I first heard about it on Slack and then on Macstories.1 Apple acquired the venerable Workflow app for iOS. From Apple’s statement to Techcrunch: “The Workflow app was selected for an Apple Design Award in 2015 because of its outstanding use of iOS accessibility features, in particular an outstanding implementation for VoiceOver with clearly labeled items, thoughtful hints, and drag/drop announcements, making the app usable and quickly accessible to those who are blind or low-vision.

I simply can’t stop watching this video of the PS4 game Everything.

From Frederic Filloux’s Monday Note: The Fake News phenomenon is like a bio-engineered plague: it spreads to all countries as specialized outlets make it their business to churn false information on an industrial scale. It hits democracies at a moment when professional media see their business models challenged from all sides. … In the end, it boils down to assessing the reputation of both publishers and authors. They won’t admit it publicly, but Google, Facebook and other large news distributors already rely on quality scoring variants.

This story by Brian Krebs is an amazing breakdown of an iCloud phishing ring. It not only provides a lot of detail about the thinking behind these phishing services (and all those phishing emails you get) but it’s a study in human nature too: This is where the story turns both comical and ironic. Many times, attackers will test their exploit on themselves whilst failing to fully redact their personal information.

White nationalists seem to have manipulated Google search results for “Boasian anthropology.” A.I. is not agnostic but it is no more moral than it is immoral. It’s an algorithm that efficiently reveals the frailties of the programmers and the source material and I really do not look forward to my life being influenced by more A.I.

I’ve long used nvALT and Dropbox to maintain my collection of notes on my Mac. The benefit of this system is that so many iOS applications sync with Dropbox. I can search and edit my large collection of notes almost anywhere that I’m sitting. But 2016 brought some new innovations and concerns. The tremendous improvements with DEVONthink on iOS and the secure end to end encryption with their Mac application have made it a compelling capture and reference manager.

From Jean-Louis Gassée: While persuading a consumer to buy a particular brand of suds seems banal enough, keep in mind the force of Facebook’s algorithms. In order to influence buying decisions, algorithms not only push consumers in a particular direction, they can steer them away from “unwanted” conclusions by injecting biased, partial information that subtly alters the user’s landscape and changes how a product is perceived. This is something I think about a lot.

Email is more than just a communication tool for me. With unbelievably inexpensive storage options and incredible search and filtering my email is now a filing cabinet. I make the extra effort to organize my email archive because it improves my search experience, but even if I just moved everything to an archive folder my email is a data collection I count on. But what if my email host went away.

Some activities just work best with multiple windows. Tabs are helpful but nothing beats dragging and dropping between folders. But it can be tedious to arrange windows every time I want to organize data. Luckily my constant companion on my Mac these days is DEVONthink Pro Office. Workspaces in DEVONthink are like Perspectives in OmniFocus. You arrange the windows and selections on the screen just how you like them. Take a quick trip to the “Go” menu and save a new Workspace.

I’ve said it many times before, I’m an iThoughts fan-boy. Now it’s available for Windows too and there’s a 70% discount for Mac users and a 20% discount for iOS users. It’s normally $50, which is a good price for a great app, but you can get it for $15 if you already own a license. That’s an incredible deal.