Thurrott Daily: December 16

Thurrott Daily: December 16
Victoria, British Columbia (9 years ago)

Good morning. Here are some musings from around the web.

12/16/2015 11:53:07 AM

Gary Vaynerchuck: Embrace our ad-blocking overlords

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I’ve written about the fact that content creators need to move past the current, shitty need to put ads all over their web sites. This week, my personal hero weighed in on the matter. (That was serious, by the way.)

How are businesses going to survive past the rise of ad blockers? … They’ll survive by adjusting to the reality of the market. Period.

The big takeaway here for me is this: average players in this space are just going to be forced into being better. This is going to motivate people to step up their game, and not just mail it in. “Ads” will have to get better and smarter.

And I think it’s great.

I do too. Scary. But great.

Microsoft is developing an app that can predict crimes

I feel like “Minority Report” did a pretty good job of predicting a reasonable future in many ways. But the way the guys on the big gesture-based screens shared information was positively 20th century: They passed physical devices around the room. Sneakernet lives!

Firefox “finally” goes 64-bit on Windows

Seriously, that’s how news of a 64-bit version of Firefox for Windows has been reported by PC World. Because, you know, adding 64-bitness to the browser … does … what? I’ll let PC World explain it.

it will be hard to tell the difference between it and the 32-bit version.

Well. 🙂 Surely there’s more than that.

Most of the big improvements happen behind the scenes, although the 64-bit version should be able to keep more tabs open without slowing as well as run web apps that require 64-bit support. 64-bit programs are able to address more than 4GB of memory, allowing for better performance.

So it “should” be better. I’m curious this isn’t more well-understood. But it turns out there are downsides too:

The one thing you will notice is that some plugins simply won’t work with Firefox’s 64-bit version.

Finally!

“[Apple to add polish, not product lines, in 2016](Apple to add polish, not product lines, in 2016)”

Woah. Are you suggesting that Apple’s current product lines are anything other than perfect? You’re banned. You’re banned for life.

Google Play Books picks up a night mode too

Following in the footsteps of Amazon, which added a night mode to its Kindle books app on its own line of tablets, Google announced this week it was doing similarly for its own book-reading app, Google Play Books.

Today we’re introducing Night Light, a new feature that makes night time reading more enjoyable and easier on the eyes. When turned on, Night Light gradually filters blue light from your screen, replacing it with a warm, amber light as the sun sets. Night Light automatically adapts to the amount of natural sunlight outside based on the time of day, giving you just the right temperature and brightness. The color adjustment is more comfortable on your eyes and greatly improves low-light night reading.

Night Light is rolling out to Android and iOS readers now

I realize many of you probably don’t use Android or iOS, or Google Play Books for that matter. But this kind of thing is really nice, and I have been using it on my Kindle HD 8 for reading at night. Hopefully Amazon (and other e-book reader makers) push it out across all of their apps going forward.

 

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