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Notes from the studio.
Writing on technology, design, VR, AI — and what it takes to ship them. Mostly long, sometimes short, occasionally wrong.
Journal · · 4 min
Apple will train its AI on your data — if you say yes
With iOS 27, Apple's promise that your data is never used to train its models gained a clause: unless you choose to help. Opt-in is the decent version of this. It is also a reminder that a privacy promise written in a policy is only as strong as the next policy. Journal · · 6 minAI glasses won, and almost nobody noticed
For a decade everyone promised the face computer and shipped headsets nobody wore. The device that actually crossed over is the least sci-fi one: ordinary glasses with a camera, mics and an AI. Why glasses won, what actually changes, and the privacy reckoning the launch videos keep skipping. Journal · · 8 minGDPR-compliant analytics without cookies: what we built and why there's no banner
GDPR-compliant analytics without cookies is possible when you collect no PII and set no client-side identifier — which is exactly why our sites carry no cookie banner. Journal · · 7 minPrivacy-First Analytics, Explained: What It Means and What We Actually Collect
Privacy-first analytics means measuring traffic without tracking people. Here's what it means, how it differs from Google Analytics, and the exact signals we collect. Journal · · 8 minWhy Cookie Consent Banners Are Bad: A Design and Ethics Failure
Cookie consent banners are bad because they are dark-pattern theatre that punish honest sites. The fix is not a better banner — it is collecting less data so you need none. Journal · · 8 minHow to build a recommender system without user tracking
A recommender system without user tracking is built on content features and session-local signals, not cross-user profiling. Here is how we ship one — and the accuracy we trade away. Journal · · 5 minWe track no users. Here is what we track instead.
No GA. No Plausible. No fingerprinting. The site you're reading sends one anonymous beacon per session — and we still know everything we actually need.— The journal, by email