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NPR: Several days after top national security officials accidentally included a reporter in a Signal chat about bombing Houthi sites in Yemen, a Pentagon-wide advisory warned against using the messaging app, even for unclassified information. “A vulnerability has been i...

Thomas Barrabi, reporting for The New York Post: The European Union is set to slap Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta with a fine that could stretch to $1 billion or more for allegedly violating its strict antitrust rules, The Post has learned — setting up a possible showdown with P...

Foo Yun Chee, reporting for Reuters under the headline “Exclusive: Apple Set to Stave Off EU Fine Into Browser Options, Sources Say”: Apple is set to stave off a possible fine and an EU order over its browser options on iPhones after it made changes to comply with landma...

World Athletics, the international governing body for athletics (track & field, etc.), is introducing “mandatory testing for anyone entering female competitions to verify their biological sex”.

Frustrated that the US Treasury Department is walking back plans to replace Andrew Jackson on the front of the $20 bill with Harriet Tubman, Dano Wall created a 3D-printed stamp that can be used to transform Jacksons into Tubmans on the twenties in your pocketbook. Here’s...

A judge chastised vandals of a Paddington Bear statue: “His famous label attached to his duffle coat says ‘please look after this bear’. On the night of the 2nd of March 2025, your actions were the antithesis of everything Paddington stands for.”

💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Apple Newsroom:

To celebrate the start of WWDC, Apple will also host an in-person experience on June 9 that will provide developers with the opportunity to watch the Keynote and Platforms State of the Union at Apple Park, meet with Apple experts one-on-one and in group labs, and take part in special activities. Space will be limited; details on how to apply to attend can be found on the WWDC25 website.

Right on time: in recent years, WWDC dates have been announced on:

• Tuesday 30 March 2021
• Tuesday 5 April 2022
• Wednesday 29 March 2023
• Tuesday 26 March 2024

and now today, Tuesday 25 March 2025. Last Tuesday in March next year is March 31 — that’s my guess for next year’s announcement.

And, yes, the “25” in the logo has a decidedly glassy look and some animation that’s just plain fun.

Link: apple.com/newsroom/2025/03/apples-worldwide-developers…

Long waits, waves of calls, website crashes: Social Security is breaking down. A deep-dive into the Trump administration’s gutting of Social Security (a long-time conservative goal).

Yours truly back in May 2023, in a thread on Mastodon (at the time, you needed an invitation code to get into Bluesky, and it was just a few months after Musk’s takeover and remaking of what was once Twitter): Bluesky is going to skyrocket to mainstream popularity and ac...

In this episode of This American Life from a few weeks ago, Masha Gessen read an excerpt from their book Surviving Autocracy about the particular kind of lie used by autocrats like Putin and Trump. Lies can serve a number of functions. People lie to deflect, to avoid embar...

What the Press Got Wrong About Hitler. This “comical figure” was regularly ridiculed in the German & international press right up until he became chancellor. It did very little to sway his supporters’ fervor.

Jon Passantino, writing at Status: Now Threads feels rather lifeless. While users still post there, for many it has become something of a second-tier platform — a place that they dump content out of habit, not because they’re having real conversations or finding meaningf...

Oscar-winning Palestinian director Hamdan Ballal (No Man’s Land) was attacked by a group of 15 armed Israeli settlers and then arrested by the Israeli army. “They let the settlers attack him and then the army abducted him.”

The expanding size of American cars over the past few decades is increasing congestion by reducing the vehicle capacity of roadways. SUVs are longer, require more braking distance, and drivers behind them need to leave more space to see around them.

A recent study found that Black Lives Matter protests had a “significant and decisive impact” on the 2020 election. “This represents one of the most consequential impacts of a social movement on electoral politics in recent history.”

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan owe them this rewatch… WE OWE IT TO 'EM! The guys shave a few points for Western University as they revisit the 1994 sports classic ‘Blue Chips’ starring Nick Nolte, Mary McDonnell, J.T. Walsh, Shaquille O’Neal, and Penny Hardaway. Directed by William Friedkin. Watch this episode and much more on our Ringer Movies YouTube channel! Producer: Craig Horlbeck Video Producer: Jack Sanders, Chia Hao Tat Try Loom today, visit loom.com to get started. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bryan Irace: Barring a sharp correction, Apple looks increasingly likely to miss out on a generation of developers conditioned to first reach for tools like Cursor, Replit, or v0 — especially as Apple’s own AI tooling remains notably absent. This goes well beyond enablin...

Lex.Games is an iOS app (and website) for playing eight daily word games.

I paid Gruber many thousands of dollars to run this ad for free games which themselves have no ads. Please keep reading.

The games:

Conlextions: Inspired by NYT’s Connections
Lexicogs: Solve crossword-style clues by assembling letter “cogs”
By a Vowel: A word jumble game with missing vowels
Six Appeal: Wordle with six-letter words

There’s also a daily Mini Crossword; a Full-Size Crossword; and Mind Control, which is a whole lot like Mastermind and not actually a word game at all; don’t sue me.

Oh, and if you only counted seven games here, the eighth is iOS-only. It’s called Letter Opener, and it’s my favorite.

Link: lex.games/df

Apple Newsroom:

Next month, a new software update will bring lossless audio and ultra-low latency audio to AirPods Max, delivering the ultimate listening experience and even greater performance for music production. With the included USB-C cable, users can enjoy the highest-quality audio across music, movies, and games, while music creators can experience significant enhancements to songwriting, beat making, production, and mixing.

Apple also started selling a new $40 USB-C to 3.5mm audio cable — male USB-C on the side that goes into your AirPods Max, male headphone jack on the other side to go into the audio-out port on a Mac or, say, an airplane seat.

Link: apple.com/newsroom/2025/03/lossless-audio-and-ultra-low…

Andrew Rossignol:

I have been diving into the world of large language models (LLMs), and a question began to gnaw at me: could I bring the cutting-edge of AI to the nostalgic glow of my trusty 2005 PowerBook G4? Armed with a 1.5GHz processor, a full gigabyte of RAM, and a limiting 32-bit address space, I embarked on an experiment that actually yielded results. I have successfully managed to achieve LLM inference on this classic piece of Apple history, proving that even yesteryear’s hardware can have a taste of tomorrow’s AI.

A fun project, well-explained. Even a great choice of computer to run it on — the 12-inch PowerBook G4 is one of the best-looking computers ever made. (Via Joe Rossignol.)

Link: theresistornetwork.com/2025/03/thinking-different-thinking…