<story><title>The Secret Power of ‘Read It Later’ Apps</title><url>https://medium.com/better-humans/the-secret-power-of-read-it-later-apps-6c75cc37ef42#.dy1vpda8b</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>pdkl95</author><text>The &amp;quot;secret power&amp;quot; of Pocket is that someone is making money off selling detailed information on what people red, probably including when, where, probably how long a given document is read. They aren&amp;#x27;t offering their bandwidth and storage as some sort of charity; those server costs are obviously being covered by surveillance-as-a-business-model.&lt;p&gt;The database Pocket is building is an incredibly tempting target for many different groups (governments, insurance companies, etc). Even if Pocket isn&amp;#x27;t using that data (unlikely), the probability of leaks&amp;#x2F;theft is high.&lt;p&gt;Building a better bookmark system is a good idea. Such a system doesn&amp;#x27;t need network access. If for some reason you need to share between devices, a socially responsible bookmark&amp;#x2F;read-it-later tool would be encrypting at the endpoints so an opaque encrypted blob is the only thing stored remotely. (prior art: the original Firefox &amp;quot;sync&amp;quot;)</text></comment>
<story><title>The Secret Power of ‘Read It Later’ Apps</title><url>https://medium.com/better-humans/the-secret-power-of-read-it-later-apps-6c75cc37ef42#.dy1vpda8b</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>AdmiralAsshat</author><text>The unmentioned perk of &amp;#x27;Read it Later&amp;#x27; apps that I haven&amp;#x27;t seen mentioned:  downloading the articles ahead of time while you&amp;#x27;re on home wifi.&lt;p&gt;On my phone it&amp;#x27;s really not a big deal, since the data consumption is minimal. But I like to do longform reading on my Nexus 7, which is a wi-fi only model, and the places where I&amp;#x27;m liable to sit around for an hour (i.e. the doctor&amp;#x27;s office, the gym, a lo-fi coffee shop, etc.) usually don&amp;#x27;t have accessible wi-fi. The ability for the tablet to sync with Pocket while it&amp;#x27;s on wifi and have everything cached when I&amp;#x27;m off is extremely useful.</text></comment>