It’s raining bookmarks
A few years ago I dived back into having a central, multi-platform/multi-browser bookmark manager and since the 362.874kg gorilla in that room was Pocket, I spent a year trying to work with it before giving up. The interface was klunky and obstreperous and left me feeling that the entire function must be a joke.
At the start of this year I decided to look again and found an alternative to Pocket, Raindrop.io, and I have to say, I’m loving it. It’s snappy, the UX is much more aligned to what I expected all along, and I don’t have to jump through hoops to manage my incoming bookmarks.
It’s also a hell of a lot cheaper on subscription than Pocket is, and this month I’ll be taking advantage of that by signing up. Arguably I don’t need the subscription for how I’m using it, but it falls into that category of wanting to reimburse the folk behind it for the great work they do.
BRB, playing a tiny violin
I read with great amusement the article in 404 of the leaking of a Facebook internal meeting where Mark Zuckerberg was complaining that everything he says gets leaked.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – one of the most fundamental problems in the whole techbro circle is seemingly the inability to engage in self-reflection.
Breaking it down in the simplest possible way: Facebook made Zuckerberg obscenely rich by trampling over the privacy of literally billions of humans around the world, and he has the audacity to complain about things he says being leaked?
Aphantasia gets Weirder
On my continuing journey of understanding how much aphantasia affects how I work and think, I spotted Expanding Aphantasia Definition: Researchers Propose New Boundaries last week and well, I have thoughts.
It’s weird enough to think that people can really construct images in their minds eye – but tastes, sounds and smells, too?
I guess my aphantasia covers a lot more senses than just the visual side of things.
Assumption Testing
As I write this blog post, I’m still making my way through this article I found recently, but from a product management perspective, particularly given I focus a lot of the time on user experience, this article, Mastering Assumption Testing in Product Management, is fascinating and useful.
Human Certification
The Verge noted this week that a new certification is coming for books – to stamp a guarantee that the book was written by a genuine human being, rather than disgorged by an LLM.
I’m all for this. My time is precious, and the creativity process is precious. Giving people a clear indicator to the origin of the content they might pay for is going to become increasingly important in this new age.
The certification process seems a bit limited in scope to start with, but any start is a good start on this front.
Essential Reading
The political timbre in the USA has without a doubt taken a very concerning turn to anyone with a shred of empathy or sense of history.
Many years ago I read a book that was an absolute turning point for me in refining my interest in ethics to focusing on ethical considerations in technology.
So I’ll say this: if you have not read IBM and the Holocaust, and you work in global technology, you should, and you should hurry up about it.
Allyship
I want to end my musings today with a statement of allyship. I am and always will be an ally to trans people. The attacks perpetuated on trans rights already in the USA over the last few weeks are sickening and are already being used to justify conservative politicians in other countries following suit.
Trans rights are human rights. There are no ifs or buts about this, and never will be.