Rolandt

Journalism’s biggest problem (as I’ve said before) is what it’s best at: telling stories. That’s what Thomas B. Edsall (of Columbia and The New York Times) does in Trump’s Digital Advantage Is Freaking Out Democratic Strategists, published in today’s New York Times. He tells a story. Or, in the favored parlance of our time, a narrative, about what he sees Republicans’ superior use of modern methods for persuading voters:

Experts in the explosively growing field of political digital technologies have developed an innovative terminology to describe what they do — a lexicon that is virtually incomprehensible to ordinary voters. This language provides an inkling of the extraordinarily arcane universe politics has entered:

geofencing, mass personalization, dark patterns, identity resolution technologies, dynamic prospecting, geotargeting strategies, location analytics, geo-behavioural segment, political data cloud, automatic content recognition, dynamic creative optimization.

Geofencing and other emerging digital technologies derive from microtargeting marketing initiatives that use consumer and other demographic data to identify the interests of specific voters or very small groups of like-minded individuals to influence their thoughts or actions.

In fact the “arcane universe” he’s talking about is the direct marketing playbook, which was born offline as the junk mail business. In that business, tracking individuals and bothering them personally is a fine and fully rationalized practice. And let’s face it: political campaigning has always wanted to get personal. It’s why we have mass mailings, mass callings, mass textings and the rest of it—all to personal addresses, numbers and faces.

Coincidence: I just got this:

There is nothing new here other than (at the moment) the Trump team doing it better than any Democrat. (Except maybe Bernie.) Obama’s team was better at it in ’08 and ’12. Trump’s was better at it in ’16 and is better again in ’20.*

However, debating which candidates do the best marketing misdirects our attention away from the destruction of personal privacy by constant tracking of our asses online—including tracking of asses by politicians. This, I submit, is a bigger and badder issue than which politicians do the best direct marketing. It may even be bigger than who gets elected to what in November.

As issues go, personal privacy is soul-deep. Who gets elected, and how, are not.

As I put it here,

Surveillance of people is now the norm for nearly every website and app that harvests personal data for use by machines. Privacy, as we’ve understood it in the physical world since the invention of the loincloth and the door latch, doesn’t yet exist. Instead, all we have are the “privacy policies” of corporate entities participating in the data extraction marketplace, plus terms and conditions they compel us to sign, either of which they can change on a whim. Most of the time our only choice is to deny ourselves the convenience of these companies’ services or live our lives offline.

Worse is that these are proffered on the Taylorist model, meaning mass-produced.

There is a natural temptation to want to fix this with policy. This is a mistake for two reasons:

1. Policy-makers are themselves part of the problem. Hell, most of their election campaigns are built on direct marketing. And law enforcement (which carries out certain forms of policy) has always regarded personal privacy as a problem to overcome rather than a solution to anything. Example.
2. Policy-makers often screw things up. Exhibit A: the EU’s GDPR, which has done more to clutter the Web with insincere and misleading cookie notices than it has to advance personal privacy tech online. (I’ve written about this a lot. Here’s one sample.)

We need tech of our own. Terms and policies of our own. In the physical world, we have privacy tech in the forms of clothing, shelter, doors, locks and window shades. We have policies in the form of manners, courtesies, and respect for privacy signals we send to each other. We lack all of that online. Until we invent it, the most we’ll do to achieve real privacy online is talk about it, and inveigh for politicians to solve it for us. Which they won’t.

If you’re interested in solving personal privacy at the personal level, take a look at Customer Commons. If you want to join our efforts there, talk to me.

_____________
*The Trump campaign also has the enormous benefit of an already-chosen Republican ticket. The Democrats have a mess of candidates and a split in the party between young and old, socialists and moderates, and no candidate as interesting as is Trump. (Also, I’m not Joyce.)

At this point, it’s no contest. Trump is the biggest character in the biggest story of our time. (I explain this in Where Journalism Fails.) And he’s on a glide path to winning in November, just as I said he was in 2016.

Microsoft hat mich gefragt, ob ich mal mit einem Surface Pro X arbeiten will, und ich will natürlich. Die Hardware ist toll, die Frage ist nur, was mit der Software ist. Surface Pro X hat einen ARM Chip und damit laufen dort für Intel entwickelte Programme nur in einer Emulation. Ich denke, das haben die meisten Tester falsch gemacht. Erst mal reflexartig Chrome installiert und sich dann über mangelnde Performance oder schlechte Batterielaufzeiten beschwert.

Ich will sehen, ob man das auch anders hinbekommt. Eine ganze Reihe von Anwendungen benutze ich bereits jetzt als Web Apps, die man mit Edge wunderbar verpacken kann. Da es den auf Chromium basierten Edge mittlerweile auch für das Pro X gibt, ist das ein guter Start. Ich bin gespannt.

This year’s Building The Future event was even better, although (again) I only got to attend a few of the main sessions since I was one of the curators for the Code track.

But I wanted to highlight the work of unsung heroes behind the scenes–hence this picture, which shows the Hipnose crew at work. There were a lot more people involved, but I’ve worked with these guys forever (both at Codebits and Pixels Camp), and they’re awesome (the projection mapping you can see on stage is one of their superpowers).

Since I didn’t get to see over half of it and there is already a lot of social media coverage out there (especially on LinkedIn), I won’t bore you with oodles of extra photos or session notes–I’ll just reiterate that it’s the innovation event of the year here in Portugal right now, and that I had a lot of fun in my limited role in it.

There’s a good reason why the topics of customer service and customer experience have become so central to nearly every discussion on business success these days. The fact is that 96% of businesses fail to survive beyond ten years, meaning that only 4 out of every 100 current businesses will survive through the next decade. Those numbers may appear grim, but the reality is that those companies that find ways to differentiate themselves have an opportunity to thrive where others fail.

Recent survey results from Gartner indicate that 89% of companies believe that customer experience is emerging as the primary basis for competition. Retaining future business requires a company to address a broad spectrum of customer needs, not only the requirements of a product itself. Emerging trends such as customer portals, self-service options like knowledge bases, and customized offerings are helping to address these needs. As customer service continues to evolve as a primary form of competitive differentiation, it is important to understand what it is and why it remains so important.

A Definition of Customer Service

So, what exactly are we talking about when we say “customer service”? This official definition from Business Dictionary sums it up well: “All interactions between a customer and a product provider at the time of sale, and thereafter. Customer service adds value to a product and builds enduring relationship.” The keyword here is value. If your customer service efforts do not add value to relationships, they are unlikely to make a long-term impact on your brand’s ability to retain its customers. Customer service is more than merely offering answers to customer questions. It’s an essential component of your brand values.

Every business that is serious about long term growth desires to build trust and customer loyalty. Today’s world is so connected that consumers have unprecedented access to options for nearly any product or service they wish to buy. With this level of choice, it is as vital as ever for your business to provide tangible reasons for customers to do business with you.

The Good: Happy Customers Are Likely to Refer Others

Recommendations from trusted sources is an important factor in making purchasing decisions for most consumers. One of the great benefits of superior customer service is that a satisfied customer is very likely to share their experience with others. Recent data estimates up to 77% of customers regularly share such recommendations with friends. Positive customer service experiences not only help retain customers but can also improve your value proposition. Approximately 7 in 10 Americans say that they are willing to spend more money on companies that offer excellent service. This finding represents an incredible opportunity to invest in service capabilities, and the benefits are clear. By providing exceptional customer service, you’ll generate a positive return on investment, improve customer retention, and grow your business through referrals.

The Bad: Negative Reviews Are Certain to Impact your Business

Almost 72% of customers do not make purchasing decisions without consulting online reviews, and they often trust them as much as close family and friends. Positive reviews from your satisfied customers are a necessary part of growing a trusted business, and stellar reviews truly make a difference. While positive reviews make a difference, most consumers these days generally expect strong reviews for any company with which they choose to do business. It’s the negative reviews that often stand out.

While mistakes happen and product or service issues are inevitable, the result of negative customer reviews is often a failure to deliver a satisfactory customer service resolution. A company’s ability to resolve customer complaints remains an important factor in reducing negative reviews and lost customers. Another unfortunate consequence of poor customer service is that a dissatisfied customer is likely to share their experience with three times as many people, as compared to someone sharing a positive experience. Positive reviews are helpful, but negative ones can do significantly more damage.

The Ugly: Dissatisfied Customers Leave, Often without a Trace

Retaining customers over the long term not only benefits your business with repeat sales and potential new business through referrals but is also far more efficient than your efforts to find new customers. The cost of acquiring new customers is a staggering 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining existing ones. The high costs of customer acquisition highlights the incredible value of repeat business.

When you lose customers, you will typically have no feedback or indication of it at all. A typical company will only hear from 5% of lost customers; they simply leave and never return. Without those points of feedback, it can be difficult to analyze where things went wrong. You must provide as many opportunities for feedback as possible at all points of your customer service process. It is impossible to follow up with every dissatisfied customer, but you can do your best to contact those that have reached out to you. Making the most of these interactions and having a robust follow-up mechanism in place can ensure you get better as you learn.  

To remain competitive, companies today must develop a comprehensive view of customer service and how to meet a wide range of customer expectations. By providing new customer service capabilities to your support team, you can help ensure that your staff and customers alike have access to tools that genuinely add value.  Differentiation for modern businesses will come from the experiences that their customers have with their brand, and those that get it right have a chance to thrive for many years to come.

Càmera i ciutat (Studio Gris. Griselda Martí, Miguel Puerto, Gisela Chueca, Helena Esteban, Barcelona: CaixaForum 2019) With Elena Siemen’s Street Theatre in Passing (see earlier post, below) still on my mind and on the basis …

Yes, this is a political post. If you don’t like those, don’t read it. In fact, it could very well offend every single one of my readers. Based on news reports, it now seems likely that the Senate will call no witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Trump. The Senate could vote not to … Continued

The post Shameless appeared first on without bullshit.

Wendy Grossman makes a good point. Encrypt, encrypt, encrypt as the way forward, while assuming all tech is ‘dirty’. It will nicely up the price too for dragnet surveillance, pushing the three letter outfits towards focusing on needles again, not ever larger haystacks.

Liked net.wars: Dirty networks

In other words, the essential question is: how do you build trusted communications on an untrusted network? The Internet's last 25 years have taught us a key piece of the solution: encrypt, encrypt, encrypt. Johnson, perhaps unintentionally, has just made the case for spreading strong, uncrackable encryption as widely as possible. To which we can only say: it's about time.

The Republican Party’s defence and support of unlimited presidential power, when it suits them, is beyond astounding.

For over a decade Mozilla has been using IRC to publicly chat with anyone interested to join the community. Recently, we’ve launched a replacement for it by creating a Mozilla community Matrix instance. I will be focusing on simply documenting what the process looks like to join in as a community member (without an LDAP account/Mozilla email address). For the background of the process you can read it here. Follow along the photos and what each caption says.

If you have managed to get this far, Welcome to Mozilla’s Matrix! 😄

NOTE: If there’s an official page documenting the process I’m not aware of it. I will add it once it is published.

I fully agree with Tantek here. (ht Jack Jamieson) Doing vegetarian or vegan by default at events is meaningful as well as easy to do. No non-vegetarian minds it, especially not with non-veg side dishes. For organisers it takes away the friction of having to keep track of various diet options.

At last year’s Techfestival (an event for thousands in Copenhagen) I was pleasantly surprised to see all catering was vegetarian by default, and the speakers dinner I attended was mostly vegan. It is important to also note that that speakers dinner was the most memorable meal I had last year, for its creative play with tastes, colors and textures.

For IndieWebCamp Amsterdam, based on the ‘vegetarian by default’ suggestion given to IndieWeb organisers, I arranged it that way too. Pre-event dinner and the first lunch were vegetarian, and the second lunch had plenty vegetarian options on the menu as well as non-vegetarian.
For our birthday unconferences from the start we catered vegetarian at the same level as non-vegetarian (our bbqs definitely aren’t vegetarian as such). It reduces overhead and planning while at the same time increasing the variety and sense of plenty of what’s on the table. It’s easy to have plenty of vegan salads, vegetable dishes and soups, with non-vegetarian food served alongside.

Replied to a post by Tantek Çelik

Instead of making "vegan" or "vegetarian" a special meal option, flip it around, and cater vegan by default, with special meal options for dairy (milk/cream/cheese/yogurt), meat, or fish (as well as other needs / sensitivities)....Things like this are why personal, small group, and company choices around food, consumption, environmental impacts do make an impact. By setting a good (if bold) example, you normalize it, you remove fear, you make it that much less strange for the next person to choose to do so, for themselves, their group, or their company. ...Systemic change is possible, and it’s possible to work in parallel at all levels.

In social media, we actually encounter monsters.

Some are monstrous, and some may only be performing monstrosity. We may not be able to tell these apart. Yet they are there.

In 1943, one met Nazis if you had the misfortune to live in Paris or Bordeaux. If you happened to live in Des Moines or Calgary, however, you might seldom or never meet a Nazi. In Paris, you had to decide: would you shake the hand of a German officer? Would you enjoy an aperitif at a café favored by clerks employed by the Gestapo? Would you spit on a collaborator you met in the street if you thought you could get away with it? If you would not, did that make you a collaborator as well?

In Des Moines, you could get through the day without thinking this through. Today, no one lives that way: social media brings distant Nazis direct to you.

We are all Berliners; je suis Charlie Hebdo.

Today, for the first time in our company's history, Acquia was named a Leader in Gartner's new Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs). This is an incredible milestone for us.

In 2014, I declared that companies would need more than a website or a CMS to deliver great customer experiences. Instead, they would need a DXP that could integrate lots of different marketing and customer success technologies, and operate across more digital channels (e.g. mobile, chat, voice, and more).

For five years, Acquia has diligently been building towards an "open DXP". As part of that, we expanded our product portfolio with solutions like Lift (website personalization), and acquired two marketing companies: Mautic (marketing automation + email marketing), and AgilOne (Customer Data Platform).

Being named a Leader by Gartner in the Digital Experience Platforms Magic Quadrant validates years and years of hard work, including last year's acquisitions. We also join an amazing cohort of leaders, like Salesforce and Adobe, who are among the very best software companies in the world. All of this makes me incredibly proud of the Acquia team.

This recognition comes after six years as a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management (WCM). We learned recently that Gartner is deprecating its Web Content Management Magic Quadrant as Gartner clients' demand has been shifting to the broader scope of DXPs. We also see growing interest in DXPs from our clients, though we believe WCM and content will continue to play a foundational and critical role.

You can read the full Gartner report on Acquia's website. Thank you to the entire Acquia team who made this incredible accomplishment possible!

Mandatory disclaimer from Gartner

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms, Irina Guseva, Gene Phifer, Mike Lowndes, 29 January 2020.

This graphic was published by Gartner, Inc. as part of a larger research document and should be evaluated in the context of the entire document. The Gartner document is available upon request from Acquia.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors:

It’s time for our annual look back on Apple’s performance during the past year, as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple.

This is the fifth year that I’ve presented this survey to a hand-selected group. They were prompted with 12 different Apple-related subjects, and asked to rate them on a scale from 1 to 5 and optionally provide text commentary per category.

It’s always a pleasure to share my thoughts about Apple’s past year in Snell’s annual report. Not only is it a great read – at this point, it’s also a fantastic historical resource collecting years of commentary about Apple.

You can read Snell’s complete report card here. For context, I’ve included my full responses to Snell’s questionnaire below.

On the Mac:

I don’t have anything particularly good or bad to say about the Mac. I appreciate the release of new hardware such as the 16-inch MacBook Pro and Mac Pro, but those products are not for me. As a heavy iPad user, however, I need to point out my favorite feature of macOS Catalina: Sidecar. In one fell swoop, Apple has allowed me to stop using my previous setup for creating an additional display for my Mac mini through the iPad. Sidecar’s performance is great, it’s natively integrated with iPadOS and macOS, and because it’s “just another display” under the hood, it worked with my existing window management automations (built using Keyboard Maestro and BetterTouchTool) right away. Sidecar is my favorite macOS feature in a long time, which says a lot about what I need from the Mac, I guess.

On iPhone:

I wasn’t a fan of 2018’s iPhone XS camera and the look of photos processed with Smart HDR. With the iPhone 11 Pro hardware, Apple fixed nearly all of my annoyances with its predecessor’s camera: colors are more vivid and true-to-life; Smart HDR is less aggressive and “fake” than before; Deep Fusion, when it works, produces some incredibly crisp images; there’s a general sense of more freedom granted by the iPhone 11 Pro camera, whether it’s about the new ultra-wide lens or the excellent night mode. The camera was the main protagonist of this year’s iPhone upgrade; the iPhone 11 Pro camera has made me fall in love with taking pictures on my iPhone all over again.

On iPad and iPadOS:

A sleeper year for hardware, an important year for software with the release of iPadOS and bifurcation of Apple’s mobile operating system. Time will tell whether having a separate iPadOS will pay off for iPad aficionados craving annual updates to the tablet’s OS; Apple’s promise is enticing, but we need to see if the company can keep up the pace at WWDC 2020. The iPad is entering its second decade in 2020, and despite its relative maturity, there’s still plenty left to address, from refinements to multiwindow (which is arguably a tad confusing in its first version) and the Files app to bigger questions that are looming large over the iPad’s role in Apple’s ecosystem. Will the iPad continue to be “just a tablet” with an optional keyboard in its second decade? Will we see Apple move toward a more hybrid approach with features inspired by and modeled after laptops? Something else entirely? We can’t know yet, but I want to believe the foundation set with iPadOS in 2019 provides Apple with a launchpad to explore these different opportunities. In terms of hardware, I really hope to see an even bigger iPad Pro eventually, with more than one USB-C port, proper support for external displays and pointing devices, and a “pro” version of the Smart Keyboard.

On wearables:

Between AirPods 2, the Series 5 Watch with always-on display, and AirPods Pro, Apple has only cemented its role as the leader in the wearable revolution with breakthrough products that are actually shipping today. I absolutely love my AirPods Pro: their noise cancellation rivals bigger, more expensive over-ear headphones. I would love to see more Watch band options for the Apple Watch in 2020; the current line-up is starting to feel a bit stale and boring.

On services:

An okay debut for Apple TV+, a decent year for Apple Music in terms of new features (time-synced lyrics!) and content (more curated playlists, updated more frequently), and a terrible start for Apple News+. The company nailed it with the initial rollout of Apple Arcade, but now they need to keep up the pace and show us why we should continue to pay for new games each month.

On HomeKit:

The Home app continues to be affected by an awful design that makes it way more difficult than it should be to quickly manage your accessories and see the status of your home at a glance. In 2020, I’d like to see a complete makeover of the Home app’s UI with a focus on speed and customization, as well as new initiatives from Apple to encourage third-party manufacturers to adopt HomeKit and Siri integration more quickly.

And lastly, some thoughts about the future of Shortcuts:

As I mentioned multiple times on MacStories, I’m curious to see where Apple will take the Shortcuts app in the future. Now that the app is integrated with the system, will Apple go back to shipping features designed for power users who rely on the app to get work done? Or will they go down the road of simplification to try and make Shortcuts more accessible for the masses at the expense of advanced users? So far, neither of these things have really happened, which makes me wonder whether Shortcuts may be going through a bit of an identity crisis at the moment. The addition of automation features in iOS 13 makes me optimistic about the fact that Apple understands the potential of Shortcuts for advanced use cases and that there’s lots more still to come.

→ Source: sixcolors.com

In 2013 I spoke about Responsive Deliverables at SXSW. While it felt in-tune to the emerging web design trends and my personal experiences, I didn’t really anticipate that I’d personally spend the nearly every day of the next 7 years working on component-based design systems. The work has been a series of utter successes, quasi-failures, mutinies, political dramas, complete lack of organizational prioritization, and 67.742% rollouts. As my head rises from the the waters of recent projects, my thoughts have been gathering around how to improve the work I do.

I was struck this week by a post by Jeremy Keith called Architects, gardeners, and design systems. Jeremy wades into the world of metaphors and expounds on Frank Chimero’s Gardening vs. Architecture metaphor and its relation to design systems. I enjoy this metaphor a lot. Gardening is a mix of planning, digging, cursing, planting, maintenance, fighting against environmental entropy, and lots of waiting to see what bears fruit.

Jeremy extends the analogy of gardening to the idea of maintenance:

Outside of the context of open source projects, we don’t talk much about maintenance. We’re much more likely to talk about making.

In our cultural obsession with billionaire entrepreneurs we laud new features more than the maintenance and incrementalism work of making old features better and more accessible. Maintenance looks like red minus signs in the spreadsheet. New features look like green plus signs. New features look better on our LinkedIn profiles. New features have that pizzazz, baby.

When gardening, the building of planters and initial planting is a very short process. The majority of your time is spent nurturing and monitoring growth. I personally feel the struggle between maintainer work and new shiny feature work. I enjoy that new feature smell but I know that my day-to-day is more like a janitor on a boat mopping up someone else’s barf. In terms of metaphors, the gardening metaphor is certainly better, and it acknowledges that design and development still tend to be more creative endeavors.

But the garden has become more systematized, industrial, and Jeremy makes a strong assertion about the societal impact design systems have:

In that light, design systems take their place in a long history of dehumanising approaches to manufacturing like Taylorism. The priorities of “scientific management” are the same as those of design systems—increasing efficiency and enforcing consistency.

This kills me, but it’s true. We’ve industrialized design and are relegated to squeezing efficiencies out of it through our design systems. All CSS changes must now have a business value and user story ticket attached to it. We operate more like Taylor and his stopwatch and Gantt and his charts, maximizing effort and impact rather than focusing on the human aspects of product development.

At the same time, I have seen first hand how design systems can yield improvements in accessibility, performance, and shared knowledge across a willing team. I’ve seen them illuminate problems in design and code. I’ve seen them speed up design and development allowing teams to build, share, and validate prototypes or A/B tests before undergoing costly guesswork in production. There’s value in these tools, these processes.

Two themes that keep coming up in my business book odyssey are that the key to employee happiness comes from autonomy and the people you work with. “Autonomy” is a tough one for design systems. In a sense, a design system exists to reduce “riffing” and wrangle against having 32 different buttons across 20 page templates. Consistency tends to be great for User Experience.

It seems to be human nature, however, to build a new button or use the wrong LEGO or use the LEGO that your corporate idols use, instead of digging in the bin for the exact right one. I’ve seen the eyes designers and developers glaze over with boredom when I inform them that their new radical idea is already in the design system and is waiting to be implemented. Perhaps problem-solving work is inherently more interesting to humans than the implementation work.

Frank says:

It can be hard to stay interested if it feels like you’re painting by numbers, even if they are your own numbers.

But design systems excel at making that new feature work boring. “You need a list of products over the thing? Well, here’s our list of products and you put it over the thing.” Often the concise description of the problem is the solution. It can of course be improved, but not bad for two minutes of work. But it only works if people feel they have autonomy and are a part of a cohesive team. Otherwise, they’ll go rogue.

There’s always a point on a project where I’m approached by a distant, rogue manager of a distant, rogue designer who has been told by their manager they need to adhere to the design system. “Is this design system compliant?” to which I only know how to reply, “I dunno, did you use the design system?”

Ultimately, your satisfaction with a design system or “design systems” as a concept in general probably depends on whether you contribute to the hyperobject or are beholden to it. It’s unfortunate that in a system where all design compositions and all lines of code must maximize shareholder value, we never learn to play and how to break the rules in order to produce something new and exciting.

So how do we inject more autonomy into design systems? Jina Anne’s philosophy on Design Tokens seems really strong in maximizing individual contributor and team autonomy, being more “descriptivist” as Jeremy puts it, rather than “prescriptivist”. Perhaps the old “Tools, not rules” adage holds up here as well. Design and development tools and processes that democratize contributions could provide autonomy, or at least the feeling of autonomy.

I’ve said it before in the past and will repeat it because I feel like it applies here, but I wonder if the tiny part of “tiny bootstraps” is maybe the most important part of my little catchphrase from yesteryear. Perhaps some styles, some utilities, some components, and a handful of carefully considered assemblies could maintain that autonomy and while keeping the User Experience consistent for customers.

The gospel of design systems is still very true to me, but I’m beginning to see some of the potential tradeoffs; the human costs.

Tim Cliss (left) in England; Frank McCaughey (right) in Dublin, Ireland (screen shot)

For those intrigued by the ideas of radical non-duality, who are not drawn to watch long videos and prefer to learn by reading, here is an edited transcription of much of an interview from a year ago, by Frank McCaughey (from his series Can I Be Frank? aka Behind the Curtain) of Tim Cliss. Tim’s message is much like Tony Parsons’ and Jim Newman’s, but you may find Tim’s engagingly compassionate way of speaking and his thoughtful turns of phrase resonate more with you, or provide a different and useful perspective on the subject. The unraveling continues.

Can I Be Frank #37 — Frank McCaughey talks with Tim Cliss

[A few of my ‘asides’ and interpretations are indicated below in square brackets. Note that both Tim (T) and Frank (F) were laughing almost continuously during this chat, and are speaking candidly and informally as good friends. It’s not a formal, ‘arms’ length’ interview. Tim smiles non-stop, and there’s no tone of authority in any of this. So don’t take it, or anything that is said, too seriously! If you want to get a sense of the playfulness of this interview, watch a few minutes of the video using the link above before reading.]

[0:00 — casual hellos and updates; discussion about talking about this with family]

[3:05]

F: Is your Mum interested in this?

T: (laughing) Are you joking? I’ve tried to explain it to her; I keep it really simple. When I was into Eckhart Tolle and the Power of Now, that was OK [with her]. Then she worried about me after that.

F: With my Mum it was “I know what you’re talking about, but let’s never talk about it again.”

T: Yeah. “I’m fine but just don’t ever mention it again”. Fortunately I talk with my brother about it and he’s good with it. He’s slightly infected you could say. It is like a virus and you aren’t getting rid of it — there is no cure. It’s a story but it’s more like you’re remembering something you’d forgotten, and once you’ve remembered it, you can never forget it again. I have no idea what it is that remembers, but something remembers. “Illusion” is about the best analogy we’ve got but it’s not an illusion — that term is quite misleading as well. Illusion suggest it’s there, and it’s not. If it were an illusion, once it was seen through it would still be there, just seen as it really is, and it’s not. The biggest misconception is that there is some enlightenment experience that would be the same for everyone. That’s just a fantasy story. When it happened it was certainly not what I was looking for, or hoping for.

[12:45]

F: What were you hoping for?

T: Bliss. With a little bit of ecstasy mixed in. But just bliss would be enough.

F: But we’ve talked about this idea of different perspectives, and I can’t help put on you this idea that there’s a subtle difference in how we see the world. ‘I’ see the world here, and there, there isn’t ‘anyone’ who sees the world.

T: That’s fine. You can’t help but do that. Seeing is just seeing. There is no change in perception. The world isn’t seen in a new way. The difference between me and no-me is really subtle, and yet enormous, massive. The me is the commentary, always assessing, judging. And then there’s just a lot of space; the perception is just more empty without the me.

F: I can see that there can only be what’s happening.

[17:25]

T: Yeah, and I start with that because nearly everyone gets that. There are times when I think I’ll never speak about non-duality again, but then it’s no different here from the place you’re at — you can’t not do that, if that’s what’s happening. It’s the only motivation I have anymore — to speak about this. The energy to be motivated for lots of other things was ‘mine’, and when I wasn’t there it didn’t happen anymore.

F: So the idea of striving for anything has disappeared?

T: All gone, yeah. And that’s really distressing, in ‘the process of falling away’, very distressing. ‘Me’ was screaming “you’re losing everything here, you’re dying here!”

F: But that unwinded itself over a period of time?

T: Seemed to, yeah. Over a couple of years I guess. Or you could say the unwinding started then. You could say it’s then forever unwinding. But that’s just a story — none of it is true. I don’t like to talk about my ‘awakening’ or whatever you want to call it because seekers then say “Oh, that’s how it is then”. And then it’s just seen as a story. And then you go “I’d like to have a go at that”. And then “It must be my turn soon.”

[21:00]

F: It’s like chasing nothing, endlessly.

T: I think most people are like that. They chase nothing their whole lives and then their body dies and that’s it.

F: That’s awful.

T: Not really. I don’t find it awful at all any more. Don’t get me wrong. It was awful for me. I suffered a lot trying to be the best me I could be. It’s endless torture.

F: These conversations do expose the futility and stupidity of that kind of seeking. Even when it’s explained that there is no liberation.

T: No. There is no liberation. You’ll never find what you’re looking for.

F: I love that, too. (laughing) Fuck.

[25:30]

T: Yeah. And the me can’t bear the end of hope. It will even take hopeless as a new path, a new thing to seek. You could make ‘nothing’ or ‘emptiness’ something to seek. But when you’ve been seeking a long time, the suffering can get unbearable. That’s how it was for me. More and more desperate. That’s why this is such a terrible message to hear. The speakers I loved and still love to hear have a message of hopelessness. There is only fulfillment — there is nothing beyond or behind. There’s nowhere to get to and nothing ever moves. All movement is just a story you’re telling. Inside and outside is empty. It’s just absolutely still. It isn’t eternal — that’s a story about going on forever. There’s nothing going on. So I say it’s ordinary but it’s also beyond wonder, beyond comprehension. And when there’s a giving up of trying to find it, because it can’t be found, then you could say — “there it is”. And yet you can’t say what that is because it’s nothing. And there’s everything in that. It’s just obvious that there can’t be anything else. The loss of time as a solid reality is the biggest aspect of what we’re talking about, because the sense of self is completely caught up with the ‘reality’ of time. The continuation of myself as an existent being — that is what I am. If that doesn’t appear, the self, which is screaming in fear that it’s dying, that it won’t exist, stops appearing, and in the absence it’s not even noticeable that it ever was. I talk about my story and what it used to be for me, but it’s just a story. No different from yours or anyone’s story. And then amazingly the stories don’t die, they just become beautiful stories. There’s a misconception that the story’s the problem. The story isn’t the problem. The problem is that it’s ‘my’ story. ‘My’ story is that I am the centre of the universe, that everything is in relation to me. And it’s that relationship that stops [when the self ‘disappears’]. So there’s nothing in relationship to me anymore. And everything is just as it is. I can’t know how it is for [others] but every body works the same way; we’ve just got this illusion of uniqueness. ‘Me’-ness, specialness. Here, there’s no special human beings anymore.

[33:40]

F: [describes how this strikes him, the emotion and rawness that comes up listening to this]

T: Raw, yeah. The sense of self is like a filter from life, a defence, a survival mechanism. We seem to be the only species that’s created an existential sense of our own beingness as unique and special and made our selves the centre of the universe. It makes perfect sense to me now. I hated my self for a long time — self was the enemy. I was just screaming for ‘me’ to stop. And then when it was right at the end, strangely, I screamed to save my own life. There’s this dichotomy in the seeker, desperately seeking the end of themselves, but when it comes to that they’ll do anything to survive. Because that’s all the ‘me’ is. And as a filter it doesn’t make life less raw. It filters to make life manageable because ‘I’ need to feel in control. ‘I’ can’t stand the idea of everything being completely chaotic, random, pointless, useless.

[37:20]

F: (laughing) ‘Me’ is this ball of tension trying to keep it all together, to know the world and confirm everything it knows. But it knows that’s impossible.

[discussion about the joys of running and the feeling of accomplishment and peace it gives, and how it gives us a brief ‘effortless’ respite from ourselves]

T: I think sometimes it’s that kind of experience that drives us to become seekers.

[44:00]

F: I remember sometimes getting caught up in the thought that there could be nothing, and that thought was absolutely terrifying.

T: It is terrifying. That’s why I say that this is not what the ‘me’ wants, what it most fears. Non-existence, the void, emptiness. And that emptiness is everything. The ‘me’ can make everything else oneness, but the ‘me’ is always separate from it because the ‘me’ has made itself ‘real’. And the lie is that ‘I am real’. It’s the lie on which everything else rests. The reality of everything stems from ‘my’ reality. ‘My’ reality makes everything else real. And when ‘I’ am not, then everything is free to be what it is. It’s not that it’s not real, it’s just that you can’t say what it is anymore [Tony uses the term ‘appearance’]. I can still call a tree a tree, and the difference is incredibly subtle but unimaginably enormous as well — when it is a tree and it is not a tree. And although that sounds ridiculous, and it’s not ‘known’, it’s obvious, but it doesn’t have the ‘reality’ that it would have had. It’s not an object, a thing.

[49:45]

F: The idea of the ‘void’ is terrifying, it makes me feel sick.

T: It’s terrifying. It’s death. But there’s nothing to die, so it’s the end of death. There aren’t many advantages with this shit, but the biggest one is that it’s the end of death. It’s the end of the possibility that ‘I’ could die, The reality (there is no reality really — but forget I said that) is that there is no death. Nothing exists. Nothing is born. Nothing dies. There is only what is, as it is. The stories of birth and life and death continue, but they’re just stories, and without ‘my’ story of ‘my’ life, they’ve lost all their weight; they’re just seen as beautiful stories. The ‘me’ just imprisons itself to keep the ‘me’ safe, and blocks everything else out, especially feelings, because they’re what the ‘me’ is most afraid of.

F: Because it has no control over them.

T: Yes. The me has no say over feelings, and it desperately wants to, so it employs strategies to avoid feelings that it doesn’t want to feel. That’s life for most people. I never know what word to use to describe this ‘absence of me’. I use that rather than ‘death of me’ because nothing dies. It’s just that the appearance of me doesn’t appear anymore. ‘I’ was an appearance, and then that appearance stops, no different than when it’s cloudy and then that stops.

[Dave’s aside: earlier Tim made the point that the self is not even an illusion (it’s a “lie” we tell ourselves), but now he’s using the word appearance, the word Tony uses to describe everything other than the self — it might be interesting to explore this different use of ‘illusion’ and ‘appearance’ when the two are clearly describing the same things]

[55:00]

F: It is true that this feeling of being and me-ing and the unraveling of the self does seem to be a bit of an ‘occurrence’.

T: Yes, and it seems that this unraveling can happen in one go, or [in others] seemingly over a long time, with pauses when nothing happens. But nothing really happens. The most amazing thing in my story of me, and the hardest thing to convey, is that it was absolutely obvious that nothing had happened. The destruction of me — it felt like I was being torn to pieces — was very unpleasant, not nice, bloody. I screamed a lot. But then the only thing that was really obvious was that none of that happened.

F: But for me as a person in the world I could never say nothing really happened because it wouldn’t be true.

T: Absolutely. It wouldn’t be true for ‘you’. There is no truth. This is the end of knowing anything about truth. Truth is just what the ‘I’ wants to know. The ‘I’ is always wanting to know what’s real, what’s true.

[58:00]

F: Sometimes I ask myself “Frank, do you really know in your heart what you’re looking for here?” And I don’t know the answer, though sometimes I think I do.

T: Yeah, that’s just how it is, until it’s not. But this isn’t “better”. Though if you asked if I’d go back to being Tim again I’d say “Not for anything.”

F: So when the self is gone is there relief? And is the seeking over?

T: There is no relief because there’s no ‘me’ to be relieved. There was “the peace that surpasses all understanding”. I remember thinking that’s what that phrase meant. I worked as a therapist, and we studied the supposedly first woman therapist, who used to say when giving counsel “All shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.” And I thought [when this happened] “That’s what she meant.” I’m making it sound spiritual and it wasn’t; there was just this ridiculously simple sense of peace, with nothing out of place, even though ‘my’ life was wrecked. The feeling of ‘OK-ness’ was overwhelming.

[1:05:30]

F: How did it happen? Did you just wake up (or not wake up) one morning…?

T: No. I had no idea that I was gone. Who would know? Something was not appearing anymore that was never there. So the absence was not ‘noticeable’. The only thing that was noticed was the absence of the symptoms that the ‘me’ seemed to produce, like anxiety, guilt, blame, a lot less judgement and measuring, And yet the ability to function is exactly the same — it was never ‘mine’. Functioning is natural. But much of what I didn’t like about myself is gone. That’s why this is worth talking about. I go for months without mentioning it, and then I say something like I said to you, that’s there’s no difference, and then I realize I would never want to go back to being ‘me’ again.

[1:08:55]

F: So the sense of me is seen as just an appearance?

T: Yes. And it’s most convincing. I like the old Advaita way of saying it, it’s like a veil — that everything is seen through ‘me’. Everything I see is seen ‘from’ me, which colours, flavours, and taints everything.

F: Yes.

T: And I don’t talk about it much but I did have some revelatory experiences [“glimpses”?] where when the ‘me’ came back I described it as “the veil had been lifted and there was life as it is”. And then the veil came down again. But there is no veil. Shit, it’s convincing though.

F: Yeah, but when you start to go down this road you shift from arguing about it to asking yourself if you can agree.

[I think Tim in his following comment misunderstands what Frank was saying]

T: No. ‘You’ can’t agree. But fortunately, Frank, there’s nothing to do. No happening is any more significant than any other.

[1:12:10]

F: The whole thing is a bit mad. It’s just always this.

T: Yeah you can say that but then people just seek ‘this’. At first you try to make your words as little misleading as possible. But then you realize no one can be misled, there is no misleading. It’s all fine. It doesn’t matter at all. There is no duality or non-duality.

F: Yeah, cause then it becomes another ‘thing’. There is a subtle difference though — the seeker doesn’t like it when someone implies they are in a special ‘state’ [or knows something you don’t but presumably could].

T: There is something to be said for knowing that hopeless is the only way, as long as you aren’t hopeful about it! You don’t want hopeful hopelessness. I was exactly like you [in my aversion to people who presumed to know or be special]. Preferences here are unchanged — opinions, politics, sports, foods, activities are all the same. There’s a lot of nonsense [among so-called ‘teachers’ of non-duality] about that.

F: Do you do ‘talks’, or ‘meetings’ about this?

T: I’ve tried, but not many people show up, and you have to really go to London to do them, since that’s probably the biggest audience for this message in the world. And this will never be a popular message. It’s offensive to a lot of selves. Once in a pub one of my mates had me by the throat. You do have to be a bit careful about it!

[thanks and farewells; recording ends at 1:19:01]

“Brexit belongs to this era in one quintessential way. It is an act of the imagination,...

David Wiley, iterating toward openness, Jan 31, 2020

David Wiley writes (correctly) that when people find it hard to participate, they don't participate. So, for example, many improvements to open educational resources (OER) never get made, because they're too hard to suggest. So he describes a process where "There’s a new button at the bottom of every page of content. It says 'Improve this page.' When a student or teacher or other user from the public web clicks the button, they’re linked directly to a Google Doc which includes all the content from the page. The Google doc is shared publicly and has Track Changes turned on. So you can just begin typing or commenting immediately." Right. This is good. I've been using Google Docs to write papers recently, sharing my work as I go. It's easy to comment, and I get some comments, but there's still more needed to make sharing and participation more popular.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Michael Segal, POCKET, Nautilus, Jan 29, 2020

This sounds like my brain: "Kaschube and his colleagues... have found a host of features that stand in stark contrast to the circuits that engineers build: spontaneous activity and correlation, dynamic context generation, unreliable transmission, and straight-up noise." It's never quiet in my brain. I suspect it's never quiet in most people's brains. That's what makes them great.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Maria Conache, Ramona Dima, Andreea Mitu, Informatica Economică, Paperity, Jan 29, 2020

As I read through this, I found myself adding gRSShnopper to the list of platforms being compared (not that it would really make sense to compare it with Coursera, Udactoty, Udemy and EdX). Organization type? Not really organized. Partnerships? Not really. Free courses? Always. Paid courses? Never. Etc. It's funny how ther other platforms all seemed to follow the same pattern in the end. Even their connection speeds are about the same. From 2006 but just became available on Paperity.

 

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Jan 30, 2020

 

We lost Alex today. For the last thirteen years, my little buddy Alex has worked side by side with me, always present on my keyboard or helping me with my papers. We forged a special bond over the years. He has appeared on many of the videos I have produced. We'll miss him terribly.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

DW, Jan 30, 2020

This article from the German DW (but here in English) profiles work to develop eLearning in Africa, drawing on the perspective of Rebecca Stromeyer, who organizes the eLearning Africa conference, and Tony Carr, from the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Beyond the well known technical challenges in Africa, "many employers still believe that online studies are worth less than degrees that require a physical presence." Via Helge Sherlund.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Josh Bersin, Jan 31, 2020

For people in the north part of northern hemisphere this is probably the most difficult time of the year as we struggle with illness and weather and darkness. It reminds us that, as Josh Bersin says, "the most important things in our lives are compassion, empathy, forgiveness, gratitude, mindfulness, social connection, and awe. These are all human issues, and all revolve around kindness." There's a tendency to blame things like lonliness and lack of compassion on our devices, but I think financial pressures, work demands, and other external stresses are playing a large role. Learning and pedagogy shouldn't be based on that harsh capitalist model of acquiring stuff - it should keep a "consistent focus on supporting people, understanding people, and giving people the opportunity to grow."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Back from a week in New Orleans (there was a wedding in the middle of that) where riding streetcars became a central theme. People were asking me if I was going to rent a car, but that seemed to me to be pointless. The French Quarter, where we were staying has very narrow streets and a distinct lack of parking. We intended to rely on NORTA (buses and streetcars) and walking. There were bikes, but my partner did not bring her phone with her, and there is no way to rent two bikes on one phone. As a matter of principle I will not install the Uber or Lyft app on my phone – though we did share my son’s Lyft for one ride. We did use taxis – but that would have to be another post.

You may have heard about the Hard Rock Hotel collapse four months ago. That occurred on a site at Rampart and Canal streets.

Entire blocks on all sides have been closed to traffic as a precaution – but there is still no work underway to remove the damaged building. Canal and Rampart streets are both streetcar routes. The Canal Street routes have a bus bridge. The Rampart Street route has simply been cancelled.

We knew none of this when we arrived. We relied on the Transit App on my iPhone. That showed – and still does by the way – regular streetcar service on Rampart – with arrival times and the “real time” symbol – so not just the schedule. We sat at a streetcar station at Ursulines waiting for trams that never came. On RTA truck whipped past us and driver yelled something unintelligible – probably “there’s no service” but it didn’t sound like those words. There was no signage anywhere on the station showing the stop was closed. Though the street has bus services, no bus stops had been placed at the same intersections to allow intending streetcar users to board a bus instead of the tram.

Now it is true that there is information on norta.com – though you do have to dig around a bit to find it.

There is also a major hiatus on the Riverfront line as construction is under way at the foot of Canal Street. So the Riverfront cars now turn up Canal instead of proceeding south along the river. The new terminus is convenient for the St Charles streetcar which is unaffected by either blockade.

I took up the issue of misleading information with the Transit App people. This is their reply.

“Although we do work with transportation agencies to display prediction times, service alerts – such as notifications about the streetcars not running – are updated by the agencies directly.

We’re a third-party app based in Montreal, Canada, so we’re not involved in the operation of the agencies. I’d suggest getting in touch with the RTA about this. You can reach the RTA here: https://www.norta.com/About/Customer-Service“

So basically the RTA just relies on its own website and does not update the information on the Transit App, nor does it do any street postering. Some buses did have service change cards – but again not on display, just for the driver to give to passengers who asked questions.

Much of the New Orleans system has exclusive reserved rights of way for the streetcars: the St Charles route south of Lee Circle and most of the Canal Street route. But not the branch along South Carrollton to the City Park. There is a median but the streetcars are in traffic in the centre lanes. This of course results in streetcars being held up behind left turning traffic. I saw no evidence of any on-street priority for transit.

Along St Charles St the streetcar is actually better for sightseeing as the car proceeds at a leisurely pace and the tour busses whizz past in the traffic lanes. If you want to look at the charming old houses in the Garden District the hop-on hop-off bus service cannot be recommended. By the way, if you are concerned about trying to board a St Charles car at Canal, at least half of the load there gets off halfway to do the guided walk through the Garden District and most of the rest at Audubon Park.

There are also a number of streets that have wide medians that I suspect may once have been streetcar lines. Of course wikipedia is the place to go to find out about that.

I have also heard a lot about how streetcars are only for tourists but that is a gross misunderstanding. Where the streetcars run, and their general reliability, means everybody uses them. In fact the schedules for the streetcars seem to much more frequent than many bus routes. It is reliability and frequency that attracts ridership no matter what the vehicle.

I were writing the current timeline we find ourselves in, surely this is the point where I’d have the ex-Presidents meet up and prepare to activate the super-secret contingency plan for when the Constitution breaks.

I suspect everyone on this planet has had similar ideas to others, and come to the exact conclusion and concept independently. This is the case of similar approaches to my Everything Notebook concept. Someone asked if what I did was a “Commonplace Book”. When they asked, I had no idea what a commonplace book was, so lo-and-behold, I went internet-sleuthing and found several excellently-written pieces on Commonplace Books.

The photo to the right shows the key elements of my own version of the Everything Notebook, they are what I call “an Everything Notebook Starter Kit”, all sourced with Mexican companies. My Everything Notebook starter kit includes the following components:

• A rigid cover notebook (200-300 pages)
• A set of adhesive plastic tabs (1″ size)
• A set of multiple-colours fineliners (0.4 mm)
• A set of multiple-colours highlighters

I think that the key element that there are two key element that differentiate the way I devised the Everything Notebook and how most Commonplace Books may be developed.

1) My Everything Notebook ALSO has a To-Do List section.

Most pieces I’ve read on Commonplace Books indicate that they’re places where writers and artists (and others, including scholars!) dump all their ideas. That notion is exactly the same underlying my concept of the Everything Notebook. I started an Everything Notebook in grade school because I was tired of having different notebooks for various subjects. Instead, I went with using only one. However, because I was raised using a “Homework Journal” where my parents had to sign my To-Do List of homework tasks, I decided to integrate this idea into my Everything Notebook concept.

2) My Everything Notebook has an inherent searchability function thanks to the plastic rigid tabs.

I have a different post coming up on the importance of record-keeping and considering notes as records (as archivists, librarians, historians and information science specialists do), but I wanted to note how I implement Searchability in an analog object such as the Everything Notebook.

Because they’re discontinued in Mexico I buy Post-It 1 inch plastic tabs when I’m in the U.S. I use them for MAJOR divisions (projects) pic.twitter.com/cfxbaj1V3u

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) July 9, 2017

As I note here, in the Everything Notebook I assign a certain number of pages to each sectionm and I divide them using adhesive rigid plastic tabs. The larger ones (1 inch long) I use for larger items (e.g. projects or ideas, or To Do List sections), whereas the smaller ones I use to indicate “weeks of the year”

For “minor” divisions (e.g. To mark specific weeks or certain articles I summarize or talks I’ve given) I use the half inch ones pic.twitter.com/SqGGeLiOY7

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) July 9, 2017

My understanding from Commonplace Books is that they are literally ideas’ dumps and therefore searchability becomes hard to obtain. However, as some of the authors whom I have linked in this post indicate, creating an index and a table of contents really does help, and this can be done both in the Everything Notebook, and the Commonplace Book.

In the end I believe these ideas always travel and we all have our own versions of the Bullet Journal, the Everything Notebook or the Commonplace Book. What becomes more important is ensuring that we adapt, adopt and implement a system that works for US.

Overview

In January I did a total of 56 tracked activities and covered a distance of 338.69km according to my Garmin.

I ended up burning 24,566 kCal doing this and gained more than 4km in elevation.

Running

I did only one run this in January. The reason for this is that my achilles tendon is still not fully healed. I did the one run and actually felt really good but greatly regretted it the next day when I limped around because the achilles tendon was inflamed again.

I am making progress though and hope in another week or so I can get back to running.

Cycling

No cycling. The weather wasn’t really great for this.

Cross Country Skiing

I managed to go four times in January. I lost one weekend and one mid-week skiing because of adverse weather conditions. As much as I love it, I wasn’t willing to drive icy roads for it and based on the road reports that was a good decision.

Gym

I have started to use the rowing machine and SkiErg quite a bit. It is interesting how with consistency things get easier. Banging out 2K as a warmup feels like nothing and even 15K is getting easier.

Yoga

I am also trying to get back into a daily Yoga habit. Slowly starting this up again and I do already it making a difference.

Walking

As I cannot run at the moment I am trying to offset this with walking.

Summary

Overall I am happyish with the way January worked. Bit bummed over the lost skiing sessions, but overall making progress.

The injured achilles tendon is a hangover from my bike crash back in October, but it is improving with the stretching. I am also starting to improve my hamstring flexibility again. In fact, the main challenge right now are my calfs actually.

Here is to an even more productive February.

Toronto Star @TorontoStar
A new study looked into why high-status cars attract so many “a--holes.” It says argumentative and egotistical men… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

There’s now one billion people using Windows 10, according to the official Italian Windows Blog (as reported by MSPowerUser).

It was last reported in September 2019 that Microsoft reached 900 million Windows 10 users.

That said, this doesn’t mean that people are switching from Chrome OS or MacOS to Windows 10. It’s possible that Windows 7 or 8 users are just upgrading to Windows 10. Which makes sense, since the older operating systems are quite dated. In fact, Microsoft ended support for Windows 7 two weeks ago.

Let us know if you’ve recently started using Windows 10.

Source: Windows Blog Italia, Via: MSPowerUser

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Anyone who bought a new iPhone 11 on launch day or any other Apple device from September 10th and November 1st, then your window to redeem free Apple TV+ is closing.

Apple offers all new iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple purchases a free year worth of Apple TV+.

The company started offering the free year of its streaming service on November 1st with all new device purchases. Once you buy a new device, you only have 90 days to redeem the offer.

9to5Mac notes that some users who are eligible for the free year but haven’t redeemed it, are getting push notification reminders.

If you bought a new device from Apple in the fall and haven’t redeemed your Apple TV+ subscription, it’s worth doing it now.

Source: 9to5Mac

The post Apple’s free year of Apple TV+ offer expiring for some people appeared first on MobileSyrup.

After unveiling plans to begin moving new conversation features tested in its ‘twttr’ experiments app to the Twitter app, Twitter is rolling out the first change.

Announced in a tweet — where else? — Twitter said it was bringing the new replies design to its iOS app. It appears the change doesn’t need an update but is instead an adjustment made on Twitter’s end. It updates the look of threaded replies, making it much easier to follow the conversation happening around a tweet.

We’ve given conversations a makeover on iOS. When people you follow are in a conversation, you’ll see their replies in a new way in your Home timeline.

This new layout makes it easier to see who's replying to who so you can join in on relevant conversations. pic.twitter.com/xNmnAtQFeI

— Twitter Support (@TwitterSupport) January 31, 2020

For example, the new design draws lines between the parent tweet and replies, making it clear which tweet is in response to which. The update ultimately makes conversations look more like threaded notes, similar to what you’d see on sites like Reddit.

In its tweet, Twitter says the “new layout makes it easier to see who’s replying to who so you can join in on relevant conversations.”

Since the change is hitting iOS devices now, it should head to Android and the web next. Both of those platforms are slated to receive new ‘twttr’ features beginning Q1 2020.

Source: Twitter Via: The Verge

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