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.
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.
I hate daylight saving time…
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.
🤦🏻♂️
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.)
Looking forward to the time when I have to explain to my in-laws that in order to install that app that they want on their iPhone they’ll have to download and sign up for the Facebook App Store, oh, but not that Facebook App Store, that’s a fake one. But this is all good and better because it’s more open now and you have more choice. Yes, you’ll have to give your credit card information to the Facebook App Store before you can download that free app.
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.
This just seems dumb to me, but I guess to each their own.
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!
We finished the first season of The Wheel of Time and have started working our way through the second. I really like it, hopefully there’s a third season coming.
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.
Some things I think Apple’s new Journal app needs:
- macOS and iPadOS support - the iPhone is fine for short, quick entries, but I want to be able to use a keyboard for those longer entries.
- Weather information - I like capturing the weather with my entires, temperature, conditions, they just add a bit to the memory.
- Export capabilities - Some way of getting the entries out of the app. Even something as basic as save to PDF would be enough for me.
Annual gingerbread house decorating complete.
Been playing a lot of #Destiny2 since the new season launched. The new coil activity is a lot of fun. Think I’ll play some #BaldursGate3 this weekend though, I want to progress my Dark Urge playthrough.
Michileen Martin writing for Giant Freaking Robot
We don’t know yet if the Baldur’s Gate project Netflix has in mind is a series and/or movie, though narratively speaking the former would seem to make the most sense. Not counting the early 2010s remakes of the Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II, the series spans nine games and over a century of story.
I’d love to see this happen!
Chris Welch writing for The Verge
It appears that Beeper Mini, an easy iMessage solution for Android, was simply too good to be true — or a short-lived dream, at least. On Friday, less than a week after its launch, the app started experiencing technical issues when users were suddenly unable to send and receive blue bubble messages. The problems grew worse over the course of the day, with reports piling up on the Beeper subreddit. Several people at The Verge were unable to activate their Android phone numbers with Beeper Mini as of Friday afternoon, a clear indication that Apple has plugged up whatever holes allowed the app to operate to begin with.
Jacob Kastrenakes writing for The Verge
Messages sent from Beeper Mini on my Pixel 8 appear as blue bubbles on the iPhones of my friends and family members. Group chats I’m on automatically switched over to iMessage as soon as someone fired off a meme. Reactions, threads, photos, and videos (without the messy text message compression) all came through. The best thing I can say about Beeper Mini is that almost no one noticed I was using it: blue bubbles just started appearing — no lost messages to speak of.
Ron Amadeo writing for Ars Technica
Google’s first attack on ad blockers is blowing up the “WebRequest API”—the primary API that ad blockers use—and replacing it with a more limited filtering API that Google has more control over. The new declarativeNetRequest API now has extensions ask Chrome to block a network request on their behalf, features arbitrary limits on the number of filtering rules, and puts limits on how effective individual rules can be.
Competed Warload’s Ruin, the new dungeon in #Destiny2 yesterday, loads of fun.
Jay Bonggolto writing for Android Central
Some people have speculated that this delay might be a clumsy attempt by YouTube to force ads on users who block them. The code in question might be trying to make sure that an ad plays for at least five seconds before the actual video starts.
The fact that Google is attempting to block adblockers on YouTube tells you who Google considers the real customers to be. Users are blocking ads because the experience sucks, but rather than trying to improve the experience for the users, Google chooses to force the enshittification on them.
