain level, there will be margin calls on the loan which are very likely to result in the sale of shares to meet these commitments.
These sorts of situations often result in a death spiral where share sales to meet margin calls result in a lower share price and more margin calls and so on.
Leshi shares have not performed well at all this year with the shares down some 30% from where they were in June 2016 and at the end of 2015.
Given that the collateralised loans were struck towards the end of 2015, I suspect that the current share price is uncomfortably close to the kind of levels that would prompt these margin calls.
I think that this is why Jia Yueting has written to his employees admitting that the company is over stretched and warning them that the cash will be more carefully invested going forward.
LeEco has struck some big deals this year including $2bn to buy Vizio, $1.8bn to build a connected car factory in China as well as $250m to buy 40 acres of Silicon Valley real estate from Yahoo.
To add insult to injury LeEco has failed to hit fund raising targets for its Chinese limo hailing service Yidao Yongsche.
I suspect that this has everything to do with the merger of Didi and Uber in China creating one huge giant and few minnows.
Ride hailing is a winner takes all market, and Yidao is now a tiny minnow in the Chinese market meaning that its chances of success are now very small which looks to have been reflected in the lack of investor interest.
Taking all of LeEco’s operations into consideration, I think that if it jettisoned all of its automotive ambitions (Faraday Future, Chinese connected cars and Yidao), the company would be in a much better position to compete.
Its other assets such as media consumption, TVs, phones fit together much more effectively and there are well documented synergies to be had from owning both the hardware and the software in the ecosystem.
LeEco’s automotive ambitions have always looked like an annex to the core business and it is increasingly clear that they stand to be a huge drain on resources.
The Faraday Future plant in Nevada and the Chinese factory have not yet broken ground meaning that the automotive ambitions can be quietly mothballed without too much fuss.
I see Jia Yueting as having little alternative as LeEco is skating on financial thin ice and there is a death spiral of margin calls and forced share sales right underneath if it breaks.
Furthermore, with a clear strategy to differentiate its offering in USA on price (see here), it is going to need every cent it has to finance its ambitions and grow its digital consumer ecosystem.
Hence, I suspect that the automotive ambitions will be reluctantly curtailed which I think gives LeEco its best chance of success in its other endeavours.
TorontoPublicLibrary@torontolibrary
Zadie Smith interviewed by Jeffrey Eugenides....Get your tix to her appearance at Toronto Reference Library Nov 15… twitter.com/i/web/status/7…
Kevin Marks@kevinmarks
The weirdest thing about everyone signing up for Signal is realising how many people's phone numbers I have that I've never called.
Google today announced a major revamp of Google Play Music. The company’s “fresh take” on its music streaming service is “smarter, easier to use, and much more assistive.” Like with almost all other services from Google, Play Music now uses machine learning to help play the right music for you depending on your location, mood, activity, and weather.
Continue reading →
Nearly all the ads I see on Facebook are fake news items like these two, next to Mark Zuckerberg’s latest post, which is, ironically, about fake news:
Besides being false and misleading clickbait, these ads are not from espn.com. They’re from http://espn.com-magazines.online. They are also bait for a topic switch, since they’re actually about a diet supplement I won’t flatter by naming. So they’re two kinds of fraud at once: outright lies from a forged source.
It can’t be that hard for Facebook not to run this kind of obviously dishonest and misleading advertising, especially since this story itself is old news. (See here.) Why hasn’t it been stopped?
I’m guessing the answer is a technical one: that Facebook’s advertising system is too easy a hack for dishonest advertisers to resist, and too hard to change.
Either that, or the money they make from ad fraud more than offsets the cost of egg on their CEO’s face.
Through the soundtrack of my life, nobody else taught more about how to be a man, a lover, and a human being with one foot in the temporary world and the other in eternity.
A couple weeks ago, I was driving to the Peets on Upper State Street in Santa Barbara when some station on the radio played the title song of Leonard’s new album, You Want It Darker.
I didn’t make it all the way. Had to pull over. There was no way I could listen and keep driving. It was too deep, too right. I had never heard it before, and it demanded full attention. Still does. The lyric begins,
If you are the dealer, I’m out of the game
If you are the healer, it means I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame
Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame
A million candles burning for the help that never came
You want it darker
Hineni, hineni
I’m ready, my lord
And he was.
I heard today, somewhere in the links below, that he recorded that final album in his Los Angeles apartment, on what turned out to be his death bed.
Google is revamping Google Play Music with intelligence that it says will deliver the right music at the right time using machine learning. According to a post by Elias Roman, Lead Product Manager for Google Play Music, Google’s streaming music service will go beyond just figuring out what you like from the music you listen to. The update will also take into account context – things like your location, what you’re doing, and even the weather.
To provide even richer music recommendations based on Google’s understanding of your world, we’ve plugged into the contextual tools that power Google products. When you opt in, we’ll deliver personalized music based on where you are and why you are listening — relaxing at home, powering through at work, commuting, flying, exploring new cities, heading out on the town, and everything in between. Your workout music is front and center as you walk into the gym, a sunset soundtrack appears just as the sky goes pink, and tunes for focusing turn up at the library.
In addition, Google has redesigned the Google Play Music home screen to emphasize your favorite music by putting it right at the top of the screen and adjusting what’s shown based on your context. The service will also automatically create an offline playlist of recently played songs for subscribers to listen to when they have no data connection.
It’s not surprising to see Google take Google Play Music in this direction. One of Google’s biggest competitive advantages is the data it knows about you from its many products. This sort of assistive technology is already baked into products like Google Photos and it seems natural to bring the same smarts to Google Play Music too.
Google Play Music will begin its world-wide roll-out to sixty-two countries this week on iOS, Android, and the web.
14. A give-way line included in the markings placed pursuant to regulation 5(1)(b) and Part II of Schedule 1 shall convey to vehicular traffic proceeding towards a Zebra crossing the position at or before which a vehicle should be stopped for the purpose of complying with regulation 25 (precedence of pedestrians over vehicles at Zebra crossings).
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Precedence of pedestrians over vehicles at Zebra crossings
25.—(1) Every pedestrian, if he is on the carriageway within the limits of a Zebra crossing, which is not for the time being controlled by a constable in uniform or traffic warden, before any part of a vehicle has entered those limits, shall have precedence within those limits over that vehicle and the driver of the vehicle shall accord such precedence to any such pedestrian.
(2) Where there is a refuge for pedestrians or central reservation on a Zebra crossing, the parts of the crossing situated on each side of the refuge for pedestrians or central reservation shall, for the purposes of this regulation, be treated as separate crossings.
Default color schemes are often horrible, but spending a lot of time putting together color schemes when you don’t have a lot of minutes is also horrible. I Want Hue by Mathieu Jacomy at the Sciences-Po Medialab lets you set a few options, and it spits out a palette for your visualization.
I think it's far too soon to say the use of technology in learning has "failed". But sceptics will enjoy this thorough denouement of educational technology. But a strand of thought half way through caught my eye. It was this: the fear that computer screens will "will replace more valuable, sensory activities, such as putting their hands through a box of sand, or eating a tub of Play-Doh." And I wondered: what is the impact of sand on test scores? How about clay and paint? I don't think we'll find a significant difference, but the argument against technology is based on exactly that sort of data.
Hate might win the battle But love will win the war Spend your life in the shadows Worried ‘bout settling scores All your gonna get for your trouble Is another mad man at the door Hate might win the battle boys But love will win the war
Fill your mouth with poison You’re bound to swallow some Build a wall long and tall You got no room to run But walk with the heart of a lion The jungle listens when you roar Cause hate might win a battle boys But love will win the war
When we all meet on that distant shore The reasons we fight Who’s wrong and who’s right Won’t matter any more Hate might win a battle boys But love will win the war
When your days look hopeless The wolf is at the door Show a little kindness Forgive a little more Hold the hand of mercy Kneel upon the floor Cause hate might win a battle boys But love will win the war
When we all meet on that distant shore The reasons we fight Who’s wrong and who’s right Won’t matter any more Hate might win a battle boys But love will win the war
Mark Zuckerberg defended Facebook this weekend regarding the role of fake news in the election. It’s way worse than he says, and he has a lot of work to do to fix it. Ignorance is the biggest problem in our democracy, and Facebook is making it worse. First, let me ask you: was your news … Continued
My MacBook Air has connected to at least 74 unsecured Wi-Fi networks in the four years I’ve had it. Each time, much of my Web traffic could have been accessed by anyone else on those networks who cared to look. That information would have been enough for the snooper to connect the dots between personal details that I prefer to stay private, such as my employer, my bank, and my healthcare provider. To my knowledge, on those occasions no one ever bothered trying. Nowadays, anyone who might want my information will have a much harder time obtaining it, thanks to the extra security I get from an inexpensive and easy-to-use virtual private network (VPN) service.
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Don’t be intimidated. Everyone can benefit from an increase to their privacy and security, and reliable services are available for less than $4 per month. Setup is automated, too—you need only install a small application. To track down the best advice about what a VPN can and can’t do for everyday people, we rounded up research and advice from around the Web, and we spoke with Rich Mogull, the CEO of security consultancy Securosis.
Why should you use a VPN?
A VPN adds security on unprotected Wi-Fi networks. “In public and on untrusted networks (hotels, coffee shops) is where they really help against attackers,” explained Mogull in an interview. When you connect to Wi-Fi without a password, anyone on the network can examine your traffic. While some parts of your Web browsing, like passwords, shopping transactions, and Google searches, are commonly encrypted thanks to the “https” at the beginning of a Web address, other information, such as email, site addresses, and app activity, may not be. When you activate a VPN, all of your traffic appears as encrypted gibberish to whoever might be looking—whether it’s the person who owns and controls the Wi-Fi router or the creepy guy in the corner of the coffee shop.
A VPN adds privacy by shielding your browsing habits from your Internet service provider. While people typically accept the fact that individual Web services track the users of their sites, the amount of information an ISP can gather on its customers in general is a bit more disturbing—especially considering the recent trend of ISPs such as Comcast and AT&T wanting to monetize customer browsing data without customers noticing.
As Mogull explained in our interview: “Most ISPs track all your activity, they tend to just track where you go (through DNS). Some monitor your traffic more deeply, sometimes with advertising tokens. Technically they can read all unencrypted traffic, but at a certain point that becomes a potential legal liability for those companies…. Keep in mind that just tracking where you go basically means they track everything you click, which is a lot of information. They then sell this to advertisers and others.”
Domain Name System (DNS) servers kind of act like a phone book for the Internet: Every browsing request (such as typing “facebook.com” into a browser) checks the phone book to learn where the desired website can be reached.
A VPN provides cheap and simple protection against any shenanigans in the fine print.
In the time since we spoke with Mogull, the FCC announced new rules (PDF) prohibiting ISPs from trading some of this information without your explicit consent. As the Washington Post explains, in a world where ISPs like AT&T seek to gobble up media properties like Time Warner, the resulting conglomerates could “quadruple-dip” on profits: Not only could they sell Internet access and content subscriptions (like HBO Now), but they could also sell ads on both services and then gather and sell data collected from those services to other advertisers. Here’s hoping the FCC’s opt-in system will keep everyone in the know about when and how private data is used. In the meantime, however, a VPN provides cheap and simple protection against any shenanigans in the fine print—even when you’re browsing from home.
A VPN adds privacy by obscuring your location from websites. While law enforcement may have sophisticated techniques to track down baddies even through a VPN, many websites and services can’t reliably collect your location data over an active, encrypted connection. In this sense, a VPN acts kind of like a mail forwarder, so all your activity appears to be from the VPN provider’s IP address—along with the activity of thousands of other users—instead of your own. (An IP address is a not-quite-constant identifying number that’s tied to your Internet connection.)
Even if you aren’t signed in to Google or Amazon, your IP address is one component that websites use to track you. This tracking actually adds convenience—typing “oil change” into a Google search, for example, will likely yield locations in your area based on your IP address—but it also means that companies are likely monetizing your history even without your realizing it.
VPNs aren’t perfect
A VPN doesn’t protect you from more common security threats like phishing. A phishing attempt tries to get you to give up personal information, including passwords, by masquerading as a legitimate service provider, such as a bank or social network. “There’s a problem with your account!” phishing emails claim, asking you to click on a link and sign in. Phishing is such a big problem that commonly impersonated websites tend to have entire pages dedicated to stopping it—you can report fake IRS scams, get instructions from Apple, see tips from banks like Chase, or report any phishing site to Google.
A VPN won’t help you in this regard, but Rich Mogull of Securosis pointed us to what he calls the most important online security tool: multifactor authentication. “This is the single best tool,” he said, “to protect your email and cloud (e.g. iCloud or Google) accounts, bank accounts, file storage (Dropbox/Box), etc.”
If you’re not familiar with the term, “two-factor” or “multifactor” authentication is an arrangement in which a service requires something more than just a password to access or alter an account. The first factor is the username and password for the account you’re trying to access, and the second factor is typically a securely and randomly generated PIN that’s accessible only from a separate device or account, such as an app on your smartphone or an email sent to your personal address. If, for instance, you go to change your Gmail password and have to enter the current password plus a code sent to your phone, you’ve used two-factor authentication. Using multifactor authentication is a key way to prevent a phishing attempt from being successful, because it requires anyone trying to access your account to have access to more than just your login info. So if a service offers the feature, you should use it.
A VPN doesn’t make you anonymous. Thinking of doing something nefarious with a VPN? If so, you had better not use it, even once, to sign in to an identifiable work account, or to an email account with your name buried deep in the archives. If your VPN address is tied to an account with your name, and it’s also tied to some illicit activity, the authorities can connect the dots if they’re motivated to do so. It would be great if we could tell you how to maintain perfect privacy, perfect security, and perfect anonymity in a few clicks. But the news of the past few years has made it abundantly clear that this isn’t feasible for most people, considering the scale of government surveillance capabilities. And your Internet service provider is a similarly intractable hurdle to overcome.
If your VPN address is tied to an account with your name, and it’s also tied to some illicit activity, the authorities can connect the dots.
For total anonymity from ISPs or governments, you would need to keep all of your information disconnected, and you can’t just start now. If your info is out there already, it’s probably too late. You need secrecy past, present, and future. That’s simply not possible for most people. Check out some of the recommended reading at the bottom of this post if you’re interested, but in-the-moment privacy and security is a more realistic goal. As such, you should be skeptical of any VPNs promising total anonymity, because you never know what other lies they’re willing to tell to get your business.
A VPN is only as secure as the company running it. Your VPN may keep certain information out of the hands of network users, Wi-Fi owners, and even ISPs, but that information still ends up in another set of hands: the VPN provider’s. Though some companies claim to log nothing but aggregate statistics for network management, others have enough traffic data to prevent piracy on their networks or even to suspend users with suspected criminal activity. While this situation is unfortunate from a privacy standpoint, it’s understandable that many VPNs, particularly those based in the US, can’t condone such activity on their networks. If they were to ignore infringement notices from copyright holders, they could eventually risk having their own ISPs or data centers cutting them off.
The more transparent a company is with its security standards, both technical and operational, the easier it is for us customers to trust that company—even if most of us in turn need to trust experts to verify claims that we don’t totally understand. Heck, many security experts will tell you to trust no one and instead rely on technology and standards that don’t require trust at all. So long as you’re aware that this give-and-take exists no matter what approach you choose, and so long as you follow some of the tips laid out below in Finding the right VPN provider, you should be in a better position than you are without a VPN at all.
Expect (rare) performance hiccups. A good VPN service shouldn’t noticeably slow down your connection or impede access, but occasional slipups do happen. These kinds of minor performance issues are what we at The Wirecutter would call flaws but not dealbreakers.
Lagginess is typically easy to fix when it arises: Toggling the service off, selecting a new server location, and reconnecting usually clears up any lag I encounter. But a VPN can also cause conflicts with security software, such as the forced network-logon screens that you encounter when connecting to public Wi-Fi networks (in libraries, for example). This problem isn’t as easy to fix, and in many cases you can most simply handle it by temporarily disabling the VPN, signing in to the network, and then reenabling the VPN.
If you routinely use a foreign server to browse the Web, you should also be prepared to get localized content from that region. It can be a minor annoyance if you forget you’re connected to a distant server and end up at the European or Canadian version of your favorite news site. Most websites with localized content, however, let you switch locations with one or two clicks in their menu bar or site settings. Some VPN services specifically advertise this type of location-shifting as a feature, allowing travelers and expats to access media that’s geo-restricted to their home market. But you shouldn’t expect this trick to work every time, as content providers are increasingly cracking down on traffic from known VPN servers.
Finding the right VPN provider
Because privacy policies change and servers are added all the time—meaning a host of security protocols need to be tested and validated—picking the “best VPN” is a bit outside our scope for now. ArsTechnica tried to find the best VPN service in June 2016, and after months of research, reporter Yael Grauer concluded, “I still can’t make good faith recommendations for VPNs that guarantee the safety and security of interested users.” Even so, you can find some consistent top performers listed with detailed reviews on specialist websites like Best10VPN, as well as tech outlets like PCMag. Other sites, such as TorrentFreak, provide some additional details on privacy policies, and That One Privacy Site does its best to give independent evaluations and summaries of dozens of services (the person behind that site points out that it does not use any affiliate links1). If you’re interested in a VPN not just because you’re worried about coffee-shop security but also because you think more widescale surveillance and tracking is creepy and invasive, Privacytools.io has a treasure trove of harrowing information for you.
Personally, I started using Private Internet Access nearly a year ago. This PCMag Editors’ Choice has all the hallmark features of a trustworthy service, and it is available at a low price of just $40 a year (or $4 a month). While I can’t say it’s the best VPN, I have certainly recommended it to friends and coworkers for its simplicity, price, and speed. When researching this article, I was content not to find too many red flags about the service from any of the sources mentioned above. In fairness, the service’s apps are ugly, and for me the connections were flaky for a month or two over the summer. With that in mind, it might not the best option for easily frustrated people.
I tried VyprVPN for a couple of months, as well, partly because Golden Frog has such approachable educational and support resources (or sales material, depending on your point of view). Though I was impressed with its fast connections, clean user interface, and reliable behavior, I didn’t think it was worth the price premium—$100 per year versus Private Internet Access’s $40—but if you value those things, it works quite well, and it didn’t stutter at all during the two months I used it.
Using a VPN is easy
If you know how to install an application on your computer, you can set up a VPN. It’s that simple. Sure, when VPNs first surfaced as a secure way to remotely access resources on a network—such as at an employer or university—most of the settings and protocols were complex enough that someone on the IT staff had to implement them manually. But modern commercial VPNs don’t make you jump through such hoops. Windows, Mac, or mobile, you can download the app of your choice, install it, and sign in. All the network gibberish is taken care of automatically in the background. To use your VPN, you just flip the switch to the on setting, and you’re good to go.
On a Mac, both the VyprVPN (left) and Private Internet Access (shortened on right) apps live in the menu bar. You can connect via either service in two clicks.
If you want a little more control, you can adjust most preferences via simple checkboxes in an option pane. You can set rules about when to connect, or activate a kill switch that halts all traffic when the VPN switches off or fails (this is a neat fail-safe feature, but it has consistently caused connection headaches for me on both Private Internet Access and VyprVPN). More expensive services tend to be more customizable, but they’re better only if you futz with them correctly. If the options all sound like Martian to you, just go ahead and stick to the default settings of a reputable service.
This article isn’t a definitive guide to VPNs. It should be only your first stop in shopping for one, not your last. But with this info and the sources we’ve provided, you should be able to figure out which features sound most important to you, and you should find a trustworthy provider that can give you secure Internet access on open Wi-Fi networks or keep some amount of information away from exploitative advertisers who might want to know what you’re doing online. Considering how easy a VPN is to install and use, it’s worth an afternoon of reading and a few bucks a month to shore up your privacy and security.
1. Author’s note: At The Wirecutter, we help support the hundreds of hours that go into our evaluations through affiliate commissions on purchases made through our links. Sources like That One Privacy Site point out the bias and false advertising prevalent in certain VPN affiliate-marketing programs. In keeping with Wirecutter policy, while researching this article I was not given any knowledge of the structure of affiliate commissions available from different VPN providers, and any affiliate links that may have been added to this article were inserted by our business team only after my draft was submitted. See this page for more information about how The Wirecutter maintains editorial independence. Jump back.
Who doesn’t love a good news/bad news joke? You know, like the one on the Roman galleon ship: “Gentlemen,” says the whip master to the galley slaves, “I have good news and bad news. The good news: For the first time in a year, you all get a change of underwear!” The rowers cheer. “The bad news is: Julian, you trade with Cato. Cornelius, you trade with Drusa…”
Apple’s new laptop, called the MacBook Pro, is also a good news/bad news story.
Which do you want to hear first?
The MacBook Pro is ready to go.
The good news
OK, here it is. The new flagship laptops from Apple (AAPL), available in 13- and 15-inch screen sizes and a choice of aluminum colors, are thinner (0.6 inches), lighter (3 and 4 pounds), and faster than ever before. They’re not tapered like the MacBook Air, but they’re thinner than the Air was at its thickest part.
The thick part of the MacBook Air is actually thicker than the new MacBook Pro.
That’s right, “was.” The existing MacBook Air will remain available for awhile, but there won’t be any more models. Told you this was good news/bad news.
The MacBook Pro screen is a masterpiece. It’s so bright, it could light up a runway. It’s a Retina screen (resolution so high, you can’t see the pixels), which is something MacBook Air fans have waited for forever. The color is spectacular. You will love this screen.
Especially because Apple has shaved away most of the margin around it. As a result, this laptop is actually about an inch smaller in each dimension than the Air, despite having the same size screen.
The screen sizes are the same, but the newer laptop is smaller all over.
The new MacBooks are very fast; as you can see in my video above, they demolish the wait times on the equivalent MacBook Airs.
The trackpad is huge, which makes a difference when, for example, you’re painting in Photoshop or pinching to zoom out. The speakers are more powerful and sound great. Battery life is the same: over 10 hours of real work.
The keys are very flat and don’t travel much at all. I actually dig it—I can really fly when I type—but lots of people hate it, at least initially. Try before you buy.
The Touch Bar
The star feature of the new laptops, though, is the Touch Bar.
Above the keyboard, where the function keys (F1, F2, F3…) once sat, there’s a colorful, half-inch–tall, Retina, 2170×60 pixel, OLED touch screen. It can display whatever programmers want: buttons for functions you might need right now, a rainbow of color selections, or a timeline of the video you’re editing. The Touch Bar is designed to give you quick access to commands and features that are usually hidden in menus—but now you don’t have to memorize keystrokes to trigger them.
The Touch Bar replaces the F-kens.
The controls here change according to what you’re doing at this moment—what program you’re using, and what function within that program.
When you’re typing, you might see QuickType (autocomplete buttons for the three words the Mac thinks you’re most likely to want to type next, just as on a smartphone). When you’re in Safari, you see thumbnails for your open page tabs. When you’ve selected text, you get formatting controls. When you’re editing video or reading an iBook, you see a horizontal “map” of your movie or book, for quick navigation with a finger touch.
The many faces of the Touch Bar.
All the major programs that come with the Mac have been outfitted with Touch Bar controls. Other software companies, including Adobe (ADBE) and Microsoft (MSFT), will be adding Touch Bar buttons to their programs, too.
In many programs, you can customize what’s on the Touch Bar, so that the functions you use most often are always glowing there.
Editing your Touch Bar is a strange, delightful procedure. You inspect the palette of available Touch Bar buttons on your Mac’s main screen. You can drag one of those buttons downward with your mouse, down off the screen, “through” the laptop’s hinge, and onto the Touch Bar. Super cool.
Drag buttons from the real screen to the Touch Bar.
There’s no feedback when you tap the Touch Bar—no little beep or vibration—so you do have to glance at it to see what you’re doing. Fortunately, the Touch Bar image is actually angled, not flat, so it’s looking right at you.
Even though I’m a hardcore keyboard-shortcut nut, I kept finding situations where the Touch Bar is a truly helpful work accelerator: navigating a video I’m editing without having to fuss with the onscreen scroll bar, for example, or tapping out emoji symbols in Messages.
(If you miss the old function keys, like F1, F2, F3, you can have them back on command. Just hold down the physical fn key on your keyboard; the Touch Bar buttons change to the old F-keys.)
The right end of the Touch Bar is a customizable Control Strip, which expands at a touch, in any program, to reveal the standard brightness and volume keys.
The Control Strip.
Oh—and being able to log in without entering a password 65 times a day is a joy. The power button—the rightmost Touch Bar button—is also a Touch ID fingerprint reader, the same sensor that’s on the iPhone and iPad. Once you’ve taught the Mac to recognize your fingerprint, just resting your finger on this button is enough to unlock it, bypassing the password screen.
In fact, if you’ve set up your Mac with different accounts, the next person can insta-switch to his account just by clicking the Touch ID sensor himself—no logging out, no menu commands, no other steps.
Finally, you can use your fingerprint to approve App Store purchases with a single touch, or to buy stuff on the web without having to enter your name, address, and credit card info over and over again (Apple Pay).
The MacBook Pro has no standard USB jacks, no video output jack, no SD card reader for your camera’s memory card. Gaaahhh!
This laptop doesn’t even use the MagSafe magnetic power cord. Remember how Apple used to promote this fantastic idea? People couldn’t drag your laptop off the desk by tripping on the cord. All of that—gone. And all of your current laptop power chargers are now worthless to you.
In the place of all that, Apple has put two or four USB-C jacks.
Nothing but USB-C now. Get used to it.
Now, I love USB-C. It’s a universal connector: It’s a power cord, and it carries data like USB, and video like HDMI, and audio, like—audio.
And it’s universal across brands, too. Google (GOOG, GOOGL). Microsoft, and Samsung are already using it. You may curse Apple for changing connector styles yet again—but this time, it’s not for its own benefit. Apple is changing to a global industry standard, meaning that for the first time, you won’t have to buy Apple power chargers and Apple video dongles.
You can plug the power cord into any of these jacks on the MacBook Pro—on either side.
There’s no upside-down to the USB-C connector, and no wrong end. USB-C is amazing. People call it the Jesus jack.
However. It’s a little early to eliminate all those other jacks. For the next couple of years, you’ll need adapters. Dongles. Adapters for your flash drives. For your monitors. For your printer. For your camera.
And for anything you want to charge up, like your camera, or your Fitbit, or even—get this—your iPhone! You need an adapter to charge your iPhone!
Apple says that by eliminating all alternatives, it’s forcing the industry to get on the USB-C wagon much faster. That’s probably true, but man; for the next year or two, fumbling for adapters all the time is going to be clumsy and awkward.
Then there are the power cords. Lots of people own two or three, which they leave plugged in at different work spots. Apple’s are $80 each, and aren’t as polished as they used to be. For example, you no longer get the six-foot power-cord extension in the box; the white brick no longer has wrapping prongs; and the connector no longer lights up to tell you if it’s charging. (You do get a little chime, just as on the iPhone.)
The new, stripped-down Apple power brick.
(This is also the first Mac in history that doesn’t make a happy little chime when you turn it on, which is strange and sad. Also weird: The laptop powers on when you open the lid—even if it was turned all the way off.)
Fortunately, you don’t have to use Apple chargers anymore. You can borrow a USB-C charger from someone’s Google phone, Microsoft tablet, or whatever, because USB-C is a universal power cord!
I tried plugging the charger from a Google Pixel phone into the Apple laptop. Sure enough, it started charging the MacBook! Very, very slowly, of course—the charging speed depends on the wattage of the adapter you’re using. But the point is: universal. All brands, all devices. Phone, tablet, laptop, desktop: all can use the exact same charger. This is a historic moment.
Now, you can use any brand of charger to charge your Apple laptop.
The price
The second bale of bad news: the price. These are expensive laptops. The cheapest model (with only two USB-C ports and no Touch Bar) is $1300, which is $200 more than the base MacBook Air model used to be.
The basic Touch Bar model is $1,500 (13-inch) or $2,400 (15-inch).
If you max out the storage and speed of a 15-inch model, the grand total is $4,300. For that, you could buy a fancy couch, or a week in Las Vegas, or a used car. Or one night in the Franklin Suite at the new Trump hotel in Washington.
And that doesn’t include any adapters.
Now, look: If a Mac is your main work machine, then you can probably justify the purchase. The size, weight, speed, screen, and Touch Bar are really fantastic. And you can now upgrade that solid-state drive to 1 terabyte of storage (on the 13-inch) or even 2 terabytes (on the 15-inch), which is double the previous max.
Life with the MacBook Pro
The “Pro” part of the name is the controversial one. Many creative professionals are deeply frustrated that the new laptops’ maximum memory is 16 gigabytes. That’s always been the MacBook Pro max, but for high-end work like video editing and Photoshop, pros want more, more, more—and Windows laptops are available with 32 gigs of memory.
For everyone else, though, using the MacBook Pro is a delight. The speed, screen, Touch Bar, and universality of chargers are all huge leaps forward, and they make day-to-day life with this machine very satisfying. That’s the good news.
The bad news is carrying around all those adapters—and ponying up the money you’ll have to pay for the opportunity.
David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes non-toxic comments in the Comments below. On the Web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. Here’s how to get his columns by email.
There’s something near-unique about Vancouver’s Court House/Art Gallery: no tall buildings directly behind this 19th-century pile even though it’s in the heart of the 21st-century city.
In most cities with heritage from a hundred-plus years ago, the 20-century intrudes. Whether around the Bund of Shanghai or Bryant Park in New York, the contrast between low stone and high glass is the norm – with a few exceptions, like the Metropolitan Museum on Fifth Avenue in NYC set in Central Park.
Okay, the Wall Centre pops up in the distance a few metres on from this viewpoint. But still, bypassers can see the original impact of architect Rattenbury’s design without another era intruding.
For the first time in way too long, I went to a data dive over the weekend, facilitated by DataKind on behalf of Global Witness, for a couple of days messing around with the UK Companies House Significant Control (“beneficial ownership”) register.
One of the data fields in the data set is the nationality of a company’s controlling entity, where that’s a person rather than a company. The field is a free text one, which means that folk completing a return have to write their own answer in to the box, rather than selecting from a specified list.
The following are the more popular nationalities, as declared…
Note that “English” doesn’t count – for the moment, the nationality should be declared as “British”…
And some less popular ones – as well as typos…:
So how can we start to clean this data?
One the libraries I discovered over the weekend was fuzzyset, that lets you add “target” strings to a set and then do a fuzzy match retrieval from the set using a word or phrase you have been provided with.
If we find a list of recognised nationalities, we could add these to a canonical “nationality” set, and then try to match supplied nationalities against them.
Adding the FCO nationalities to a fuzzyset list, and then matching nationalities from the significant control register against those nationalities, gives a glimpse into the cleanliness (or otherwise!) of the data. For example, here’s what was matched against “British”:
British | Britsh | Bristish | Brisith | Scottish | Britsih | British/Greek | Greek/British | Briitish | British/Czech | Bitish | Brtisih | British/Welsh | Brirish | Brtish | British. | British Norfolk | British Cornish | British Subject | British English | Uk British | British/Irish | Britiah | British/Swedish | Biitish | Brititsh | British/English | Briish | British/Persian | Britiish | Brittish | French British | British/German | British/Syrian | Britihs | Briitsh | British /English | British / English | Brits | Kenyan/British | Britis | American British | Btitish | British/Bahrain Dual | Brtitish | Polish/British | Dual British/Irish | Brirtish | British- | British Uk | Brutish | Britich | British (Naturalised) | British (Canada Born) | Brithish | British Irish | British & Usa | Britisch | British/French | British/Israeli | Britrish | Britsh - English | American/British | Britisb | White British | Birtish | English / British | British/Turkish | Dual Usa/British | British/Swiss | Biritish | Britishu | Britisah | European British | British / Scottish | British & Israeli | British Swiss | Scotish | British Welsh | Britisn | Briti | Britihs & Irish | Britishi | Brfitish | Usa And British | American / British | British-United Kingdom | British Usa | Britisg | Israeli/British | Britih | Welsh British | Us & British | British Indian | British Asian | B Ritish | Emaratis | British/Bosnian | White Brtitish | British - English | Welsh/British | German/British | British & Irish | British-Israeli | British / Greek | Great British | Beitish | White Uk British | Belizean & British | Brithish English | Brituish | Britiash | Indian British | British Caribbean | Swedish/British | Britisjh | British Amercian | Britisk | Turkish/British | Brtiish | Br5itish | Brritish | Welsh, British | Brtitsh | U.K British | Britidh | Kurdish/British | English British | Brith | Irish/British | Britisj | British/Pakistan | I'M British | Britisih | American & British | British / Welsh | British / Swiss | Brittsh | British Icelandic | Swiss / British | Brotish | British Sikh | English/British | Britiswh | Bristsh | British European | British And Usa | British / Israeli | British Bengali | British Afghan | Brithsh | Brit6ish | British/Indian | British/Libyan | British/Polish | British Israeli | British National | Swiss British | Briritsh | Britishh | British / Irish | Brithis | Britshi | British And Thai | Britush | Britiss | British, English | Bfritish | Btritish | Brisitsh | White English | British/Mosotho | Usa & British | British/ Eu National | Finnish/British | Israeli + British | British And Polish | Bartish | Nritish | Brishish | British Manx | German And British | Britiosh | British (Bermudian) | Britishbritish | Naturalised British | English - British | Welsh - British | Dual American/British | British,Uk | British And Us | Uk Brittish | British Overseas | British & Swiss | English-British | British & Polish | Us/British | Swiss & British | British And Greek | Iraqi, British | Breitish | Black British | U.K. British | Afghan British | Brit / English | British/Asian | Awhite British | Asian British | British / Polish | Caucasian British | Britosh | Bristih | Britsish | British Libyan | Britisth | Brisish | British & Spanish | Britinsh | Britisht | Britsith | Britash | Irish / British | Brisitish | Brirtsh | Bruitish | Dutch / British | Bristis | Ritish | Welsh, Bristish | British Resident | British And French | British/ English | British (Welsh) | French/British | Dual British - French | Bristiah | Great Britain & Usa | British & Us | Uk Scottish | British Scott | Brititish | Dual: British, Usa | .British | British (Scots) | Scottish Uk | British/Scottish | Brittiish | British-Irish | Btittish | Scottish. | Britisy | Bruttish | Dual British Irish | Scottish/British
In passing, English matched best with Bangladeshi, so we maybe need to tweak the lookup somewhere, perhaps adding English, Scottish, Northern Irish, Welsh, and maybe the names of UK counties, into the fuzzyset, and then in post-processing mapping from these to British?
Also by the by, word had it that Companies House didn’t consider there to be any likely significant data quality issues with this field… so that’s alright then….
PS For various fragments of code I used to have a quick look at the nationality data, see this gist. If you look through the fuzzy matchings to the FCO nationalities, you’ll see there are quite a few false attributions. It would be sensible to look at the confidence ratings on the matches, and perhaps set thresholds for automatically allocating submitted nationalities to canonical nationalities. In a learning system, it may be possible to bootstrap – add high confidence mappings to the fuzzyset (with a map to the canonical nationality) and then try to match again the nationalities still unmatched at a particular level of confidence?
In the last year or so, Apple has stepped up service and support efforts in a major way.
Between launching several Twitter accounts, including @AppleSupport, which won a prize from Twitter this week as the top customer service provider on the social network. Now, it appears Apple is ready for the global launch of a new support service that has been rumoured for at least a year, an iOS app called Apple Support.
The app first appeared in the iOS App Store in the Netherlands, and still hasn’t made it to any other countries yet. The new app shows any Apple products owned by the account holder, and includes help articles, live chat functionality, and the ability to book Genius appointments, with that last bit of functionality previously built in to the Apple Store app.
It’s unclear so far exactly when this app will get a global rollout, but assuming nothing goes wrong with the version released in the Netherlands, it will likely hit other markets soon. Many Apple Store visitors have complained that it’s difficult to get an Genius Bar appointment on short notice these days, so hopefully with live chat and the ability to schedule a support phone call from within the app, more people will be able to get the help they need without needing to visit a store.
Since Google Photos split from Google+ back in 2015, users hoped the company would take the opportunity to make Photos more powerful alone than it could be while tied in to Google’s mostly failed social network.
To Google’s credit, the company has been working hard on bringing innovative new photo features to the service, as well as providing all users with free, unlimited photo backups, though at a lower quality.
Google Photos for Android has received another useful update, giving users the ability to create animated GIFs from a set of two to 50 photos from their library while offline. Before the update, users could select images and create an animation, but only with a network connection, presumably because the image processing was happening remotely on Google’s servers. Now though, even when you don’t have Wi-Fi, you’ll be able to quickly generate GIFs on the device itself, and they’ll be backed up automatically once you connect to a network.
This feature is Android-only for now, but Google Photos features are usually cross-platform, and iOS should presumably be getting the feature soon. Since releasing the Pixel, a phone with advanced automatic digital video stabilization, it’s clear the Google is getting serious about using the hardware to do more and more image processing locally on device.
How to Post Your Bike on Craigslist. This post explains exactly how to advertise your bike on Craigslist, so that you can successfully sell your bike online for a good price.
Google today announced a major revamp of Google Play Music. The company’s “fresh take” on its music streaming service is “smarter, easier to use, and much more assistive.” Like with almost all other services from Google, Play Music now uses machine learning to help play the right music for you depending on your location, mood, activity, and weather.
Besides being false and misleading clickbait, these ads are not from 
