Neat! I have wondered how much of a foothold "retrograde" tech will take in the next 10-20 years.
Decision fatigue, nostalgia, attenuation — call it what you will. At some level we're tacitly acknowledging that the vast ocean of content and complexity we've created is beyond what is desirable or even healthy to effectively evaluate.
A very modern malaise. Excuse the armchair philosophizing.
My 6yo has an iPhone which arrived OOTB with a News widget, accessible by a single swipe, including similar "breaking" content. No sign-in required. Just an internet connection. What does she want for Christmas? An iPhone 14 Pro Max. I kid you not.
Literally everyone she goes to school with has TikTok and are talking about content in that app day in and day out.
Do I like this? No. Are you a million miles from reality for pre-teens? Yes.
A song and dance about how this is a somehow simply a treatise on the decline of Microsoft is naive at best and highly disingenuous at worst. I really don't want to sound vitriolic but do y'all live in the real world? I wonder sometimes.
Convey a singular point with intent. Below is first paragraph rewritten. Just my 2¢.
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Essays should be persuasive. But we can aim for something more ambitious: that an essay should be useful.
Useful writing makes a strong claim without resorting to falsehoods.
It is more useful to say that Pike's Peak is in the center of Colorado than somewhere within.
Precision and correctness are like opposing forces. Useful writing is bold and true. It tells people something important, that they might not have known, without resorting to manufactured surprise or equivocality. This is formative of fundamental insights.
Any idea will not be novel to all, but may still have impact for the many.
In argument: be correct, be important, be strong. This will ensure usefulness.
Anecdotal: was setting up some Hisense TVs at work the other day and the unit came up with a message that "all Network features" would be disabled if you declined the EULA.
Immediately thought "works for me".
I wonder if any other manufacturer offers that choice.
Edit: commercial signage panels are about as close as you get to dumb TVs these days. Rarely include any smart features, can get in quite large sizes. Not OLED or anything but if you just want a decent display...
Dipping into whimsical analogies: this is a digital abattoir where the meat = content.
Now, as before, no-one wants to see how the sausage gets made. Especially those selling it.
Can't kill demand or bear the visceral truth. So instead we'll pretend the seedy underbelly doesn't exist. Paper over dissonance with ethical codes and platitudes.
Not new. Just a context shift in production of sustenance for the collective, insatiable gaping maw.
Ironic that participants were initially contacted via FB ads.
In light of the recent "Research" app disclosure, and that in both cases a fee was paid for participation, it makes me wonder what people won't do for a few extra dollars in their bank account given a similar scenario.
The NYT article is almost apologetic about its inconclusiveness. I might wonder - should I happen to be wearing my tinfoil hat - that it is designed as a means of placation, an ode to the status quo, rather than a deterrent for the average consumer.
> In other words my current smartphone will be unsafe for everyday use after September 2018, but it may have some life left in it by protecting its operating system with some network level security.
I stopped paying attention when I read this.
Pi-Hole is an ad blocker and it is fit for that purpose. No argument from me. However, to give this advice to people for whom device and network security is not a major or even minor concern is frankly dangerous.
Buy an iPhone. Buy a Mac. Keep your Windows PCs updated. Get a mesh WiFi solution that takes care of firmware patches automatically. Run a browser-based blocker that updates in the background without interaction.
These are the low-hanging fruit that should be done long before you are trying to set up what is essentially MITM-as-an-appliance without any paid support or guarantee.
Decision fatigue, nostalgia, attenuation — call it what you will. At some level we're tacitly acknowledging that the vast ocean of content and complexity we've created is beyond what is desirable or even healthy to effectively evaluate.
A very modern malaise. Excuse the armchair philosophizing.