Linked List: October 26, 2026

Monday, 26 October 2026

The NYT Seemingly Does Marissa Mayer Dirty 

Alexandra Alter, in the lede for her profile of Marissa Mayer’s new AI startup Dazzle for The New York Times (gift link):

Late last year, Marissa Mayer was struggling with what felt like an impossible task.

Her daughter Marielle was turning 10, and Marielle’s teacher wanted three bullet points summarizing what made her special. Mayer — the former chief executive of Yahoo and a pioneer at Google, where she was the first female engineer — likes cracking a hard problem. But she felt overwhelmed by the range and complexity of potential answers.

So Mayer asked her personal A.I. assistant, Dazzle. Within a few seconds, Dazzle delivered an answer.

“It came back and was like, your daughter is empathetic, creative and an animal lover,” Mayer said. She thought it was perfect.

That anecdote is brutal. It makes it seem like Mayer has lost her mind. She’s getting roasted for it on social media. I suspected (and hoped) there was more to the story. There was. Here’s Mayer herself on X:

To be clear, I didn’t use Dazzle because I was overwhelmed by making a slide. I used it because summing up your child in a few bullets feels laughably limiting. And, since our team had just gotten an early prototype running, I wanted to see what deeper threads it might find.

She might just be hyping her startup. But she definitely didn’t tell The Times that she needed help from AI to remember that her own daughter is “empathetic, creative, and an animal lover”. She seemingly got done dirty by Alter and the Times on that use-case anecdote.

Apple Issues Statement on iPhone Duo’s Crack Problem 

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

Here is Apple’s full statement:

The response to iPhone Duo from early users has been incredibly positive, and we are seeing exciting things from developers who are rapidly updating their apps to take advantage of its unique form factor. We are aware of an issue impacting the inner display on a small number of iPhone Duo units. If users experience issues with their iPhone Duo display, they should contact AppleCare for a replacement.

The company says the problem affects a very small number of iPhone Duo units and appears to surface relatively quickly. Most iPhone Duo units are not affected. You do not need AppleCare+ to have your iPhone Duo replaced for this problem. If you bought from a carrier, you should contact AppleCare directly, not your carrier, to get your device replaced.

Did it cross Ternus’s mind to just say “You’re folding it wrong?”

(History doesn’t repeat, and in this case, it actually doesn’t even rhyme. Steve Jobs never told anyone they were “holding it wrong” with the iPhone 4 — he emailed a customer, “Just avoid holding it in that way.” But CNN went with the headline “Apple on iPhone Complaints: You’re Holding It Wrong” and that’s the line everyone wrongly remembers.)

Glenn Fleishman on Apple Notes and Markdown 

Glenn Fleishman, writing at Six Colors, “Why Notes Will Never Let Us Edit Markdown”:

The Notes app added Markdown import and export in the version 26 operating system releases, and the macOS 27 Golden Gate update lets us copy and paste as Markdown. Why can’t we just write natively in that hoary, simple format?

I use Markdown all day, every day. In fact, I’m writing these words in Markdown without you even knowing it. All content-management systems (CMSes) I’m aware of support native Markdown entries when posting, and many writing and note-taking apps integrate Markdown conventions without needing to trumpet them.

Fleishman not only ably describes why Apple Notes doesn’t support editing in Markdown syntax, but also why it shouldn’t. It is correct for Notes only to natively support WYSIWYG editing. Normal users should never ever be exposed to formatting codes. Also, Markdown, as a language, can be malformed. It should be impossible for users to create a malformed note in Notes. If you could edit in Markdown in Notes, you could create malformed notes. That’s just gross. I can say that. Markdown isn’t for everyone. And even for me — Markdown’s creator — I don’t want it in Notes, which is the notes app I use.

I think Apple has done a really good job in the last few years adding import/export and copy/paste support for Markdown to Notes. That’s the right way for Notes to support Markdown. My biggest complaint with Notes’s recent Markdown support — as noted by Fleishman — is that most of these features are only on the Mac, not iOS.

A Simple Two-Step Shortcuts Shortcut Lets You Lock the iPhone Duo When You Close It 

Federico Viticci:

Don’t like that the iPhone Duo doesn’t auto-lock when you close it?

You can fix it with this simple Shortcuts automation.

Two steps:

  1. A conditional for when the iPhone is Closed.
  2. Lock the screen.

I mentioned in my review that I kept closing the Duo expecting it to lock, like when closing a book (or a laptop, for that matter). And it didn’t occur to me that I could simply add this feature via Shortcuts. That’s cool. But I also mentioned in my review that I wouldn’t want that to happen every time I closed it. Sometimes you do want to just switch from the wonderful inner display to the miserable little outer display, and the last thing you want when you do that is to need to re-authenticate for the hundredth time of the day with Touch ID. It was just a wrong instinct I had, and I broke myself of that instinct after about a week or so of full-time Duo use. I stopped expecting it to lock on close. So while I think this shortcut is worth pointing out — and I especially think it’s a good reminder to think about Shortcuts when you find yourself wishing for features that aren’t in Settings — I recommend trying to break yourself of this habit if you have a Duo and find yourself with the same wrong close-to-lock instinct I initially had.

Update: Stephen Robles posted a clever version that only locks the Duo on close if it’s on the home screen; if any app is open, it stays unlocked. That’s much more tempting to try. (He includes that one in a whole video full of Duo tips on YouTube.)

Tiny Computers for iPhone Duo 

If you’ve got or get a Duo and don’t try this out, you’re not hooked up right.

Update: But as Cabel Sasser notes, though incredibly fun, this was clearly made by a young Claude-aided developer who never used any of these actual old computers. Let’s just say there are a lot of ahistorical details.