Technology

In my weekly perusal of education newsletters, I came across a Time magazine article about new attempts to bring AI and machine learning to monitoring student behavior on school devices. While the article focuses on student mental health—suicide prevention in particular—I looked into the companies mentioned therein and discovered that the scope of monitoring efforts is broad and deep. It is a fascinating and discomforting topic, with each company working on a different aspect of student safety with rhetoric to match. ...

I’ve completed my Apple Vision Pro demo in what felt like record time—seventeen minutes, when everything I’ve heard referenced half an hour—and I can firmly place myself in the camp of people who simultaneously very interested in a Meta Quest 3 right now, and excited about the next several versions of Vision Pro. ...

Last week, Apple launched Vision Pro. I’ve read and listened to commentary, and watched many reviews and demos since its release. I have a good sense of what it can and can’t do, but that’s hugely different than experiencing it. Here is my current understanding of Vision Pro and what I find most important and interesting without having used it. This Wednesday I’ll be going to an Apple store to demo Vision Pro, and I will follow up with what I’ve learned. ...

Today I discovered that Google Docs has supported pageless documents for over a year and a half. I learned this at precisely the right time, and now I’m rethinking how I handle many of my digital documents. ...

I switched back to Ulysses and refined the Writing homescreen on my iPad. I have no idea how long this particular setup will last considering the short time spent since I previously discussed this, but it feels stable, all my writing can live in a single app, and I can drop the dance I’d tried with iCloud to make iA Writer work across all my devices. ...

I had a moment of panic followed by clarity and motivation when I realized my tenuous approach to managing tasks at work was no longer tenable. I needed to make a change. ...

With the iPhone 15 series switching to USB-C, my last tangible reason for holding onto Android phones has been erased. In part thanks to the huge trade-in promotions offered in exchange for cell carrier lock-in, I’ve given up my Pixel 6 Pro and switched to an iPhone 15 Pro. ...

Erin and I decided to cancel Netflix the other week after subscribing for about eight years. I’d been infrequently toying with the idea for a few years, but while recording a recent episode of Comical Start Grant asked me something that solidified my reasoning. ...

Sixteen months after placing my order, I was delighted to see my Playdate arrive this past week. While I haven’t spent much time with it, everyone I’ve shown it to has been absolutely charmed by it’s fun design. Who doesn’t like spinning a crank as part of a game? It’s a novelty that likely won’t see be used as often as I wish I had the time for, but I am happy to have a small diversion available with a growing set of games. The design is fun and fresh, with a whimsy that perfectly fits my aesthetic. It makes you smile when you see it, and I can see having fun with it on trips when I want to do something other than read. It’s not for everyone—it’s expensive for what it is on paper—but I recommend checking it out if you have the means.

When I first learned about the QUERY function in Google Sheets, I was brought back to the surprisingly large amount of discourse I’ve read regarding spreadsheets and databases, the best of which is contained in Matt Parker’s book Humble Pi. In short, the backbone of spreadsheet software is not designed to let it perform like a database. But because spreadsheets are more explicable, visual, and interactive, businesses and researchers and all other sorts of folk force them into that bucket. ...