APP SUBSCRIPTIONS MUST OFFER VALUE
Software authors are increasingly switching to subscription models to make their work “sustainable”. Too often they’re forgetting to make a value proposition that helps their customers. Here’s a hint: if you have to write a Medium post explaining why I should support your new business model, you’re doing it wrong. I understand why authors can’t afford to write an app and then offer free upgrades for the following decade. That’s a great way to cut off the income supply that keeps new development happening.
Read moreINTRODUCING METRIC QUANTITY UNITS FOR COMPUTING
In computing, metric-sounding prefixes almost universally refer to sizes expressed as powers of two: kilo = 2^10 = 1024 mega = 2^20 = 1,048,576 giga = 2^30 = 1,073,741,824 …and so on. In 1998, the IEC incorrectly voted to change that, and it’s time to fix this mistake. Using “k” to mean 2^10 dates back to at least 1959, with Gordon Bell of IBM ("Architecture of the IBM System/360"), Gene Amdahl of DEC ("Instrumentation Techniques in Nuclear Pulse Analysis"), and others standardizing them as units in 1964.
Read moreTRAVELING WITH OMNIFOCUS AND OMNIOUTLINER
I don’t travel a lot, so when I do I invariably find that I’ve forgotten something important (9 PM the night before: “say, dear, where are we boarding the dogs?” “I thought you were doing that!”). I wrote an AppleScript to copy items from an OmniOutliner document to an OmniFocus project so that I never have to forget again. I love OmniFocus. It runs my life. But it lacks any kind of a template systems to let you quickly churn out copies of a project.
Read morePROVIDER
The shield was half-heartedly poking at her keyboard when the car started to move. Oh. "I guess I'm rolling. Coverage is sketch here so I might cut out." "Oh my God. You're still shielding her? I thought we paid you better than that." His voice lifted when he disapproved. She rolled her eyes. "Her husband gives me a hundred bucks plus six a mile. She probably just wants ice cream or fries or something.
Read moreAMERICA'S MILITARY VERSUS THE WORLD
I am pro-military. I think having a strong military means we're unlikely to have to use it to protect ourselves. But how strong does it actually need to be? For the sake of argument, I'll assume that spending corresponds to strength. That is, America spending $1 million gives us roughly as much military power as China or Russia spending $1 million. If this is not true, then we're spending money poorly and should re-evaluate our budget before increasing it.
Read moreSEARCH-PROOF YOUR DEVICES WHEN TRAVELING
Over-eager airport security has recently taken to making travelers unlock their phones and tablets for examination. This is both unforgivably invasive and trivially easy to defeat. Here's how to protect your data1 on your iPhone or iPad2 when traveling. Simplest: disable Touch ID Enable a six-digit passcode on your device. Set your device to erase itself after 10 failed passcode attempts. You should do these two steps anyway! Before you get to airport security, turn your device off.
Read moreREBOOTING
I started this blog twelve years ago. I always meant to update it regularly, but… life intervenes. After recently coming back to it, I decided it was due for a good cleaning. There were lots of old articles about things I no longer care about but that people on the Internet keep visiting and linking to. I kept them. But there were also a lot of opinion pieces that I no longer agree with.
Read morePURGE YOUR YAHOO ACCOUNT (BUT DON'T DELETE IT!)
There are about 1.5 billion reasons to want to cancel your Yahoo account. Don't do that! According to Yahoo's account deletion page, they "may allow other users to sign up for and use your current Yahoo! ID and profile names after your account has been deleted": This is a terrible policy not shared by other service providers, and there are many scenarios where it's a huge security problem for Yahoo's users.
Read moreMIGRATING OFF EVERNOTE
In late 2016, Evernote updated their privacy policy to explicitly grant their employees the right to view your personal information. In their own words: And please note that you cannot opt out of employees looking at your content for other reasons stated in our Privacy Policy (under the section, "Does Evernote Share My Personal Information or Content?"). This is unacceptable for most of the things you'd want to use a note taking application for, and I believe that makes it wholly unfit for any kind of business or private use.
Read moreFOCUS.
I was in a meeting when I noticed the sun was hitting my water bottle just right.