Om Malik: What’s particularly ironic is that today’s Google has become exactly what its founders warned against in their 1998 paper: an advertising company whose business model fundamentally conflicts with serving users’ needs. I remember when Sergey Brin and Larry Page first art … | Continue reading
The Autorité de la concurrence: The Autorité de la concurrence has fined Apple €150,000,000 for abusing its dominant position in the sector for the distribution of mobile applications on iOS and iPadOS devices between April 2021 and July 2023. […] However, while the principle of … | Continue reading
With the launch of iOS 18.4 today, Apple says Apple Intelligence features are now available in the E.U. and in several new languages. I remain skeptical that Apple Intelligence was ever “delayed” in the region. Until today, it was only available in variations of English. When App … | Continue reading
Kurt Wagner and Katie Roof, Bloomberg: Elon Musk said his xAI artificial intelligence startup has acquired the X platform, which he also controls, at a valuation of $33 billion, marking a surprise twist for the social network formerly known as Twitter. This feels like it has to b … | Continue reading
Allison Morrow, CNN: Tech columnists such as the New York Times’ Kevin Roose have suggested recently that Apple has failed AI, rather than the other way around. “Apple is not meeting the moment in AI,” Roose said on his podcast, Hard Fork, earlier this month. “I just think that w … | Continue reading
Online privacy isn’t just something you should be hoping for – it’s something you should expect. You should ensure your browsing history stays private and is not harvested by ad networks. By blocking ad trackers, Magic Lasso Adblock stops you being followed by ads around the web. … | Continue reading
Meta: Formerly a place to view friend requests and People You May Know, the Friends tab will now show your friends’ stories, reels, posts, birthdays and friend requests. You know, I think this concept of showing people things they say they want to see might just work. Meta says t … | Continue reading
Jeff Johnson in November 2023: When people wistfully proclaim that they wish for the next major macOS version to be a “Snow Leopard update”, they’re wishing for the wrong thing. No major update will solve Apple’s quality issues. Major updates are the cause of quality issues. The … | Continue reading
Remember when Substack’s co-founders went to great lengths to explain what they had built was little more than infrastructure? It was something they repeated earlier this year: You need to have your own corner of the internet, a place where you can build a home, on your own land, … | Continue reading
The high-test idiocy of a senior U.S. politician inviting a journalist to an off-the-record chat planning an attack on Yemen, killing over thirty people and continuing a decade of war, seems to have popularized a genre of journalism dedicated to the administration’s poor digital … | Continue reading
Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal — which has recently been in the news — in an op-ed for the Financial Times: The UK is part and parcel of a dangerous trend that threatens the cyber security of our global infrastructures. Legislators in Sweden recently proposed a law that … | Continue reading
Like those since 2020, WWDC 2025 appears to be an entirely online event with a one-day in-person event. While it is possible there will be live demos — I certainly hope that is the case — I bet it is a two-hour infomercial again. If you are planning on travelling there and live o … | Continue reading
Jason Koebler, 404 Media: The best way to think of the slop and spam that generative AI enables is as a brute force attack on the algorithms that control the internet and which govern how a large segment of the public interprets the nature of reality. It is not just that people m … | Continue reading
Grace Dean, BBC News: Ms O’Carroll’s lawsuit argued that Facebook’s targeted advertising system was covered by the UK’s definition of direct marketing, giving individuals the right to object. Meta said that adverts on its platform could only be targeted to groups of a minimum siz … | Continue reading
John Voorhees, MacStories: The update [next month] will enable 24-bit, 48 kHz lossless audio, which Apple says is supported by over 100 million songs on Apple Music. Using the headphones’ USB-C cable, musicians will enjoy ultra-low latency and lossless audio in their Logic Pro wo … | Continue reading
Simon Sharwood, the Register: Over the weekend, users noticed their Timelines went missing. Google seems to have noticed, too, as The Register has seen multiple social media posts in which Timelines users share an email from the search and ads giant in which it admits “We briefly … | 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 annoyance … | Continue reading
Lucy Mangan, the Guardian: There have been a few contenders for the crown [of “televisual perfection”] over the years, but none has come as close as Jack Thorne’s and Stephen Graham’s astonishing four-part series Adolescence, whose technical accomplishments – each episode is done … | Continue reading
Reid Tatoris, Harsh Saxena, and Luis Miglietti, of Cloudflare: Today, we’re excited to announce AI Labyrinth, a new mitigation approach that uses AI-generated content to slow down, confuse, and waste the resources of AI Crawlers and other bots that don’t respect “no crawl” direct … | Continue reading
There is a long line of articles questioning Apple’s ability to deliver on artificial intelligence because of its position on data privacy. Today, we got another in the form of a newsletter. Reed Albergotti, Semafor: Meanwhile, Apple was focused on vertically integrating, designi … | Continue reading
Damian Carrington, the Guardian: Their exploration of future fossils has led [Prof. Sarah] Gabbott and [Prof. Jan] Zalasiewicz to draw some conclusions. One is that understanding how human detritus could become fossils points towards how best to stop waste piling up in the enviro … | Continue reading
Benedict Evans: That takes us to xR, and to AI. These are fields where the tech is fundamental, and where there are real, important Apple kinds of questions, where Apple really should be able to do something different. And yet, with the Vision Pro Apple stumbled, and then with AI … | Continue reading
There is a free market argument that can be made about how Apple gets to design its own ecosystem and, if it is so restrictive, people will be more hesitant to buy an iPhone since they can get more choices with an Android phone. I get that. But I think it is unfortunate so much [ … | Continue reading
Tom Van Pelt, technical director at GSMA: In my last post, ‘RCS Now in iOS: a New Chapter for Mobile Messaging‘, I celebrated the integration of Rich Communication Services (RCS) with Apple’s iOS 18, a culmination of years of collaboration across mobile operators, device manufact … | Continue reading
Constantine Anastasakis, of Dribbble, a portfolio hosting site for designers that also has a job board and, as of last year, serves as an intermediary between designers and clients: Since Week 36 of last year, the total value of transactions processed through our marketplace (GMV … | Continue reading
Estella Ren, the Toronto Star: A Canadian retail icon is on its last legs as Hudson’s Bay Company plans to liquidate its entire business by June, with the process starting as early as next week. This is a 350-year-old retailer that has been hollowed out in the span of less than t … | Continue reading
Ryan Christoffel, 9to5Mac: Here’s the thing about pre-recorded videos: it’s way easier to market features via concept videos rather than true demos. Sure, live demos can also be faked to fool an audience too. But the Siri presentation was able to get a pass because highly edited … | Continue reading
Mark Gurman, Bloomberg: Apple Inc.’s top executive overseeing its Siri virtual assistant told staff that delays to key features have been ugly and embarrassing, and a decision to publicly promote the technology before it was ready made matters worse. Robby Walker, who serves as a … | Continue reading
Molly White: Instead of worrying about “wait, not like that”, I think we need to reframe the conversation to “wait, not only like that” or “wait, not in ways that threaten open access itself”. The true threat from AI models training on open access material is not that more people … | Continue reading
In just about every discussion concerning TikTok’s ability to operate within the United States, including my own, two areas of concern are cited: users’ data privacy, and the manipulation of public opinion through its feeds by a hostile foreign power. Regarding the first, the U.S … | 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 – del … | Continue reading
John Gruber wrote an appropriately scathing piece about Apple’s inability to deliver improvements to Siri. It is a much needed perspective from someone who receives press briefings and demos, and is therefore able to better gauge Apple’s likely progress on these features. It is n … | Continue reading
From a letter (PDF) sent by five U.S. lawmakers, linked from a press release issued by Sen. Ron Wyden: The U.K.’s attempted gag has already restricted U.S. companies from engaging in speech that is constitutionally protected under U.S. law and necessary for ongoing Congressional … | Continue reading
Michael Tsai: Swift Assist was supposed to arrive in 2024, but it never even appeared in a beta. Apple hasn’t announced that it’s postponed or cancelled. It’s not even mentioned in the release notes. At least some members of the press saw a demo, indicating Swift Assist is not en … | Continue reading
Joan Westenberg: Scroll through Instagram for a few minutes, and you’ll be swamped by a parade of sponsored posts promising extraordinary wealth through minimal effort: “PDF farming” generating €25,000 monthly, rebranded ebooks yielding “$4230 in a month,” or selling “thousands o … | Continue reading
Mark Gurman, Bloomberg: Apple Inc. is preparing one of the most dramatic software overhauls in the company’s history, aiming to transform the interface of the iPhone, iPad and Mac for a new generation of users. The revamp — due later this year — will fundamentally change the look … | Continue reading
While I am on the subject of Mozilla, the organization added a terms of use document for Firefox and revised its privacy obligations. It went badly. Jan Schaumann on Mastodon: Wait, what? By using #Firefox, I now grant Mozilla “a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to u … | Continue reading
Christina Petrova, communications manager at Mozilla: Since the launch of the first DMA browser choice screens on iOS in March 2024, people are making themselves heard: Firefox daily active users in Germany alone have increased by 99%. And in France, Firefox’s daily active users … | Continue reading
Online privacy isn’t just something you should be hoping for – it’s something you should expect. You should ensure your browsing history stays private and is not harvested by ad networks. By blocking ad trackers, Magic Lasso Adblock stops you being followed by ads around the web. … | Continue reading
Josh Sisco and Davey Alba, Bloomberg, earlier this week: Google is urging officials at President Donald Trump’s Justice Department to back away from a push to break up the search engine company, citing national security concerns, according to people familiar with the discussions. … | Continue reading
Earlier today, in reacting to the news of delayed Siri updates, I noted Mark Gurman had recently reported these features could be released in May, but I doubted it. It turns out I could have been more up-to-date if I had bothered to refresh his author page at Bloomberg. Gurman: B … | Continue reading
Apple spokesperson Jacqueline Roy, in a statement provided seemingly first to both Stephen Nellis, of Reuters, and John Gruber: […] We’ve also been working on a more personalized Siri, giving it more awareness of your personal context, as well as the ability to take action for yo … | Continue reading
Guilherme Pimenta, Valor Econômico: The Federal Regional Court of the 1st Region (TRF-1) has overturned a trial ruling and reinstated an injunction imposed by the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (Cade) on Apple, as part of an investigation into alleged abuse of domina … | Continue reading
Michael Geist and Kumanan Wilson, the Globe and Mail: Given recent turbulent events and the diminishing trust between Canada and the U.S., it is entirely possible that Washington would seek enhanced access to sensitive Canadian data, notably including financial and health data. T … | Continue reading
Samantha Subin, CNBC: Content aggregator Digg is making a comeback with the help of an unlikely partner: Reddit co-founder and rival Alexis Ohanian. Ohanian and Digg founder Kevin Rose acquired the platform for an undisclosed sum. The deal is backed by venture capital firms True … | Continue reading
Ben Werdmuller: The original web was inherently about redistribution of power from a small number of gatekeepers to a large number of individuals, even if it never quite lived up to that promise. But the next iteration of the web was about concentrating power in a small set of ga … | Continue reading
Colleen Underwood, CBC News: The province says the flat rate for wine is going up another 15 cents per 750 ml bottle. And it’s creating a new ad valorem, or “value added” fee, that will go up as the price of wine goes up, on top of the flat fee. For example, according to the […]⌥ … | Continue reading
The Association for Computing Machinery which — and this is not, strictly speaking, important — ought to have a way cooler logo than it actually does: ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, today named Andrew G. Barto and Richard S. Sutton as the recipients of the 2024 ACM … | Continue reading