The Brooks Review

My blog and podcast feeds go around these few main interests of mine: software, art, design, music and Apple.

Podcasts:

Varieties, science, design.

* This American Life. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/

* Radiolab. http://www.radiolab.org/series/podcasts/

* Planet Money. http://www.npr.org/planetmoney

* Stuff You Should Know. http://www.howstuffworks.com/

* The Infinite Monkey Cage. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00snr0w

* The Weekly Briefly (Shawn Blanc). http://feedpress.me/weeklybriefly

* Actuality (from Quartz). http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/actuality-marketplace-and-quartz

* Anticast (for Portuguese speakers out there - the best Brazilian podcast I know). http://www.brainstorm9.com.br/anticast/

* 99% Invisible. http://99percentinvisible.prx.org/

Technology, programming, Apple, etc.

* Debug. http://www.imore.com/debug/

* Mac Power Users. http://www.relay.fm/mpu

* Accidental Tech Podcast. http://atp.fm/

* Overtired. http://www.esn.fm/overtired/

* The Vergecast. http://www.theverge.com/verge/verge_archives/show?mode=EntryGroup&slug=the-vergecast

* What's Tech (also from The Verge, fun show). http://www.theverge.com/whatstech

* Pragmatic. http://techdistortion.com/podcasts/pragmatic

* Iterate. http://www.imore.com/iterate

* The Changelog. http://5by5.tv/changelog

* Build Podcast (each post is actually a screencast about some technology). http://build-podcast.com/

* The Talk Show With John Gruber. http://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow

*…

My belief is mostly intuitive and likely more extreme than most, and I don't know of a good single source to point to. John Ioannidis' writings are probably a good starting point: http://retractionwatch.com/2016/09/13/we-have-an-epidemic-of-deeply-flawed-meta-analyses-says-john-ioannidis/. Searching for "convenience sampling" on Andrew Gelman's blog yields lots of good discussion in the comments: http://andrewgelman.com/?s=%22convenience+sample%22. Miguel Hernan's book on Causal Inference gives a good sense of the pitfalls of biased sampling: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/miguel-hernan/causal-inference-book/. Sorry I can't do better, and maybe others can add better sources.

P.S. I enjoyed the way you formatted and responded to your parent comment.

Thanks, the style is sometimes referred to as "interleaved" or "inline", as opposed to "top posting" and "bottom posting": https://brooksreview.net/2011/01/interleaved-email/. It was the norm for early online communications, but has mostly fallen out of favor. I think it works very well for some situations, although it too is surprisingly controversial: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5233428.

Firefox Focus has been my go to browser on iOS since the time it launched. The premise is a single tab, which you use and then erase all data from once you're done. As it says, rinse and repeat! If you want multiple tabs, this is not the browser for you (though Firefox iOS could be).

I use Firefox Focus more than any other app, including for browsing and reading through HN comments. It's got a good ad blocker (though not the fastest [1]), but no options to control ad blocking on a per site basis.

The browser has been improving over time. It also includes an extra layer of passcode/biometric protection that can help prevent others from seeing what you've opened in it. The only issue I've noticed is that it sometimes forgets the page you've loaded after sometime (may be because it doesn't save them to the disk, and when iOS removes it from memory, it starts out again as a blank slate).

[1]: https://brooksreview.net/2018/09/safari-content-blocker-evaluations-92618-edition/

Wireless data has actually got more expensive.

A little older now, but:

- https://brooksreview.net/2010/06/att-caps-phone-data-usage-w...

- http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-att-wireless-plan-caps-phone...

2GB for $25/mo with AT&T, $10/GB overage.

Now?

- https://www.att.com/shop/wireless/data-plans.html

$30/mo for 2GB, with $15/GB overage.

Data prices do seem to have gotten better:

http://about.att.com/story/att_offers_its_best_ever_pricing_...

where they reduced the plan from $80 to $65 for voice+2GB data.

Indeed, last year to go from 2GB to 5GB cost $20, and now costs $25.

- http://www.att.com/att/planner/

From the CBS article, "With that plan and voice service, a smart phone could cost as little as $55 per month before taxes and add-on fees, down from $70 per month."

According to AT&T's planner, that means in SIX YEARS, costs haven't changed at all, overall.

Regarding the thought that Instapaper is somehow robbing writers of ad revenue, I think it needs to be noted that you actually have to visit an article to add it to your Instapaper queue. On top of that, Readability's model of paying authors isn't all that effective, a recent article on The Brooks Review[1] showed that even a moderately popular site such as his generates nearly no income from Readability's service, especially now that the service has gone free with optional payments.

Also, what happens to all those authors that don't opt in to receive payments from Readability? Does readability just take money on their behalf and not actually pay it out to them? It seems like that would be a legal grey area.

[1]: http://brooksreview.net/2012/03/readability-ios/

Examples of beautiful laptops that don't look like MacBooks:

https://brooksreview.net/imgs/sony_vaio_505.jpg

http://www.sony.co.in/product/resources/en_IN/images/hubpages/vaio/Hub-Child-Feature/feature10/p13_11/ultrabook_0.jpg

http://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/voodoo-envy-white_-flat-view-02.jpg

http://blog.laptopmag.com/wpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/sony-x505.jpg

http://www.lenovo.com/shop/americas/content/img_lib/530x430/x1.jpg

Believe it or not, it is possible to design great looking products without being called an Apple-clone. Most companies just try to stick with what works.