Blog Index for January 2019

Apple convinces us we are at fault for Apple's failings

(Sat Jan 26 2019 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) Apple sells us a utopia experience. We do not worry about viruses and whole host of problems that Windows users face. We have a simple built-in backup system with which it's very easy to migrate our files from machine to machine, compared to the nightmare of doing this on Windows. Does that mean the Apple Experience is absolute perfection? Nope, Apple is making lots of mistakes. Should Apple's customers just take it without complaint? Nope, Apple will keep up the same problems unless we hold their feet to the fire.

Apple MacBook Pro design flaw, dubbed Flexgate, makes display prematurely fail

(Sat Jan 26 2019 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) Apple's quest seems to be ever-thinner-lighter computers, which is nice for those of us carrying computers around, but makes Apple introduce design defects. A couple years ago it was learned one could bend the iPhone in half because it was too thin. Now we've learned that recent MacBook Pro displays can prematurely fail, directly because of Apple's quest to make it incredibly thin. There are two related problems -- In some MacBook Pro's, the display shows an effect like stage lighting (The Stage Light Effect), and in others the display simply shuts off.

The death of news outlets has been a long time coming - not just business models

(Thu Jan 24 2019 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) Today layoffs at several prominent news organizations caused the news industry to cry wolf about business models and how the Internet was a big threat to the traditional news organization business model. In the thick of this debate came Jeremy Littau with a series of twitter postings explaining his take on what really happening. According to Littau the issue started in the 1980's with a consolidation of news organizations and hedge fund managers starting to strip newspapers of value.

Chris Hayes: Online news business is in crisis due to lack of a viable business model

(Thu Jan 24 2019 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) Chris Hayes, a news presenter at MSNBC, asks a poignant question about whether there is a business model for online "digital news"? That is a troubling question since he is a prominent employee at a well regarded online-only news organization. And it is a crisis, as he says, because with the Internet as it stands we must have valuable high integrity news outlets that are also viable businesses, or we will lose the free and open society we enjoy.

Google Ads manipulates Google search results

(Tue Jan 22 2019 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)) The advertising alongside Google search results is a necessary evil that helps Google stay in business, so that Google can provide the excellent services it offers to us all. At least, that's how Google wants us to see those advertisements. Google's own training material seems to make it clear that Google wishes to downplay organic search results, in other words the natural results we should be seeing, in favor of the advertising results. Advertisements are based largely on the advertisers willingness to pay, not the relevance of the ad, and therefore the real search results are pushed down the page.