This weekend, I had to purchase a new iPhone. My iPhone 11 — bought in October 2019 — was becoming unreliable. Its touch screen was acting up, either producing ghost touches or becoming unresponsive in some areas, which could be frustrating when the affected areas were covering the keyboard. In the past couple of weeks, I even had to use a Bluetooth mouse and a Bluetooth keyboard to unlock my phone a few times. After four and a half years, getting a new iPhone seems expected. I would have preferred to get an updated-for-2024 version of the iPhone SE, but surprisingly, no new iPhones SE were re ..read more

This post is inspired by the excellent track entitled Lamb’s Garbage (Unfinished), from the classic album and one of my favourites, Mr Oizo’s Lambs Anger. The concept of the song, as its title suggests, is to regroup bits of songs that were never completed to be full tracks. Since I’ve been sitting on a few short drafts for a while now, and since I can’t seem to convert those drafts into full blog posts, I thought I’d borrow the idea and compile parts of these unfinished posts into an inaugural “unfinished” post, a format that may or may not return. In the meantime, this is a format I can only ..read more

Some links don’t call for a full blog post, but sometimes I still want to share some of the good stuff I encounter on the web. A Willy Wonka-inspired experience ‘scam’ was so bad that people called the cops・The kind of story that either makes you laugh or cry. I can’t seem to stop searching for more information about it. How the most expensive swords in the world are made・The best 25 minutes I spent watching YouTube in a long time. ‘Very few have balls’: How American news lost its nerve・An acute painting of the journalism landscape, particularly in the production and publication of investigati ..read more

I do this every time. Writing at length about a topic I care about supercharges my brain. I have an idea, blurry at first, that becomes clearer and clearer as I write about it. When I’m finished, the idea is clear, mature, and the newly published post makes a lot of sense. I should then be ready to start writing the next one, and move on with my life. Except I’m not. My brain, apparently unaware that the drafting phase is over, keeps on analysing the initial idea well after the finished draft is online. And guess what? The torrent of thoughts my brain keeps pouring over me, and I end up changi ..read more

Shitty software is everywhere. And by “shitty” software, I mean software that is either not well-suited for a task, poorly implemented (meaning CPU-intensive for no reason), and/or simply not well-designed. As someone who really enjoys quality software and spends way too much time searching for a slightly better solution for each use case, this apparent lack of taste and bon goût from the general public kinda annoys me. It’s not like software is something we only use every other day: software is ubiquitous. I’d understand if people were not sensitive to the quality of shopping center escalator ..read more

At the end of 2022, my employer got me a brand new computer. It was a big deal because I had been using a typical company-issued Windows PC for the previous three years — and it was fine — and they gave me a MacBook Air (late 2020 model, aka the M1 MacBook Air). I was very happy to finally get a Mac for work, but also a better computer, with better performance, a better screen, a better microphone, a better design, much better battery life, better software, and so on. But a part of me was also worried. I was worried that using a Mac at work while working from home 9 days out of 10 would blur t ..read more

Some links don’t call for a full blog post, but sometimes I still want to share some of the good stuff I encounter on the web. Japan is set to launch the world’s first wooden satellite to combat space pollution・Not from The Onion. What’s Inside This Crater in Madagascar?・A very entertaining investigation. (via Kottke) How Google is killing independent sites like ours・We often discuss SEO as a cat-and-mouse game with Google. While I don’t completely agree with the article’s conclusion that “the ball is in Google’s court” (as online advertising seems to never be at fault for decreasing revenues ..read more

I like DuckDuckGo. I have used their search engine for ten years. I like their stance on privacy. I even like their cartoon duck. But what is DuckDuckGo? Most of you would probably say: “It’s a search engine, like Google.” While this is true, it’s also incomplete. If “search engine” was the obvious answer five years ago, I don’t think it is anymore. What is DuckDuckGo’s main product nowadays? This is where it gets tricky. DuckDuckGo seems to spend a lot of time and effort on building web browsers, privacy-focused tools, but not so much time on search. If the search engine is the point-of-entry ..read more

I took way too much time to write this post, as I had a lot of difficulties expressing my thoughts, and the more I worked on what I was really wanting to say, the more I had to say. The first result was all over the place, so I started from scratch again, and this new result feels “summarised,” but I’m not sure if it’s clearer than the original or if it feels “complete” in my mind. I decided to jump in and never mind if some parts are confusing for you, dear readers: I had a very intense month of January at work, and my brain feels like it already needs a big vacation. If you’re wondering abou ..read more

Consider me very suspicious of AI, or should I say very cautious. After all, the latest or next generation of A.I. may eventually render my job useless; why should I embrace this new technology? My job involves organising the production of content for a brand, writing a few things here and there, proofreading a lot of emails and webpages, ensuring the right tone of voice, defining topics and creating outlines for the brand’s presence through blog posts, webinars, videos, white papers, etc. It’s easy to see where A.I. could either replace me for 90% of these tasks or render them completely usel ..read more