After watching Seaspiracy, Netflix’s hotly debated documentary about the unsustainable practices of industrial fisheries, my mixed feelings about the limitations of the platform’s thumbs-based rating system were vividly revived.

I found Seaspiracy to be sensationalist, highly biased, and in some cases factually problematic. (Since I’m not here to explain these problems, I invite you to read what marine biologists had to say about it here and here.) Given that I absolutely want to learn more about the environment, my dilemma boils down to two conflicting messages I want to convey to Netflix through my rating of the documentary:

1. I DO…

Our current model for the social internet is destination-based. We have to stop what we’re doing, head to a social media app or site, then start sharing and interacting with others. Think of these social media sites as malls and every other website as independent shops and houses in a sprawling suburb. The suburb is quiet. Walking around the neighbourhoods is drab. What few shops exist outside the mall are nowhere near as lively as the mall. You drive to the mall, walk-in, and there are people and sounds everywhere. …

Before you look up something online, you might first need to figure out what keywords will help you find it. This has become a common enough occurence that the usability experts at the Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) recently released a term for it: Keyword foraging.

In their article, they focus primarily on how online creators and businesses could use knowledge about keyword foraging to ensure their content can be found. In one example, they discuss how someone searching for a “duster cardigan” may have to start by using less precise terms, such as “long sweater cardigan.” …

In an insightful talk by Steve Selzer, the designer and creative director paints a picture of how our “frictionless” world has long been dictated by Silicon Valley startups. In particular, the dominant formula for apps is to make them as brainlessly easy to use as possible. Need a taxi? Hail it with a button. Craving a burger? There’s a button for that too. Want someone to clean your bachelor pad? Button!

Realistically, none of these apps need to be that simple. But unfortunately, startups took the standard of using technology to make our lives easier and ran with it (right…

In an attempt to peel away from shady data practices, I’ve started using more private browsers, opting out of data sharing on websites, and logging out of my Google account and social media to minimize cross-site tracking. For the most part, the only immediately noticeable thing that has come out of this is that my ads are less relevant, but I still see the same amount. However, a side-effect I didn’t expect to miss as much is the personalization of the service itself.

Now, my YouTube recommendations have become a lot worse, searching is more cumbersome without some amount of…

Last week, I read the article by Noam Bardin, ex-CEO of Waze, on why he stayed so long at Google. In it, he states that his experience selling Waze to Google proved to him that it’s difficult for startups to operate within a large corporation without clashes over culture and governance.

Like many people working with startups, I was nodding approvingly by the end and excitedly shared the article with my networks.

The man is clearly very intelligent and hard-working, and he built an incredible company that was bought out by an even more incredible company. Noam provided some poignant…

Throughout the pandemic, the most reliable source of information has been the scientists and medical community, and yet we continue to get two levels of filtration between the best source and ourselves. The first filter is the government and the second is the media. The government distorts it one way, the media distorts it another, and in the worst-case scenario, the media distorts what the government has distorted about the science.

As a reaction to this societal failure, people are being told: if you want to be intelligent, you have to put in the work yourself and do your own…

After finishing a book, movie, or game, what do you do? Personally I find myself rushing to the internet and looking up reviews and analyses. It’s a fantastic, and often free, way to get so much more out of the content you just experienced. However, I have started to notice a downside to this.

There have been several occasions where I will have finished the content feeling satisfied and then have those feelings dashed by a cynical analysis. The reverse is also true. …