If you have read Byron Tau’s reporting, including his book “Means of Control”, you might be familiar with Mike Yeagley. He was the one who made the U.S. military and intelligence community aware of the surveillance they could conduct through digital advertising placements and the open data market. Joseph Cox of 404 Media recently interviewed […]⌥ Permalink

Paul Kafasis, linking to an Ars Technica report with the headline “A missing underscore sent innocent man to prison for 18 months”, asks: While I understand how the mistake led to this poor guy becoming a suspect, I really can’t fathom how he was convicted. What the hell happened during that trial? This is the […]⌥ Permalink

It is Hater Week over at Aftermath, and Chris Person wrote a banger of a rant about Adobe: It’s one thing to hate software, but that hate takes on new dimensions when you have to use it for your job. To choose software and have it fail is unfortunate; to be chained to it for […]⌥ Permalink

Maddy Varner, Wired: Over the weekend, people were surprised to discover that some Anthropic Claude chats could be easily found via web search. The issue, which appears to have been first flagged by a redditor, exposed chats that included people asking for advice about what political party they should join, whether attorneys in Kansas are […]⌥ Permalink

Timothy Pratt, the Guardian: The US Department of Justice is attempting to prosecute an Atlanta resident in connection with the movement against the police training center known as Cop City because he had GrapheneOS on his phone, an open-source operating system that enables users to enter a passcode and wipe a phone clean. […] Meanwhile, […]⌥ Permalink

Natalie Kaufman, in a Wall Street Journal article headlined “Young Adults Are Letting AI Do Their Talking for Them — Even in Person”: [Niharika] Abbaraju, 20, is part of a growing cohort of young adults outsourcing deeply human tasks to AI. Many, struggling with social anxieties great or small, will seek assistance ahead of a […]⌥ Permalink

Tom Alison, “head of Facebook”, made some noise today by announcing a forthcoming change to the platform that seems to, in effect, turn it into TikTok: So later this year, we’ll begin testing a reimagined experience that puts a subset of people who we think want more video on Facebook into full-screen video the moment […]⌥ Permalink

Dustin Bluck, developer of Castro: You might have a theory that there’s a funnel and growth in podcasts *must* ultimately be good for the apps. Like YouTube and TikTok introduce people to the concept of podcasts via shorter videos, and as certain users become more enthusiastic about a particular creator or the whole concept, they […]⌥ Permalink

Meta, last month: We’re launching Meta Glasses with three frame styles offering distinct silhouettes that suit different faces, moods, and occasions: […] Meta Glasses by Kylie — A unique slim oval frame designed in collaboration with Kylie Jenner and inspired by her personal style. Katie Notopoulos, Business Insider, today: Interestingly, since the launch of her […]⌥ Permalink

Chad Miller has launched Grain, described as: […] a photo-first social app. Post galleries, share 24-hour stories, and browse feeds by following, For You, camera, or location. The most obvious comparison is Instagram, but without videos. I have been trying Grain for several months; it is really fun and worth checking out despite an icon […]⌥ Permalink

Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable: Last December, Google sued SerpApi over scraping its search results, and now a court has granted SerpApi’s motion to dismiss the case. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers dismissed these claims with leave to amend, giving Google 21 days to refile its complaint if it can demonstrate authorization from copyright […]⌥ Permalink

Google’s Nick Fox on, for some reason, LinkedIn: People also asked if AI in Search would mean that people never click through to websites anymore. Actually, as we’ve shared before, we continue to send billions of clicks to the web every day through Search. And we’ve designed our AI features in Search to connect people […]⌥ Permalink

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors: Apple and Klarna are partnering on a new “Apple Upgrade” program set to launch in the U.S. on Tuesday, July 28, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The program will allow you to finance most iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch models, with a 24-month term for iPhones and Apple Watches and a […]⌥ Permalink

If you believe Meta, its forthcoming Albertan data centre will be, at worst, unnoticeable to people across this province: We pay the full costs of our data centers’ energy use so consumers aren’t negatively impacted, and fund new and upgraded infrastructure. We worked closely with Greenlight Limited Partnership, Altalink, Capitol Power, and the Alberta Electric […]⌥ Permalink

An un-bylined report from Calgary.tech: Apple will make a rare conference appearance in Calgary next week, joining the inaugural Swift Rockies gathering for iOS developers at the Calgary Zoo. Taking place July 22 and 23, Swift Rockies is a boutique, single-track conference created by Calgary-based iOS engineer Raman Singh. The independently organized event is capped […]⌥ Permalink

Diana Novak Jones, Reuters: Meta Platforms faces trial in Tennessee on Monday over the state’s claims that Instagram’s design is to blame for a youth mental-health ​crisis, one of several trials in the coming weeks testing allegations that the company’s social media platforms were intentionally built to be addictive. I imagine Meta will spend considerable […]⌥ Permalink

Zoey Forbes, a U.K.-based attorney, in the Dial: One hundred and forty years on from the Berne Convention, the basic principles of copyright remain the same, but GenAI poses a threat to authors different from anything that has existed before. Its novel technology is not only destabilizing what it means to reproduce works, but what […]⌥ Permalink

Jason Koebler, 404 Media: The AI music generation tool Suno scraped millions of songs and lyrics from YouTube Music, Deezer, and Genius, as well as from the stock music libraries Pond5, Jamendo, Freesound, the International Music Score Library Project, and podcasts via RSS feeds, according to a hacker who breached the company and shared data […]⌥ Permalink

Dr. Drang: A couple of days ago, Casey Liss took a break from arguing about temperature scales to tweak me about the recent passage of the Sunshine Protection Act by the House. The Act would make Daylight Saving Time permanent, something Casey knows I disapprove of. A similar bill passed the Senate a few years […]⌥ Permalink

If you cannot get enough squircle talk, Michael Tsai has a whole roundup of different takes, some of which you may not have seen already. Here is another thing: robbing icons of a variable for creative excellence and flexibility is just another form of context flattening. You know how Instagram and YouTube are host to […]⌥ Permalink

Kashmir Hill, of the New York Times (gift link), learned about an A.I.-generated biography of her for sale on Amazon for $27. It is just one of many wholly-generated books available there: Amazon does not mind if people hawk A.I.-generated books on its platform, unless they are truly and deeply terrible. “Charlie Kirk: An Inspiring […]⌥ Permalink

Bryce Elder, on the Financial Times’ Alphaville blog: Here’s paragraph one of the Morgan Stanley’s SpaceX initiation note: With an ‘X of 1’ position in space infrastructure, we believe SpaceX can convert energy into intelligence at scale with optionality to monetize through a range of consumer and enterprise solutions for the next era of AI… […]⌥ Permalink

Sarah Perez, TechCrunch: In a newly published Apple Advertising Services policy, effective as of July 14, 2026, the iPhone maker shares its rules for advertising on Apple Maps. Notably, it prohibits the broad category of home services businesses, like plumbing, electrical, locksmith, HVAC, pest control, roofing, and general contracting services, among others. If Apple is […]⌥ Permalink

Paul Kafasis, writing on the Rogue Amoeba blog: With last year’s release of MacOS 26 (Tahoe), Apple made a mess of app icons. In the first betas of MacOS 27 (Golden Gate), however, there are signs of a turnaround. We’re urging Apple to continue making improvements, by restoring the ability for MacOS app icons to […]⌥ Permalink

Yash Garg: A friend pointed me to this option in Meta Accounts Center called “Activity from other businesses”, which shows “activity sent from other businesses or organizations to show you relevant content.” Their main help page doesn’t even work in my region. If you dig around in your Meta account privacy settings, you can turn […]⌥ Permalink

Karl Bode: One lie that companies have been telling local municipalities is that if they greenlight a massive local AI data center, it will immediately bring a flood of savvy innovators to your podunk-ass town. The promotional materials for Kevin O’Leary’s still hypothetical “data centre park” imagine a futuristic campus full of bright young minds […]⌥ Permalink

Nathaniel Rich, author of the novel “Cloudthief”, in a non-fiction retelling for New York Times Magazine of a 2007 heist of a London data centre by Terry Ellis and others: The fixer — Ellis called him Ray and won’t reveal his name — met him in North London near Hampstead Heath for coffee and cakes. […]

Meta, in a press release called “Meta’s A.I. Glasses: Your Questions Answered”: Can’t people just cover up or disable the LED? The camera is disabled when people try to do this. Beginning with our second generation of glasses, the camera is automatically disabled if we detect that the capture LED has been blocked. No photos […]⌥ Permalink

Joseph Cox, 404 Media, last month: ShinyHunters published the [Madison Square Garden] data on Tuesday. The full file download is nearly 45GB. A spokesperson of the group sent 404 Media a smaller sample of the data. One file includes what appear to be emails sent by customers to MSG and sometimes MSG’s response. One email […]⌥ Permalink

Jason Torchinsky, the Autopian: You know what I miss that cars often had up until the ’90s or so, and are almost extinct today? Badges. Not the usual make/model badges, though, we still have plenty of those, I mean the highly-specific feature badges that cars used to proudly display. Actually, not even just features — also […]⌥ Permalink