By John Gruber

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Heather Armstrong, Writer of ‘Dooce.com’, Dies of Suicide at 47 ★

Alex Williams, The New York Times:

Heather Armstrong, an explosively popular web writer and entrepreneur who, with her website Dooce, was hailed as the queen of the so-called mommy bloggers for giving millions of readers intimate glimpses of her joys and challenges in parenthood and marriage, as well as of her harrowing struggles with depression, died on Tuesday at her home in Salt Lake City. She was 47.

Her death was announced on her Instagram channel. Pete Ashdown, her longtime partner, said the cause was suicide. He said he had found her body in the home.

Unspeakably sad. Nothing but love and warm thoughts for her children, family, and friends.

(If you are in crisis, please call, text, or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988. There is hope and there is help.)

Tuesday, 9 May 2023

Imran Chaudhri’s Humane Demo at TED ★

I’m rooting for Humane, but honestly, I just don’t get it from what I see here.

Apple Launches Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad ★

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today unveiled Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad. Video and music creators can now unleash their creativity in new ways that are only possible on iPad. Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad bring all-new touch interfaces that allow users to enhance their workflows with the immediacy and intuitiveness of Multi-Touch. Final Cut Pro for iPad introduces a powerful set of tools for video creators to record, edit, finish, and share, all from one portable device. Logic Pro for iPad puts the power of professional music creation in the hands of the creator — no matter where they are — with a complete collection of sophisticated tools for songwriting, beat making, recording, editing, and mixing. Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for iPad will be available on the App Store as subscriptions starting Tuesday, May 23.

Both apps are priced the same: $5/month or $50/year, with a one-month free trial.

We’ve all been waiting for these two apps to come to iPad, and at a glance, both of them look very good. Subscription pricing is interesting, and makes me wonder if the Mac apps are going to switch to that too. And a sidenote, releasing/announcing these apps now makes me think that next month’s WWDC keynote is chockablock with other announcements.

Sunday, 7 May 2023

Kolide ★

My thanks to Kolide for sponsoring last week at DF. Right now, “Zero Trust” is in serious danger of becoming an empty buzzword. The problem isn’t just that marketers have slapped the Zero Trust label on everything short of breakfast cereal — it’s that for all the hype, we don’t seem to be getting any safer.

At the heart of Zero Trust is a good idea, but the way most companies execute that idea is incomplete. Specifically, most security practitioners forget that device compliance is a crucial element of Zero Trust. Kolide solves the device compliance element of Zero Trust for companies that use Okta. Kolide’s premise is simple: if an employee’s device is out of compliance, they can’t log in to their cloud apps until they’ve fixed the problem. And instead of creating more work for IT, Kolide provides instructions so users can get unblocked on their own.

Kolide works across your Mac, Windows, and even Linux devices, with mobile support coming soon. To learn more and see their product in action, simply visit their website.

Saturday, 6 May 2023

Clarence Thomas Corruption Scandal Gets Worse ★

Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski, reporting for ProPublica:

In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to send his teenage grandnephew to Hidden Lake Academy, a private boarding school in the foothills of northern Georgia. The boy, Mark Martin, was far from home. For the previous decade, he had lived with the justice and his wife in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Thomas had taken legal custody of Martin when he was 6 years old and had recently told an interviewer he was “raising him as a son.”

Tuition at the boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month. But Thomas did not cover the bill. A bank statement for the school from July 2009, buried in unrelated court filings, shows the source of Martin’s tuition payment for that month: the company of billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow. […]

“You can’t be having secret financial arrangements,” said Mark W. Bennett, a retired federal judge appointed by President Bill Clinton. Bennett said he was friendly with Thomas and declined to comment for the record about the specifics of Thomas’ actions. But he said that when he was on the bench, he wouldn’t let his lawyer friends buy him lunch. […]

“This is way outside the norm. This is way in excess of anything I’ve seen,” said Richard Painter, former chief White House ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, referring to the cascade of gifts over the years.

Painter said that when he was at the White House, an official who’d taken what Thomas had would have been fired: “This amount of undisclosed gifts? You’d want to get them out of the government.”

Just breathtaking corruption. And Thomas’s response is basically, “Fuck you.”

Friday, 5 May 2023

Dithering ★

Yours truly and Ben Thompson’s podcast — two episodes per week, 15 minutes per episode. Not a minute less, not a minute more. If you’re not listening, you’re missing out. $5/month or $50/year. We’re now in our fourth year, and we’ve had remarkably little churn — people who subscribe to Dithering tend to stay subscribed, which warms my heart. It’s a fun show and everyone loves the enforced brevity and regularity.

Bonus: At the end of March we started a Dithering group in Wavelength, the new private group messaging app I started advising earlier this year. It’s sort of an unofficial perk and an experiment. Subscribers can find the link to join the group in the show notes for each episode. We had no idea how this group would go, but it’s been wild. As of this typing there are over 2,900 members, and activity every day across a wide range of threads. I believe it’s the single largest group on all of Wavelength. (I just tonight told the story there of the piece of shit 2021 Kia Sorento I was bamboozled by Hertz into renting for a road trip to Boston this week, to pick my son up at the end of the college year.) It’s a nice, smart, fun little community.

Ford CEO Jim Farley Seems Very Happy That GM Is Dropping CarPlay ★

Great 3-minute clip from Joanna Stern’s interview with Ford CEO Jim Farley at the WSJ’s Future of Everything Festival. She asks him about GM’s plan to drop CarPlay from their future EVs, and Farley starts by saying “Yeah, how about that?” and laughing.

Farley says, “The interior has to be really well done. But in terms of content? We kind of lost that battle 10 years ago. So get real with it, because you’re not going to make a ton of money on content inside the vehicle. It’s going to be safety/security, partial autonomy, and productivity in our eyes. [...] 70 percent of our Ford customers in the U.S are Apple customers. Why would I go to an Apple customer and say ‘Good luck!’? That doesn’t seem customer centric.”

Farley and Ford have it exactly right. New car buyers, even from mainstream brands like Ford, are overwhelmingly iPhone users — exactly as Apple bragged at WWDC last June, and what iPhone users want in their cars is CarPlay. If anything, Farley is being kind to GM and GM CEO Mary Barra when he says their message to iPhone users is “Good luck” — it’s really more like “Fuck you.” And again, the most telling part of the whole exchange is the way Farley laughs at the start. You really have to hear it — his laugh implies a certain I can’t believe our good fortune that GM is doing this. It’s enough to make you think Mary Barra is a mole from Ford, planted to steer would-be Chevy buyers into Ford dealerships.

If you’re asking how it can be that 70 percent of Ford’s customers are iPhone users when the iPhone has maybe just over 50 percent market share in the U.S., the key is new car buyers. The Android masses are buying used cars, either because they don’t have the budget for a new car or because they don’t care about buying nice things (or both). So even a non-luxury brand like Ford has an overwhelming majority of customers with iPhones.

New York Times Obituary for Katie Cotton ★

Richard Sandomir, writing for The New York Times:

Katie Cotton, who as Apple’s longtime communications chief guarded the media’s access to Steve Jobs, the company’s visionary co-founder, and helped organize the introduction of many of his products, died on April 6 in Redwood City, Calif. She was 57.

Her death, in a hospital, was confirmed by Michael Mimeles, her former husband. He did not give a cause but said that she had experienced complications from heart surgery she underwent a few years ago.

Not sure what took a month, but it’s a nice obituary, with quotes from Walt Mossberg, John Markoff, and other writers who covered Apple.

“She was formidable and tough and very protective of both Apple’s brand and Steve, particularly when he got sick,” Walt Mossberg, a former technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, said in a phone interview, referring to Mr. Jobs’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in 2004. He added: “She was one of the few people he trusted implicitly. He listened to her. She could pull him back from something he intended to do or say.” Mr. Jobs died in 2011 at 56. [...]

“When Steve came back, he didn’t just put key engineers in place,” Greg Joswiak, Apple’s senior vice president of marketing, said. “He put the right people in place to lead us around the company, and Katie was a big part of that.”

Cotton retired from Apple almost a decade ago, but Apple’s comms still bear her mark. She built a team and a culture.

‘Super Mario Bros. Movie’ Passes $1 Billion in Global Box Office Revenue ★

Rebecca Rubin, reporting for Variety:

The Super Mario Bros. Movie is officially the first film of the year to cross the coveted $1 billion milestone at the global box office.

As of Sunday, after 26 days of release, the animated video game adaptation, from Universal, Illumination and Nintendo, has grossed $490 million in North America and $532 million internationally. It’s only the fifth movie of pandemic times to join the $1 billion club, following Spider-Man: No Way Home, Top Gun: Maverick, Jurassic World Dominion and Avatar: The Way of Water.

I realize box office numbers like this aren’t inflation-adjusted, but it’s rather incredible — no pun intended — that The Super Mario Bros. Movie has grossed far more than any movie from Pixar (^{whose list is topped by The Incredibles 2 at $600 million}). This is no ding against Pixar, but simply speaks to how valuable and beloved the Nintendo character franchise is worldwide.

What a coup it is for Universal to score this partnership with Nintendo for their theme parks. When comparing Universal’s parks to Disney’s, the gaping hole has always been Disney’s menagerie of beloved characters for kids — Mickey and friends, and an ever-growing list of new characters from new movies (including Pixar’s recent rich library). Universal had jack squat^* for toddlers and grade schoolers. Now, they have Super Nintendo World, which like Pixar’s stuff appeals just as much to adults as it does toddlers.

Update: OK, my bad: my original link above was for U.S. domestic box office numbers. Worldwide, Pixar has 4 films that have grossed over a billion: Incredibles 2, Toy Story 4, Toy Story 3, and Finding Dory. My point though isn’t about which movies made the most money, but rather to assert that the Nintendo characters are that big of a deal.

* In Orlando, Universal’s Islands of Adventure park has Seuss Landing, but as much as I adore Seuss’s books, his characters don’t have anything close to the sort of appeal Disney’s and Nintendo’s do. Part of Seuss’s appeal is that his style is slightly creepy. And Universal has let that whole Seuss Landing get sun-bleached over time — it’s looked disregarded, if not almost abandoned, for years.

20 New Games Added to Apple Arcade ★

Off the top of my head, my single biggest complaint about Apple today is their role profiting from, and promoting, addictive pay-to-win games in the App Store. Yet simultaneously they’re building up an impressive, wide-ranging library of games that never have any in-app purchases at all with Apple Arcade. For $5/month, Apple Arcade has gone from “a pretty good deal” to “a veritable bargain”.

The Downfall of Brydge ★

Chance Miller, reporting for 9to5Mac:

Brydge, a once thriving startup making popular keyboard accessories for iPad, Mac, and Microsoft Surface products, is ceasing operations. According to nearly a dozen former Brydge employees who spoke to 9to5Mac , Brydge has gone through multiple rounds of layoffs within the past year after at least two failed acquisitions.

As it stands today, Brydge employees have not been paid salaries since January. Customers who pre-ordered the company’s most recent product have been left in the dark since then as well. Its website went completely offline earlier this year, and its social media accounts have been silent since then as well.

The whole report is a hell of a read. Impressive original reporting from Miller and his colleagues at 9to5Mac. Here’s just one gut punch among many in the story:

In December, Brydge held its annual Christmas party at a local restaurant. [Co-CEOs] Mander-Jones and Smith had set a budget for the party, the people said, and they stuck to that budget. At the end of the night, one of the CEOs put his card down for the bill. His card was declined, and a Brydge employee paid the bill instead, the people said.

Thursday, 4 May 2023

The Union Representing Apple Store Workers in Maryland Wants to Prompt Customers for Tips on Purchases ★

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:

Workers at Apple Inc.’s unionized store in Maryland are asking for higher pay and additional time off, along with changes that could affect the company’s tightly controlled retail experience, such as letting customers tip employees.

The employees, represented by the International Association of Machinists & Aerospace Workers, are conducting negotiations with Apple on Wednesday and Thursday. Their latest proposal calls for raises of as much as 10%, as well as major changes to the outlet’s vacation policy, bereavement leave and overtime. [...]

The workers’ negotiators also want Apple to adopt a tipping system, letting patrons offer gratuities in increments of 3%, 5% or a custom amount for in-store credit-card transactions.

“This will allow thankful patrons the ability to express gratitude for a job well done without any obligations,” the union wrote Apple. “All monies collected through this manner would be dispersed to members of the bargaining unit biweekly based on any hours worked.”

Higher pay and better vacation/holiday/leave policies are exactly the sort of things the union should ask for.

But this tipping proposal is so antithetical to Apple’s customer-first retail experience that it feels like a joke, or that the union negotiators have never even been in an Apple Store. They might as well ask for employees to be allowed to vape while working. Asking for something like tipping — on very expensive products, no less — plays right into the hands of those who argue that retail store unionization is not aligned with the interests of customers.

Stores that pay employees by commission create an obvious incentive for salespeople to pressure customers into purchasing items they don’t need or aren’t entirely comfortable with. Prompting for tips on retail sales is just a backdoor commission.

Apple Q2 2023 Results ★

Jason Snell at Six Colors:

Apple announced its latest quarterly results on Thursday. The company posted $94.8 billion in revenue, down slightly from the year-ago quarter but — at least to my eyes — not down as much as we might have expected.

Mac revenue was, as expected, down 31 percent to $7.2 billion — the lowest quarter of Mac revenue since 2020. iPad was down 13 percent to $6.7 billion, the lowest iPad revenue quarter since 2020. iPhone was up 2 percent to $51.3 billion, which given the downward trend elsewhere was pretty impressive — it was a Q2 record for iPhone revenue.

Services revenue soared to an all-time record of $20.9 billion, up 5 percent. Wearables was down by one percent, to $8.8 billion.

See also: Six Colors’s transcript of Tim Cook’s prepared statement and Apple’s Q&A with analysts. I thought it was interesting which shows and movies from TV+ Cook chose to highlight:

During the past quarter, fans tuned in to incredible new series like “Shrinking” and “The Big Door Prize” and got to welcome “Ted Lasso” back into their homes for a third season. Movies like “Tetris” are captivating viewers with many more to come, including Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” later this year.

Three years since its launch, Apple TV+ programming has been celebrated across the globe with over 1,450 nominations and more than 350 wins. Recently, we were thrilled to cheer on “The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse,” which won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

This season of our historic 10-year partnership with Major League Soccer is well underway. With MLS Season Pass, we’ve created the ultimate destination for soccer fans, offering subscribers the ability to watch every match with no blackouts. And with baseball season in full swing, Apple TV+ subscribers can watch their favorite teams with a return of Friday Night Baseball.

Sidenote: Two weeks ago IDC projected Mac sales as being down 40 percent year-over-year, which shows how large IDC’s margin of error is.

Tuesday, 2 May 2023

‘Nice Twitter Handle You Have There. Would Be a Real Shame if Something Happened to It.’ ★

Bobby Allyn, reporting for NPR:

In an unprompted Tuesday email, Musk wrote: “So is NPR going to start posting on Twitter again, or should we reassign @NPR to another company?”

Under Twitter’s terms of service, an account’s inactivity is based on logging in, not tweeting. Those rules state that an account must be logged into at least every 30 days, and that “prolonged inactivity” can result in it being permanently removed.

Musk did not answer when asked whether he planned to change the platform’s definition of inactivity and he declined to say what prompted his new questions about NPR’s lack of participation on Twitter.

“Our policy is to recycle handles that are definitively dormant,” Musk wrote in another email. “Same policy applies to all accounts. No special treatment for NPR.”

This is a shakedown, pure and simple. What a message to big brands and celebrities: stop posting to Twitter and they’ll reassign your longstanding username.

It’s bizarre that Musk thinks this might prompt NPR to start posting to Twitter again, when the only rational reaction is to feel assured that walking away from Twitter was the right move.

The Onion: ‘Netflix Condemns WGA Strike for Putting Future Show Cancellations Behind Schedule’ ★

The Onion:

Emphasizing the negative effects the recent union action would have on the company, Netflix officials condemned the Writers Guild of America strike Tuesday for putting future show cancellations behind schedule. “We have dozens of shows already stuck in the early stages of the preproduction process, but this strike will cause significant delays in our eventual scrapping of those projects,” said Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, who added that preventing work that writers had committed over a year of their lives to from becoming fully realized creations that the streaming platform could kill before they ever saw the light of day was unconscionable.

Nailed it.

The Browser Company Is Building a Swift Development Toolchain for Windows ★

Hursh Agrawal, cofounder of The Browser Company (makers of the upstart browser Arc, which for now is Mac-only):

We’re sprinting hard to get Arc onto Windows in 2023 — exact timing still 🤐!

His tweet has a two-minute video that outlines a tremendously ambitious plan:

• Swift on Windows (compiler, debugger)
• VSCode integration, Swift bindings for WinAppSDK
• Porting Arc to Windows

If they pull it off, they’ll ship a toolchain to develop cross-platform Mac/Windows apps, programmed in Swift using VSCode. I have my doubts about whether this is possible from a small team, and I have different doubts about whether this would be a good way to write good Mac apps. So I’d ignore this for now — but for the fact that Arc itself is very interesting, and very much real.

It’s not for me, but it really has a bunch of innovative, original ideas for a web browser. They’ve proven that they can ship. So I say godspeed.

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Tuesday, 2 May 2023

You Can Register Domain Names in iOS’s iCloud Settings ★

I knew that iOS 16 introduced support for custom domain names for iCloud+ Mail — bring your own domain name but use iCloud as your email provider and web interface. Here’s a thing I only learned today though: you can register new domain names right in iOS 16’s Settings app: iCloud Account → iCloud → iCloud Mail → Custom Email Domain.

In their support document, Apple states:

A third-party registrar handles the sale of each domain. For billing or refund issues, contact them for support.

For me (screenshot) that’s Cloudflare (whose caching and SSL services I use for Daring Fireball — fantastic company). Not sure if that’s true worldwide, or if Apple has other registrar partners in other countries.

Monday, 1 May 2023

NYPD Is Encouraging New Yorkers to Plant AirTags in Their Cars for Theft Recovery ★

NYPD chief Jeffrey Maddrey, on Twitter:

The 21st century calls for 21st century policing. AirTags in your car will help us recover your vehicle if it’s stolen. We’ll use our drones, our StarChase technology and good old fashion police work to safely recover your stolen car. Help us help you, get an AirTag.

Juli Clover, at MacRumors:

In an accompanying press conference on Sunday, New York City mayor Eric Adams said that the city will provide 500 free AirTags to car owners. According to CBS News , the AirTags are available to residents in Castle Hill, Soundview, and Parkchester, as these areas have seen a 548 percent increase in stolen Hyundai and Kia vehicles.

This is a case where, ideally, you’d want FindMy (or Apple’s Tracker Detect app for Android) not to notify a potential thief that they’re being tracked by an unknown-to-them AirTag. But we can’t have it both ways. There’s no magic way to mark your AirTag as not being used for stalking.

One spitball idea: Apple could license AirTag technology to be built into third-party products. With cars, they could make it part of the CarPlay system — have an AirTag integrated with the dashboard console system.

Update: I forgot that Apple does license FindMy this way: VanMoof e-bikes have FindMy support. I was reminded of this today by a DF reader who found his stolen bike this week using it.

Apple Releases Rapid Security Response Updates for iOS 16.4.1 and MacOS 13.3.1 ★

Juli Clover, reporting for MacRumors:

Apple today released Rapid Security Response (RSR) updates that are available for iPhone and iPad users running the iOS 16.4.1 update and Mac users running macOS 13.3.1. These are the first public RSR updates that Apple has released to date. [...]

iOS Security Response 16.4.1 is available through the standard Software Update mechanism in the iPhone or iPad Settings app, but is a quick update, requiring just a couple of minutes to download the update and then a quick restart for the install process. The macOS update can be installed through System Settings.

I’ve seen a few of these RSR updates while running beta versions of iOS, but I suspect those were all just tests from Apple of the RSR delivery and update mechanisms. It’s a great new mechanism for Apple, but one that they’d only use for truly significant bugs — ones they realize are being actively exploited in the wild, or could be to deeply detrimental effect.

Update: Seems a little weird that today’s RSR updates aren’t listed yet on Apple’s security updates page. In recent years Apple has been very diligent about updating this page upon the release of security updates. These new RSR updates seem to exist outside this documentation system for now.

Twitter API Pricing Prompts WordPress to Drop Automated Twitter Posting ★

From the official blog of Jetpack, an official WordPress plugin from Automattic:

Twitter decided, on short notice, to dramatically change the terms and pricing of the Twitter API. We have attempted to work with Twitter in good faith to negotiate new terms, but we have not been able to reach an agreement. As a result, the Twitter connection on Jetpack Social will cease to work, and your blog posts will no longer be auto-shared to Twitter.

You will still be able to share your posts to Twitter manually by pasting the post link into the body of your tweet.

In addition, you can still auto-share your posts to Tumblr, Facebook, and Linkedin. In the near future, we are adding the ability to auto-share to Instagram and Mastodon.

Twitter’s new API pricing is exorbitant, starting at $42,000/month for 50 million tweets. I get the feeling that there are a lot of “enterprise” Twitter API users whom Elon Musk believed would definitely pay these prices, who instead are saying “We are definitely not paying these prices.” Musk thinks Twitter is indispensable. Doesn’t seem like almost anyone else does.

This is a perfect case: Twitter was getting far more value out of Wordpress blogs being able to auto-share new posts than vice-versa. Now those tweets just won’t go out.

Update: Here’s another good example: the MTA (New York’s transit authority) will no longer post status updates to Twitter. If they’re not paying, who is?

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Sunday, 30 April 2023

Limited Edition: Atoms × MKBHD Sneaker M251 ★

My thanks to Atoms for sponsoring last week to promote their sweet new sneakers: a limited edition collaboration with Marques Brownlee. The mid-top Model 251 sneaker features a sleek design that blends style and comfort, paying homage to Marques’s first YouTube video — 2m:51s long — and the start of his journey as a creator.

They hooked me up with a pair and they are nice. (Where’s that chef’s kiss emoji?) Same great fit and comfort as regular Atoms, with a very distinct look. I don’t even need to tell you the colors. Available only until May 23 — check them out while they’re available.

Friday, 28 April 2023

Photomator ★

The Pixelmator blog:

A new update for Photomator is now available, bringing a ton of fantastic new features, changes, and improvements. But hold on, did we say Photomator? That’s right — the app now has a snappier and catchier new name! To complete the makeover, version 2.3 also features a beautiful, refreshed design, but the biggest highlight of this update lies beyond the looks.

We’re excited to introduce an all-new and incredibly powerful selective adjustments feature that will completely change the way you edit photos in Photomator. From now on, you can easily select and edit specific areas of a photo using a variety of selections and masks, and even make selections automatically, using AI. There are just so many great new features in this update, so read along if you’d like to learn all about them, and stick around till the end for one more, very exciting announcement.

Just a terrific app that presses the boundaries of how good an iOS app can be.

More on GM Dropping CarPlay ★

Brian Sozzi, reporting for Yahoo Finance:

GM told investors on Tuesday it’s looking to achieve profit margins of more than 20% on “new businesses” by 2030. That would be above the company’s overall 2030 operating margin goal of 12% to 14%.

Pros have speculated GM could charge subscriptions for services such as insurance by tapping into an accumulating stream of data that it owns.

“It’s part of where we’re going as a company,” Jacobson added. “Obviously data and software is a big competitive space across the board.”

The more I read about GM’s thinking, the more alarming it seems. It doesn’t seem to be about being able to provide a better experience than CarPlay, but instead about collecting surveillance data that Apple’s privacy rules don’t allow. Sozzi just breezes past this notion of using surveillance data to sell car insurance, but a car that reports such data to insurance companies seems like a privacy disaster. My insurance company doesn’t need to know how fast I drive, or where I go and when.

Rest of World: ‘Twitter Is Complying With More Government Demands Under Elon Musk’ ★

Rest of World:

It’s been exactly six months since Elon Musk took over Twitter, promising a new era of free speech and independence from political bias. But Twitter’s self-reported data shows that, under Musk, the company has complied with hundreds more government orders for censorship or surveillance — especially in countries such as Turkey and India.

The data, drawn from Twitter’s reports to the Lumen database, shows that between October 27, 2022 and April 26, 2023, Twitter received a total of 971 requests from governments and courts. These requests included orders to remove controversial posts, as well as demands that Twitter produce private data to identify anonymous accounts. Twitter reported that it fully complied in 808 of those requests, and partially complied in 154 other cases. (For nine requests, it did not report any specific response.)

Free speech!

See also: Mike Masnick at Techdirt:

This isn’t a transparency report. It’s an obfuscation report. And, if Elon is correct that “transparency is the key to trust,” this report suggests you shouldn’t trust Twitter one bit.

Beating Roulette ★

Kit Chellel, in an enthralling piece for Bloomberg:

I spent six months investigating the clandestine world of professional roulette players to find out who Tosa is and how he beat the system. The search took me deep into a secret war between those who make a living betting on the wheel and those who try to stop them — and ultimately to an encounter with Tosa himself. The British press got plenty wrong in their reports about what happened on the night of March 15, 2004. There was no laser. But the newspapers were right about one thing: It is possible to beat roulette.

Wednesday, 26 April 2023

The Talk Show: ‘This Guy Reads a Lot Better’ ★

Special guest Quinn Nelson joins the show to talk about Apple’s rumored AR/VR headset, Apple silicon, and more.

Sponsored by:

• Trade Coffee: Get a free bag of fresh coffee with any Trade subscription.
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Yours Truly With Rene Ritchie Speculating on WWDC ★

Spoiler: I’m hoping to see something akin to GitHub Copilot in Xcode.

Monday, 24 April 2023

CNBC: ‘Apple Declares Victory After Decision Reached in Epic Games Appeal’ ★

CNBC:

An appeals court on Monday mostly sided with Apple over its App Store rules in a suit with Epic Games. The decision signals that Apple’s control over the App Store and the fees it charges likely won’t significantly change as a result of an ongoing legal challenge by Epic Games.

Long story short, Epic has been barking up the wrong tree.

The Twitter Blue Apocalypse Is Nigh ★

Climate scientist Peter Gleick:

Any tweet now with science, data, and facts about #climatechange is now swarmed by climate-denying trolls, bots, and idiots because science, data, and facts scare the hell out of them, and because Elon’s Twitter now promotes them. What a cesspool. Example:

https://twitter.com/PeterGleick/status/1649949142335012867

I think there’s a line of thought that Elon Musk had months ago ruined Twitter, but the last few days have shown that it’s gotten far worse than ever before. The main buyers of Twitter Blue are, indeed, “trolls, bots, and idiots”, and Twitter is now hardwired to prioritize tweets and replies from those accounts.

The blue-check accounts now are just Catturd, people who want to be Catturd, and million-plus-follower users who sure as shit are not paying for their verification status.

Here’s a tweet from MIT’s official account that simply states a fact: “We did not subscribe to Twitter Blue.” Look at the replies. They’re all blue-check MAGA-hats.

CNN Fires Star Anchor Don Lemon ★

Michael M. Grynbaum, John Koblin, and Benjamin Mullin, reporting for The New York Times:

“CNN and Don have parted ways,” Chris Licht, CNN’s chairman, said in a statement. “Don will forever be a part of the CNN family, and we thank him for his contributions over the past 17 years. We wish him well and will be cheering him on in his future endeavors.”

That benign language contrasted sharply with Mr. Lemon’s interpretation of the day’s events. In a scathing message on Twitter, Mr. Lemon told viewers that he was abruptly informed by his talent agent “that I have been terminated by CNN.”

“I am stunned,” Mr. Lemon wrote. “After 17 years at CNN I would have thought that someone in management would have had the decency to tell me directly. At no time was I ever given any indication that I would not be able to continue to do the work I have loved at the network.” (CNN disputed Mr. Lemon’s account, saying the anchor “was offered an opportunity to meet with management but instead released a statement on Twitter.”)

In a clear sign of acrimony, Mr. Lemon has retained the aggressive Hollywood litigator Bryan Freedman to handle his exit. His contract with CNN runs through 2026, according to two people with direct knowledge of his deal.

Brian Stelter: “It’s the craziest day in cable news history.”

Fox News Dumps Tucker Carlson ★

The New York Times:

Fox News said Monday that it was parting ways with Tucker Carlson, its most popular prime time host who was also the source of repeated controversies and headaches for the network because of his statements on everything from race relations to L.G.B.T.Q. rights.

The network made the announcement less than a week after it agreed to pay $787.5 million in a defamation lawsuit in which Mr. Carlson’s show, one of the highest rated on Fox, figured prominently for its role in spreading misinformation after the 2020 election.

In making its announcement, Fox offered a terse statement of gratitude. “Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor,” it said.

Aaron Rupar:

Here was the end of what turned out to be Tucker Carlson’s final Fox News show last Friday. Certainly no indication that he didn’t expect to be on the air tonight. In fact Tucker’s final words are, “We’ll be back on Monday.”

Brian Stelter:

Let’s make one thing very clear: Tucker Carlson did not choose to leave Fox News like this. Others can decide whether the word “fired” applies here, but he isn’t leaving on his own terms.

It seems like it’s unlikely to be a complete coincidence that Fox News settled the Dominion lawsuit for nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars, but odious though Carlson may be, he wasn’t really at the forefront of Fox’s election lies. Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs were — and they’re both still employed at Fox.

Some people are speculating that it might be acquiescence to The Boss in Mar-a-Lago, after text messages uncovered in the Dominion suit revealed Carlson writing to colleagues, of Trump, “I hate him passionately.” But if Trump had a grudge against Carlson, why did he do an interview on Carlson’s show just two weeks ago?

Makes me think something else is going on. Maybe some sort of harassment situation? Or maybe the Murdochs figured someone had to be fired, and it might as well be the guy who’s too big for his britches?

Update: The LA Times:

People familiar with the situation who were not authorized to comment publicly said the decision to fire Carlson came straight from Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch. Carlson’s exit is related to the discrimination lawsuit filed by Abby Grossberg, the producer fired by the network last month, the people said. Carlson’s senior executive producer Justin Wells has also been terminated, according to people familiar with the matter.

Saturday, 22 April 2023

DF Sponsorship Openings ★

Speaking of weekly sponsorships, there’s only one opening left before the end of June: next week.

Weekly sponsorships have been the top source of revenue for Daring Fireball ever since I started selling them back in 2007. They’ve succeeded, I think, because they make everyone happy. There’s only one sponsor per week and the sponsors are always relevant to at least some sizable portion of the DF audience, so you, the reader, are never annoyed and hopefully often intrigued by them. And, from the sponsors’ perspective, they work. My favorite thing about them is how many sponsors return for subsequent weeks after seeing the results.

If you’ve got a product or service you think would be of interest to DF’s audience of people obsessed with high quality and good design, get in touch. If this quarter is a sign, the summer months will start filling up soon. And as I mentioned above, if you’ve got something to promote right now, next week is the opening left this quarter.

Kolide ★

My thanks to Kolide for their continuing sponsorship support here at DF — they co-sponsored the latest episode of The Talk Show that dropped last night, and they sponsored this entire week here at the website. They’re a great company with a great product.

Here’s an uncomfortable fact: at most companies, employees can download sensitive company data onto any device, keep it there forever, and never even know that they’re doing something wrong. Kolide’s new report, The State of Sensitive Data, addresses this issue head-on.

Kolide offers a more nuanced approach than MDM solutions to setting and enforcing sensitive data policies. Their premise is simple: if an employee’s device is out of compliance, it can’t access your apps. Kolide lets admins run queries to detect sensitive data, flag devices that have violated policies, and enforce OS and browser updates so vulnerable devices aren’t accessing data.

To learn more and see Kolide in action, visit kolide.com.

Friday, 21 April 2023

The Talk Show: ‘$8 Billion in Late Fees’ ★

Rene Ritchie returns to the show to discuss generative AI (and what Apple might soon do with it), iPhone passcodes and iCloud device security, HBO Max turning into just plain Max, and Make Something Wonderful  —  one more thing from Steve Jobs.

Brought to you by:

• Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code talkshow for 10% off your first order.
• Kolide: Cross-platform endpoint security solution for teams that value privacy and transparency.

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Thursday, 20 April 2023

BuzzFeed News Is Shutting Down ★

Ben Smith, writing at Semafor:

My old boss and partner Jonah Peretti announced today that he’s shutting down BuzzFeed News, which we built together starting in 2012.

He wrote to staff that he’d been ​​”slow to accept that the big platforms wouldn’t provide the distribution or financial support required to support premium-free journalism purpose-built for social media.” And he wrote that he could have managed the many business challenges that BuzzFeed has faced better.

The news makes me heartsick.

Peretti hired me in 2012 to build a news organization for the exploding social web. For a few years, we felt the wind of Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest at our backs, and we did journalism that treated those sites as the front page of the new internet. At first, we celebrated and immersed ourselves in an optimistic web culture that imagined a reader who cared about which Disney princess she was, and also the worst of how the American justice system treated abused women, who wanted to argue about the color of the dress and also understand the science behind it. That was back when all of it mixed up in your Facebook feed, and it felt novel.

BuzzFeed News did great work and employed some terrific reporters, but they never had a plan to turn a profit that made any more sense than that of the underwear-collecting gnomes on South Park.

Humane Previews AI-Powered Wearable at TED ★

Ina Fried, reporting for Axios:

Ex-Apple employee Imran Chaudhri gave TED attendees on Thursday an early glimpse of the AI-powered wearable that his startup, Humane, has been developing. [...]

The screenless device, which does not require a nearby cell phone to work, uses a combination of voice and gestures for input and can display information by projecting it onto nearby objects.

Details: In his TED talk, Chaudhri showed the wearable, which sat in his jacket pocket, translating his own voice into French.

• He also answered a phone call from his wife with the call information appearing as a green image projected onto his hand.

• “This is good AI in action,” he said, promising more details would be released in the coming months.

The device — which seemingly doesn’t yet have an announced name? — looks about 2 inches wide and 1 inch high, and is worn on your chest like a Star Trek communicator badge. Here’s an image of the phone call information projected onto Chaudhri’s hand. Hope the whole demo is released on video soon.

Update: Actually, now that I look at the video clips that are available, I think the device is quite a bit bigger, and Chaudhri has it peeking out of a pocket on his jacket? Unclear.

‘Arcade Game Typography’ by Toshi Omagari ★

Read-Only Memory, video game book publishers extraordinaire:

The first book of its kind — a definitive and beautifully designed survey of ’70s, ’80s and early ’90s arcade game pixel typography. Exhaustively researched by author Toshi Omagari (a celebrated typeface designer at Monotype UK) Arcade Game Typography gathers together 250 pixel typefaces, all carefully chosen, extracted, redrawn and categorised by style, and each with an accompanying commentary by Omagari. The title also features 4 illustrated essays on videogame typography theory and practice, documenting the unique advantages and challenges presented to designers of these bold, playful and often quirky alphabets.

I bought and devoured this book back in October 2019, but somehow never recommended it here on Daring Fireball. I should be arrested for dereliction of duty. But I was reminded of it today by this toot from Antony Johnston.

A book about classic arcade game fonts is so obviously up my alley that I’d probably enjoy a bad book about them. But Arcade Game Typography is an exquisitely good book: deeply researched, beautifully illustrated with copious screenshots and close-up pixel-by-pixel details, and engagingly written by Omagari. I’m linking here to the limited edition hardcover, which costs $46, but there’s also a high-quality paperback edition for $28. (Buy through that Amazon link and you’ll make me rich with a cut of the dough.) If you don’t want this book you’re either too young or you’re not hooked up right.

See also: Estelle Caswell interviewed Omagari in 2020 in a video for Vox, focusing specifically on the 8x8 pixel Quiz Show font, a.k.a. the arcade font.

The Oakland A’s Are Moving to Las Vegas ★

Mick Akers, reporting for The Las Vegas Review-Journal:

The Oakland Athletics have zeroed in on Southern Nevada, signing a binding purchase agreement for land just west of the Strip where a major-league ballpark could be constructed. The agreement is for 49 acres at Dean Martin Drive and Tropicana Avenue, owned by Red Rock Resorts, parent company of Station Casinos.

That’s close to T-Mobile Arena (home of the NHL Golden Knights), behind the New York New York casino complex.

“For a while we were on parallel paths (with Oakland), but we have turned our attention to Las Vegas to get a deal here for the A’s and find a long-term home,” A’s President Dave Kaval told the Review-Journal on Wednesday. “Oakland has been a great home for us for over 50 years, but we really need this 20-year saga completed and we feel there’s a path here in Southern Nevada to do that.”

With the announcement of the purchase agreement, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred concurs with Kaval and hopes the A’s shifting their efforts solely to Southern Nevada will lead to the end of the team’s yearslong quest to leave crumbling Oakland Coliseum.

Recent embarrassments for the A’s in Oakland include a game against the Cleveland Guardians that drew just 3,000 fans, and a possum that lives within the walls of the visiting press boxes, which stunk them up so badly that the Mets’ broadcast team had to move to another box.

Wednesday, 19 April 2023

Warren Buffett on Apple ★

Warren Buffett, asked on CNBC about Berkshire Hathaway’s largest holding, Apple (they own nearly 6 percent of Apple’s stock)

“If you’re an Apple user and somebody offers you $10,000, but the only proviso is they’ll take away your iPhone and you’ll never be able to buy another, you’re not going to take it. If they tell you if you buy another Ford car — they’ll give you $10,000 not to do that — you’ll take the $10,000 and you’ll buy a Chevy instead.”

Buffett, famously, isn’t technically minded. But I think that helps him understand Apple’s value. He’s right: Apple’s moat is customer loyalty, and that loyalty is earned through user experiences that other companies can’t match.

Using Ford and Chevy as his counterexamples is serendipitous, as Dare Obasanjo quipped:

Someone should print this tweet out, frame it and give it to the CEO of GM in commemoration of their decision to stop supporting CarPlay in their vehicles.

It’s true. The anger over GM’s decision to drop CarPlay and Android Auto support in its EVs is really only anger about dropping CarPlay.

WhatsApp, Signal, and Other Secure Messaging Platforms Write Open Letter to the UK Government Defending End-to-End Encryption ★

From an open letter signed by the leaders of WhatsApp, Signal, Viber, and a few other secure services:

Proponents say that they appreciate the importance of encryption and privacy while also claiming that it’s possible to surveil everyone’s messages without undermining end-to-end encryption. The truth is that this is not possible.

We aren’t the only ones who share concerns about the UK Bill. The United Nations has warned that the UK Government’s efforts to impose backdoor requirements constitute “a paradigm shift that raises a host of serious problems with potentially dire consequences”. Even the UK Government itself has acknowledged the privacy risks that the text of the Bill poses, but has said its “intention” isn’t for the Bill to be interpreted this way.

Global providers of end-to-end encrypted products and services cannot weaken the security of their products and services to suit individual governments. There cannot be a “British internet,” or a version of end-to-end encryption that is specific to the UK.

The UK Government must urgently rethink the Bill, revising it to encourage companies to offer more privacy and security to its residents, not less. Weakening encryption, undermining privacy, and introducing the mass surveillance of people’s private communications is not the way forward.

I’m glad to see these companies defending end-to-end encryption, but this letter dances around the repercussions of this proposed legislation in the U.K. What they mean in the third paragraph quoted above is that if the legislation passes, people in the U.K. won’t be able to use WhatsApp or Signal or any other end-to-end encrypted service. Apple isn’t a signatory of the letter, but I think iMessage would be banned too.

Some reports are portraying this as though these services would begrudgingly comply if the law passes, but they can’t. End-to-end encryption is inherent to the protocols. If end-to-end encrypted messaging is banned in the U.K., it won’t mean that WhatsApp, Signal, et al will somehow switch to insecure protocols in order to comply — it will mean that people in the U.K. can’t use these apps.

It’s tough, messaging-wise, because coming right out and saying that sounds like these companies won’t comply, by choice. Laypeople seemingly can’t be made to understand that a “good-guys-only back door” is cryptographically impossible. But that’s the truth. WhatsApp is incredibly popular in the U.K. — the message should not be that U.K. lawmakers are trying to weaken WhatsApp’s encryption, but rather that U.K. lawmakers are going to make WhatsApp illegal.

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