The Electronic Frontier Foundation: So we were concerned when we started hearing from multiple sources that Hurricane Electric, a Tier 1 ISP, is interfering with traffic. Confirmation of the details has been difficult, in part because Hurricane itself has refused to respond to ou … | Continue reading
Kieran McCarthy: In the last couple of weeks, Microsoft updated its general terms of use to prohibit scraping, harvesting, or similar extraction methods of its AI services. Also in the couple of weeks, Microsoft affiliate OpenAI released a product called GPTbot, which is designed … | Continue reading
Rebecca Tan and Regine Cabato, Washington Post: In the Philippines, one of the world’s biggest destinations for outsourced digital work, former employees say that at least 10,000 of these workers do this labor on a platform called Remotasks, which is owned by the $7 billion San F … | Continue reading
Om Malik: Mobile phone processors are becoming more powerful, and computer vision algorithms continue to advance. These innovations will minimize image noise, auto-correct imperfections, and optimize images for screen displays. The software’s capacity to merge data from multiple … | Continue reading
Benedict Evans: Whenever anyone proposes new rules or regulations, the people affected always have reasons why this is a terrible idea that will cause huge damage. This applies to bankers, doctors, farmers, lawyers, academics… and indeed software engineers. They always say ‘no’ a … | Continue reading
Do you want to block all YouTube ads in Safari on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac? Then download Magic Lasso Adblock — the ad blocker designed for you. It’s easy to setup, doubles the speed at which Safari loads and blocks all YouTube ads. Magic Lasso is an efficient, high performance … | Continue reading
Martin Coulter, Reuters: From Friday, a host of internet giants – including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms, Apple’s online App Store, and a handful of Google services – will face new obligations in the EU, including preventing harmful content from spreading, banning or l … | Continue reading
Ashley Stewart, in a report for Insider that is probably paywalled but I know you are very clever: Zoom CEO Eric Yuan told employees this month that the company was making the surprising decision to send some workers back to the office regularly because its flagship remote-work p … | Continue reading
Brian Heater, TechCrunch: In a surprise move, Apple this week penned a letter to California state senator Susan Talamantes Eggman, voicing support for SB 244, a “right to repair” bill currently making its way through Sacramento’s State Capitol building. Apple has, of course, soft … | Continue reading
Kevin Jiang, the Toronto Star: Just months after the advent of ChatGPT late last year, hundreds of websites have already been identified as using generative artificial intelligence to spew thousands of AI-written, often misinformation-laden “news” stories online. As the world nea … | Continue reading
Joseph Cox at the newly launched 404 Media: This is the result of a secret weapon criminals are selling access to online that appears to tap into an especially powerful set of data: the target’s credit header. This is personal information that the credit bureaus Experian, Equifax … | Continue reading
Gerrit De Vynck, Washington Post: A paper from U.K.-based researchers suggests that OpenAI’s ChatGPT has a liberal bias, highlighting how artificial intelligence companies are struggling to control the behavior of the bots even as they push them out to millions of users worldwide … | Continue reading
Andrew Cunningham, Ars Technica: You can still do a clean install of Windows, and it’s arguably easier than ever, with official Microsoft-sanctioned install media easily accessible and Windows Update capable of grabbing most of the drivers that most computers need for basic funct … | Continue reading
Want to experience twice as fast load times in Safari on your iPhone, iPad and Mac? Then download Magic Lasso Adblock — the ad blocker designed for you. It’s easy to set up, blocks all YouTube ads, and doubles the speed at which Safari loads. Magic Lasso Adblock is an efficient a … | Continue reading
Eric Seufert: Twitter has seen a dramatic decrease in its Top Downloaded chart position across both platforms since the app was renamed to X. Why? The situation presents a fascinating case study at the intersection of brand equity and mobile platform dynamics. John Gruber: At thi … | Continue reading
A recent story in the New York Times is the most recent iteration of the theme that people — especially young people — are increasingly using subtitles when watching movies and shows. It is more-or-less a retread of a late June story in IndieWire, which was similar to an early Ju … | Continue reading
Yair Rosenberg, the Atlantic: In real life, if someone crashed a gathering of strangers and started disrupting conversations while shouting abuse, they’d quickly be bounced from the party. Yet on social media, this sort of caustic conduct is not only tolerated but sometimes celeb … | Continue reading
Paris Marx: Microsoft is really hitting it out of the park with its AI-generated travel stories! If you visit Ottawa, it highly recommends the Ottawa Food Bank and provides a great tip for tourists: “Consider going into it on an empty stomach.” Jay Peters, the Verge: If you try t … | Continue reading
Jesse Squires, last March: I discovered earlier this week that my website is no longer being indexed by Bing and DuckDuckGo. In fact, it appears that it has been deliberately removed from their search indexes. On Bing, rather than display a “no results” message, it displays a “So … | Continue reading
“Hazel” of “Team YouTube” on August 8: Starting today, if you have YouTube watch history off and have no significant prior watch history, features that require watch history to provide video recommendations will be disabled – like your YouTube home feed. This means that starting … | Continue reading
Ethan Baron, Mercury News: Owners of some older iPhone models are expected to receive about $65 each after a judge cleared the way for payments in a class-action lawsuit accusing Apple of secretly throttling phone performance. The Cupertino cell phone giant agreed in 2020 to pay … | Continue reading
Jason Snell wrote about the history of the iMac on its twenty-fifth anniversary for the Verge: While PC makers spent many years trying (and failing, for the most part) to make iMac knockoffs, it was really a transitional device. While Apple still has a nice business selling iMacs … | Continue reading
Sam Wolfson, the Guardian: Over the past month, I’ve spoken with engineers at Apple about how Maps started to get good. They told me that as well as data from city officials, including digital dashboards that update maps automatically, they also monitor changes from riders themse … | Continue reading
iA: The prevalent critique of the DMA often rests on vague condemnations, perpetuating the belief that the EU creates impractical laws. Our analysis showed quite the opposite. Drafted by experts in law and technology, the DMA tackles numerous industry issues, benefiting consumers … | Continue reading
Stephen Hackett: Somehow, this page is still up on Apple’s website, albeit with a big red non-Retina banner reading “Apple TV app is the new home of iTunes Movie Trailers” that doesn’t actually link anywhere. What a sad way to die. I am one of the approximately eight remaining us … | Continue reading
For years, the Internet Archive has been carefully preserving 78 RPM records created with fragile shellac for something it calls the Great 78 Project. The idea is that it is impossible to tell whether digital recordings or original records will last longer, so it is archiving bot … | Continue reading
Michael Tsai replied to my comment on CNet’s decision to purge some of its older articles: It’s quite possible the consultants were taking them for a ride or are just wrong. But it’s also possible that the SEO people who follow this stuff really closely for a living have figured … | Continue reading
Matt Birchler: My top suggestion with a bullet is to stop having this [subscribe] modal appear every single time I read a post from a newsletter I’m not subscribed to. It’s even worse when I subscribe via RSS, so I’ve already subbed, even if they don’t know it. Call this a co-sig … | Continue reading
Jani Patokallio: Do you like reading articles in publications like Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal or the Economist, but can’t afford to pay what can be hundreds of dollars a year in subscriptions? If so, odds are you’ve already stumbled on archive.today, which provides easy a … | Continue reading
I find the alarmist tone of this series of reports from NewsGuard to be largely unwarranted. People used to worry about blogs or the internet itself spreading misinformation, which has undeniably been the case, but you could make that argument about every publishing medium in his … | Continue reading
Thomas Germain, Gizmodo: Tech news website CNET has deleted thousands of old articles over the past few months in a bid to improve its performance in Google Search results, Gizmodo has learned. […] Whether or not deleting articles is an effective business strategy, it causes othe … | Continue reading
The Canadian Association of Broadcasters and U.S.-based National Association of Broadcasters have issued a joint statement condemning Meta for preventing users from linking to news on its platforms in Canada following the passage of the Online News Act: Meta – a nearly trillion-d … | Continue reading
Threads’ user base seems to be an object of fascination among the tech press. Mark Zuckerberg says it is “on the trajectory I expect to build a vibrant long term app” with “10s of millions” of users returning daily. Meanwhile, third-party estimators have spent the weeks since Thr … | Continue reading
Alex Ivanovs, Stackdiary: Zoom’s updated policy states that all rights to Service Generated Data are retained solely by Zoom. This extends to Zoom’s rights to modify, distribute, process, share, maintain, and store such data “for any purpose, to the extent and in the manner permi … | Continue reading
Preetika Rana, Wall Street Journal: Uber Technologies posted its first-ever operating profit in the second quarter, a milestone in its long-term efforts to stem losses in its businesses carrying people and delivering food. Since its 2009 founding, Uber has not once proved it is a … | Continue reading
David McCabe and Nico Grant, New York Times: In the decision, which was unsealed on Friday, Judge Amit P. Mehta of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia dismissed four claims in the lawsuits and allowed government lawyers to move forward with three. Judge Mehta wrote t … | Continue reading
AnnaMaria Andriotis, reporting for the Wall Street Journal in June: Goldman Sachs Group is trying to end its partnership with Apple. The Wall Street firm is in talks with American Express to take over its Apple credit card and other ventures with the tech giant, according to peop … | Continue reading
Today, Meta announced it is beginning the process of ending Canadians’ access to news publications as a consequence of Bill C–18, now known as the Online News Act. This is an entirely predictable consequence of the Act, which requires big tech companies like Google and Meta to de … | Continue reading
Ian Betteridge: Apple doesn’t have to create modular phones that are incredibly easy to repair, although it would be fantastic if it applied its undoubted engineering prowess to doing so. There are a lot of things it could do which aren’t as radical as that. Apple could publish i … | Continue reading
Kevin Purdy, Ars Technica: Ricky Panesar, CEO of UK repair firm iCorrect, told Forbes that screens replaced on newer iPad Pros (fifth and sixth-generation 12.9-inch and third and fourth-generation 11-inch models) do not deliver straight lines when an Apple Pencil is used to draw … | Continue reading
Ashley Belanger, Ars Technica: Apple has granted a rare exception to its strict App Store rules, allowing Twitter to rebrand as X and become the first one-character iPhone app. A “rare exception”? I guess in the vastness of the App Store, any atypical behaviour could be considere … | Continue reading
Ernesto Van der Sar, TorrentFreak: The subtitles that appeared on Turner Classic Movies were made for a Karagarga release, too but weren’t necessarily sourced through the site. The fansubs may be available through other subtitle repositories as well. TorrentFreak contacted TCM to … | Continue reading
Kashmir Hill, New York Times: It hasn’t paid very well, but what [Mike] Masnick doesn’t have in wealth he makes up for in influence. Lawmakers, activists and executives consider him an essential guide for what’s happening in the technology world and what to do next. “Whenever tec … | Continue reading
Zachary Kamel, Ricochet: As part of our ongoing national investigation into platforms like Airbnb and their role in the housing crisis, we’ve been tracking and identifying the largest players in some of Canada’s hottest rental markets. These property owners and entrepreneurs oper … | Continue reading
Steve Stecklow and Norihiko Shirouzu, Reuters: Tesla years ago began exaggerating its vehicles’ potential driving distance – by rigging their range-estimating software. The company decided about a decade ago, for marketing purposes, to write algorithms for its range meter that wo … | Continue reading
Readers from the United States, allow me to direct you to Fight for the Future’s current initiative about Bad Internet Bills. They are profiling crappy bills — many of which appear to promise great things — that will erode security and privacy. You may recognize the Cooper Davis … | Continue reading
Jon Porter, the Verge: “I am taking on a significant project to demonstrate how one of the most popular gadgets today — Apple’s AirPods Pro — could have been easily made repairable with minimal effort,” [Ken] Pillonel says in a press release. “My primary objective is to encourage … | Continue reading
Ben Wiser, et al., of Google, proposing a new Web Integrity standard: The trust relationship between websites and clients is frequently established through the collection and interpretation of highly re-identifiable information. However, the signals that are considered essential … | Continue reading