danah boyd: Since the “social media is bad for teens” myth will not die, I keep having intense conversations with colleagues, journalists, and friends over what the research says and what it doesn’t. (Alice Marwick et. al put together a great little primer in light of the legisla … | Continue reading
X on Wednesday announced a new set of terms, something which is normally a boring and staid affair. But these are a doozy: Here’s a high-level recap of the primary changes that go into effect on November 15, 2024. You may see an in-app notice about these updates as well. Governin … | Continue reading
Gian Volpicelli and Samuel Stolton, Bloomberg: Under the EU’s Digital Services Act, the bloc can slap online platforms with fines of as much as 6% of their yearly global revenue for failing to tackle illegal content and disinformation or follow transparency rules. Regulators are … | Continue reading
Dominic Wellington responded thoughtfully to speculation, including my own that a device management key for suppressing screen recording alerts in MacOS Sequoia was added in part because of employee monitoring software: […] I know perfectly well that these sorts of tools exist an … | Continue reading
Joe Rossignol, MacRumors: Apple sells two external displays, including the Pro Display XDR and the Studio Display, but neither has received hardware upgrades in years. In fact, the Pro Display XDR is nearly five years old, having been released all the way back in December 2019. V … | Continue reading
Charlie Warzel, the Atlantic: Even in a decade marred by online grifters, shameless politicians, and an alternative right-wing-media complex pushing anti-science fringe theories, the events of the past few weeks stand out for their depravity and nihilism. As two catastrophic stor … | Continue reading
Apple in the release notes for MacOS 15.1 beta: Applications using our deprecated content capture technologies now have enhanced user awareness policies. Users will see fewer dialogs if they regularly use apps in which they have already acknowledged and accepted the risks. John G … | Continue reading
I am not much of a true crime podcast listener, but the first three episodes of “Kill List” — Overcast link — have transfixed me. Jamie Bartlett: Besa Mafia was a dark net site offering hitmen for hire. It worked something like this: a user could connect to the site using the Tor … | Continue reading
A bit of background, for those not steeped in the world of WordPress development: there exists a plugin called Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) which allows developers to create near-endless customization options for end clients in the standard page and post editor. It is hard to exp … | Continue reading
CBC News: All Calgary Public Library locations closed early on Friday after a cybersecurity breach compromised some systems, according to a spokesperson. All locations were shut down as of 5 p.m. Between this and the Internet Archive, criminals are picking terrible targets this w … | Continue reading
I have been trying to stay informed of the hostile relationship between WordPress, Automattic, and Matt Mullenweg, and third-party hosting company WPEngine. Aram Zucker-Scharff put together a helpful and massive set of links to news coverage. Michael Tsai has a good collection of … | Continue reading
Well, add XOXO to the list of conferences I was never able to attend. The final edition occurred this year and it looked pretty special. Happily, if you — as I — were unable to attend in person, Andy Baio has begun uploading videos of this year’s talks. I have watched those from … | Continue reading
Jonathan M. Gitlin, Ars Technica: Last night, after a wait of roughly an hour after the official start time, Elon Musk spoke to a crowd of Tesla fans and some journalists on a film studio backlot in California to give us an update on the company’s much-talked-about pivot to robot … | 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. As an efficient, high performance, and native Safari ad blocker, Magic Lasso blocks all intrusive ads, trackers, and annoyances … | Continue reading
Apple is a famously tight-knit business. Its press releases and media conferences routinely drum the integration of hardware, software, and services as something only Apple is capable of doing. So it sticks out when features feel like they were developed by people who do not know … | Continue reading
Speaking of the Internet Archive, Matt Sephton, in August, posted about the surprise loss of his account there: Recently at Internet Archive a “glitch” (their choice of word) deleted a great many accounts, including my account that had been at archive.org/details/@gingerbeardman … | Continue reading
Brendan Jones: The rise of Mastodon has made me so much more aware of government services requiring us to use private companies’ systems to communicate with them and access services. Sitting on a Dutch train just now I was shown on a screen “feeling unsafe in the train? Contact u … | Continue reading
Jason Scott: Someone is DDOSing the internet archive, so we’ve been down for hours. According to their twitter, they’re doing it just to do it. Just because they can. No statement, no idea, no demands. An X account claiming responsibility says it is a politically motivated attack … | Continue reading
Sarah Krouse, Dustin Volz, Aruna Viswanatha, and Robert McMillan, Wall Street Journal (probably paywalled; sorry): A cyberattack tied to the Chinese government penetrated the networks of a swath of U.S. broadband providers, potentially accessing information from systems the feder … | Continue reading
I have to say, it is quite an odd thing to be listening to a podcast and hear one’s own name. This recently happened to me on the latest episode of “Upgrade”. It feels like I am about to be called to the principal’s office or something. But I was not. Myke Hurley and Jason […]⌥ P … | Continue reading
Karl Bode, Techdirt: Scientists say that low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations being built by Amazon, Starlink, and AT&T pose a dire threat to astronomy and scientific research, and that too little is being done to address the issue. There are costs to suddenly widesprea … | Continue reading
As smartphones began competing on satellite connectivity, I had my doubts. Sure, I could imagine a dire emergency situation where it would be lifesaving, but would I ever use it? I hike a little and I cycle a lot, often without cell connectivity, and I feel completely comfortable … | 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. As an efficient, high performance, and native Safari ad blocker, Magic Lasso blocks all intrusive ads, trackers, and annoyances – deli … | Continue reading
The New York Times recently ran a one–two punch of stories about the ostensibly softening political involvement of Mark Zuckerberg and Meta — where by “punch”, I mean “gentle caress”. Sheera Frenkel and Mike Isaac on Meta “distanc[ing] itself from politics”: On Facebook, Instagra … | Continue reading
It has been a little more than a month since Telegram CEO Pavel Durov was arrested and charged in France, and he has spent September trying to explain authorities’ interest and Telegram’s response. Only one problem: I am not sure how much I can believe him. But I can only explain … | Continue reading
Sarah Perez, TechCrunch: iOS apps that build their own social networks on the back of users’ address books may soon become a thing of the past. In iOS 18, Apple is cracking down on the social apps that ask users’ permission to access their contacts — something social apps often d … | Continue reading
Croissant is not just a delicious pastry; it is also a new app from Ben McCarthy and Aaron Vegh: Social media in 2024 can be a real pain. But I’m happy to d’éclair that Croissant is here to help. It makes cross-posting to Bluesky, Mastodon and Threads feel buttery smooth. I have … | Continue reading
Juli Clover’s experiment last month created fertile ground for ample anecdata about whether capping the battery at 80% of its capacity leads to better longevity. This sort of stuff fascinates me. So here is what I did with my evening: I looked through the first ten pages of the r … | Continue reading
I loved this essay from Thea Lim, as published in the Walrus, about our quantified digital lives subsuming our reality, but I have a quibble with this otherwise excellent paragraph: […] What we hardly talk about is how we’ve reorganized not just industrial activity but any activi … | Continue reading
Until this week, the most recent data available about the moderation activities of the company formerly known as Twitter could be found in a report covering the last six months of 2021. Maybe you heard, but Elon Musk began his process for acquiring the company in April 2022, and … | Continue reading
Allow me to set the scene: you have been seated with a group of your friends at a restaurant, catching up in a lively discussion, when a member of the waitstaff shows up. They take everyone’s orders, then the discussion resumes — but they return a short while later to ask if you … | Continue reading
Juli Clover, MacRumors: With the iPhone 15 models that came out last year, Apple added an opt-in battery setting that limits maximum charge to 80 percent. The idea is that never charging the iPhone above 80 percent will increase battery longevity, so I kept my iPhone at that 80 p … | Continue reading
Karen Hao, the Atlantic: Microsoft isn’t a company that exists to fight climate change, and it doesn’t have to assume responsibility for saving our planet. Yet the company is trying to convince the public that by investing in a technology that is also being used to enrich fossil- … | Continue reading
Akshat Rathi, Bloomberg, in July: The Alphabet Inc. unit [Google] has claimed that it’s been carbon neutral in its operations since 2007. The status was based on purchasing carbon offsets to match the volume of emissions that were generated from its buildings, data centers and bu … | Continue reading
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission: A new Federal Trade Commission staff report that examines the data collection and use practices of major social media and video streaming services shows they engaged in vast surveillance of consumers in order to monetize their personal informati … | Continue reading
If you are using an app that requires persistent permission to access what is visible onscreen, Jeff Johnson shares a tip to grant longstanding permission on a per-app basis. Instead of timing out after a month, you can extend the permission a thousand years into the future. This … | Continue reading
Cristina Criddle, Financial Times: At present, Perplexity’s AI chatbot gives a comprehensive response to user questions based on information from the internet, citing sources and including links to web pages. Below this, Perplexity offers suggested follow-up queries. Under its ne … | Continue reading
Suzanne Smalley, the Record: Ford Motor Company is seeking a patent for technology that would allow it to tailor in-car advertising by listening to conversations among vehicle occupants, as well as by analyzing a car’s historical location and other data, according to a patent app … | Continue reading
Kevin V. Nguyen, San Francisco Standard: In a wide-ranging, 45-minute set, [John] Mulaney did not hold back when it came to joking about the cartoonish conference, which aspired to be the “largest AI event in the world.” “You’re an account executive at Top Low?” Mulaney asked an … | Continue reading
Jay Tan and Alexis Copeland, of Microsoft: Our studies showed that while our illustrations could be described as colorful, inclusive, and genial on a surface level, they were received within consumer culture as uninteresting and emotionless. The flat vectorized style that was onc … | Continue reading
Kyle Orland, Ars Technica: Fans of ultra-viral mobile gaming hit Flappy Bird who were stunned by the game’s sudden removal from the iOS App Store 10 years ago were probably even more stunned by last week’s equally sudden announcement that Flappy Bird is coming back with a raft of … | Continue reading
Last night, I watched the finale of the “Grand Tour” and, with it, the end of the on-screen constant of three British car journalists who have entertained me since I was a teenager. It was good; I am glad they wrapped in such a touching way. Also, I suddenly want to go to Zimbabw … | Continue reading
For a review of this year’s new iPhone Pro models, Nilay Patel, of the Verge, asked Apple about the company’s view of photography. There is a really good, on-the-record response which seems to draw a clear line on the processing of an image. Put simply, it seems Apple’s perspecti … | Continue reading
Apple: […] When messaging contacts who do not have an Apple device, the Messages app now supports RCS for richer media and more reliable group messaging compared to SMS and MMS. RCS rolled out in a relatively early beta release for my iPhone — perhaps in July — and I have appreci … | Continue reading
Chiara Castro, TechRadar: Hungary, the country that now heads the Council of Europe after Belgium, has resurrected what’s been deemed by critics as Chat Control, and MEPs are expected to vote on it at the end of the month. After proposing a new version in June, the Belgian presid … | Continue reading
Michael Tsai has a good roundup of the muted responses to Apple’s annual September product presentation. This year’s bit of consumerist fun did feel overlong and tedious — like homework for understanding the lineup rather than an exciting demonstration of tomorrow’s technology av … | Continue reading
I was proved wrong after I speculated last month the new monthly permissions prompt for legacy screen recording might not be in the released build of MacOS Sequoia: I think it is possible MacOS 15.0 ships without this dialog. In part, that is because its text — “requesting to byp … | Continue reading
Congratulations to Jason Snell and Dan Moren for ten years of Six Colors. From its beginning as a result of a painful media layoff, it is wonderful to see its continued independent success. I have read it just about daily since its launch, and have quoted Snell, Moren, and other … | Continue reading