In March 2021, the stock photography giant Getty Images acquired free stock photo site Unsplash. Unsplash said it would remain free under its new ownership. So, how is that going? Unsplash: We are excited to announce the launch of Unsplash+. An Unsplash+ subscription gives you a … | Continue reading
Jason Snell: […] But if Mastodon gets enough community gravity to make me want to pay more attention, I’ll need an app. There are a lot of Mastodon client apps out there, and I’ve tried several of them, but none of them are really good enough or polished enough for me to use regu … | Continue reading
Ellery Roberts Biddle, of Authoritarian Tech, after linking to a series of stories about the extreme oppression faced by people in China and Tigray, in Ethiopia — stories which should not be ignored, mind you — in an update about Meta’s suit against NSO Group: This is why the leg … | Continue reading
Andy Greenberg, author of “Sandworm”, has a new book out called “Tracers in the Dark” about the new investigative techniques to find criminals who use Tor and cryptocurrencies. Over the past month and a half, Wired has dripped out a lengthy excerpt from the book. The final part w … | Continue reading
I made a mistake. In my piece about the first month of Twitter’s new ownership at the hands of someone who is, at best, an unreliable narrator of his own reality, I did not add the word “alleged” to the phrase “Apple’s reduced advertising spend”. For some unknown reason, I decide … | Continue reading
Kashfia Kabir, What Hi-Fi?: And the longer it goes on, the more the question needs repeating. Is hi-res audio a priority for Apple? [AirPods engineer Esge] Andersen remains coy, saying that while audio quality is always a priority, “it is important to understand that we can still … | Continue reading
Todd Spangler, in a mess of a Variety article: The new disclosures, touted as “The Twitter Files,” were posted in a lengthy Twitter thread by investigative reporter and author Matt Taibbi (and retweeted by Musk). It’s based on “thousands of internal documents obtained by sources … | Continue reading
Hey, remember Future — the kind with an uppercase F? It launched last June as a way for Andreessen Horwitz to promote its investment activities, almost explicitly: “We want to write about stuff we know and that we invest in,” says [Margit] Wennmachers. This includes topics like c … | Continue reading
Thomas Germain, Gizmodo: Sure, the internet is great, but it has a serious flaw. There just aren’t enough ads. If you’re anything like me, you spend your time online casting your eyes across the screen, desperately hoping for another way to turn your attention into advertising re … | Continue reading
Everdeen Mason, New York Times: Now we can shift our work to editing the puzzle. Tracy Bennett, who joined The Times as an associate puzzle editor in 2020, will be the editor of Wordle. The game will have a Times-curated word list and will be programmed and tested like the Spelli … | Continue reading
Johana Bhuiyan, the Guardian: The tech advocacy group Accountable Tech conducted an experiment in August and October to test Google’s pledge. Using a brand new Android device, researchers with the group analyzed their Google activity timeline, where the company shows what informa … | Continue reading
Andrea Mills, of Internet Archive Canada: With the passing of Bill C-19 this past June, the Copyright Act was amended to extend the term of copyright for literary, dramatic or musical works and engravings to life of the author plus a period of 70 years following the end of the ca … | Continue reading
According to a filing today in the “butterfly” keyboard lawsuit, the class action settlement has been approved. If you are part of the class — that is, a U.S. buyer of a 2015–2019 MacBook, MacBook Air, or MacBook Pro model, and you had the keyboard repaired or a keycap replaced — … | Continue reading
We are officially one month into Elon Musk’s ownership of Twitter. One month of needlessly cruel layoffs, of cozying up to far right goons, of uncertainty about the direction my favourite bar is taking. It is under new management which thinks few people are unwelcome to stay rega … | Continue reading
Samuel Wigley of the British Film Institute: An HD cam filming driver-passenger conversations from the dashboard – an impossible space to fit one of your old-school movie cameras (Abbas Kiarostami’s 10). An unbroken 90-minute take gliding through St Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum … | Continue reading
Rebecca Bellan, TechCrunch: Despite concerns, any driver who has already paid the steep price for Tesla’s FSD will be able to access the software in North America. Tesla had previously extended FSD access to 160,000 owners in the U.S. and Canada in September, and today’s widespre … | Continue reading
Earlier this week, Facebook released its most recent Widely Viewed Content Report, for which it still does not create unique permalinks. There is a copy on the Internet Archive for, you know, archival purposes. The Widely Viewed Links section of the report is notable for being fu … | Continue reading
David Pierce, the Verge: Smartphones may be boring now, but that’s only because they’ve been so good for so long. As they’ve become so entrenched and ubiquitous in our lives, they’ve become even harder to disrupt. How do you beat the device that can do everything and is always wi … | Continue reading
Eugene Kim, Insider: Insider spoke with over a dozen current and former employees on the company’s hardware team to get a better picture of its current condition. They described a division in crisis. While Alexa was once one of the company’s most rapidly growing projects, the mou … | Continue reading
Last.fm on Twitter: It’s our 20th birthday today . A huge thank you to everyone who supported us and scrobbled with us throughout that time. You make http://Last.fm possible. Bring on the next 20. Via Jacob Kastrenakes at the Verge: I was a little surprised to see that Last.fm wa … | Continue reading
Here is a short and curious Twitter thread from app developers and security researchers Tommy Mysk and Talal Haj Bakry: Apple’s analytics data include an ID called “dsId”. We were able to verify that “dsId” is the “Directory Services Identifier”, an ID that uniquely identifies an … | Continue reading
Jeff Butts, the Mac Observer: Beginning in iOS 16, Apple has added the ability to push out security fixes without requiring a full iOS update. This can be much faster to install, since the patches are generally much smaller. Wednesday, Apple released one of these updates, called … | Continue reading
Elizabeth Lopatto, writing at the Verge in April: Now, if Musk buys Twitter, I feel like we all have a vague idea of how this goes. First, a lot of Twitter employees quit because Musk’s companies are notoriously miserable places to work. Second, Musk tweets about a bunch of shit … | Continue reading
I looked between the couch cushions and found some news for you that is not related to Twitter. A pre-emptive caveat that fixed generational boundaries are not my favourite way of grouping people, but I thought the results of this survey were interesting enough to share. Jordan M … | Continue reading
My thanks to Due for sponsoring Pixel Envy this week. Due’s developer asked me to remind you of what makes the app different. “Annoying” is probably not a word a developer would like his app to be associated with. I certainly don’t mind. Thankfully, users have also thought of my … | Continue reading
Max Read: […] Put another way, the rest of Twitter will go like the whole verification episode did: it’ll be stupid and annoying for a while, then chaotic, then pretty funny, and then, at the end of the process, basically the same as before, but slightly worse. Or, that’s how it … | Continue reading
Christine Dobby, writing for the Globe and Mail in 2018: Less than three weeks ago, Shaw gave 6,500 non-unionized employees the option to take voluntary severance packages, but said it expected just 10 per cent, or 650 people, to accept the buyouts; on Thursday, it said 3,300 emp … | Continue reading
Steven M. Bellovin on Twitter: Sad news from @unccs — Fred P. Brooks, the founder and long-time chair of the department (and a major influence on my professional outlook) passed away a few hours ago. Brooks, of course, was responsible for Brooks’ Law as described in the Mythical … | Continue reading
Mia Sato, the Verge: NewsWhip data shows that BuzzFeed’s footprint on Facebook has withered away for years as a result of these changes. In 2016, BuzzFeed stories posted on the platform had 329 million engagements; by 2018, that number had fallen to less than half. Last year, Buz … | Continue reading
Matt Novak, Gizmodo: FTX filed for bankruptcy on Friday, leaving reasonable people to wonder how a cryptocurrency platform founded in 2019, which reached a valuation of $32 billion in 2021, could plummet to zero in such a short time. There’s a new piece in the New York Times whic … | Continue reading
Remarkably, for a country that is as large and as loyal to Apple’s ecosystems as Canada,1 this new Vancouver store is only the third location in the country which is not a boring indoor mall store. Apple’s longstanding spot on Rue Sainte-Catherine is its only true “flagship” stor … | Continue reading
Josh Eidelson, Bloomberg: Workers say that whereas the focus of an Apple Genius used to be to impress customers with a high level of service, they and other employees are now increasingly pressured to upsell. They’re pushed to prioritize “ownership opportunities,” the company’s e … | Continue reading
David Roth, Defector: It’s a cycle. People create something, together, that reflects their energy and weird work; that thing becomes compelling as a result, and that makes it valuable, and at some point someone puts a price on it and someone else pays that price. It is at that mo … | Continue reading
Jason Del Rey, Recode: The sponsor-ification of the Amazon shopping experience is just the latest twist. If you’re looking closely enough, a quick search on Amazon for, say, “iPhone screen protector” or “youth soccer socks” will only turn up paid product listings carrying a “Spon … | Continue reading
“Annoying” is probably not a word a developer would like his app to be associated with. I certainly don’t mind. Thankfully, users have also thought of my app as “indispensable” and a “game changer”. It has helped people living with ADHD and early dementia. It has saved marriages. … | Continue reading
The awkwardly named “semaform” article format that is the main gimmick of Semafor is supposed to ensure information and analysis remain in separate buckets. So, how is that working out for them? Here is an article from Friday by Diego Mendoza, which carries the following headline … | Continue reading
The absence of clear understanding of App Tracking Transparency’s material effect has produced a cottage industry of writers explaining how it is responsible for all kinds of trends in advertising. Some of those theories are more believable than others; here is an example of the … | Continue reading
Twitter is obviously not dead, but this feels like a collection of artifacts of a different time on Twitter. Good for a chuckle or, if you are weird like me, a lot of wheezy laughter. “Stay fresh cheese bags” gets me every time. ⌥ Permalink⌥ Permalink | Continue reading
Adi Robertson, reviewed Meta’s Quest Pro at the Verge: But, again, the current use is limited. Meta has one confirmed app that uses foveated rendering, the game Red Matter 2, which renders at a high resolution in the Quest Pro — but is still held back by that fundamental grainine … | Continue reading
Mike Masnick, Techdirt: As for the background on all this, some of you youngsters might not remember this, but back in 2011 Twitter signed a consent decree with the FTC over its failure to safeguard user info. Now, almost every big tech company these days has a consent decree wit … | Continue reading
Alexander George, Wired: Feeling his engineers have lost touch with the common folk, Herb employs Homer because he is, Powell says, “an average schmo.” Homer is given free rein to design his dream car, a futuristic creation filled with conveniences that make driving easy and plea … | Continue reading
Dougall Johnson dove deep into the nitty-gritty of Apple’s Rosetta 2 x86 emulator for its ARM-based Macs, and I cannot comprehend almost any of it. But the conclusion? That is something even I can understand: Engineering is about making the right tradeoffs, and I’d say Rosetta 2 … | Continue reading
Taylor Hatmaker, TechCrunch: Now when tweets appear in Twitter’s timeline it’s impossible to visually distinguish the two categories of blue check accounts from one another. Doing so would require clicking through to examine a user’s follower count, which isn’t necessarily a reli … | Continue reading
Wang Boyuan of PingWest on Twitter: In the recently released iOS 16.2 beta2, AirDrop to everyone feature is found to last for 10 minutes instead of forever. However, this change only appears in iPhone’s China models. […] Well, it turns out to be also a “hot fix” in today’s iOS 16 … | Continue reading
Esther Crawford, project manager at Twitter: A lot of folks have asked about how you’ll be able to distinguish between @TwitterBlue subscribers with blue checkmarks and accounts that are verified as official, which is why we’re introducing the “Official” label to select accounts … | Continue reading
Patrick McGee and Ryan McMorrow, Financial Times: Yet when it comes to selling its devices to Chinese consumers, business has boomed. Operating profits in greater China — which includes Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan and mainland China — have shot up 104 per cent over 24 months to $31. … | Continue reading
Last month, Apple’s Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak were interviewed by Joanna Stern at the Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live event. Stern asked some pretty good questions; Federighi and Joz are too media trained to answer as comprehensively as any of us would like. But there was … | Continue reading
If you think you hate video shot in vertical orientation now, just wait until you see the screenshot in this article. Then imagine that space packed with ads, and you have a pretty good idea of what the future of television looks like. ⌥ Permalink⌥ Permalink | Continue reading