Jon Brodkin writing for Ars Technica Security reporter Brian Krebs called the move “a gift to phishers” in an article yesterday. It was a phishing risk because scammers could register a domain name like “netflitwitter.com,” which would appear as “netflix.com” in posts on X, but clicking the link would take a user to netflitwitter.com. This is something you’d expect from a high school computer science assignment, not a company that’s supposed to be worth $44 billion.

I have Facebook notifications set to deliver in the scheduled summary. It’s worked fine for a long time, but now all of a sudden I’m getting these notifications each day. These are not time sensitive Facebook. Needless to say I’ve disabled Facebook’s ability to send me “time sensitive” notifications.

Ryan Gilliam writing at Polygon: The star of the trailer is the new Prismatic subclass, which allows players to combine all of the other game’s subclasses into one. Bungie calls this an “advanced” subclass, and it looks like it’ll offer an entirely new way to play. Prismatic Guardians even gain the ability to use a super-powered grenade that combines darkness and light together. Other subclasses will be getting grenades as well that combine elements: stasis and void for Warlocks; strand and arc for Titans; and solar and statis for Hunters.

Sarah Fielding writing for Engadget Now, YouTube’s CEO Neal Mohan has responded with a clear warning to OpenAI that using its videos to teach Sora would be a “clear violation” of the platform’s terms of use. That’s pretty rich coming from Google.

Ron Amadeo writing for Ars Technica Having an office with barely working Wi-Fi sure is awkward for a company pushing a “return to office” plan that includes at least three days a week at Google’s Wi-Fi desert.

Karl Bode writing for TechDirt You could ban TikTok with a patriotic flourish from the heavens immediately, but if we fail to regulate data brokers, pass a privacy law, or combat corruption, Chinese (or Russian, or Iranian) intelligence can simply turn around and buy that same data (and detailed profiles of American consumers) from an unlimited parade of different data brokers, telecoms, app makers, marketing companies, or services. Amen!

Scharon Harding writing for Wired If you want to opt out of the new “Dispute Resolution Terms,” you have to write a letter. I never really liked Roku.

Ron Amadeo writing for Ars Technica We’re five months removed from the launch of the Pixel 8, and that doesn’t seem like a justifiable position anymore: Google says its latest AI models can’t run on the Pixel 8. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Looking forward to this!

John Gruber writing over at Daring Fireball But what’s the counterargument? That anything short of 100 percent accuracy at flagging scams and rip-offs renders the entire App Store review process pointless? That if, say, 1 in every 1,000 scam attempts slips through, the entire process should be scrapped? That argument can’t be taken seriously. Best take I’ve seen on this whole situation.

Nilay Patel writing for The Verge This of course follows YouTube, Spotify, and Netflix all declining to allow their iPad apps to run on the Vision Pro before launch — and the last time we asked, there was no mention of a proper visionOS YouTube app coming in the future, so something’s changed in Mountain View. (One theory: the immediate popularity of Christian Selig’s Juno app for YouTube on the Vision Pro.

Jason Snell writing at Six Colors By default, Apple’s backend systems will find a new episode of a podcast and transcribe it. When a new podcast episode drops, the transcript won’t be available right away—but will appear once Apple has had a chance to consume it.

Great post by Karawynn Long on LLMs and language as a sign of intelligence over on their Nine Lives newsletter. Everyone should definitely read it, but here’s a few of my favourite quotes: “Language skill indicates intelligence,” and its logical inverse, “lack of language skill indicates non-intelligence,” is a common heuristic with a long history. It is also a terrible one, inaccurate in a way that ruinously injures disabled people. Now, with recent advances in computing technology, we’re watching this heuristic fail in ways that will harm almost everyone.

Over at 9to5Mac But interestingly, Larin, Bezvershenko, and Kucherin note there is a mystery remaining when it comes to CVE-2023-38606 that they’d like help with. Specifically, it’s not clear how attackers would have known about the hidden hardware feature: We are publishing the technical details, so that other iOS security researchers can confirm our findings and come up with possible explanations of how the attackers learned about this hardware feature.

Julyssa Lopez writing for Rolling Stone Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong drew cheers from the live audience when he sang out, “I’m not part of the MAGA agenda” during his performance. The original line is, “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda.” ❤️ Green Day!

Chance Miller writing for 9to5Mac Some of the early real-world reviews of the 2024 Chevy Blazer EV have emerged, and it certainly doesn’t sound like GM’s “Ultifi” infotainment software is ready for prime time. I don’t suspect this will get any better anytime soon.

Emma Roth writing for The Verge What started as a simple app download in Beeper Mini has become an increasingly complex process for Beeper users, and its latest fix seems like its most desperate attempt yet: Beeper wants users to own or rent a jailbroken iPhone, along with having a Mac or Linux computer. I think it’s safe to say Beeper Mini is no more.

Annual gingerbread house decorating complete.