Laura Kalbag @laura@mastodon.laurakalbag.com

I’ve written a basic intro on how to read RSS in 2020, with some recommendations for feed readers.

(I started writing this a few weeks ago, but now might just be a great time to curate the news you want, and filter out the needlessly overwhelming stuff.)

https://laurakalbag.com/how-to-read-rss-in-2020/

“You should be aware that, depending on the software your company uses and the policies it has in place, there may be some privacy concerns.”

https://onezero.medium.com/slack-zoom-google-hangouts-are-your-remote-work-apps-spying-on-you-cf1e33809cf7

What’s your favourite RSS feed reader?

I’ve got a few options to recommend for the web and macOS/iOS but not many browser extensions, or feed readers for Windows or Linux.

It took til nearly 2pm for me to clock why I’m being terrible and irrational today.

Unless your company is emailing me to tell me how you’re paying your employees and contractors during this time, I do not care for your coronavirus marketing email one bit.

“The diseases that are most successful in the coming century will, as always, be the diseases that exploit our major failure modes and popular delusions.”

https://www.wired.com/story/what-coronavirus-pandemic-says-about-society/

“COVID-19 could easily be used as an excuse to spread mass surveillance… This is not intended to be alarmist, but it’s important to keep an eye on mission creep in this space.”

https://venturebeat.com/2020/03/06/ai-weekly-coronavirus-facial-recognition-and-the-future-of-privacy/

I just can’t with Google. I do not understand why the web community (mostly) views Facebook as questionable but treats Google as socially acceptable. Lines drawn at their own convenience.

“To say the internet has a huge impact on our society is an understatement. And the data and privacy missteps committed by Big Tech disproportionately affect historically marginalized communities.”

https://onezero.medium.com/ok-google-black-history-month-is-over-what-now-c08016119b69

The lot of this is infinitely quotable. And if you’re a person in tech who is starting to care about justice, equality, ethics and so on, please please read the exceptional advice at the end of the article.

“Prodigal tech bro stories skip straight from the past, when they were part of something that—surprise!—turned out to be bad, to the present, where they are now a moral authority on how to do good, but without the transitional moments of revelation and remorse”

https://conversationalist.org/2020/03/05/the-prodigal-techbro/

Please tell me International Women’s Day is the right day for a woman to have a tearful meltdown about her worklife inadequacies. (You don’t need to tell me… I already did it.)

snoozy boy

I don’t post like I used to because the responses from men have become unbearable. The gamut of creepy, condescending or copycat. They do it in person at conferences too, which makes me think twice about speaking. (And I witness this being far worse for women less white than me.)

https://dev.to/aspittel/nevertheless-ali-coded-e2h

“When you look into the way Spotify’s slowly morphed its playlists into data-mining machines, suddenly it makes a lot more sense.”

https://gizmodo.com/spotifys-weird-linkedin-playlists-sound-like-a-cash-reg-1842097222

my new plant has my attitude

If you insist on Mothers Day marketing, please give me a quick way to opt out. This time of year is a constant pummelling reminder that my mum isn’t here anymore. It’s a very unsubscribey feeling.

Good on Planned Parenthood for doing the right thing and removing the Facebook tracking. But it’s shocking that developers are ignorant to the tracking embedded in these frameworks and libraries. It’s irresponsible.

“Glued together, these scraps of information create a collage of my overall health, which Facebook can then sell advertisements against. In collecting data about my health behavior and interests, Facebook probably knows more about my health than my doctor.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/90457638/planned-parenthood-let-facebook-track-how-often-i-logged-my-period