FeedCity

Mark Zuckerberg, concluding a 600-word essay ostentatiously typeset in the style of web pages circa 1994^*:

Meta believes strongly in building personal superintelligence that empowers everyone. We have the resources and the expertise to build the massive infrastructure required, and the capability and will to deliver new technology to billions of people across our products. I’m excited to focus Meta’s efforts towards building this future.

What about the metaverse? Wasn’t that the thing? What Zuckerberg, and thus Meta, actually believe strongly in is jumping on whatever trend becomes a hype bubble. The company’s soul is empty.

* Actual web pages from 1994 didn’t include nearly a megabyte of JavaScript to display 3 kilobytes of text.

Link: meta.com/superintelligence/

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac: Apple has voiced its opposition to the case many times over the last year. Now, it has officially filed its answer to the DOJ’s antitrust complaint, pushing back forcefully against the allegations. As a refresher, the DOJ’s antitrust lawsuit focu...

Tea remains #3 overall in the US iPhone App Store. Here’s a screenshot of the top free iPhone apps today, and a list of the current top 10, using the full names the apps choose to display: ChatGPT Wingstop Tea Dating Advice Threads Google Google Maps WhatsApp Messenger Par...

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

YouTube on Tuesday announced it’s beginning to roll out age-estimation technology in the U.S. to identify teen users in order to provide a more age-appropriate experience. The company says it will use a variety of signals to determine the users’ possible age, regardless of what the user entered as their birthday when they signed up for an account.

Well-intentioned though I think this is, it still feels more than a little dystopian.

Link: techcrunch.com/2025/07/29/youtube-rolls-out-age…

Reuters:

Sony released the first game in the Horizon series, Horizon: Zero Dawn, on its PlayStation 4 in 2017. The games follow a red-headed woman named Aloy as she navigates a post-apocalyptic world populated by human tribes and robotic animals.

Sony said in its complaint that it declined an offer from Tencent to collaborate on a new Horizon game last year. Tencent later announced Light of Motiram, which Sony said features identical gameplay, story themes and artistic elements to Horizon as well as many other similarities.

Sony said that video game journalists have characterized Light of Motiram as a “knock-off” of Horizon, including one who called the game Horizon Zero Originality.

Tencent is the Chinese software giant behind, amongst many other things, WeChat, China’s “everything app”.

Link: reuters.com/legal/litigation/sony-sues-tencent-allegedly…

Back in March I linked to and recommended Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, a cogent collection of 20 short essays. I was never a big e-book reader, both because I love printed books so much and because I welcome any respite from reading on screens of any sort. But if e-books are your thing, note that Apple Books currently has it for just $2. Amazon’s Kindle edition is also $2 — and the paperback edition, which is the lovely little thing I own, is an oddly but low-priced $7.31.

Link: books.apple.com/us/book/on-tyranny/id1195458571

These prices — which I presume are a back-to-school season promotion — are even lower than those during the weeklong “Prime Day” earlier this month, and you don’t need to be a Prime subscriber to get them:

• The pretty-good base configuration (16 GB RAM, 256 GB storage) is just $800.
• The configuration with 16 GB RAM and 512 GB is $1,000, the normal price for the base model.
• You can splurge and get 24 GB RAM with 512 GB storage for just $1,200.

These are make-me-rich affiliate links, as is this link for AirPods Pro 2 for just $200, $50 off.

Link: amzn.to/4fdd0gN

Sean Lyndersay, general manager of Edge at Microsoft: For decades, the way we’ve used browsers has remained linear: open a tab (or 20), search for something, read a page, repeat. It’s a model that’s worked well, but it hasn’t fundamentally changed. Until now. As AI begin...

Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch: Google on Monday announced an update to its Chrome web browser that will introduce AI-generated store reviews to U.S. shoppers with the aim of helping to determine the best places to make a purchase. The feature, which will be availab...

Emanuel Maiberg and Joseph Cox, reporting again for 404 Media: Despite Tea’s initial statement that “the incident involved a legacy data storage system containing information from over two years ago,” the second issue impacting a separate database is much more recent, af...

One of the best indie weather apps just got a major overhaul for 2025, and it’s worth checking out.

Hello Weather is well known for its simple, friendly design, but the new update rounds it out with more depth and customization.

You’ll get beautiful new visuals for wind, UV, future forecasts, and more, all powered by the finest data on Earth. With its excellent widgets, Watch app, and notifications, you’ll always stay up to date.

Hello Weather also respects your privacy, with no tracking or ads in sight. It’s a customer-focused app, made with care.

Download Hello Weather and start a 7-day free trial.

Link: helloweather.com/

From this paywalled report at Punchbowl News, as quoted by Taegan Goddard at Political Wire: “The Senate GOP campaign arm is warning that Apple’s new iOS update could cost them $25 million in fundraising revenue, as well as priceless GOTV opportunities,” Punchbowl News r...

Adam Aaronson: The International Bartenders Association, or IBA, maintains a list of official cocktails, ones they deem to be “the most requested recipes” at bars all around the world. It’s the closest thing the bartending industry has to a canonical list of cocktails, a...

Dominic Preston, writing at The Verge, regarding Android fans’ bristling at ICEBlock developer Joshua Aaron’s claims that an Android (or web) version of ICEBlock couldn’t provide the same level of privacy as the iOS version: Aaron told The Verge ICEBlock is built around ...

Back in 2021 a young engineering student named Ken Pillonel modified his own iPhone X to replace the Lightning port with USB-C, which became a small viral sensation. He’s back at it, with a far more ambitious project: iPhone cases with USB-C ports for the last five or so years of models with Lightning ports. He’s produced three batches of cases so far, but is currently sold out.

Even if you’re not interested in buying one of these cases, Pillonel’s video documenting how he brought the concept to fruition is quite clever and fun.

Link: youtube.com/watch?v=KUXQzVD1TdI

Carlos Greaves, writing for McSweeney’s:

“The president remained steadfast in his novel interpretation of constitutional law.”

“Faced with the choice between clinging to the letter of the law and marching to the beat of his own legal drum, the president chose the latter.”

Link: mcsweeneys.net/articles/new-york-times-style-guide…

My thanks to Drata for sponsoring this week at DF to promote SafeBase. SafeBase eliminates the friction of inbound security reviews. It helps you automate inbound requests, use AI to answer questionnaires, and share your security posture proactively — all through a centralized Trust Center.

Link: safebase.io/lp/why-safebase/?utm_source=daring_fireball&utm…

Max A. Cherney and Stephen Nellis, reporting for Reuters: Those customers for the company’s so-called 14A manufacturing process are crucial to the success of the technology — so much so that if it fails to secure a big one, it could shut down its cutting-edge manufacturi...

Emma Roth, The Verge: Google will officially deprecate links generated with its URL shortening tool next month. On August 25th, 2025, all links in the https://goo.gl/* format will no longer work and return a 404 error message. Google shut down its URL shortener in 2019,...

Emanuel Maiberg and Joseph Cox, reporting for 404 Media: Users from 4chan claim to have discovered an exposed database hosted on Google’s mobile app development platform, Firebase, belonging to the newly popular women’s dating safety app Tea. Users say they are rifling t...

Jason Snell returns to the show to talk about the early PC platform rivalries of the 1980s, iOS 26 leaks (and Apple suing YouTuber Jon Prosser), the various Apple OS 26 public betas and the state of Liquid Glass, and more. (Where by “more” I mean a little baseball and keyboard nerdery.)

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Link: daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2025/07/25/ep-427

The public betas are out for iOS/iPadOS/WatchOS/MacOS 26, and Dan Moren and Jason Snell cover them all at Six Colors. Here’s Moren on iOS 26: Apple’s new design language, dubbed Liquid Glass, applies across all their platforms, but unsurprisingly, it feels most at home o...

ICEBlock: ICEBlock is an innovative, completely anonymous crowdsourced platform that allows users to report Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity with just two taps on their phone. In recent years, ICE has faced criticism for alleged civil rights abuses and ...

David Barnard:

On the podcast I talk with John about the fascinating 40-year history of Apple’s developer relations, how almost going bankrupt in the 1990s shaped today’s control-focused approach, and why we might need an “App Store 3.0” reset.

Yet another fun appearance on a podcast. There’s a good transcript too, if you’re more of a reader than a listener.

Link: subclub.com/episode/the-past-present-and-future-of-building…

Anna Gross, Tim Bradshaw, and Lauren Fedor, reporting for the Financial Times (syndicated without paywall at Ars Technica): Sir Keir Starmer’s government is seeking a way out of a clash with the Trump administration over the UK’s demand that Apple provide it with access ...

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Apple today provided developers with the fourth betas of iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 for testing purposes, with the updates coming two weeks after Apple seeded the third betas.

MacOS, WatchOS, tvOS, and VisionOS too, all in lockstep. Also, a good first look at what’s changed in iOS 26 beta 4 from beta 3. Some of the things Apple is tweaking between betas need more than minor tweaking. Also: Apple Intelligence summaries for news notifications are back.

Link: macrumors.com/2025/07/22/apple-seeds-ios-26-beta-4/

CHM:

Come and explore an extraordinary showcase of historical computers, from pristine originals to ingenious modern hacks. Computer enthusiasts around the world look forward to the annual Vintage Computer Festival.

Experience hands-on demos of historical systems from the 1960s through the 1990s, learn preservation tips, and try out brands like Apple, Atari, Commodore, Tandy/Radio Shack, and more.

It’s in Mountain View, so I can’t make it, but given all the recent nostalgia that’s been in the air regarding the early PC era, I wish I could.

Link: computerhistory.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-3/

Jay Peters, The Verge:

Google’s Pixel 10 launch event is just under a month away, but the company is already revealing the official design of the base phone. You can currently see a video of the phone on Google’s website (and below). It looks just like the official renders that leaked earlier today, which showed that the phone will have a third back camera (which is rumored to be a telephoto sensor).

That’s certainly one way to deal with leaks. It looks like a Pixel 9, which looks like an iPhone 12–16 with a different (but cool) camera mesa.

Link: theverge.com/news/711033/google-pixel-10-design-tease…

Reuters: Italian tax authorities argue that free user registrations with X, LinkedIn and Meta platforms should be seen as taxable transactions as they imply the exchange of a membership account in return for a user’s personal data. The issue is especially sensitive give...

Ellen Nakashima, Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Joseph Menn, reporting for The Washington Post: The U.S. government and partners in Canada and Australia are investigating the compromise of SharePoint servers, which provide a platform for sharing and managing documents. Tens ...