Category: The Next Computer

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The Next Computer

The release treadmill as a weakness

The question is not how we can evolve towards a circular economy, but instead why we continue to evolve away from it.

– “How and why I stopped buying new laptops“

The writer makes several solid points about using old, used machines. I’m am no stranger to this way of thinking. I use a nine year old Macbook Pro and a ten year old Macbook Air as my main laptops. Both, especially the Pro, have had several components upgraded and work more than well for my needs.

The most important part is the writer’s reflection on why his behaviour is the exception, not the rule

Although capitalism could provide us with used laptops for decades to come, the strategy outlined above should be considered a hack, not an economical model. It’s a way to deal with or escape from an economic system that tries to force you and me to consume as much as possible. It’s an attempt to break that system, but it’s not a solution in itself. We need another economical model, in which we build all laptops like pre-2011 Thinkpads. As a consequence, laptop sales would go down, but that’s precisely what we need. Furthermore, with today’s computing efficiency, we could significantly reduce the operational and embodied energy use of a laptop if we reversed the trend towards ever higher functionality.

Significantly, hardware and software changes drive the fast obsolescence of computers, but the latter has now become the most crucial factor. A computer of 15 years old has all the hardware you need, but it’s not compatible with the newest (commercial) software. This is true for operating systems and every type of software, from games to office applications to websites. Consequently, to make laptop use more sustainable, the software industry would need to start making every new version of its products lighter instead of heavier. The lighter the software, the longer our laptops will last, and we will need less energy to use and produce them.

These are all sensible points. The tech industry’s incentives have evolved to a point where this sort of thinking is quaint, even naive. New machines – phones, tablets, smart watches, headphones – are expected to have annual refreshes, and companies will be punished by the ‘market’ if they don’t abide.

I’d like to see a company shift their business model to one where they only released a phone every three years, but had such a strong, sticky subscription model around it for annual revenue.

Subscriptions are hard to pull off but not terribly difficult to imagine. Apple and Google both have successful subscription models around their devices. That their scale is such that they have to release new phones and increase sales every year could arguably be their weakness, not always a strength.

Apple and Google and other gadget giants are on a treadmill; an upstart need not.

End note: I think there was a point in 2013-14 when Xiaomi came close – at least outside of China they had a large yet closely-knit community, a small set of excellent phones and accessories, and their innovative, well-designed (although in many cases copied) software. They’ve since become like every other phone manufacturer.

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Data Custody Decentralisation and Neutrality The Next Computer

Cloud islands

A lot of what I write is about data custody. It’s a topic that we’re inevitably going to have to debate in the mainstream sometime this decade – I mean prime time conversations on TV. That’ll happen when enough people experience the downsides of having their data reside with just a few large tech companies.

The Custodial Internet
Data Ownership vs Custody for the 21st Century – Part 1

There are many ways things could go wrong with your data in the Cloud.

People could be locked out of their account for some violation of terms of service they weren’t even aware of, or being hacked via social engineering. If it’s their Google account, they lose access to their email, their photos, contacts. This has happened several times. We only rarely hear of it when it happens to someone with a large online following.

One of these companies may have a problem with their data centers. Even though people have access to their accounts, they could find their emails, documents, chats lost.

Companies could suffer an outage. This happens fairly regularly, most recently just a few days ago with the data organisation company Notion. If you can’t access your information at a critical moment – if you need to pull up a receipt number or a scan of a medical prescription – you lose trust in the company you stored your data with.

There are others still:

Governments could ban companies overnight, leaving you unable to access your data – India’s upcoming cryptocurrency law could do just that.

Companies could readjust free limits, leaving you with no choice but to begin paying them to hold your data – the upcoming changes to Google Photos’ free tier is an example.

You could find that there’s no easy way to export your data – if you move from an iPhone to an Android, it’s really hard to transfer the notes from your Notes app to an equivalent Android app.

The ‘cloud’ as the default for our life’s information and documents and photos – this is all very new. Email was probably the first to move to the cloud with Gmail, but even that was just fifteen years ago. That’s barely half a generation.

Each of us needs to spend at least some time thinking about how we’re going to deal with our data when we’re ten, twenty, thirty years older than today. How likely is it we’ll continue use iPhones or whatever they evolve to, to have several terabytes of info in our iCloud Drive or its successor(s), that we’ll keep buying Apple TVs to project our photos on? Ditto with Google. Or {giant trillion dollar corporation}.

We have collectively been exposed to billions of dollars of marketing to keep us from thinking about this, to believe that our data’s safe in the Cloud for now and forever.

To add to that, most of us aren’t ‘tech-savvy’ enough to even know what alternatives exist, much less be able to move to them and use them on an every day basis – why, even if you change your default browser, you’ll be asked if you want to switch back by the browser your computer shipped with (try it – change your default browser to Firefox on Mac OS; Safari will ask you right away if you want to switch back. Microsoft is even worse with Edge)

Finally, neither independent software makers nor open source projects been able to create software that, for the most part, can replace the entire gamut of Cloud-like software that the dominant tech companies provide. For instance, it’s not straightforward to organise your photos using something that’s not Apple Photos or Google Photos or Adobe Lightroom Classic – alternatives exist but they’re not great.

So. It’s not easy and it’s not a solved problem by any means.

Until the Cloud becomes a safe, reliable commodity like the electricity grid or the Internet itself, we’re going to have multiple independent Cloud islands. Apple’s. Google’s. Amazon’s. Microsoft’s. Yandex’s. Dropbox’s. Adobe’s. And a dozen more.

Each are closed worlds, but worlds that hold your life’s work and loves. And your only key, your username and password, isn’t guaranteed to always work.

It’s not sustainable.

(Featured Image Photo Credit: Pearse O’Halloran/Unsplash)

Categories
Products and Design The Next Computer Wellness when Always-On

Stress and pressure

In my opinion, this is mostly true. In fact, acknowledging this distinction reveals something important:

The distraction and attention suck that’s skillfully designed into social media, games and other apps is hard to shake because it blurs the line between pressure and stress.

On the surface, this addiction seems to be in our control – we got into it, it’s self-inflicted. Most advice advocates deleting apps, turning off notifications, locking our devices away temporarily, setting our screens to black-and-white, turning off 4G, deliberately downgrading our phone – actions that we’re supposed to take and then maintain. Any subsequent failure is personal because the original responsibility was ostensibly ours, and therefore there’s deserved pressure to stick to our de-addiction goal.

But it isn’t really like that is it? Social media and notification addition cause stress that is inflicted upon us by apps, apps that have been designed by companies with enormous resources and incentives to keep us engaged for as long as possible. The battle is unequal and the onus should be as much on these apps to encourage good, healthy behaviour as it is on you and me to reduce screen time.

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Decentralisation and Neutrality The Next Computer

The physical limits of software and the Internet

There’s a worldwide shortage of semiconductor chips. Across industries. Nearly every device we own today has chips, and often dozens of them. We think of chips as essentially infinite in number. But:

Industry executives also blame excessive stockpiling, which began over the summer when Huawei Technologies Co. — a major smartphone and networking gear maker — began hoarding components to ensure its survival from crippling U.S. sanctions… Rivals including Apple, worried about their own caches, responded in kind… “There’s a chip stockpiling arms race,”

All that has dried up the spigot for smaller-volume buyers such as the makers of cars and gaming consoles: Nintendo Co., Sony and Microsoft Corp. have struggled to make enough Switches, PlayStations and Xboxes for about a year… [a] growing chorus of industry leaders warning in recent weeks they can’t get enough chips to make their products. Carmakers appear in direst straits and have spurred the U.S. and German governments to come to their aid

– “Chip Shortage Spirals Beyond Cars to Phones and Consoles”

We discuss the centralisation of the Internet on this site. This article shows that even the other end of the stack – chips, the building blocks of hardware, are centralised.

It also shows that while we aren’t wrong in thinking of the Internet and software in general as infinite, there are real physical constraints for the hardware that it all runs on.

(Featured Image Photo Credit: @awmleer/Unsplash)

Categories
Data Custody Privacy and Anonymity The Next Computer Wellness when Always-On

A no-bullshit look at Facebook’s and Apple’s privacy propositions – Part 2

(Part 1 – How Facebook’s using guilt to get people to voluntarily opt out of Apple’s privacy protections)

There is a kernel of truth in Facebook’s argument that “with the upcoming iOS 14 changes, many small businesses will no longer be able to reach their customers with targeted ads”. Targeted ads work better than generic, non-targeted ones. And facebook is able to provide user targeting like no other for two reasons: because people share very personal information on Facebook, and because outside of that, Facebook aggressively collects information on people through their activities outside of Facebook, both via businesses who themselves install Facebook tracking to understand their customers better and through other companies they call “Audience Data Providers“

However, Facebook’s ad targeting can be used by businesses large and small. A small burger joint in a city in theory could use Facebook’s sharp targeting to reach its type of customers in its catchment area. But a nationwide burger chain or its franchisee can use the same targeting software to drive people to its store instead, often outspending the independent small business. Facebook makes no promises to small businesses that this is only about them.

It follows that should a person agree to allow themselves to be tracked, Facebook also makes no claim to its users that that information will only be used by small businesses. Just like Facebook’s ad software is available to businesses large and small, user data once collected is also available to any company with a Facebook ad account.

So while Facebook’s ability to track people in such detail doesn’t really give small businesses any sort of sustainable competitive advantage, it doesn’t give its users any choice about trading their data to support an ostensibly noble cause.

Finally, Facebook’s argument holds weight only because of its dominant position in the online ad business, alongside Google. A small ad network would hardly be taken seriously if it claimed to stand up for small businesses nationwide, leave along globally. It’s disingenuous for Facebook to accuse Apple of using its dominant position to push its own agenda while it does the exact same thing. 

Apple’s position on privacy is simple. As one of its ads says, “What happens on your iPhone stays on your iPhone”. [1] It is a commitment one party makes to another, no one else, and that party proves it by aligning its interests to the others’.

Facebook’s (opposite) position on privacy is more messy and conflicted. It urges one party (its users) to make sacrifices (allow data tracking) in order to benefit a third party (small businesses) whose thriving only it (Facebook) can ensure. That does not sound like a healthy relationship between any of the parties

As we’ve discussed many times on this site, in the Internet we’ve ended up building, the question of privacy is one of data custody – who you trust with your data. And in that regard, I’d much rather cast my lot with Apple that with Facebook.

End note: One could argue that Google’s stance on privacy, while being the opposite the opposite of Apple’s, is also straightforward: give me data, I’ll make your life dramatically better. Search, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Photos, even the much-missed Google Reader. I’d trust Google with my data way before I trust Facebook.

[1] This is in the context of how Apple’s AI to categorise photos and other data works on-device instead of first sending all data to some central server.

Categories
Data Custody Privacy and Anonymity The Next Computer Wellness when Always-On

A no-bullshit look at Facebook’s and Apple’s privacy propositions – Part 1

Facebook is guilting people who use their iPhone app. iOS 14’s App Tracking Transparency now requires app makers to explicitly get people’s assent to be tracked. If the phone user declines, iOS only sends generic information that’s really hard to trace back to any identifiable person.

Obviously, this works against Facebook’s interests. It’s built a seven-hundred-billion-dollar company over fifteen years on the back of a sophisticated, extremely aggressive data collection and ad display business.

Facebook’s tried public pressure and PR to lobby against this intervention, arguing that this opt-in hurts not it, but small businesses, who rely on Facebook ads to target would-be customers.

Now Facebook’s building that argument right into its app, with a full-screen appeal to its users to allow themselves to be tracked in detail, so that small businesses may thrive. First reported by CNBC, here is what the screen supposedly looks like (left, before Apple’s prompt to the right):

Facebook’s CEO has said publicly that the company sees Apple as a competitor because “has every incentive to use their dominant platform position to interfere with how our apps and other apps work, which they regularly do to preference their own… Now Apple may say that they’re doing this to help people, but the moves clearly track their competitive interests.”

Now, Facebook’s straight-up ‘gaslighting’ people into voluntarily overriding Apple’s protections.

(Part 2 – comparing how Facebook and Apple talk about people’s data)

Categories
Products and Design The Next Computer Wellness when Always-On

Disturb by default

This Hacker News thread asks an interesting question: When did “disturb” become the default mode for devices? Specifically,

A few days ago I took a nap and set the DND –do not disturb– on a timer for 1h. Once the timer finished it went by default to “Turn off DND”, which is the same as “disturb me please”… Because of this I was wondering when did the “disturb” mode became (sic) the default? This applies to my phone as well, which I always have with DND turned on. How is it that we have to turn on DND. Shouldn’t it be “turn on disturb mode”?

Some of the answers I found worth sharing:

people generally want to be disturbed by notifications. Just consider how many people don’t keep their phone in silent mode. I don’t think it’s the ideal way to live, but people love running over to their phone to see if it’s a new WhatsApp message that cause the ping.

At the beginning of the smartphone era, there just weren’t that many disruptions to warrant a DND mode. Most notifications were interesting. And we didn’t have wearable devices tethered to phones or computers either. The normalization of distraction kind of got us by surprise, society-wide, and it’s only now that new UX patterns are developing to help people manage it.

My theory would be that that:

> “disturbable by default” is a carry-over from landline-only time
calls where rarer in landline-only time because they (sometimes) cost money
> calls where rarer in particular times (eg late at night) because of a social norm
> calls in the middle of the day where probably rarer, but also much easier to ignore because you were not at home and your phone simply run in the void
> calls were mostly done by human beings

Now, the “phone calls from a human being who respects social norms or that I simply never hear” have been replaced by “automated notifications from bots in a piece of plastic that’s constantly in my pocket, or text messages from people that expects me to be reachable at any time.”

Categories
Products and Design The Next Computer

iPhone home screen, February 2021 – widgets-only, again

(Previously:August, September, October, November, December, January home screens)

Little has changed from my home-screen-less, widgets-only setup from a couple of months ago. It’s likely going to stay this way until iOS 15 or later introduces something new.

A couple of comments, though:

I use the App Library as one way to launch my apps [1]. iOS do a good job of surfacing the most used apps in any App Library folder. But muscle memory forms pretty quickly, and I can now locate my most-used applications without even thinking about it. The brain just know, spatially, where they are on the App Library screen

There are two search bars, and it’s annoying. One is Spotlight, activating by swiping down on any screen. The second is the App Library search, activated by swiping down in the same way on the App Library screen.

Because I’ve deleted all home screens but the mandatory one, I have two screens that both reveal a search bar with the same action – but the search bars are totally different. Not just visually, but one searches files, contents in apps, Shortcuts, the web. The other lists apps.

Often I’m not consciously aware of which screen I’m on, I’ll search for some data in the App Library search bar and get no results. When I realise, after a second, that this isn’t the right screen, I need to abandon the search, switch to another screen or swipe down all the way from the top to invoke Spotlight, then type my text all over again.

I’m sure there’s a good reason for designing things this way [2], but it annoys me at least once a day.

[1] Siri Suggestions when swiping down to reveal Spotlight is another.

[2] Most people have a problem of too many home screens, not too few. Apple intended App Library to be a seldomly-used repository for apps that don’t need to live on a home screen or in a folder, but still need to be accessible. I use App Library as my only home screen, the opposite of what Apple designed it for.

Categories
Privacy and Anonymity The Next Computer Wellness when Always-On

Federated learning, cookies and keeping it simple when it comes to privacy

Google’s building what the company says is an alternative to cookies that collect interest-based information based on a person’s browsing pattern. Called federated learning of cohorts or FLOC, the project has made some code available on the code-sharing service github. From that page:

The browser uses machine learning algorithms to develop a cohort based on the sites that an individual visits. The algorithms might be based on the URLs of the visited sites, on the content of those pages, or other factors. The central idea is that these input features to the algorithm, including the web history, are kept local on the browser and are not uploaded elsewhere — the browser only exposes the generated cohort. The browser ensures that cohorts are well distributed, so that each represents thousands of people.

Google also created a comic to explain Federated Learning in general, which can be applied to projects other than displaying ads on web pages:

It’s a far, far cry from the one Google made over twelve years ago when it announced the then-revolutionary Chrome browser.

As someone with a computer science background, I am interested in learning about and following the progress of FLOC. As someone who cares about privacy and has invested thousands of hours helping spread awareness, I will avoid information collection for the purposes of displaying ads, period. Whether it’s through cookies or fingerprinting or the supercookies we read about recently, or through federated learning.

FLOC will be rolled out in Chrome in 2021, to people who are logged in to the Chrome browser. My advice from the point of view of privacy is to avoid this altogether. Just follow good hygiene when connected to the Internet on your phone or computer (which is all the time):

Other than point #2, it’s all setup and forget. Do it.

Categories
Products and Design The Next Computer

Paradigm Change and Personal Status

A change-oriented mindset, especially for technology, is one where you force yourself to let go of the models you developed for how things work and learn new approaches. Re-wiring yourself and letting go of that muscle memory and those patterns that often took years to develop and perfect is incredibly difficult in a technical sense. It is also difficult emotionally. So much of our own sense of empowerment comes from mastery of the tools we use and so changing or replacing tools means we are no longer masters but back to being on equal footing with lots of people. No one likes resetting their station on the tech hierarchy.

– Steven Sinofsky, “My Tablet Has Stickers”