The Best Of The Internets


Apple Blows Up The Concept Of A Privacy Policy

While its title is a little hyperbolic, the article highlights some of the work Apple is doing to make their Privacy Policy more accessible. You know, so non-lawyers can actually understand what Apple does with their data and why.


In the Future, How Will We Talk to Our Technology?

Depending on how you read the title, your expectations for this article may not align with the subject: the technical means by which we talk to our devices. It’s not about the APIs or voice recognition, but rather how our desires are transferred from our mind to our device’s “ears”. Voice is obviously one way—and David spends a lot of time discussing microphone improvements—but it could also be silently using subvocalization.

If—like me—this stuff fascinates you, you should definitely give it a read.


Before you learn to code, ask yourself why

This is a really thoughtful piece weighing the pros and cons of code schools against teaching yourself with a big focus on why you might want to learn to code. I highly recommend this piece for anyone thinking about getting into coding. Share away!


U.S. Web Design Standards

I’m so excited to see this resource making it out into the public. Congrats to the U.S. Digital Service and 18F folks for their awesome work and for their focus on accessibility!


CSS Round Display Level 1

An interesting proposal from LG regarding design tools for addressing non-rectangular screens.


18 ways Doctor Who can make you a better designer

A bit of fun, but there’s some good stuff in here. One particularly crucial fact: “Answers are often obvious in design if you are asking the right questions, but sometimes finding the question is the tricky bit.”


Content Blocking Primer

Fantastic post from Eric on how the mass appeal of content blockers has given the web a mulligan. There’s a lot of great content in his post, but I’ll just share this one emblematic passage:

Remember, this isn’t just about ads. Ads are emblematic of the root problem, but they’re not the actual root problem. If ads were the sole concern of content blockers, then the blockers (mostly) wouldn’t bother to block web fonts. It’s possible to use web fonts smartly and efficiently, but most sites don’t, so web fonts are a major culprit in slow mobile load times. The same is true for Javascript, whether it’s served by an ad network, an analytics engine, or some other source. So they’re both targeted by blockers—not for enabling ads, but for disabling the web.


iOS 9, Safari and the Web

An excellent (and exhaustive) overview of what’s new in iOS 9 as it pertains to web design.