tech

I have to admit something: After writing about quitting the email service HEY from 37Signals, I ended up going back and resubscribing (before my data was deleted). Sure, I tried other services. Proton was a total bust. I ran into bugs that rendered the platform unusable, unless I wanted to wait for hours to be able to access the emails the alerts were telling me I had in my inbox, or deal with the emails that, for some reason, couldn’t be deleted. Fastmail was better, but lacked polish. There were some unpainted spots, carpet that had a few stains, etc.

When HEY warned me that my data would soon be deleted, I dutifully entered my credit card information and resubscribed for another year. Reading debates about the service, I often come across discussions about the unique features, such as the screener. People have come up with some clever hacks to replicate the functionality of the screener in other email tools. My needs/wants are not so simple, though.

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I noticed that The Cure was advertising their heavily praised new album Songs From A Lost World in a bio vinyl format. I was curious about what that meant. Fortunately, I had my good buddy Claude to help answer the question. He responded with this:

Bio vinyl refers to vinyl materials manufactured using bio-based or renewable raw materials instead of traditional petroleum-based ingredients. This type of vinyl is part of a broader category of sustainable alternatives to conventional plastics.

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It seems that being a Firefox user means being in a constant state of trepidation about whether the app will last the year. For a long while now, it has been well known that the browser’s very survival depends on the largesse of its search partner, Google. The Mozilla Foundation, which develops Firefox, is a non-profit, but it gets 85% of its funding thanks to the commercial interests of the biggest beneficiary of ad revenue on the internet.

Once again, the threat of the infusion of cash from Google in exchange for placement as Firefox’s default search engine disappearing is imminent. The latest risk for Mozilla is thanks to the Department of Justice case against Google.

The DOJ wants to bar Google from paying to be the default search engine in third-party browsers including Firefox, among a long list of other proposals including a forced sale of Google’s own Chrome browser and requiring it to syndicate search results to rivals.

The sad irony is that the pursuit of the DOJ to expand user choice in the area of search would limit user choice in the browser space. I have some sympathy for the argument against doing that. For all the bluster from the DOJ over the last few decades about bundled browsers, it’s easy enough for a consumer to switch if that is what they want to do. The choice is free for the making.

Chris Butler writes about the glut of information to which we are exposed and how that does not advance our wisdom or understanding.

Think about this comparison: Information is to wisdom what pornography is to real intimacy. I’m not here to moralize, so I compare to pornography with all the necessary trepidation. Without judgement, it’s my observation that pornography depicts physical connection while creating emotional distance. I think information is like that. There’s a difference between information and wisdom that hinges on volume. More information promises to show us more of reality, but too much of it can easily hide the truth. Information can be pornography—a simulation that, when consumed without limits, can weaken our ability to experience the real thing.

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Manton Reece commenting on Nick Heer from Pixel Envy expressing his distrust for agentic AI.

I also don’t trust AI for this. And yet, in 1995 a lot of people didn’t trust entering credit cards on the web. I’m open to the possibility that in 10 years, AI buying things for us will be normal.

I tend to agree that most of us will adapt and adjust as the plates shift underneath us from the tectonic changes that AI brings. I would make a distinction, though, in the types of agentic AI that will be much easier to get used to and that where we would prefer to keep our agency closer to the vest. As a developer, if I can use AI to remediate a CVE for me, I think it’s fairly easy to give up that control. As a vacation-starved worker bee who wants to plan a trip to Europe, I might even relish the possibiliy of booking that myself and certainly would have trouble trusting AI to do it for me.

Though I love the service, I canceled my HEY email account. I’m not happy about it, but I am pretty sure it’s the right thing to do. The founders have been saying things I’ve been critical of for some time, but it has reached the point where I don’t trust the company with my data.

For weeks now, my wife has been telling me about data that she uses to do her job being deleted from federal databases. This includes economic and health information, such as statistics on energy burden (the cost of utilties vs. household income) and maternal and infant medical facts. Of course, my spouse is not the only one to notice this disturbing trend, but the examples she has provided seem particularly egregious and incomprehensible.

It’s shocking to me to go online and see people from 37Signals, which runs the HEY service, encouraging this type of behavior as a service to the country. If 37Signals is as cavalier about data as those they are praising, I believe it’s only natural to question if they are good stewards of your resources.

I’ve started my switch to Proton Mail, which is an appealing alternative, given their focus on encryption and security. I’ve never been one to go overboard on privacy protections, given that I’m kind of a nobody. However, with a government this adversarial towards many of its citizens (not to mention its own employees), known and unknown, I think it’s a good idea to start taking extra precautions.

My initial experience with Proton hasn’t been altogether bad (though there are some serious bugs with their MacOS client — which I will be soon reporting). However, Proton doesn’t have the same level of consideration and willingness to defy conventions as HEY, which makes the user experience less delightful. If I could in good conscience stick with a 37Signals product, I would, but it’s time to move on.

I am still reeling from the announcement about DeepSeek and the economics it represents for AI. To think that Biden’s chip restrictions had the opposite of the intended effect of curtailing Chinese AI development and actually forced more efficiency into the process.

Wall Street is now worried that may be the case. I mean, how can a small Chinese startup, born out of a hedge fund, spend fractions in terms of both compute and cost and get similar results to Big Tech? That’s what everyone is now scrambling to figure out – Meta, perhaps more than the others because their model with AI is similar to what DeepSeek seeks: an open-source (read: open-weight) model that permeates the industry and drives down costs, thus undercutting rivals who rely on charging for said models. Meta’s problem here is that they’re spending tens of billions of dollars to make such a model. And again, DeepSeek just did it for something a lot closer to $0 than to where Meta’s spend is heading.

No slight against the previous administration here. Who could have predicted that outcome?

→ AI, Uh, Finds a Way by M.G. Siegler