This will be interesting..
WhatsApp will require users in Europe to be at least 16 years old
I can imagine many reasons why the age limit would need to be increased under more strict European privacy law, none of them any good for something so fundamental as a messaging app.
1Blocker will be releasing a new version called 1Blocker X on 26 April, pre-order now available. I have no doubt it will be even better than the original (now called 1Blocker Legacy), so I’m in.
Unread will no longer show “Untitled” or placeholder text from syncing services when displaying posts without titles…
Less is more
Source: burk.io
∞ Collected Goodness Good material. Good art. Good living.
Collected Goodness.com by Drew Coffman
Very interesting and inspiring stuff, will need to look in to it more but the first recommended reads/listens seem very worthwhile.
I also like the format a lot, it strikes a balance between linking to interesting content supplemented with quotes supported by the voice-over by Drew. Very well done altogether.
Found via: @patrickrhone (thanks!)
Scaling is hard
Most of the design tolerances of the Model 3 are already better than any other car in the world. Soon, they will all be better. This is not enough. We will keep going until the Model 3 build precision is a factor of ten better than any other car in the world. I am not kidding.
Our car needs to be designed and built with such accuracy and precision that, if an owner measures dimensions, panel gaps and flushness, and their measurements don’t match the Model 3 specs, it just means that their measuring tape is wrong.
I’m quoting a quote of Eldon Musk by John Gruber.
But after reading the article and memo I can’t suppress the feeling that people waiting in line (after forking over cash to enter the cue) would be happy with clear delivery times1 and quite satisfied with tolerances on par with current electric cars that are already build at scale2.
In my opinion the real challenge for Tesla (or any car manufacture for that matter) isn’t reaching near perfect build precision but getting to a good enough level at scale.
Tesla taking on the challenge to build 350.000+ model 3’s currently in backorder3 is a marvel on it’s own.
This will play out to be the greatest achievement in automotive history or Tesla being overtaken by the traditional manufactures moving to full electric.
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Tesla halts Model 3 production second time this year -telegraph.co.uk ↩︎
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In Europe you could have a full electric VW e-Golf on your driveway, two months after you place an order. ↩︎
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Based on quick calculation on numbers provided by Bloomberg ↩︎
Far more than 87 million people may have had their Facebook data harvested by Cambridge Analytica
No surprises here, but I am still curious what the final number will be. Place your bets…
∞ It’s all about perspective
Mobile apps are still often lacking in efficiency, Apple’s Smart Keyboard is mediocre and reaching up to touch the screen is far less comfortable and efficient than using a mouse.
The whole article feels a bit shortsighted and only focussing on comparing the iPad to a regular PC. All of the statements could be made in favour of the iPad as a PC replacement. It’s all about perspective I guess.
Micro guide: Additional steps and recommendations when using Cloudflare for your DNS
Cloudflare users wanting to use a custom domain name for their hosted Micro.blog will be greeted by a “custom domain isn't pointing to the micro.blog" error message when trying to save the custom domain.
Luckily there is a work around:
How to get your custom domain working with Cloudflare
- First follow the steps as outlined above and add the proper “A” and/or “CNAME” records to the Cloudflare DNS panel;
- Before adding the custom domain to your Micro.blog account make sure that the “DNS and HTTP proxy (CDN)” (orange cloud-icon) is disabled and set to bypass (grey cloud icon with the hover text “DNS only”);
- After updating your DNS records and Cloudflare set to bypass for the “A” record and/or “CNAME” go to “Account” on Micro.blog and fill hostname (e.g. yourdomain.com) that you’d like to use for your Micro.blog;
- Micro.blog should save and enable to custom domain without issues. If you get a message “custom domain isn’t pointing to the micro.blog" make sure that you have set Cloudflare on bypass and wait for a few more minutes (the DNS change can take some time to get in effect);
- After successful saving the custom domain you can re-enable Cloudflare functionality on your domain/Micro.blog by remove the bypass, make sure that the cloud-icon is set to orange (hover text should state: “DNS and HTTP proxy (CDN)”).
So there you have it, you are able to use Cloudflare (DNS/CDN/security/caching/DDOS protection) with hosted Micro.blogs, with some additional steps to get the initial setup working.
Some additional recommendations:
Using Cloudflare to redirect www. to root domain
If you would like to enable www. and root version of your custom domain it’s advisable to redirect one to the other (to make sure that there isn’t any duplicated content). Cloudflare can redirect the www. version to the root domain:
- Go to “Page rules” within your Cloudflare account;
- Create a page rule;
- Add <www.yourdomain.com>/* within the first field (“If the URL matches”);
- Under “Then the settings are:” select “Forwarding URL”, “ 301 - Permanent redirect”;
- Add: <yourdomain.com>/$1 to the destination URL field;
- Save and deploy the page rule for the redirect to take effect.
Cloudflare, SSL and your Micro.blog
You should not use the SSL functionality provided by Cloudflare (email help@micro.blog to enable SSL).
Micro Guides: small articles which can be of great help
Yesterday I had the opportunity to help someone from the Micro.blog community by writing a tiny post.
This sparked an idea: Micro guides, small articles about any subject you think could be of help or interest to the Microblogging community (for instance on writing, podcasting1, blog design or any other subject you think could be of help).
I will certainly start to share more short articles on my journey to writing more often and possibly on Micro.blog tech stuff if I run in to it.
The open web is build together, feel free to share (who knows how many people you could help!)
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I already learned a lot about podcasting from the people I follow. ↩︎
Micro Guide: Changing the default colors of the Micro.blog Marfa theme
I switched my theme for this microblog to Marfa.
Marfa is a new theme for Micro.blog hosted websites. I really like the theme but wanted to give it a small personal touch by changing the default color for links.
Changing the defaults (light red/pink-ish) is quite easy. Using the edit CSS functionality of Micro.blog you can overwrite the default colors by pasting the code above and change the colors to your liking.
nav.main-nav a.cta {
background: #fff;
color: #ee4792;
border: 2px solid #fcdae9;
}
nav.main-nav a.cta:hover {
background: #fcdae9;
color: #ee4792;
}
nav.main-nav a, #footer a, #post-nav a, p a{
box-shadow: inset 0 -2px 0 #fcdae9;
}
nav.main-nav a:hover, #footer a:hover, #post-nav a:hover, p a:hover {
box-shadow: inset 0 -25px 0 #fcdae9;
}
#fcdae9 is for underline and shading of the links. The #ee4792 color is for the “Also on Micro.blog” text in the upper right button.
Microcasting (short form podcasting) comes to Micro.blog. Welcome Wavelength. What a great addition to Micro.blog and the Indieweb!
The Irony
Mark Zuckerberg left some of his notes on the table during a break in his testimony before Congress yesterday. It caught the attention of a press photographer who shared a photo of the document on social media.
I guess Mark learned an important lesson: never to leave your notes open and unattended in public. Keeping stuff to yourself should not be based solely on trusting others to act in your best interest.
To reuse and rephrase a quote by Mr. Zuckerberg himself; ‘I’ve “trust them.” Dumb f*ck’
There is, however, quite some talk on social media if it’s morally ok for the press to share the picture taken. A valid discussion even when it’s a hearing regarding a company under testimony for violating people’s privacy. We should treat others as you would want them to treat you1.
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I’m not linking to the photo as I think this information should have been kept private. The company in question doesn’t change this for me. ↩︎
Do I really need to switch Text Editors?
Questioning if I really need to look in to switching Text editors I almost discarding the pick for the best Text Editor over at The Sweet Setup. Although after quickly skimming the article, some part did caught my attention.
Atom, being open source, has an advantage here compared to other options like Sublime Text or BBEdit.
Even if GitHub were to stop actively developing Atom, the open source nature of the app would (probably) allow it to live on through collaboration of its users and other contributors. In that sense, Atom is about as future-proof as an app can be.
Being open source and supported by a community sparked my interest (mainly due to my renewed focus on IndieWeb / Open standards and Open source). So, a bit to my surprise, I am now switching text editors.
Benedict Evans in his article “The death of the newsfeed” very clearly provides insight on why big tech companies are forced to a more algorithmic world, inadvertently forcing them between a rock and a hard place.
I couldn’t agree more to all Benedict states in this article and highly recommend anyone interested in this subject to read the article (twice!).
Unavoidable as it seems, though, this approach has two problems. First, getting that sample ‘right’ is very hard, and beset by all sorts of conceptual challenges. But second, even if it’s a successful sample, it’s still a sample.
Using signals of what people seem to want to see risks over-fitting, circularity and filter bubbles. People’s desires change, and they get bored of things.
In my opinion this is one of the biggest challenges in data science.
How can we help people navigate an abundance of choices (post, pictures, search results or products) without unethically steer behaviour, creating self-fulfilling prophecy1 or limit the room for people to change their preferences and discover new stuff.
The battery of my Apple Watch(v1) really starts showing it’s age. After being on my wrist daily for years, I don’t know if I will get another one… Having a completely muted iPhone is great but wrist based notification are still a major distraction during one-on-one conversations.
∞ Obscure E-Mail Vulnerability
This vulnerability is a result of an interaction between two different ways of handling e-mail addresses. Gmail ignores dots … Netflix doesn’t ignore dots.
It’s an example of two systems without a security vulnerability coming together to create a security vulnerability. As we connect more systems directly to each other, we’re going to see a lot more of these.
After writing another post on Facebook and the recent privacy scandals I deleted it all; because it’s not about Facebook at all.
It’s about alternatives (preferably which can not be “acquired”, but this is a topic for a different post) and this is exactly why moved all my writing to Micro.blog.
∞ Facebook Sharply Increases Estimate of How Many Users’ Information Was Harvested By Cambridge Analytica
Facebook on Wednesday said the personal information of up to 87 million people, most of them Americans, may have been improperly shared during the 2016 election with Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm connected to President Trump.
I won’t be the least surprised if this number will still increase quit a bit in the coming weeks.