Google has updated its affiliate ads policy for Chrome extensions
after creators accused PayPal’s popular Honey browser extension of
being a “scam.”
Honey was accused of taking affiliate revenue from the same
influencers it paid for promotion by using its Chrome extension to
swap in its own affiliate link before you checked out. According
to the updated Google policy posted today, this isn’t
allowed in most cases
Ben Lovejoy, writing at 9to5Mac:
Our editor-in-chief Chance Miller wryly commented that a radical
new look would serve as a great way to distract from the
ever-slowing progress on the new Siri. But in truth, I think many
more Apple users will be wowed by a new look than ...
Last week The Wall Street Journal laid off about a dozen tech reporters and editors — not on the fun side, where folks like Joanna Stern and Nicole Nguyen work, but on the straight news side. Chris Roush at Talking Biz News obtained a memo sent to the staff from WSJ editor-i...
New service for disgruntled/embarrassed Tesla owners:
Our team at Steal My Tesla has years of experience in the
automotive industry, with a special focus on luxury vehicles,
premium wheels and rims, catalytic converters, and driver
assistance systems. Trust us to handle your Tesla acquisition with
professionalism and discretion.
A clip from this 2016 interview with Marco Rubio — then a candidate for the Republican presidential primary, today Trump’s secretary of state — by CNN’s Jake Tapper is making the rounds on social media. It’s extraordinary. I’m linking here to the full video, hosted on Rubio’...
Andrew Boynton, head of copy at The New Yorker:
Keen-eyed grammar fans may notice some changes in our pages — and
in this newsletter. Last fall, David Remnick, the editor,
suggested convening a group to talk about the magazine’s house
style, to see if any rules might bea...
If these caps were a student project it’d get an F. Who thinks you can print one logo on top of another? They look like mistakes, like caps that got run through the embroidery machine twice. The only good one is for the “ASHOS”, which comes close to the actual word everyone uses for that team of cheaters.
I think more than anything I admired Kevin’s restraint and his
caution. Blogging is a hustle and the incentives for hyperbole and
breathlessness are endless. That makes most people easy to ignore.
But Kevin — who had a whole career in the normal-person rat race
before he started this — sweated the details. He had a serious
mind for facts and numbers and he knew how to work with data. His
posts were always overflowing with numbers and charts and levels
of detail and nitty gritty I couldn’t pile into my brain because I
was too scattered and unfocused. When he said something, you had
to take it seriously. When he disagreed with you, you knew it was
time to re-check your work. Kevin was almost all signal and very
little noise. That was his defining mark.
Marian Drum, posting yesterday on Kevin Drum’s site:
With a heavy heart, I have to tell you that after a long battle
with cancer my husband Kevin Drum passed away on Friday, March
7, 2025.
No public memorial services are planned.
In lieu of flowers, please donate to th...
Jon Prosser, in a YouTube video with mocked-up animations showing exactly what he’s talking about, 51 days ago:
Today we have your very first exclusive look at the changes coming
to iOS 19 — with a redesigned camera app and possibly ... a
redesigned iOS.
Basic idea is ...
It’s been a quiet week, so John Gruber briefly joins Jason to
discuss Apple’s AI delay, new Macs, new iPads, and the future of
Apple regulation worldwide.
Recorded earlier today, so it covers, somehow, all of last week’s Apple news — and last week was a kind of crazy week in Appletown. I even squeezed in some parenting advice for Myke Hurley, who’s out on paternity leave.
Craig Hockenberry returns to the show. Topics include Apple’s new hardware this week — M3 iPad Airs, A16 regular iPads, M4 MacBook Airs, and the M4 Max and surprising M3 Ultra Mac Studios. And we go deep on The Iconfactory’s years-in-the-making new app, Tapestry — a universal timeline for the Internet.
This whole 1989 profile of Albert “Cubby” Broccoli by John Culhane for the LA Times is full of enjoyable nuggets, but this fact blew my mind:
Giovanni Broccoli and his brother emigrated to Long Island from
Calabria at the turn of the century. According to research done i...
On this episode of The Vergecast, we talk about the future
of Bond. (James Bond.) John Gruber, the author of Daring Fireball
and a preeminent Bond expert, joins the show to talk about
Amazon’s acquisition of MGM, its struggles with the
Broccoli family over what to do with the Bond franchise, and why
so many fans of the series are worried about what might happen
when a company like Amazon takes over a beloved name. Will Bond
turn out like Marvel, or Star Wars? Or something else entirely?
We’ll see — but history suggests we shouldn’t be too optimistic.
I’m deeply pessimistic about the future of the Bond franchise, but I do love talking and thinking about it. Really enjoyed this chat.
Simon Willison:
These new Apple Intelligence features involve Siri responding to
requests to access information in applications and then performing
actions on the user’s behalf.
This is the worst possible combination for prompt
injection attacks! Any time an LLM-based s...
Zac Hall, 9to5Mac:
Since last fall, Apple has been marketing the iPhone 16 and Apple
Intelligence with an unreleased Siri feature. After confirming
today that the more personal version of Siri isn’t coming anytime
soon, Apple has pulled the ad in question.
The commercia...
Stephen Nellis, reporting for Reuters:
Some artificial intelligence improvements to Apple’s voice
assistant Siri will be delayed until 2026, the company said
on Friday.
In a statement, Apple said it has “been working on a more
personalized Siri, giving it more awareness...
Here’s a statement I got this morning from Apple spokeswoman Jacqueline Roy, verbatim:
“Siri helps our users find what they need and get things done
quickly, and in just the past six months, we’ve made Siri more
conversational, introduced new features like type to Siri a...
Nate Silver, writing at his Silver Bulletin:
Last night, as President Trump delivered his State of the Union
address, the Wall Street Journal reported that ABC News would
lay off the remaining staff at 538 as part of broader cuts within
corporate parent Disney. Having be...
Oliver Darcy, reporting at Status (paywalled, alas), on the sudden demise of FiveThirtyEight:
On Wednesday morning, shortly after sending an all-staff memo
announcing layoffs at ABC News, network president Almin
Karamehmedovic joined a virtual meeting with the FiveThirty...
Jason Snell, at Six Colors:
With the M4 Mac mini being powerfully tempting for
desktop Mac users who crave power, Apple has upgraded the Mac
Studio to blast past the mini in terms of performance. The base
model, still starting at $1999, is powered by the M4 Max chip
prev...
Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors:
Let’s start with the surprises. Both M4 MacBook Air models are
priced $100 less than their predecessors: $1199 for the 15-inch
model and $999 for the 13-incher. If I’m not mistaken, this is the
first time that the new-generation design...
Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg on 6 December 2024, regarding Apple’s first in-house cellular modem, “Apple Plans Three-Year Modem Rollout in Bid to Top Qualcomm”:
For now, the modem won’t be used in Apple’s higher-end products.
It’s set to come to a new mid-tier iP...
Mark Gurman, in his Power On column for Bloomberg, on January 12:
The new entry-level iPads — J481 and J482 — will get faster
processors and Apple Intelligence. The current models have the A14
chip and 4 gigabytes of memory. Look for the new versions to have
the A17 Pro ...
Tapbots:
v2.3 is now available on the App Store for Mac and iOS/iPadOS!
What’s new?
Grouped Notifications (Mention and Notification tabs are now
merged)
Support for AlphaNumeric Post IDs (Can now log into more
services like GoToSocial)
Accessibility Improvements
Bug Fi...
Mark Gurman, yesterday at noon ET:
It’s not an “Air” — but the new Mac Studio, codenamed J575,
appears to be imminent. It could be announced as early as this
week along with the new MacBook Airs. There are signs these will
come with an M4 Max but that its new Ultra chip ...
Ron Filipkowski:
Trump’s Sec of Agriculture Brooke Rollins says the solution to
high egg prices for Americans is to get some chickens and raise
them in your backyard.
No exaggeration. She’s selling the idea of everyone raising chickens in their back yards as “awesome”,...
Zac Hall, writing at 9to5Mac:
Leitmotif, the team behind the awesome diff and merge Mac app
Kaleidoscope, is expanding its portfolio of native Mac apps for
developers. The company has acquired Taska, a native Mac app that
serves as a frontend for web services like GitHub...
Funny piece — if your surname isn’t “Null” — by Oyin Adedoyin for The Wall Street Journal (News+ link):
Even those without the last name Null are finding themselves
caught in the void. Joseph Tartaro got a license plate with the
word “NULL” on it nearly 10 years ago. The...
