Elon Musk, in a tweet responding to Google’s announcement of their deal to provide Gemini to Apple for use in Apple Intelligence:
This seems like an unreasonable concentration of power for Google, given that the also have Android and Chrome
I’m sure that if Grok were as popular as Gemini, Musk would turn down a deal with Apple to avoid concentrating “power” in his hands.
Link: macrumors.com/2026/01/12/elon-musk-reacts-to-gemini-siri/
Here’s an illustrated follow-up regarding the absurdity of MacOS 26’s “looks like they’re rounded off like a child’s toy but actually they’re still rectangles with corners” windows. If you turn on always-visible scroll bars (which you should) and scroll to the bottom, they look like this:
(That’s Safari, which I think is a somewhat popular app.)
It would make more sense if we found out that the team behind redesigning the UI for MacOS 26 Tahoe was hired by Meta a year ago and deliberately sabotaged their work to make the Mac look clownish and amateur.
Daring Fireball
• Daring Fireball Department of Commerce
Connecting user accounts to third-party APIs always comes with the same plumbing: OAuth flows, token storage, refresh logic, and provider-specific quirks.
WorkOS Pipes removes that overhead. Users connect services like GitHub, Slack, Google, Salesforce, and other supported providers through a drop-in widget. Your backend requests a valid access token from the Pipes API when needed, while Pipes handles credential storage and token refresh.
Simplify integrations with WorkOS Pipes.
Link: workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium…
Superhuman AI Exfiltrates Emails
Classic prompt injection attack:When asked to summarize the user’s recent mail, a prompt injection in an untrusted email manipulated Superhuman AI to submit content from dozens of other sensitive emails (including financial, legal, and medical information) in the user’s inbox to an attacker’s Google Form.
To Superhuman's credit they treated this as the high priority incident it is and issued a fix.
The root cause was a CSP rule that allowed markdown images to be loaded from docs.google.com - it turns out Google Forms on that domain will persist data fed to them via a GET request!
Via Hacker News
Tags: security, ai, prompt-injection, generative-ai, llms, exfiltration-attacks, content-security-policy
apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/2025-marked-a-record-breaking-year-for-apple-services/
Just wanted to drop a quick note to say that kottke.org moved servers over the weekend. You shouldn’t have noticed anything, except perhaps that the site is faster now. There was a small issue with the RSS feed after the migration, but that’s been resolved. If you notice anything amiss, drop me a line?
As always, big thanks to the crew at Arcustech for their rock-solid hosting and prompt tech support expertise.
Tags: kottke.org
I loved watching this quick video recap of how Penguin designer Elisha Zepeda made the book covers for 10 books that came out in 2025. Zepeda has a much longer look at his process on YT.
Using lidar, scientists discovered a 400-foot-long wall composed of “60 massive granite monoliths, set directly onto the bedrock in pairs at regular intervals”. The wall is 30 feet underwater and was built 7000+ years ago.
The Atlas Obscura Podcast
• SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura
Caroline Mazel-Carlton has visited over 1000 Atlas Obscura Places. But the project was about more than ticking off a list – she says it helped save her life.
This episode contains discussion of suicidal thoughts. If you or someone you know is struggling, contact the Suicide Crisis Hotline by calling or texting 988.
Explore the Atlas: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/all-places-in-the-atlas-on-one-map
Learn more about Caroline’s organization, the Wildflower Alliance:
https://wildfloweralliance.org/
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Shit’s getting real, folks.
Link: federalreserve.gov/newsevents/speech/powell20260111a.htm
