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August 19, 2019: Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann on their new book "Super Thinking" (and Duck Duck Go)

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This week: Co-authors (and spouses) Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann talk about their new "book of mental models" called "Super Thinking." Gabriel is also the founder of the search engine Duck Duck Go.

Pointers:

• Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models, by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann

• What if We All Just Sold Non-Creepy Advertising?, Gabriel's op-ed in the New York Times (June 19)

• Twitter thread by Ashkan Soltani on the Do Not Track Act from Sen. Josh Hawley; see also Duck Duck Go's post on the act

• Duck Duck Go, Gabriel's search engine

• Techtonic from Jan 29, 2018, featuring an interview with Gabriel

Recent news:

• Facebook's mind-reading helmet covered on A Little Slice of Tech Pie from today (my 2-minute segment on Wake & Bake with Clay Pigeon).

• People Are Starting to Realize How Voice Assistants Actually Work (Sidney Fussell in the Atlantic, Aug 15): "And Facebook makes five. Which is to say, this isn’t so much a series of “scandals” surrounding human review as the results of a user base becoming minimally aware of how voice-assistant technology actually works. Our listening devices did what they were designed to do. We just didn’t realize who was listening."

• John Gruber on Daring Fireball, Aug 16: "If I graded Apple on the privacy and trust implications of [Siri audio surveillance], I’d give them an F."

• From Aral Balkan (Aug 14): "Don’t call it a techlash, there’s no backlash against technology, there’s a backlash against a single toxic strain of exploitative, colonial, surveillance-based technology developed and exported by Silicon Valley. There’s a Valleylash. There’s a yearning for techmancipation."

• From recent Techtonic guest Chris Gilliard (referring to a NYT article today, Aug 19):



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