Katie Paul and Courtney Rozen, Reuters: Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged shortcomings in the company’s sweeping restructuring at an internal town hall on Thursday, saying the systems known as AI agents had not progressed as quickly as he had expected, according to a recording heard by Reuters. […] In retrospect, he said, the “trajectory […]⌥ Permalink

Marcel Thee, Nikkei Asia: Following Australia’s move in late 2025, Indonesia became the first non-Western country to announce restrictions on social media access for users under 16. Rules unveiled on March 6 require platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Roblox to introduce age verification checks and remove underage accounts. The restrictions were supposed to […]⌥ Permalink

Sam Schott: As of 2026-07-28, this project is archived. It’s been a fun challenge to develop a syncing client, but unfortunately, I find too little time to invest in Maestral these days. I’ve also moved away from using Dropbox myself. Maestral will still remain usable in the medium term, but will no longer be actively […]⌥ Permalink

Bruce Schneier: AI agents are agents of the person or organization that deploys them—and should be treated by the law as such. If a company hired human writers to write its summaries, that company would be liable for inaccuracies in those summaries. If a company’s human agent signed contracts in the company’s name, that company […]⌥ Permalink

The Tiny Awards are returning for a fourth year. The past three winners have been remarkably diverse — rotating sandwiches, a one minute park experience, and a memorial to the fifty thousand names of those killed in Gaza. If you know of a cool, weird, eye-opening, or simply interesting web-based thing launched between July 2025 […]⌥ Permalink

Satya Nadella at Microsoft’s Build conference this year: Perhaps the most important design criteria for us is: ‘how do we earn the permission from the communities in which we are building these data centres?’ That’s where these principles ground us and focus us. How do we ensure that the D.C.s do not increase the electricity […]⌥ Permalink

Matt Growcoot, PetaPixel: Despite the technical difficulties, there are photographs of Canada in the 1860s — including one taken of the historic moment the proclamation of Confederation was read out at Market Square, Kingston, Ontario. I had no idea there was a photo taken when this proclamation was read. ⌥ Permalink⌥ Permalink

When Apple announced Siri A.I. would not be available on E.U. iPhones or iPads at launch, it said: Given the serious risks to users, Apple designed a solution called Trusted System Agent — an intermediary that would allow virtual assistants to safely access the same features and capabilities as Siri AI for devices in the […]⌥ Permalink

Sony’s Sid Shuman: As consumer preferences and the broader entertainment industry continue to shift away from physical discs to digital, physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028.  Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only. […]⌥ Permalink

Mathew Ingram: So what, I can hear you thinking. I don’t know or care what anyons are, or how gallium arsenide works. Me neither! The interesting part of this story for me is that Microsoft — a company that has a market value of $2.7 trillion and almost single-handedly created the personal computing industry — […]⌥ Permalink

Tyler Murphy and Ben, co-founders of EasyOptOuts: We’ve discovered vulnerabilities in Hide My Email that allow attackers to discover the meant-to-be-hidden address behind a Hide My Email address. We reported the issue to Apple over a year ago, and as of June 30, 2026, it still hasn’t been fixed. About a month ago, we realized […]⌥ Permalink

“boat-botany”: Old Reddit’s logged-out experience is a significant source of abusive scraping and automated traffic on the platform. It’s also an important interface for many long-time mods and redditors. To strike the right balance between preserving your access to Old Reddit while preventing abusive scraping and automated traffic, over the next month we will start […]⌥ Permalink

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority: ‘Steering’ – the ability for developers to engage with customers about off‑platform options – is currently banned by Apple and restricted by Google in the UK. Lifting these constraints would allow developers to bypass mandatory fees set by platforms. The CMA’s consultation includes principles to ensure that the fees […]⌥ Permalink

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission: Between November 2023 and August 2025, Amazon AU’s Prime contracts with more than one million annual subscribers contained what the ACCC alleges were five unfair contract terms that allowed it to unilaterally make negative changes during the contract period without offering subscribers a remedy. It is also alleged that […]⌥ Permalink

Byron Kaye, Reuters: Australia’s prime minister vowed on Friday to bullet-proof laws supporting a social ​media ban for under-16s as the government prepares legal action against platforms amid a steady stream of evidence that the ban has had little impact on teen use. […] He did not give further details about what steps the government […]⌥ Permalink

Kyle Chayka, the New Yorker: As Claude Design catches on among Anthropic users, a generic-design aesthetic is emerging that’s as noticeable as text-based A.I. tics such as overenthusiastic em-dash usage or “not X … but Y” constructions. In slide decks and on website interfaces, there’s a predominance of beige- and cream-colored backgrounds, rusty orange-hued accents, […]⌥ Permalink

Josh Marinacci, building on top of my metaverse rundown: Let’s get to one of the big points of the article I started this rant with, that if VR couldn’t be popular during a global lockdown when everyone had lots of free time and was trapped inside, then it would never be popular. While that might […]⌥ Permalink

Terrence O’Brien, the Verge: But this isn’t some fluke, or temporary supply chain problem. Companies are choosing data center clients over ordinary buyers because “the same chip earns far more inside an AI server than inside a consumer device,” according to Srikanth Jagabathula, professor of technology, operations, and statistics at the NYU Stern School of […]⌥ Permalink

Max Read: But times change, and so too does a man’s fashion. Zuck still shows up in photos in his boxy heavyweight tees, but he’s begun to rotate in—and even favor—soft, textured, lifelessly tasteful polos like the heather gray number above, or the long-sleeve taupe Prada joint he wore buttoned to the top at the […]⌥ Permalink

Jason Snell, Macworld: A new pivot point for Apple? Seems like a good time for a new pivot for me, too. This year has been full of milestones for me, from appearing on “Jeopardy!” to reviewing David Pogue’s book about Apple for The Wall Street Journal, to crowdfunding a new podcast about Apple history. Along […]⌥ Permalink

Jeff Carlson, CNet: Apple’s Certified Refurbished store has been a sanctuary for people who balk at the prices of new Apple products, but it provided little shelter from today’s increases across many of its lines. Reconditioned items are also more expensive. These increases seem to be driven less by the current refurbished lineup and more […]⌥ Permalink

Terrible news: Om Malik passed away on June 24, 2026, at Stanford Hospital after a long health journey with his heart. He was surrounded by family and friends. I will miss Malik’s writing, of course. I will also miss his photography, where he had found a distinctive and recognizable style that was very often breathtaking. […]⌥ Permalink

Here is a little marketing pop quiz for you: the company you work for wants to increase the prices of its products across the board urgently — and by a significant amount — because key components are suddenly more expensive. Which strategy do you choose? Wait until there is a good time, like the next […]⌥ Permalink

Paresh Dave and Lauren Goode, Wired: Meta left potentially sensitive information collected from employee laptops accessible to anyone inside the company, according to an internal security notice seen by WIRED and three current employees familiar with the issue. The data, which was collected as part of a divisive initiative to train artificial intelligence models, is […]⌥ Permalink

Cynthia Khoo, writing for the Institute for Research on Public Policy’s Policy Options: If Bill C-22 passes as is, it could put in place one piece of a bigger cross-border law enforcement data-sharing system, as envisioned in the CLOUD Act and other international data-sharing treaties. Once completed, this system could further expose Canadian residents and […]⌥ Permalink

While I am criticizing the New York Times’ odd framing choices, here is a more substantial critique from Alejandra Caraballo: Over the last several years it has become readily apparent that there has been a shift in the editorial framing and focus of the New York Times when it regards issues relating to transgender people. […]⌥ Permalink

Michael H. Keller, Eli Murray, Danielle Ivory, and Irineo Cabreros, New York Times (gift link): The surge in pedestrian deaths has baffled researchers. Most other wealthy countries haven’t seen similar increases, suggesting that possible culprits like smartphones don’t tell the whole story. Other likely causes of deadly crashes, such as drunken and distracted driving, have […]⌥ Permalink

Gergely Orosz: Meta has a booming business, and is already a beneficiary of AI via increased ads revenue. Meanwhile, my Facebook feed is filled with fake, AI-generated videos, with hundreds of comments from bots and people who seemingly don’t realize it’s AI. It all seems like just more content for Meta to show ads next […]⌥ Permalink

Apple announced this week it would be implementing its “alternative app marketplaces” and “alternative app payments” schemes to residents of Brazil after a settlement with the country’s antitrust authority. Michael Tsai has a good roundup of the history of this settlement and reactions from developers. The people living in places where Apple’s standard App Store […]⌥ Permalink

Rolfe Winkler, Wall Street Journal: Apple plans to raise prices on its products to offset the surging costs of memory and storage chips, Chief Executive Tim Cook said in an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal. “Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” he said. “We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are […]⌥ Permalink