By John Gruber
Build anything with exe.dev. It’s just a computer.
Linked List: May 1, 2023
Monday, 1 May 2023
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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.
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 ★
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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 ★
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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?