The Curious Engineer

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The Rectangle

therectangle.substack.com

Adventures in digital culture. Click to read The Rectangle, by Callum Booth, a Substack publication.

Tech news / industryEssays / personal

’22’23’24’25’26
Posts
160 from 31 Aug 2022 to 7 Apr 2026
Posting
monthly (10 in the last year)
Kind
personal blog
Feed
https://therectangle.substack.com/feed

2026 6

  1. Come on, we all know social media is addictive
  2. Sharing AI videos is like telling people about your dreams
  3. The long road to cable
  4. The unbreakable urge to Google
  5. Delete social media
  6. Make remotes great again

2025 38

  1. Music algorithms failed us
  2. I hate Black Friday, it's great
  3. Your phone needs a sock
  4. We beat Liquid Glass
  5. Digital photo frames: Pure magic
  6. We’re not ready for smart glasses
  7. All roads lead to bodyslop
  8. The internet never forgets
  9. The end of design
  10. Building a PC #2: Picking the parts
  11. iPhone Air: To what end?
  12. Ban phones
  13. PREMIUM!
  14. The great AI job swindle
  15. Online Safety Act: What went wrong
  16. Building a PC #1: Why bother?
  17. RTS fever
  18. How the written internet died
  19. The Lightswitch Problem
  20. brb toonin'
  21. What's a number?
  22. Scratch scratch scratch
  23. You're dead, Duolingo
  24. Cloud save magic
  25. brb sunbathin'
  26. Can an e-ink handset help my phone addiction?
  27. Why am I still on Twitter?
  28. Studio Ghibli AI slop
  29. Cheap earbuds got damn good
  30. Who wants AI-written fiction?
  31. Our grotesque era
  32. Online archaeology
  33. Defining The Great Uncoupling™
  34. Tech's reality problem
  35. Give me a "busy mode" or give me death
  36. WHAT?!? A non-disposable disposable camera???
  37. Darts, I love you
  38. The Great Uncoupling™

2024 50

  1. Festive greetings!
  2. Dead phone
  3. You finally did it, Apple
  4. FIFA: Beanie Babies in football form
  5. Nationalise YouTube
  6. Help! I need a power bank
  7. Disposable cameras are back, baby
  8. Things more likely than Google paying Russia $2 undecillion
  9. I still miss you, StumbleUpon
  10. Vinyl's dead
  11. Why don't books come with digital downloads?
  12. A history of the 4 beers and 2 cigs speedrun
  13. The majesty of the rice cooker
  14. Apple thirsts for your earholes
  15. I've seen Spotify's future
  16. Pebbling? What the hell even is that?
  17. Social media free Sundays
  18. An ode to the Chromecast
  19. I want a 'forever mouse'
  20. Who needs a Friend?
  21. QR code menus are criminal
  22. You can't trust Google Maps
  23. Right time
  24. The death of music TV
  25. Examining the 'Life If They Lived Closer' meme
  26. EUROS FEVER
  27. Cheers, earplugs
  28. Pondering Sonos' first headphones
  29. Chess: The joy of sucking
  30. Ranking the newest emojis
  31. Sorry, iPads, sorry
  32. When's a computer not a computer?
  33. Boy Math™? Oh boy...
  34. A 'discount sticker' TikTok account is the purest thing online
  35. Use your stuff
  36. I can't wait for full colour ereaders
  37. Really? You want a robot?
  38. The horror of a broken hard drive
  39. This teen is tattooing himself 500 times in 500 days
  40. That's weird, Spotify, real weird
  41. Memes and our metamodern condition
  42. Willy Wonka and weird-ass AI
  43. Why can't I be a dick to AI?
  44. Sorry I doubted you, Screen Time
  45. The Vision Pro? Daddy, chill
  46. I love Google Maps' lists, they suck
  47. Bidets and butt wipes
  48. RIP Pitchfork
  49. Bots do it better
  50. The best of The Rectangle in 2023

2023 52

  1. The lockscreen as a modern locket
  2. Behold, prison hooch!
  3. Buy first, be later
  4. The philosophy of tracking music
  5. Like Spotify Wrapped? You'll love Last.fm
  6. Big Tech is bad — but not all the time
  7. People are pissing all over the place
  8. Boy mathing my way to a new TV
  9. The Touch Bar is dead, long live the Touch Bar
  10. He only went and drank 2,000 pints
  11. Look how they massacred Bandcamp
  12. Indie Sleaze & disintegrating digital memory
  13. Happy birthday!
  14. RIP YouTube Premium Lite
  15. Some tech should stay lost
  16. Apple's scummy update cycle
  17. Cool stuff I saw at IFA 2023
  18. Here's a helpful WhatsApp tip
  19. The quest for perpetual stew
  20. Where are all the electronics repair shops?
  21. A chat with the creator of the 'relatable Jeremy Strong meme'
  22. Hold up, this is about a work tool?
  23. Musk is two little boys in a man suit
  24. Apps are dumb — and VanMoof is the proof
  25. Prime Day sucks
  26. I hate how much I love YouTube Premium
  27. Forsooth, a new Furby
  28. Superb sleep app swallowed by online shit wave
  29. God bless Battle Chess
  30. Oh no! It's the Apple Vision Pro!
  31. 'Recorder in the Corner' is the song of the summer
  32. Meet the man trying to drink 2,000 pints in 2023
  33. The new Zelda game is a glimpse of pure humanity
  34. The Pixel Fold is Google's final shot at smartphone relevance
  35. Huh, half of vinyl buyers don't own a record player???
  36. An old tech solution to a new tech problem
  37. Bow down to time-stamping YouTubers
  38. Meet the teen who tried watching 'The Lorax' every day for a year
  39. Explaining the 'let it linger' meme
  40. Musk must run all the things
  41. Punching phone addiction in the face
  42. Why, music apps, why?!?
  43. Praise be the humble kettle
  44. Addicted to earbuds
  45. Hey Elon, I can help
  46. Hardware subscriptions are a horrible idea
  47. Why turning it off and on again works so well
  48. What's better? Ereaders or real books?
  49. Google is only useful for searching Reddit
  50. Cheers for the sucky new MacBook Pro, Apple
  51. Throwing the iPhone a sweet sixteen
  52. Movies of 2022: The films that shaped my year

2022 14

  1. The best albums of 2022
  2. The gadgets that got me through 2022
  3. Video streaming apps need a 'night mode'
  4. I made AI write this
  5. Spotify Wrapped sucks
  6. The gamification of exercise has gone too far
  7. Steve Jobs' $200k sandals gave me some ideas
  8. How to build a social media site
  9. The metaverse should feel like a Walkman
  10. All your old tech is haunted, actually
  11. Everything and everyone should be a BeReal clone
  12. The four stages of owning a new phone
  13. In defence of printers
  14. Coming soon