I wasn’t always into podcasts. I started listening to them near the start of 2020 to get my daily news of what was happening with the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, I used my smartphone like most other people. I would mindlessly scroll through social media and I wasn’t very considerate of how I was constantly being tracked and profiled. Nowadays, I listen to podcasts that are more appropriate to my lifestyle....
I was thinking about what topics I could write about and I thought it would be fun to have an ongoing series where I would talk about technologies that I follow that I’m excited about and why I’m excited and where technologies I’ve talked about in the past are up to. I don’t plan to do this on any particular planned schedule; they’ll be done when I feel like enough has changed....
Most people nowadays have their whole lives on their phones. They will look at their e-mails, watch videos, do all their shopping, write all their personal thoughts all on the one device. With all the processes running on the device, there are, naturally, many outgoing connections that are potentially hostile towards the user. These additional connections will also drain the device battery without benefiting the user. While the easiest way to deal with unwanted outgoing connections is to simply not use apps that behave in this way or find alternatives, the average person simply doesn’t care or have the understanding of why it’s important to have these connections under control which means the apps must be “sanitised” as best as possible....
Discord is a popular communications platform that many communities are built upon. While Discord Inc. has generally taken the stance that they are not in the business of selling your data, there is still a lot of potential for abuse. Privacy policies can change with little notice and upon acquisition. Representatives of the platform have stated openly that encrypted conversations are not a feature that is planned as it prevents the operators to moderate abuse that occurs on the platform....