MADvice

1. Your Apps Know Where You Were Last Night
   As smartphones have become ubiquitous and technology more accurate, an industry of snooping on people’s daily habits has spread and grown more intrusive. Every moment of every day, mobile phone apps collect detailed location data from phones going to schools, hospitals, shops, homes and sell it to advertisers and even hedge funds. They say it’s anonymous, but the data shows how personal it is. The mobile location industry began as a way to customize apps and target ads for nearby businesses, but it has morphed into a data collection and analysis machine. [NY Times, 12min]
2. The Case for the 6-Hour Workday
   The eight-hour workday harkens back to 19-century socialism. But so much has changed since then. The internet fundamentally changed the way we live, work, and play, and the nature of work itself has transitioned in large part from algorithmic tasks to heuristic ones that require critical thinking, problem-solving, creativity, and uninterrupted stretches of time to get into a state of flow. Could a shorter, more productive workday actually set the scene for higher productivity and less-stressed employees? [HBR, 6min]
3. The State of Technology at the End of 2018
   Every year in mid-December Ben Thompson summarises the state of technology in a blog post. This year’s edition coincides with another tech executive testifying in front of US congress. This time the executive was Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google. Here are the 2014, 2015, and 2016 summaries. He skipped it last year in order to cover Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox. [Stratechery, 8min]

A quote I'm thinking about:
 

– Bob Dylan