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Two Keyboards at a Bar (and in Walks Touch Bar)

Bryan Chaffin ·

Check out this rather brilliant piece imagining Apple keyboards past and present drinking in a bar, when in walks that obnoxious fellow, Touch Bar (via Daring Fireball). It’s high-larious, spot on, and flawlessly executed. Here’s a taste:

APPLE EXTENDED II: Lonely times, man. Lonely times. First, it was scissors then butterflies. Do you want to know what I miss? Electric Alps switches. That was the dream, right?

MACBOOK PRO (nervous, staring at the bar, napkins in both hands): Did you clean up before I sat down? It looks clean, but…

APPLE EXTENDED II (interrupting): Kids today. They don’t appreciate the reliable, credible haptic feedback of a single healthy keystroke. It’s all hunt, peck, and swipe swipe swipe.

TOUCHBAR (arrives): Hey! Nobody told me we were going out to drinks ?. This is great! ?

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There's a New Wi-Fi Standard Coming, and It's Much More Secure

John Martellaro ·

The current W-iFi protocol we all use, WPA2, isn’t considered very secure these days. It badly needs to be upgraded. And that’s going to happen in late 2019 with WPA3. This article explains the problems with WPA2 and how WPA3 will fix them. Excerpt.“If you ask virtually any security person, they’ll say don’t use Wi-Fi, or if you do, immediately throw a VPN connection on top of it,” says Bob Rudis, chief data officer at security firm Rapid 7. “Now, Wi-Fi becomes something where we can say hey, if the place you’re going to uses WPA3 and your device uses WPA3, you can pretty much use Wi-Fi in that location.” That will change everything. The Wired article fills us in.

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How Can We Build Healthy Technology?

Andrew Orr ·

Wired has a good op-ed about how to build healthy technology. It examines our relationship with technology, as well as our technological addiction and dependence.

There is no defined category for technology addiction, but psychiatrists have been debating whether internet addiction is a real malady. It was not added to the latest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the diagnostic bible of mental health professionals around the world.

Each of us relates to technology in a unique, highly personal way. We lose or cede control, stability, and fulfillment in a million different ways. As Leo Tolstoy wrote in the novel Anna Karenina, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

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Meru Health Wants to Make Mental Health Care More Accessible

Andrew Orr ·

TechCrunch writes about a service called Meru Health, a company that wants to make mental health care more accessible to employees.

Meru Health offers an eight-week treatment program for depression, burnout and anxiety. The program, currently led by five licensed therapists, utilizes both cognitive behavioral therapy, behavioral activation and mindfulness-based intervention. Provided as an employee benefit, Meru Health only charges companies if the patients report feeling any better.

Down the road, Meru Health may make its service available to everyday consumers, but right now, Ranta said the focus is on selling to larger employers and doing clinical research. Meru Health is also looking to bring on board a doctor to help with medication management and, possibly, even providing prescriptions.