Linked List: September 2024

Monday, 30 September 2024

The Talk Show: ‘Shipping vs. Shipping’ ★

Jason Snell returns to the show to discuss Apple’s September product announcements, and Meta’s Orion prototype AR glasses. Absolutely no baseball talk, almost.

Sunday, 29 September 2024

Method ★

My thanks to Method Financial for sponsoring last week at Daring Fireball. Method Financial’s authentication technology allows instant access to a consumer’s full liability portfolio using just personal information and consent, eliminating the need for usernames and passwords.

With just a few lines of code, Method’s APIs enable real-time, read-write, and frictionless access to all consumer liability data with integrated payment rails. Method leverages integrations with over 15,000 financial institutions to stream up-to-date, high-fidelity data from users’ accounts and to facilitate payment to them.

Method has helped 3 million consumers connect over 24 million liability accounts at companies like Aven, SoFi, Figure, and Happy Money, saving borrowers millions in interest and providing access to billions of dollars in personalized loans.

‘Meta and Apple: Same Game, Different Rules’ ★

Jason Snell, Six Colors:

These are companies playing the same game, but in different ways. Who’s ahead? I would argue that it’s impossible to tell, because if Apple had a product like Orion we would never see it. We can argue about whether Apple’s compulsion to never, ever comment on unannounced products is beneficial or not, but it’s a Steve Jobs-created bit of Apple personality that is very unlikely to be countermanded any time soon.

Here’s how tenuous the Orion prototype is. Meta claims it would cost $10,000, but they haven’t said whether that would be the cost of goods or the retail price. But let’s give them the benefit of the doubt and say that the retail price would be just $10,000 if they brought this to market today. That’s expensive. But it’s not ridiculous. You can buy high-end workstation-class desktops that cost that much. A fully-specced 16-inch MacBook Pro costs $7,200.

But according to The Verge, these Orion prototypes only get 2 hours of battery life. And they’re too thick and chunky. You look weird, if not downright ugly, wearing them. So Meta not only needs to bring the price down by a factor of at least 3× (which would put it around the $3,500 price of Vision Pro, which most critics have positioned as too expensive), they also need to make the glasses smaller — more svelte — while increasing battery life significantly. Those two factors are in direct contradiction with each other. The only easy way to increase battery life is to put a bigger battery in the device, which makes the device itself thicker and heavier. (See this year’s iPhone 16 Pro.)

Orion by all accounts is a really compelling demo. But it’s also very clearly a prototype device only suitable for demos. Even at $10,000 retail it wouldn’t be compelling today. Yet somehow Meta wants us to believe they have “line of sight” to a compelling consumer product at a compelling price.

It’s exciting that they showed Orion publicly, but I don’t think it helped Meta in any way going forward. There’s a reason why Apple didn’t show off a prototype iPhone in 2004.

Saturday, 28 September 2024

Relay for St. Jude Is Approaching $1 Million ★

Every September, the whole extended family at Relay FM raises money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, one of the most amazing institutions in the world. St. Jude is dedicated to curing childhood cancer and helping families affected by it. Since 2019 Relay has raised over $3 million, and their best-ever single month was just north of $775,000.

This year they’re already at $925,000, within earshot of a cool million, with three days to go in the month. Let’s make that happen.

Update, 30 September: And, boom, they hit it: $1,041,913.31 and still counting.

Hidden Pref to Restore Slow-Motion Dock Minimizing on MacOS ★

In the midst of recording last week’s episode of The Talk Show with Nilay Patel, I offhandedly mentioned the age-old trick of holding down the Shift key while minimizing a window (clicking the yellow button) to see the genie effect in slow motion. Nilay was like “Wait, what? That’s not working for me...” and we moved on.

What I’d forgotten is that Apple had removed this as default behavior a few years ago (I think in MacOS 10.14 Mojave), but you can restore the feature with this hidden preference, typed in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.dock slow-motion-allowed -bool YES

Then restart the Dock:

killall Dock

Or, in a single command:

defaults write com.apple.dock slow-motion-allowed -bool YES; killall Dock

Or, if you prefer a proper app to a command-line invocation, Marcel Bresink’s excellent TinkerTool.

Tom’s Guide iPhone 16 Battery Life Testing Shows Impressive Year-Over-Year Gains ★

Tom Pritchard, writing at Tom’s Guide:

We put the iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro and the iPhone 16 Pro Max through the Tom’s Guide battery test, which involves surfing the web over 5G at 150 nits of screen brightness. The iPhone 16 Pro Max and iPhone 16 Plus have risen to the top with some incredibly impressive results — making our best phone battery life list in the process. Here’s how the new iPhone 16 models’ battery life stacks up against their iPhone 15 counterparts, and rival flagships.

WSJ: ‘Apple Is No Longer in Talks to Join OpenAI Investment Round’ ★

Tom Dotan and Berber Jin, reporting late last night for The Wall Street Journal (News+):

Apple is no longer in talks to participate in an OpenAI funding round expected to raise as much as $6.5 billion, an 11th hour end to what would have been a rare investment by the iPhone maker in another major Silicon Valley company. Apple recently fell out of the talks to join the round, which is slated to close next week, according to a knowledgeable person.

I just observed the other day that the tumultuous (to say the least) leadership situation at OpenAI seems incongruous with Apple’s.

Also surely related, to some degree, is this report on OpenAI’s financials that dropped yesterday from Mike Isaac and Erin Griffith at The New York Times:

OpenAI’s monthly revenue hit $300 million in August, up 1,700 percent since the beginning of 2023, and the company expects about $3.7 billion in annual sales this year, according to financial documents reviewed by The New York Times. OpenAI estimates that its revenue will balloon to $11.6 billion next year.

But it expects to lose roughly $5 billion this year after paying for costs related to running its services and other expenses like employee salaries and office rent, according to an analysis by a financial professional who has also reviewed the documents. Those numbers do not include paying out equity-based compensation to employees, among several large expenses not fully explained in the documents.

Rob Pike, on Mastodon:

OpenAI: We lose a little on every sale but we make it up in volume.

Friday, 27 September 2024

iA Writer’s Android App Is Frozen in Carbonite ★

iA, which has been shipping a version of iA Writer for Android for 7 years:

By September, we thought we had honored our side of the new agreement. But on the very day we expected to get our access back, Google altered the deal.

We were told that read-only access to Google Drive would suit our writing app better than the desired read/write access. That’s right — read-only for a writing app.

When we pointed out that this was not what we had, or what our users wanted, Google seemed to alter the deal yet again. In order to get our users full access to their Google Drive on their devices, we now needed to pass a yearly CASA (Cloud Application Security Assessment) audit. This requires hiring a third-party vendor like KPMG.

The cost, including all internal hours, amounts to about one to two months of revenue that we would have to pay to one of Google’s corporate amigos. An indie company handing over a month’s worth of revenue to a “Big Four” firm like KPMG for a pretty much meaningless scan. And, of course, this would be a recurring annual expense. More cash for Google’s partners, while small developers like us foot the bill for Android’s deeply ingrained security shortcomings.

Developing serious productivity apps for Android sounds like fun. (See also the footnote on how stunningly rampant piracy is on Android, too.)

Thursday, 26 September 2024

X Blocks Links to Stolen J.D. Vance Dossier ★

Elizabeth Lopatto, reporting for The Verge:

X is preventing users from posting links to a newsletter containing a hacked document that’s alleged to be the Trump campaign’s research into vice presidential candidate JD Vance. The journalist who wrote the newsletter, Ken Klippenstein, has been suspended from the platform. Searches for posts containing a link to the newsletter turn up nothing.

Posting this just in case there remained an iota of a thought in your head that Elon Musk is actually a radical “free speech” absolutist and not just someone who blew $44 billion buying Twitter to warp the entire platform in the direction of his own weird un-American political agenda.

The Talk Show: ‘The Dynamic Paradox’ ★

Nilay Patel returns to the show to consider the iPhones 16.

Wednesday, 25 September 2024

Masimo Founder Joe Kiani Resigns as CEO Following Ouster From Board ★

Reuters:

Masimo said on Wednesday founder Joe Kiani has decided to step down as the medical device maker’s CEO, days after shareholders voted to remove him from the company’s board following a bitter proxy battle with activist hedge fund Politan Capital Management.

The company named veteran healthcare executive, Michelle Brennan, as interim chief. Brennan was nominated by Politan for Masimo’s board last year, along with the hedge fund’s founder Quentin Koffey. Both were subsequently elected by shareholders.

Shares of the company were up 5.4% at $133 in early trade. The stock has fallen more than 40% since Feb. 15, 2022, when Masimo announced the $1-billion acquisition of audio products maker Sound United. The deal was a key factor behind Politan’s activism.

No mention of Apple in Reuters’s report, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s soon a settlement in the patent dispute over the blood oxygen sensors in recent Apple Watch models that’s left the feature disabled for new watches sold in the U.S. this year. My understanding is that Kiani was single-mindedly obsessed with fighting Apple over this.

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs and Sam Bankman-Fried Are Cellmates in Arkham Asylum ★

Holds hand to earpiece... Correction: they’re bunking in a jail cell together in Brooklyn, not Gotham. We regret the error.

Tuesday, 24 September 2024

Juli Clover Limited Her iPhone 15 Pro Max to the 80 Percent Charging Limit for an Entire Year ★

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 percent limit from September 2023 to now, with no cheating.

My iPhone 15 Pro Max battery level is currently at 94 percent with 299 cycles. For a lot of 2024, my battery level stayed above 97 percent, but it started dropping more rapidly over the last couple of months. I left my iPhone at that 80 percent limit and at no point turned the setting off or tweaked it. [...] You can compare your level battery to mine, but here are a couple other metrics from MacRumors staff that also have an iPhone 15 Pro Max and did not have the battery level limited.

Current capacity: 87%. Cycles: 329

Current capacity: 90%. Cycles: 271

My year-old iPhone 15 Pro (not Max) which I simply used every day and charged to 100 percent overnight: max capacity: 89 percent, 344 charge cycles.

I’m so glad Clover ran this test for a year and reported her results, because it backs up my assumption: for most people there’s no practical point to limiting your iPhone’s charging capacity. All you’re doing is preventing yourself from ever enjoying a 100-percent-capacity battery. Let the device manage its own battery. Apple has put a lot of engineering into making that really smart.

iPhone 16 Models Now Use an Electrically-Released Adhesive ★

Donald Papp at Hackaday:

There’s a wild new feature making repair jobs easier (not to mention less messy) and iFixit covers it in their roundup of the iPhone 16’s repairability: electrically-released adhesive.

Here’s how it works. The adhesive looks like a curved strip with what appears to be a thin film of aluminum embedded into it. It’s applied much like any other adhesive strip: peel away the film, and press it between whatever two things it needs to stick. But to release it, that’s where the magic happens. One applies a voltage (a 9V battery will do the job) between the aluminum frame of the phone and a special tab on the battery. In about a minute the battery will come away with no force, and residue-free.

Clever.

Monday, 23 September 2024

Nilay Patel’s iPhone 16 Pro Review Addresses the Nilay-Patel-iest of Questions: What Is a Photo? ★

Nilay Patel, writing at The Verge last week:

I asked Apple’s VP of camera software engineering Jon McCormack about Google’s view that the Pixel camera now captures “memories” instead of photos, and he told me that Apple has a strong point of view about what a photograph is — that it’s something that actually happened. It was a long and thoughtful answer, so I’m just going to print the whole thing:

Here’s our view of what a photograph is. The way we like to think of it is that it’s a personal celebration of something that really, actually happened.

Whether that’s a simple thing like a fancy cup of coffee that’s got some cool design on it, all the way through to my kid’s first steps, or my parents’ last breath, It’s something that really happened. It’s something that is a marker in my life, and it’s something that deserves to be celebrated.

And that is why when we think about evolving in the camera, we also rooted it very heavily in tradition. Photography is not a new thing. It’s been around for 198 years. People seem to like it. There’s a lot to learn from that. There’s a lot to rely on from that.

Think about stylization, the first example of stylization that we can find is Roger Fenton in 1854 — that’s 170 years ago. It’s a durable, long-term, lasting thing. We stand proudly on the shoulders of photographic history.

That’s a sharp and clear answer, but I’m curious how Apple contends with the relentless addition of AI editing to the iPhone’s competitors. The company is already taking small steps in that direction: a feature called “Clean Up” will arrive with Apple Intelligence, which will allow you to remove objects from photos like Google’s Magic Eraser.

McCormack’s response is genuinely thoughtful, and resonates deeply with my own personal take. But it’s worth noting that Apple is the conservative company when it comes to generative AI and photography — and yet they’re still shipping Clean Up. I’m not complaining about Clean Up’s existence. I’ve already used it personally. I’m just saying that even Apple’s stance involves significant use of generative AI.

LoveFrom Now Has a Mascot: Montgomery the Bear ★

Mark Wilson, writing at Fast Company:

Now, a full five years later, are we meeting the LoveFrom mascot, Montgomery: a bear, paying homage to San Francisco’s Montgomery Street where LoveFrom is headquartered and will soon open its own store.

Montgomery has just appeared on LoveFrom’s website, where it will sniff and follow your cursor, before slowly navigating over the letters of LoveFrom like rocks in a pond.

A lovely mark and even lovelier animation.

Tripp Mickle Profiles Jony Ive and LoveFrom, Confirms OpenAI Partnership for Device ★

Tripp Mickle, writing for The New York Times:

Mr. Ive and Mr. Altman met for dinner several more times before agreeing to build a product, with LoveFrom leading the design. They have raised money privately, with Mr. Ive and Emerson Collective, Ms. Powell Jobs’s company, contributing, and could raise up to $1 billion in start-up funding by the end of the year from tech investors.

In February, Mr. Ive found office space for the company. They spent $60 million on a 32,000-square-foot building called the Little Fox Theater that backs up to the LoveFrom courtyard. He has hired about 10 employees, including Tang Tan, who oversaw iPhone product development, and Evans Hankey, who succeeded Mr. Ive in leading design at Apple.

On a Friday morning in late June, Mr. Tan and Ms. Hankey could be seen wheeling chairs between the Little Fox Theater and the nearby LoveFrom studio. The chairs were topped by papers and cardboard boxes with the earliest ideas for a product that uses A.I. to create a computing experience that is less socially disruptive than the iPhone.

The project is being developed in secret. Mr. Newson said that what the product would be and when it would be released were still being determined.

I feel like Mickle somewhat buried the lede here. Architectural projects, magnetic buttons, for $2,000 jackets a lovely new typeface, new steering wheels for electric Ferrari sports cars — all of those design projects are interesting. But an OpenAI-powered personal electronic device, with longtime Apple all-stars Evans Hankey and Tang Tan leading the small team? That’s interesting. That’s competing against Apple. That’s complicated given Ive’s legendary history with Apple. It’s further complicated by the fact that most of LoveFrom’s designers came with Ive from Apple. It’s complicated even further by Powell Jobs’s backing of the startup.

Also somewhat interesting to me is the timing of Mickle’s profile. He spoke with Ive and Marc Newson back in June, but the story was published ... the very day after the arrival of Apple’s new iPhones, AirPods, and watches. That timing might have been entirely the choice of the Times. But still, it’s hard not to notice.

And the whole thing is made even stranger given OpenAI’s partnership with Apple to provide “world knowledge” generative AI by the end of this year. Can’t help but think of then-Google-CEO Eric Schmidt being an Apple board member when the iPhone debuted — with built-in system apps for Google Maps and YouTube — while Google was simultaneously building Android to compete.

iOS 18 Messages Bug, Triggered When Sharing an Apple Watch Face, Causes Crash and Data Loss ★

Zac Hall, with a public service message at 9to5Mac:

For now, the bug is triggered when someone replies to a shared watch face in a thread on Messages in iOS 18. The threaded responses feature allows you to have an inline conversation about a specific message that may have been sent earlier in the chat.

If this happens, Messages will repeatedly crash if the user tries to open the conversation in the app. Sending or responding to conversations from other chats directly in Messages is also not easily possible as the app may repeatedly crash.

Once triggered, the bug affects both users. It appears to require responding to the shared watch face from iOS 18. Replying from iOS 18.1 will not trigger the bug.

However, if the user responds in a thread to the shared watch face, Messages will crash on iOS 18.1 beta, iPadOS 18.1 beta, and macOS 15.1 beta as well.

I suspect we’ll see an iOS 18.0.1 update imminently that includes a fix for this. It’s a nasty bug, though.

Sunday, 22 September 2024

WorkOS ★

My thanks to WorkOS for, once again, sponsoring last week at Daring Fireball. WorkOS is a modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. Start selling to enterprise customers with just a few lines of code. Ship complex features like SSO and SCIM (pronounced skim) provisioning in minutes instead of months.

Today, some of the fastest growing startups are already powered by WorkOS, including Perplexity, Vercel, and Webflow.

For SaaS apps that care deeply about design and user experience, WorkOS is the perfect fit. From high-quality documentation to self-serve onboarding for your customers, it removes all the unnecessary complexity for your engineering team.

Friday, 20 September 2024

Qualcomm Is Trying to Acquire Intel ★

Lauren Thomas, Laura Cooper, and Asa Fitch, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+):

Chip giant Qualcomm made a takeover approach to rival Intel in recent days, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be one of the largest and most consequential deals in recent years. A deal for Intel, which has a market value of roughly $90 billion, would come as the chip maker has been suffering through one of the most significant crises in its five-decade history.

A deal is far from certain, the people cautioned. Even if Intel is receptive, a deal of that size is all but certain to attract antitrust scrutiny, though it is also possible it could be seen as an opportunity to strengthen the U.S.’s competitive edge in chips. To get the deal done, Qualcomm could intend to sell assets or parts of Intel to other buyers.

Intel — once the world’s most valuable chip company — had seen its shares drop roughly 60% so far this year before The Wall Street Journal reported on the approach. As recently as 2020, the company had a market value above $290 billion.

If you’d told me even just 10 years ago that one of these two would acquire the other in 2024, I’d have lost my shirt betting it would be Intel acquiring Qualcomm, not the other way around. What an ignominious demise this would be for the company that put the silicon in Silicon Valley. But here we are.

Danny Boyle’s ‘28 Years Later’, a $75 Million Feature Film, Was Shot Using iPhone 15 Pro Max ★

Carlton Reid, writing for Wired:

The use of Apple smartphones as the principal camera system on 28 Years Later was subsequently confirmed to Wired by several people connected with the movie, detailing that the particular model used to shoot was the iPhone 15 Pro Max. [...]

Several arthouse films have been shot with iPhones, including Sean Baker’s Tangerine (2015) and the Steven Soderbergh drama Unsane (2018), but these movies were limited-release, low-budget offerings compared to 28 Years Later. The new film’s $75 million budget is only part of the franchise’s total, with 28 Years Later being the first of a new trilogy; all three coming zombie films are being scripted by screenwriter Alex Garland, who is reuniting with Boyle and Mantle after helming Civil War, released earlier this year.

Right there, in your pocket, all day every day.

Austin Mann’s iPhone 16 Pro Camera Review: Kenya ★

Austin Mann:

Over the past week we’ve traveled over a thousand kilometers across Kenya, capturing more than 10,000 photos and logging over 3TB of ProRes footage with the new iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max cameras. Along the way, we’ve gained valuable insights into these camera systems and their features. [...]

The moment I learned about it, I knew exactly how I wanted to test it: a photo shoot with Craig.

A few months ago, my friend Bobby Neptune introduced me to Craig, one of the last remaining super tusker elephants roaming the earth. He is unique not only because of his enormous tusks, but also because of his extremely gentle demeanor and his curious habit of often approaching safari cruisers. I knew if we were lucky enough to find him, it might be a great opportunity to put the new Ultra Wide sensor to the test.

Bobby got on the phone with David, a local maasai who tracks Craig daily, and we met up with him to see if we could locate this beautiful animal.

I had dinner with Mann and a few other photo-nerd friends in California last week, after the Apple event, and when he told me his plan for Kenya — particularly his hope that they’d be able to find Craig — I crossed my fingers. What a magnificent animal.

Absolutely stunning work — still and video — from Mann, too. Inspiring to know that this same camera is in my pocket every day.

Shohei Ohtani’s Game for the Ages ★

Los Angeles Dodgers DH Shohei Ohtani entered last night’s game in Miami with 49 stolen bases and 48 home runs for the season. Only five other players in MLB history have ever hit 40 home runs and stolen 40 bases in a season. No player had ever achieved a 50-50 season.

Ohtani went 6-for-6, hitting 3 homers, stealing 2 bases, and knocking in 10 RBIs — thus breaking 50 in both categories in the same game. Unreal. It’s the second-greatest single-game performance by a hitter in baseball history. (Everyone knows the greatest, especially Dodgers fans.)

Postscript: I want to add my sincere kudos to Marlins manager Skip Schumaker (great baseball name). Asked why he didn’t walk Ohtani intentionally, he replied, “That’s a bad move, baseball-wise, karma-wise, baseball-gods-wise. You go after him and see if you can get him out.” That’s what he said to the media after the game. During the game, in the dugout, when asked if the Marlins should walk Ohtani, he put it even better: “Fuck that.”

Elon Musk, Useful Idiot ★

Speaking of “Leon” Musk, here’s Victor Tangermann, writing for The Byte:

In March, the US government accused the founder of Moscow-based company Social Design Agency of orchestrating a “persistent foreign malign influence campaign” on behalf of the Kremlin. The propaganda operation, dubbed “Doppelganger,” involved spreading memes, deepfaked videos, and falsified documents online to alienate the West from Ukraine and its leadership following Russia’s 2022 invasion.

The company is overseen by a top aide to Russian president Vladimir Putin, and has attempted to discredit Ukraine’s military and political leadership by flooding social media with propaganda.

And as it turns out, infamously gullible billionaire and X-formerly-Twitter owner Elon Musk appears to have gotten duped by the campaign. In October 2023, Musk shared a meme to his millions of followers showing Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky straining his face, with the caption reading: “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in aid.”

According to leaked documents obtained by a number of European media outlets, the meme — alongside a number of other posts that were not shared by Musk — was put together by none other than the Social Design Agency.

Most people might reconsider their social media habits after finding out they inadvertently shared Russian-made propaganda memes.

Cards Against Humanity Sues Elon Musk (SpaceX) for $15 Million ★

Cards Against Humanity:

We have terrible news. Seven years ago, 150,000 people paid us $15 to protect a pristine parcel of land on the US-Mexico border from racist billionaire Donald Trump’s very stupid wall.

Unfortunately, an even richer, more racist billionaire — Elon Musk — snuck up on us from behind and completely fucked that land with gravel, tractors, and space garbage.

Just look at it! He fucked it.

How did this happen? Elon Musk’s SpaceX was building some space thing nearby, and he figured he could just dump his shit all over our gorgeous plot of land without asking. After we caught him, SpaceX gave us a 12-hour ultimatum to accept a lowball offer for less than half our land’s value. We said, “Go fuck yourself, Elon Musk. We’ll see you in court.”

European Commission Opens ‘Specification Proceedings’, Ostensibly to Tell Apple Exactly What to Do ★

The European Commission yesterday:

Today, the European Commission has started two specification proceedings to assist Apple in complying with its interoperability obligations under the Digital Markets Act (‘DMA’). [...] Pursuant to Article 8(2) of the DMA, the Commission may, on its own initiative, adopt a decision specifying the measures a gatekeeper has to implement to ensure effective compliance with substantive DMA obligations, such as the interoperability obligation of Article 6(7) DMA.

The first proceeding focuses on several iOS connectivity features and functionalities, predominantly used for and by connected devices. [...] The Commission intends to specify how Apple will provide effective interoperability with functionalities such as notifications, device pairing and connectivity.

The second proceeding focuses on the process Apple has set up to address interoperability requests submitted by developers and third parties for iOS and IPadOS [sic]. It is crucial that the request process is transparent, timely, and fair so that all developers have an effective and predictable path to interoperability and are enabled to innovate. [...]

The Commission will conclude the proceedings within 6 months from their opening.

As ever with the Commission and their bureaucratese, I’m unsure whether this announcement is perfunctory or an escalation. But I think it’s an escalation, and they’re so irritated by Apple’s refusal to cave to the “spirit” of the DMA while complying with the letter of the law, that they’re simply going to tell Apple exactly what they want them to do in six months. This is not going to go well, as it seems they’re going to demand Apple offer third-party peripheral makers and software developers the same access to system-level software that Apple’s own first-party peripherals and software have. I’m not even sure why they’re having proceedings, because this press release makes it sounds like they’ve already decided.

Also worth noting: Margrethe Vestager is on her way out, about to be replaced by Spanish socialist Teresa Ribera, a career climate expert (which, possibly, might give her an affinity for Apple, far and away the most climate-friendly large tech company) with no experience in competition law. To me that makes Ribera an odd choice for the competition chief job, but apparently that makes sense in the EU. It remains unclear to me whether Ribera supports Vestager’s crusade against the DMA’s designated “gatekeepers”. If she doesn’t, is this all for naught?

Sidenote: Honest question: Can someone explain to me the Commission’s use of boldfacing? In the first 265 words of the press release, 66 of them are bold, across 13 different spans. They seemingly use boldfacing the way Trump capitalizes words in his tweets: indiscriminately. I find it highly distracting, like trying to read a ransom letter. It’s not just this press release, they do it all the time.

Thursday, 19 September 2024

Apple Seeds First Public Betas of iOS 18.1 and macOS 15.1 Sequoia With Apple Intelligence ★: Still a little awkward for a tentpole marketing feature of the iPhones 16 arriving tomorrow, but a public beta is a notable milestone.

Wednesday, 18 September 2024

Apple Intelligence Will Come to More Languages, Including German and Italian, Next Year (But Don’t Hold Your Breath for iPhones and iPads) ★

Allison Johnson, The Verge:

Apple Intelligence’s list of forthcoming supported languages just got a little longer. After an October launch in US English, Apple says its AI feature set will be available in German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Vietnamese, “and others” in the coming year. The company drops this news just days before the iPhone 16’s arrival — the phone built for AI that won’t have any AI features at launch.

Apple’s AI feature set will expand to include localized English in the UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand in December, with India and Singapore joining the mix next year. The company already announced plans to support Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish next year as well.

Apple shared this news with me last night too, and my first thought was, “German and Italian? Does that mean they’ve gotten the OK that Apple Intelligence is, in fact, compliant with the DMA?” But that’s not what they’re announcing. This is just for Apple Intelligence on the Mac — which already offers Apple Intelligence in the EU in MacOS 15.1 Sequoia betas, because the Mac is not a designated “gatekeeping” platform. The standoff over Apple Intelligence on iOS and iPadOS remains.

Voyager 1 Just Fired Up Thrusters It Hasn’t Used in Decades ★

Ashley Strickland, reporting for CNN:

Engineers at NASA have successfully fired up a set of thrusters Voyager 1 hasn’t used in decades to solve an issue that could keep the 47-year-old spacecraft from communicating with Earth from billions of miles away. [...]

As a result of its exceptionally long-lived mission, Voyager 1 experiences issues as its parts age in the frigid outer reaches beyond our solar system. When an issue crops up, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have to get creative while still being careful of how the spacecraft will react to any changes.

Currently the farthest spacecraft from Earth, Voyager 1 is about 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away. The probe operates beyond the heliosphere — the sun’s bubble of magnetic fields and particles that extends well beyond Pluto’s orbit — where its instruments directly sample interstellar space.

Michael Chabon, on Threads:

I find the continuing mission of Voyager 1 so moving, for the way its name alone evokes a time of promise, for the thought of that tiny contraption way out there in the vastness at the edge of the heliosphere — perhaps the farthest any human-made thing may ever travel — a bit battered, swiftly aging, still doing the work it was purposed to do.

An amazing feat of engineering five decades ago, kept going by amazing feats of engineering today.

Tuesday, 17 September 2024

Israel Planted Explosives in Pagers Sold to Hezbollah, Officials Say ★

Sheera Frenkel and Ronen Bergman, reporting for The New York Times:

Israel carried out its operation against Hezbollah on Tuesday by hiding explosive material within a new batch of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon, according to American and other officials briefed on the operation.

The pagers, which Hezbollah had ordered from Gold Apollo in Taiwan, had been tampered with before they reached Lebanon, according to some of the officials. Most were the company’s AP924 model, though three other Gold Apollo models were also included in the shipment.

The explosive material, as little as one to two ounces, was implanted next to the battery in each pager, two of the officials said. A switch was also embedded that could be triggered remotely to detonate the explosives.

At 3:30 p.m. in Lebanon, the pagers received a message that appeared as though it was coming from Hezbollah’s leadership, two of the officials said. Instead, the message activated the explosives. Lebanon’s health minister told state media at least nine people were killed and more than 2,800 injured.

The devices were programmed to beep for several seconds before exploding, according to three of the officials.

Hezbollah leadership had ordered its members to forgo modern phones for security reasons, convinced (probably correctly) that Israeli intelligence was able to track them. So they switched to decades-old pagers. But Israel seemingly infiltrated the supply chain of Gold Apollo and boobytrapped the pagers.

In the initial pandemonium after the attack was triggered, there was speculation that, somehow, it was simply the batteries that exploded. But batteries — especially the AAA batteries these pagers use — don’t explode with that much force:

Independent cybersecurity experts who have studied footage of the attacks said it was clear that the strength and speed of the explosions were caused by a type of explosive material.

“These pagers were likely modified in some way to cause these types of explosions — the size and strength of the explosion indicates it was not just the battery,” said Mikko Hypponen, a research specialist at the software company WithSecure and a cybercrime adviser to Europol.

This whole operation sounds like it would make for a great movie.

(Hypponen, whom I believe I met, at least once, at a long-ago Macworld Expo or WWDC, was previously referenced on DF in 2012 regarding a widespread Mac Trojan horse.)

Monday, 16 September 2024

Ten Years of Six Colors ★

Jason Snell:

Ten years sure seems like a long time.

Ten years ago the iPhone got physically big for the first time. (In the ensuing decade, iPhone revenue has doubled.) Ten years ago Apple announced the Apple Watch.

Ten years ago I found myself without a job for the first time.

I ran into Snell before (and again after) Apple’s event last week, and he mentioned that it marked Six Colors’s 10th anniversary. My reaction: I somehow simultaneously think of Six Colors as still kinda new and a bedrock, irreplaceable part of the Apple media firmament.

On days like today, it’s the first site I visit, because of pieces like these:

Dan Moren: “iOS 18 Review: Your iPhone, Your Way”
Snell: “iPadOS 18 Review (ish): Math Notes, Calculator, and Weird Tab Bars”

And, nearest and dearest to my heart, Snell’s review of MacOS 15 Sequoia. All of that, just today.

Apple Watch’s Sleep Apnea Detection Feature Now Available in More Than 150 Countries ★

Joe Rossignol, reporting for MacRumors:

Apple released watchOS 11 today following months of beta testing. A key new health-related feature included in the software update is sleep apnea detection, which is available starting today on the Apple Watch Series 10, Apple Watch Series 9, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 in more than 150 countries and regions, according to Apple.

The list of countries includes the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, and many others, with a full list available on Apple’s website. A few English-speaking countries where the feature is not yet available are Australia and Canada, as Apple is still seeking regulatory clearance for the feature in some regions.

Apple has also published the clinical validation summary for the sleep apnea notification feature.

Thierry Breton Resigns, Forced Out by the European Commission President ★

Thierry Breton, in a letter to Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission:

On 24 July, you wrote to Member States asking them to nominate candidates for the 2024-2029 College of Commissioner, specifying that Member States that intend to suggest the incumbent Member of the Commission were not required to suggest two candidates. On 25 July, President Emmanuel Macron designated me as France’s official candidate for a second mandate in the College of Commissioners — as he had already publicly announced on the margins of the European Council on 28 June. A few days ago, in the very final stretch of negotiations on the composition of the future College, you asked France to withdraw my name — for personal reasons that in no instance you have discussed directly with me — and offered, as a political trade-off, an allegedly more influential portfolio for France in the future College. You will now be proposed a different candidate.

Over the past five years, I have relentlessly striven to uphold and advance the common European good, above national and party interests. It has been an honour.

However, in light of these latest developments — further testimony to questionable governance — I have to conclude that I can no longer exercise my duties in the College.

I am therefore resigning from my position as European Commissioner, effective immediately.

Translation from bureaucratese to English: “Faced with being fired for being a jackass or resigning, I resign.”

I’m starting to get the feeling that the EC’s regulatory arm is not, in fact, politically popular in the EU.

Sunday, 15 September 2024

Tiptop ★

My thanks to Tiptop for sponsoring DF last week. Tiptop is a completely new way to pay that makes everything you buy more affordable with trade-in at checkout. It’s incredibly easy. At checkout, you simply select any item you own that you want to trade in from Tiptop’s catalog of over 50,000 choices, and you’ll receive instant credit towards your purchase.

If you’re a merchant, you can easily enable Tiptop with no up front costs, Shopify checkout support, and great APIs for integration with any store. Plus, they are currently offering $10,000 in Tiptop Promotional Credit that you can use to help your customers learn about Tiptop without discounting.

Get started now as a merchant, or experience Tiptop as a shopper at partners like Nothing Tech, Daylight, Cradlewise, and King of Christmas. (And if you’re thinking Tiptop rings a bell, you may recall that after leaving TechCrunch last year, Matthew Panzarino joined Tiptop, and we chatted about it when last he was on The Talk Show earlier this year.)

Saturday, 14 September 2024

Dithering, and This Week’s Apple Event ★

I’m still collecting my thoughts on this week’s “It’s Glowtime” Apple event, and where Apple stands in general. But this episode of Dithering that dropped Friday morning captures my high-level thoughts well. We haven’t done this in a while, but we’re making it free for everyone to listen to. Give it a listen, while I continue to write and think. (We also have a feed of our occasional free episodes; search your podcast player for “Dithering” and it should show up.)

Dithering as a standalone subscription costs just $7/month or $70/year. You get two episodes per week, each exactly 15 minutes long, with yours truly and Ben Thompson. I just love having an outlet like Dithering for weeks like this one. People who try Dithering seem to love it, too — we have remarkably little churn.

(You can also get Dithering by subscribing to Stratechery, a bundle that includes all of Ben’s writing, his interviews, plus the Sharp Tech, Sharp China, and Greatest Of All Talk podcasts — all of that, including Dithering, for just $15/month or $150/year.)

Thursday, 12 September 2024

OpenAI Releases New o1 Reasoning Model ★

Kylie Robison, reporting for The Verge:

OpenAI is releasing a new model called o1, the first in a planned series of “reasoning” models that have been trained to answer more complex questions, faster than a human can. It’s being released alongside o1-mini, a smaller, cheaper version. And yes, if you’re steeped in AI rumors: this is, in fact, the extremely hyped Strawberry model.

For OpenAI, o1 represents a step toward its broader goal of human-like artificial intelligence. More practically, it does a better job at writing code and solving multistep problems than previous models. But it’s also more expensive and slower to use than GPT-4o. OpenAI is calling this release of o1 a “preview” to emphasize how nascent it is. [...]

“The model is definitely better at solving the AP math test than I am, and I was a math minor in college,” OpenAI’s chief research officer, Bob McGrew, tells me. He says OpenAI also tested o1 against a qualifying exam for the International Mathematics Olympiad, and while GPT-4o only correctly solved only 13 percent of problems, o1 scored 83 percent.

Putting aside the politics and other legitimate social and legal concerns around AI, scoring that well in a difficult math exam is just incredible.

Update: Robison wrote:

I wasn’t able to demo o1 myself, but McGrew and Tworek showed it to me over a video call this week. They asked it to solve this puzzle:

“A princess is as old as the prince will be when the princess is twice as old as the prince was when the princess’s age was half the sum of their present age. What is the age of prince and princess? Provide all solutions to that question.”

The model buffered for 30 seconds and then delivered a correct answer.

I found this puzzle pretty damn tricky, personally. I pasted it, verbatim, into ChatGPT-4o and it solved it, correctly, the first time. I pasted it into the new o1-Preview model, and it both took longer and gave me the incorrect answer. I replied to o1-Preview, “Are you sure about that answer? Can you try it again?” and this time it gave me the correct answer. Still impressive, but kind of weird that this was OpenAI’s own example puzzle intended to show off the new o1-Preview model.

Spoilers follow. Avert your eyes from the remainder of the post if you want to solve this one your own. Here’s how I solved the puzzle, with pen and paper, before pasting the puzzle into any LLMs:

Let y = the princess’s age now and x = the prince’s. Let d = the delta between princess and prince’s ages. By definition, at any given year in time, d = y - x and therefore y = x + d. (To be pedantic, d equals the absolute value of y - x but somehow it’s obvious to me, from phrase “as the prince will be”, that the princess is older than the prince.)

We care about three years:

Now.
When the princess is half the sum of their combined ages from year (1).
When the princess is twice the prince’s age from year (2).

For (1), we know by definition that this is always true now matter what year it is: y = x + d — that is to say the princess is d years older than the prince.

For (2) we can express the princess’s age as:

(y + x) / 2

And we from (1) we know that no matter what year it is, the prince is d years younger than the princess. So during year of (2), the prince’s age can be expressed as:

((y + x) / 2) - d

and year (3) is defined as when the princess (y) is twice the above (the prince’s age from year (2)), so the princess age in year (3) can be expressed as:

2((y + x) / 2) - 2d

And in any given year, the prince’s age is the princess’s minus d, which can thus be expressed, for year (3), by subtracting one more d from the line above:

2((y + x) / 2) - 3d

Cancelling out those 2’s:

y + x - 3d

That is the prince’s age for year (3). The puzzle’s definition is that princess’s age now (y) is the same as prince’s in year (3), the line above. So we can form an equation:

y = y + x - 3d

Those y’s cancel out, so we are left with:

x = 3d

And by definition y is always x + d (the prince’s age plus their age difference), so:

y = 4d

So for any given difference (d) in their ages, the prince must be 3 times d and the princess 4 times d:

Difference	Princess = 4d	Prince = 3d
1	4	3
2	8	6
3	12	9
4	16	12
…

So a generalized solution are any ages where the princess is 4/3 the age of the prince. I double-checked this mentally by applying all the clauses of the puzzle to the princess and prince’s ages in each line of the table above.

That’s my answer and my thinking. Here’s a link to my ChatGPT transcript. It’s all one chat, with my first pasting of the puzzle sent to GPT-4o, and all my subsequent comments (including the second pasting of the puzzle) being sent to o1-Preview.

FDA Grants Approval to AirPods Pro 2 for Use as Hearing Aids ★

Brian Heater, reporting for TechCrunch:

The iPhone 16 took center stage at Apple’s “It’s Glowtime” event, but the most interesting tidbit came from a different line entirely. Indeed, among a sea of new hardware came an intriguing software update to one already on the market: the AirPods Pro 2.

Apple announced that its most premium earbuds would double as an over-the-counter hearing aid, courtesy of a software update, pending approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The FDA on Thursday announced that it has granted what it calls “the first over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aid software device, Hearing Aid Feature.” Specifically, it has approved the software update that enables that functionality.

In briefings on Monday, Apple employees expressed what I can only describe as confidence that FDA approval for this would be imminent, but like sports fans, it was almost as though they didn’t want to jinx it. Asked if FDA approval might come before the iOS 18.0 and MacOS 15.0 updates scheduled for this coming Monday, they wouldn’t really answer, but had looks on their faces that said that’s what we’re hoping.

What a great feature this seems to be.

Wednesday, 11 September 2024

Taylor Swift Endorses Kamala Harris, Encourages Followers to Register to Vote ★

Taylor Swift, in a post late last night on Instagram:

I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice. Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make. I also want to say, especially to first time voters: Remember that in order to vote, you have to be registered! I also find it’s much easier to vote early. I’ll link where to register and find early voting dates and info in my story.

With love and hope,

Taylor Swift
Childless Cat Lady

Given her almost unfathomable popularity, any endorsement is a big deal, period. But this was a really well-written statement. The emphasis on doing your own research about both candidates and making up your own mind is persuasive. For one, it appeals to anyone young who’s leaning Trump but feeling squishy about it, and fancies themself an independent thinker. And it deflates any notion that she’s telling her fans to vote for Kamala Harris just because she is.

Timing this endorsement for after the end of last night’s debate seems strategic too. If Harris had done poorly, it would have presented a course-correcting narrative. Or, as actually happened, if Harris handed Trump his dumb red hat, it would run up the score.

And signing off that way? Chef’s kiss.

Social media nerd note: Swift posted this to Instagram, and Instagram only. In 2020, when endorsing Joe Biden, she posted both to Instagram and Twitter. She has a Threads account but has only posted there three times, all back in April, upon the release of her album The Tortured Poets Department.

Tuesday, 10 September 2024

Apple Told to Pay Ireland €13 Billion in Tax by EU ★

BBC News:

Apple has been ordered to pay Ireland €13bn (£11bn; $14bn) in unpaid taxes by Europe’s top court, putting an end to an eight-year row.

The European Commission accused Ireland of giving Apple illegal tax advantages in 2016, but Ireland has consistently argued against the need for the tax to be paid.

The Irish government said it would respect the ruling.

Apple said it was disappointed with the decision and accused the European Commission of “trying to retroactively change the rules”.

Ireland doesn’t want the money:

The Irish government has argued that Apple should not have to repay the back taxes, deeming that its loss was worth it to make the country an attractive home for large companies.

What a great win for Margrethe Vestager, making clear to the world that the EU is hostile to successful companies. Good job.

Good Riddance to Apple’s FineWoven Cases ★

Juli Clover, reporting for MacRumors:

Apple today discontinued its ill-received FineWoven material, introducing no new cases that use the leather replacement. The company has also removed existing FineWoven iPhone cases for older devices from its website, though FineWoven versions of the MagSafe Wallet and AirTag Key Ring continue to be available.

You know what’s a great material for phone cases? Leather. Apple is so damn good at material engineering — I truly expect them to, sooner rather than later, come up with a leather-like non-leather that’s as good or better than actual leather. But FineWoven sure as shit wasn’t it.

Update: Also, Apple is still using FineWoven for watch bands, with, of course, updated colors. It really was just the FineWoven iPhone cases that people complained about — the material seems fine (sorry) for these other products.

New Building at Apple Park: The Observatory ★

My iPhones 16 briefing yesterday was at this new building. It is very nice. A little cozy — it’s not that big. Great light, and from the main room, a splendid view of the main building. Restroom doors are like bank vault doors.

Monday, 9 September 2024

1Password ★

My thanks to 1Password — which, earlier this year, acquired longtime DF sponsor Kolide — for sponsoring last week at DF. When the EU enacted GDPR in 2018, executives and security professionals waited anxiously to see how the law would be enforced. And then they kept waiting ... and waiting ... but the Great European Privacy Crackdown never came.

But the days of betting that you’re too big or too small to be noticed by GDPR are over. Recently, EU member nations (plus the UK) have started taking action against data controllers of all sizes–from the big (Amazon), to the medium (a trucking company), to the truly minuscule (a Spanish citizen whose home security cameras bothered their neighbors).

If you’re an IT or security professional, you may be wondering what to do. Unfortunately, GDPR compliance isn’t the kind of thing you can solve by buying a tool or scheduling a training session. The best place to start is to adopt a policy of data minimization: collect only the data you truly need to function, on both customers and employees. After that, your second priority should be securing the data you have — keeping it only as long as you absolutely need to, and then destroying it.

1Password can help with all aspects of GDPR compliance. To learn more about GDPR compliance, check out this post at 1Password’s blog.

Friday, 6 September 2024

More on Spotify Connect and iPhone Volume Buttons ★

Emma Roth, reporting for The Verge last week:

Spotify users on iPhone will no longer be able to control the volume on connected devices using their physical volume buttons. In an update to its support page, Spotify said Apple “discontinued” this technology, forcing iPhone owners to use an annoying workaround. [...]

“We’ve made requests to Apple to introduce a similar solution to what they offer users on HomePod and Apple TV for app developers who control non-Apple media devices,” Spotify says in its update. “Apple has told us that they require apps to integrate into Home Pod in order to access the technology that controls volume on iPhones.”

I believe Spotify has subsequently edited their support page, because the above text no longer appear here, where it now reads:

Apple has discontinued the technology that enables Spotify to control volume for connected devices using the volume buttons on the device. While we work with them on a solution, you can use the Spotify app to easily adjust the volume on your connected device.

It remains unclear to me exactly what is going on here. I think what happened is that what Spotify was doing to enable users to use the hardware volume buttons on their iPhones to control the volume of playback on other devices via Spotify Connect was making use of private or undocumented APIs, and Apple shut those APIs down in iOS 17.6. In short, that it was a hack that stopped working or just stopped working reliably.

But I was wrong yesterday to say — in the headline of the post, of all places — that Spotify could solve the problem by adopting AirPlay 2. Spotify Connect is, and needs to be, its own separate thing. Spotify users who use Connect love it. Here’s what one DF reader wrote to me: “AirPlay is a per-device feature, while Spotify Connect synchronizes Spotify sessions across devices. I can initiate playing on my iPhone, then control it from my iPad, Mac, or Watch. I can change the destination speaker from any device. It’s so good that I’m forever wedded to Spotify until Apple or someone else comes up with an equivalent experience. I think if AirPlay offered equivalent functionality, but Spotify refused to adopt it, Spotify would be open to more criticism, but from the perspective of a Spotify user, it’s lost functionality and even supporting AirPlay 2 would not fix what is now a diminished experience. So I think Spotify is doing the only thing they can, which is complain.”

The basic gist is that Apple has always controlled the hardware buttons and switches on iOS devices. Games can’t use the volume buttons as, say, left/right or up/down buttons. In the very early years of the App Store third-party camera apps started using the volume buttons as camera shutter buttons, but Apple then forbade it — and then started using those buttons as shutter buttons in the system Camera app, and then, like 15 years later, finally added an API for this use case in iOS 17.2.

But note that new API is only for using these buttons for capture:

Important You can only use this API for capture use cases. The system sends capture events only to apps that actively use the camera. Backgrounded capture apps, and apps not performing capture, don’t receive events.

Spotify (and Sonos) were clearly using the hardware volume buttons in ways unapproved. It’s fair to argue that Apple should provide APIs they can use, especially if it’s for controlling audio volume, even if on another device. But they don’t.

Also worth noting: when using Apple’s own Remote app to control an Apple TV, the iPhone hardware volume buttons adjust the volume on the Apple TV. According to Apple this also works when using the Remote app to control an AirPlay-compatible smart TV. That’s the ability Spotify and Sonos seek for themselves.

See also: Michael Tsai.

Update: I think Marco Arment nailed it:

My guess is this API, which has been deprecated for a decade:
developer.apple.com/documentation/[...]/mpmusicplayercontroller/

It’s the only way we’ve ever been able to programmatically set the iPhone volume, so it’s how apps would intercept volume buttons: observe it for changes, and upon a change, immediately set it back, then perform the custom action.

The only other known method is subview-diving on the MPVolumeView, but I don’t think that was ever reliable enough to actually write changes to the volume.

In other words, it wasn’t just a hack that stopped working, it was a pretty filthy hack that stopped working. There has never been an API for third-party apps to use the hardware volume buttons to do what Spotify Connect and Sonos were doing. There should be. But there never was, and still isn’t.

Thursday, 5 September 2024

Spotify Wants to Use iPhone Volume Buttons to Control Connected Devices, But Refuses to Support AirPlay, Which Would Solve the Problem ★

Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch:

Spotify claims Apple may again be in violation of European regulation, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which requires interoperability from big technology companies dubbed “gatekeepers.” This time, the issue isn’t about in-app purchases, links or pricing information, but rather how Apple has discontinued the technology that allows Spotify users to control the volume on their connected devices.

When streaming to connected devices via Spotify Connect on iOS, users were previously able to use the physical buttons on the side of their iPhone to adjust the volume. As a result of the change, this will no longer work. To work around the issue, Spotify iOS users will instead be directed to use the volume slider in the Spotify Connect menu in the app to control the volume on connected devices.

The company notes that this issue doesn’t affect users controlling the volume on iOS Bluetooth or AirPlay sessions, nor users on Android. It only applies to those listening via Spotify Connect on iOS.

Who should get to decide the rules for how the hardware volume buttons work on iPhones and iPads? Apple, or the European Commission?

Wednesday, 4 September 2024

Liz Cheney: ‘Not Only Am I Not Voting for Donald Trump, but I Will Be Voting for Kamala Harris’ ★

Annie Karni, reporting for The New York Times:

During an event at Duke University, Ms. Cheney told students that it was not enough for her to simply oppose the former president, if she intended to do whatever was necessary to prevent Mr. Trump from winning the White House again, as she has long said she would.

“I don’t believe we have the luxury of writing in candidates’ names, particularly in swing states,” Ms. Cheney said, speaking to students in the hotly contested state of North Carolina. “As a conservative, as someone who believes in and cares about the Constitution, I have thought deeply about this and because of the danger that Donald Trump poses, not only am I not voting for Donald Trump, but I will be voting for Kamala Harris.”

The room erupted in cheers after she made her unexpected announcement.

I have so much respect for Cheney. Her father too, but he’s retired. Liz Cheney took this principled stand while she was one of the most influential Republicans in the nation. I get being a conservative, politically. I get being opposed to the Democratic Party, politically. Liz Cheney is a conservative and — like her father — endorses very different policies than Kamala Harris. But (lowercase ‘d’) democratic politics ought to be viewed very much like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs are in psychology. Some things matter more than others. And nothing — not climate change or the environment, not reproductive rights, and certainly not fucking tax rates — nothing matters more than support for democracy itself and the rule of law. The only way we’re going to get those other things right — which are really, really important — is through democratic governance and the rule of law.

Trump is 100 percent anti-Democratic-Party but he’s no conservative. I don’t support or endorse a Reagan/Bush/Cheney political viewpoint, but that viewpoint is coherent. Trump espouses no coherent views at all. He literally tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. He’s a criminal. He’s mentally deranged, decrepitly old, and failing before our eyes. “I don’t like Democrats” is — with Trump on the ballot and polling within the margin of error of winning — not high enough on the political hierarchy of needs to cast one’s vote for anyone but Kamala Harris.

If the Democratic candidate were a Trump-like decrepit crooked lunatic, I wouldn’t hesitate, for a second, to vote for, say, Republican Liz Cheney for president. None of this namby-pamby bullshit about “writing in” a non-candidate’s name. No protest voting for a third-party candidate. The next president is either going to be Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, and only one of the two believes in anything at all — anything — that this great country stands for.

Trump Threatens Zuckerberg With ‘Life in Prison’ in New Book ★

Alex Isenstadt, writing for Politico:

“Save America,” a Trump-authored coffee table book being released Sept. 3, includes an undated photograph of Trump meeting with Zuckerberg in the White House. Under the photo, Trump writes that Zuckerberg “would come to the Oval Office to see me. He would bring his very nice wife to dinners, be as nice as anyone could be, while always plotting to install shameful Lock Boxes in a true PLOT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT,” Trump added, referring to a $420 million contribution Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, made during the 2020 election to fund election infrastructure.

“He told me there was nobody like Trump on Facebook. But at the same time, and for whatever reason, steered it against me,” Trump continues. “We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison — as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election.”

I was not aware that “steering” a social network against a presidential candidate was not only illegal, but subject to life in prison. Elon Musk better be careful with anti-Kamala-Harris posts like this one, because I’m sure Trump feels just as strongly about “steering” in either direction. The law’s the law, and Donald J. Trump is a stickler for the law — not some sort of vindictive thin-skinned crackpot megalomaniac who is obsessed with “life in prison” because it’s looking more and more like that’s his own fate.

The Secret Inside One Million Checkboxes ★

Last year Nolen Royalty made a website called One Million Checkboxes, which presented to the user exactly what it claimed on the tin. The gimmick was that the million checkboxes were shared globally. If I toggled checkbox 206,028 in my browser, you’d see checkbox 206,028 flip state in your browser. Totally pointless. Totally fun.

Here, Royalty tells the story of how the site was used by bot-writing teenage hackers:

Lots of people were mad about bots on OMCB. I’m not going to link to anything here — I don’t want to direct negative attention at anyone — but I got hundreds of messages about bots. The most popular tweet about OMCB complained about bots. People … did not like bots.

And I get it! The typical ways that folks — especially folks who don’t program — bump into bots are things like ticket scalping and restaurant reservation bots. Bots that feel selfish and unfair and antisocial.

And there certainly was botting that you could call antisocial. Folks wrote tiny javascript boxes to uncheck every box that they could — I know this because they excitedly told me. [...]

What this discord did was so cool — so surprising — so creative. It reminded me of me — except they were 10 times the developer I was then (and frankly, better developers than I am now). Getting to watch it live — getting to provide some encouragement, to see what they were doing and respond with praise and pride instead of anger — was deeply meaningful to me. I still tear up when I think about it.

Via Jason Kottke, who aptly observes that the way the hackers got in touch with Royalty “reminds me of the palimpsest (layered communication) that the aliens use to communicate with Earth in Carl Sagan’s Contact (and the 1997 movie).”

Oprah Winfrey Is Hosting a Prime-Time TV Special on AI ★

Benj Edwards:

On Thursday, ABC announced an upcoming TV special titled, “AI and the Future of Us: An Oprah Winfrey Special.” The one-hour show, set to air on September 12, aims to explore AI’s impact on daily life and will feature interviews with figures in the tech industry, like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Bill Gates. Soon after the announcement, some AI critics began questioning the guest list and the framing of the show in general. [...]

In a nod to present-day content creation, YouTube creator Marques Brownlee will appear on the show and reportedly walk Winfrey through “mind-blowing demonstrations of AI’s capabilities.”

Brownlee’s involvement received special attention from some critics online. “Marques Brownlee should be absolutely ashamed of himself,” tweeted PR consultant and frequent AI critic Ed Zitron, who frequently heaps scorn on generative AI in his own newsletter. “What a disgraceful thing to be associated with.”

What a jackassed take from Zitron. I mean think about it. Imagine that Oprah’s producers get in touch with MKBHD to ask if he’d like to participate in a prime-time network TV special about AI, specifically to show cool AI use cases, and he was like, “Nah, I don’t think this special is going to sufficiently present the viewpoint of a wide enough array of AI critics.”

These galaxy-brain peanut gallerians haven’t even seen clips from the show, let alone the entire special itself. They’re judging it by the guest list. A guest list that in fact includes obvious critics and skeptics. Edwards:

Other guests include Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin from the Center for Humane Technology, who aim to highlight “emerging risks posed by powerful and superintelligent AI,” an existential risk topic that has its own critics. And FBI Director Christopher Wray will reveal “the terrifying ways criminals and foreign adversaries are using AI,” while author Marilynne Robinson will reflect on “AI’s threat to human values.”

It’s also quite likely that invited guests weren’t told who the other interview subjects were. That’s just not how these things work. Oprah’s production surely shot dozens of hours of interviews to cut into a one-hour special — some of the subjects were likely left on the cutting-room floor.

If you don’t think it’s anything short of fucking cool that Marques Brownlee is getting a spot to show off cool AI use cases to Oprah in a prime-time network TV special, you’re a jackass. And if you’re going to argue that there are no cool AI use cases, you’re a liar.

Tuesday, 3 September 2024

Apple Sports, Updated for Football Season, Will Soon Support Live Activities ★

Apple Newsroom:

With iOS 18 and watchOS 11, the Apple Sports app will offer Live Activities for all teams and leagues available in the app for the first time ever, delivering live scores and play-by-play at a quick glance to a user’s iPhone and Apple Watch Lock Screens.

Coming in an app update later this year, Apple Sports will also introduce a new drop-down navigation for the main scorecard views, making it even faster to switch between My Leagues, My Teams, and users’ feeds for favorited leagues. A new enhanced search makes it easier to view matches for leagues fans do not currently follow.

Does anyone understand why it requires iOS 18 for Live Activities? Perhaps it’s just a subtle nudge to get people to upgrade their device OS?

Also: Interesting but unsurprising to me that Apple Sports will support Live Activities on WatchOS, but won’t offer a WatchOS app. I think this is the way most — or at least many — apps should support WatchOS going forward. It’s just never been a great platform for “apps”. It’s a great platform for glanceable information, though.

Update: Via email, DF reader Deep Desai explains the iOS 18 requirement:

This is definitely because broadcast push notifications require iOS 18 — this lets you create a channel on APNS which devices can subscribe to. It’s pub/sub instead of collecting individual push tokens from devices and sending them each a notification.

Departure Mono ★

“Departure Mono is a monospaced pixel font inspired by the constraints of early command-line and graphical user interfaces, the tiny pixel fonts of the late 90s/early 00s, and sci-fi concepts from film and television.”

Both the font (by Helena Zhang) and website (by Tobias Fried) are fantastic. Freely available, too.

Brazil’s X Ban Is Sending Lots of People to Bluesky ★

Jay Peters, The Verge:

X is currently banned in Brazil following an order from a Supreme Court justice, and Brazilian users seem to be turning to Bluesky, an alternate social network, in droves.

“Brazil, you’re setting new all-time-highs for activity on Bluesky!” the official Bluesky account said in a post.

“There will almost certainly be some outages and performance issues,” Bluesky developer Paul Frazee said. “We’ve never seen traffic like this. Hang with us!”

Back in May 2023, I made a bold prediction that hasn’t panned out:

Bluesky is going to skyrocket to mainstream popularity and actually replace Twitter, and Mastodon cannot, because Bluesky is being designed to be simple, fun, and — most importantly — easy to understand.

That prediction might have proven wrong anyway, but the event I didn’t foresee at the time was Meta’s Threads (which launched last July). Threads is thriving, and by some measures, for some communities, has overtaken X as the preeminent Twitter-like social network. But, for better (in some ways) and worse (in others), Threads is quite different from the Twitter of yore.

What’s great about Bluesky is that of today’s four major Twitter-like platforms — X, Threads, Mastodon, Bluesky — it’s the one that’s closest in spirit to old Twitter. Yet, personally, it gets the least of my attention of the four. Still rooting for Bluesky, though, and I’m not surprised at all that, faced with a sudden shutdown of X, Bluesky is seeing a jolt of Brazilian signups.

‘Founder Mode’ ★

Paul Graham:

The theme of Brian’s talk was that the conventional wisdom about how to run larger companies is mistaken. As Airbnb grew, well-meaning people advised him that he had to run the company in a certain way for it to scale. Their advice could be optimistically summarized as “hire good people and give them room to do their jobs.” He followed this advice and the results were disastrous. So he had to figure out a better way on his own, which he did partly by studying how Steve Jobs ran Apple. So far it seems to be working. Airbnb’s free cash flow margin is now among the best in Silicon Valley.

The audience at this event included a lot of the most successful founders we’ve funded, and one after another said that the same thing had happened to them. They’d been given the same advice about how to run their companies as they grew, but instead of helping their companies, it had damaged them.

Why was everyone telling these founders the wrong thing? That was the big mystery to me. And after mulling it over for a bit I figured out the answer: what they were being told was how to run a company you hadn’t founded — how to run a company if you’re merely a professional manager. But this m.o. is so much less effective that to founders it feels broken. There are things founders can do that managers can’t, and not doing them feels wrong to founders, because it is.

More on the Clooney-Pitt Movie ‘Wolfs’ ★

Apple Original Films had originally promised writer-director Jon Watts and co-stars George Clooney and Brad Pitt a wide theatrical release for their upcoming (and seemingly well-reviewed) movie Wolfs. But, pretty much at the last minute, Apple canceled those plans, and instead will screen it in limited theaters for one week before streaming it on Apple TV+ at the end of this month.

David Canfield interviewed Watts for Vanity Fair, where Watts said he only found out about the change in plans a few days before it was announced:

Canfield: As somebody who’s worked in indies, who’s worked in the MCU, and has now made a standalone studio movie, how do you see the state of theatrical versus streaming, especially given the pivot with this movie? Does it concern you at all?

Watts: You want the movie to be seen, and if you maximize the way that people are able to actually see a movie, I think that is good — I watched so many movies that really influenced me on VHS because I grew up in a small town in Colorado, so we just didn’t have those movies in the theaters. But for me, the theatrical experience is still the number one. It’s up to the people that are able to make those decisions to put them in theaters for people to see, and just have the confidence that people will go see them. People want to go to the movies. People love the movies.

Canfield: If you had known then what you know now about the way this movie will be released, would you have gone in another direction, given that you were talking to a lot of studios?

Watts: [Laughs] I try to not think about hypothetical situations like that.

It doesn’t sound like Apple’s change of plans has resulted in bad blood, per se — merely disappointment. Watts has already agreed to write, produce, and direct a sequel. But it feels like Apple is still in the early stages of navigating its role as a Hollywood studio. I think there’s still a sense that Apple is a creator-friendly partner for big-budget movies, but a move like this, contradicting the obvious wishes of both the director and two of the biggest stars in the business, works against that reputation.

Also, a week-ago report in The New York Times by Nicole Sperling reported that Clooney and Pitt were paid “more than $35 million each”. But speaking at the Venice Film Festival premiere of Wolfs yesterday, Clooney said that number was bullshit:

“[It was] an interesting article and whatever her source was for our salary, it is millions and millions and millions of dollars less than what was reported. And I am only saying that because I think it’s bad for our industry if that’s what people think is the standard bearer for salaries,” Clooney said. “I think that’s terrible, it’ll make it impossible to make films.”

Monday, 2 September 2024

1Password and Charging for SSO ★

My thanks to 1Password — which, earlier this year, acquired frequent DF sponsor Kolide — for sponsoring last week at DF. Imagine if you went to the movies and they charged $8,000 for popcorn. Or, imagine you got on a plane and they told you that seatbelts were only available in first class. Your sense of outraged injustice would probably be something like what IT and security professionals feel when a software vendor hits them with the dreaded SSO tax — the practice of charging an outrageous premium for Single Sign-On, often by making it part of a product’s “enterprise tier”. The jump in price can be astonishing — one CRM charges over 5000% more for the tier with SSO. At those prices, only very large companies can afford to pay for SSO. But the problem is that companies of all sizes need it.

Until outraged customers can shame vendors into getting rid of the tax, many businesses have to figure out how to live without SSO. For them, the best route is likely to be a password manager, which also reduces weak and re-used credentials, and enables secure sharing across teams. And a password manager is likely a good investment anyway, for apps that aren’t integrated with SSO. To learn more about the past, present, and future of the SSO tax, read 1Password’s full blog post.

‘In the South of France With George and Brad’ ★

I really dug this interview by Zach Baron for GQ with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, who are co-stars in the upcoming Apple feature film Wolfs:

Clooney: We’re lucky too. We’re in a profession that doesn’t force you into retirement.

Baron: Well, there’s two sides of that coin, right? There is that cliché for actors of: All of a sudden the phone stops ringing.

Clooney: Okay, but there’s two ways of doing this, right? The phone stops ringing if your decision is that you want to continue to be the character that you were when you were 35, and you want a softer lens. But if you’re willing to, say, move down the call sheet a little bit and do interesting character work, then you can kind of — you have to make peace with the idea that you’re going to die! I will walk up to people and they’ll be like, “Oh, you’re older than I thought.” And I’m like, “I’m 63, you dumb shit!” It’s just: That’s life. And so as long as you can make peace with the idea of change, then it’s okay. The hard part is, and I know a lot of actors who do this — and you do too — who don’t let that go and try desperately to hold onto it.

Sunday, 1 September 2024

The Talk Show: ‘Good Enough to Be Pesky’ ★

Special guest Taegan Goddard, longtime writer and founder of Political Wire, joins the show to talk about the past, present, and future of independent media.