Chris Duckett ZDNet article (A VPN will not save you from government surveillance) is informative, if a little hyperbolic: Under the laws that force telcos to store customers' call records, location information, IP addresses, billing information, and other data for two years, there is a small caveat for journalists that forces agencies to obtain a warrant when seeking to uncover a journalist’s source. Neither the journalist, nor the telcos, will ever know that such a warrant existed, but these provisions were essentially a figleaf to shut up the Canberra press gallery under the auspices of protecting democracy and freedom of the press when the data retention laws were being considered – and it worked.

Monday Note is linked more often in my new feed forJean-Louis Gassée’s take on Apple. But I’ve found that Frederic Filloux’s series on the modernization of the news media much more interesting. In his April 17 post Filloux applies some of Jeff Bezos' lessons: Hence the implicit first lesson from Jeff Bezos: put the product and those who will use it at the center of your operations. Hire, train and transform the mentalities toward that goal.

My host provider Webfaction forced a server upgrade on me which sounds like it would be good. Except one of my design principles for Macdrifter is to have very few dependencies so I didn’t really need a new server. Or a new OS. Or a new version of Python. So some things happened that shouldn’t and some other things should have happened that didn’t. Here’s a brief list: All SSH keys changed.

This is a very impressive (and extensively referenced) blog post. I’ve repeatedly struggled to use Trello for project management. It has never clicked for me. This is a great tutorial for the basic capabilities in Trello but it’s also a thoughtful breakdown of an information capture system. I think the conclusion section is also a very honest assessment of the system.

iThoughts for iOS has a nice update this week that adds support for document providers. Now I can store my planning maps inside DEVONthink along with the rest of my project data and still open them from within iThoughts for editing. I like the Smart Folder I have on my Mac to load all of my iThoughts maps at once. It’s very convenient to browse all of my maps. But I can create a similar folder in DEVONthink for Mac.

My good friend and amazing designer Erik Hess did something. He made a sticker pack just because he loves Tomcats. I think they are beautiful. I’d imagine if you like aircraft, this would be right up your alley. It’s two bucks which like 1/19,000,000 of the cost for the actual plane.

In the United States we have few privacy protections. We now have fewer than we had 6 months ago. We represent little more than a pool of cash to be exploited. My personal strategy is to make the collection of my data cost as much as possible because I like to believe that there is a point that it loses its value to those doing the collecting. With the repeal of the FCC rules governing collection of data by ISPs, I now use a VPN 24/7.

Is this it then? Is this the last gasp of independent blogging as everyone moves to micro transactions of half considered thoughts? Will Tweets eat Wordpress? It sure seems like the indie blogs are thinned down to a small collection of ideas and opinions. Worse, it feels like the only sites that receive attention are the ones with interstitial ads or pop-up lectures about ad blocking. I know a lot of people are worried about indie blogging because The Deck is going away.

I sure do like Slack. It’s a hugely convenient service that I actually pay for.1 Many of my best friends are on Slack and it’s a continuous source of enjoyment and intelligent discussions for me. But I use it less now because I can’t trust its security. From Techcrunch: Slack has a lot of functions, but end-to-end encryption isn’t one of them, which makes the platform a no-go for some users.

I first met Bill DeVille through the DEVONthink forums many years ago. He was always generous with his time and even tempered with his responses. He made the experience and product better. So much so, that DevonTech hired him which instantly made me their fan. From the DevonTech website: After both his daughter and his wife had died, Bill moved from Baton Rouge, LA, to a log cabin in Nashville, IN.