Tags: lockin

Will 2016 be the year web advertisers realise we don’t want to be monitored?

Ethan Zuckerman:

This is advertising we’re talking about, the industry founded on the hallucination that people secretly appreciate being tracked, analysed and told what to buy. Advertisers, and the technology companies that cater to them, are responding to ad blocking the only way they know how: doubling down on their fantasy that viewers will suddenly love advertising just as soon as ads are so all-knowing that they anticipate one’s every need and desire.

Blocked! - O’Reilly Radar

Following on from that Wired article I linked to about disabling JavaScript, Simon St. Laurent brings in another factor—content blockers on iOS:

Apple offers its users the power to turn off much of the Web: fonts, styles, scripts, and more.

He rightly points out that the answer to building a robust, resilient web has been here all along:

Turning off web fonts, CSS, and images will frustrate designers and limit user interface possibilities, but turning off JavaScript might mean that we have to reconsider the architecture of our applications. Without JavaScript, the Web returns to its foundations of HTTP requests returning pages, with links and form submissions as the backbone of application structure.

Clifford Levy on Twitter

I’d like to do this for all Clearleft web projects.

How important is mobile for @nytimes? We’re blocking access to our home page on desktop in our building.

Space stasis: What the strange persistence of rockets can teach us about innovation. - By Neal Stephenson - Slate Magazine

An excellent historical overview of rocketry by Neal Stephenson.

iPhone sim free

Looks like the iPhone has been unlocked. Jesus phones want to be free.