Jeff Bezos, in a memo he shared publicly on X:
I shared this note with the Washington Post team this morning:
I’m writing to let you know about a change coming to our
opinion pages.
We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two
pillars: personal li...
Loved this remembrance by Manohla Dargis in The New York Times:
When Clint Eastwood needed a performer who could persuasively go
boot-toe to boot-toe with him in his brutal 1992 western
Unforgiven, he needed an actor who was his towering equal
onscreen. Eastwood needed a...
I’ve spent the last six days using the iPhone 16e, and the experience has been a throwback. In many ways, the iPhone 16e both looks and feels like the modern-day progeny of the early Steve Jobs era iPhones. Early iPhones like the plastic 3G and 3GS, and the glass-back/metal-...
Joseph Menn, reporting for The Washington Post:
The U.S. Justice Department told Congress in November there were
no major disputes with the United Kingdom over how the two allies
seek data from each other’s communication companies.
But at that time, officials knew Briti...
Zac Hall, reporting for 9to5Mac:
According to a letter seen by 9to5Mac, the Trump Administration
is investigating whether the UK may have broken a bilateral
agreement when secretly demanding that Apple build a global
backdoor into iCloud.
Trump’s Director of National In...
I referenced Downie twice earlier today — once in my item linking to Charlie Monroe (developer of Downie) writing about the indie app business, and earlier in my post about using Downie to download the MP3 from Jony Ive’s interview on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs.
I someho...
Charlie Monroe, developer of excellent apps such as Downie and Permute:
But also don’t do this alone. I work 365 days a year. Last year, I
worked 366 days (2024 was leap year). I’m not saying that I work 8
hours each day, but even during weekends, holidays, vacation, I
n...
Alex Heath, writing for The Verge:
Just a few weeks after everyone freaked out about
DeepSeek, Elon Musk’s Grok-3 has again shaken up the fast-moving
AI race. The new model is ending the week at the top of
the Chatbot Arena leaderboard, while the Grok iOS app
is at the t...
Chris Welch, writing at The Verge:
Apple has acknowledged a peculiar bug with the iPhone’s
dictation feature that briefly displays “Trump” when someone
says the word “racist.” The Verge has been unable to reproduce
the issue, but it picked up attention on Tuesday after a...
Desert Island Discs is a remarkably long-running BBC Radio interview program now hosted (or presented, if you will) by Lauren Laverne. The gimmick is that guests are asked to name eight songs, a book, and a “luxury item” they’d take with them if stranded on a desert island, ...
Michael Liedtke, reporting for the AP:
Apple shareholders rebuffed an attempt to pressure the technology
trendsetter into joining President Donald Trump’s push to scrub
corporate programs designed to diversify its workforce.
The proposal drafted by the National Center f...
The advantage to having me on Rene’s show, rather than vice versa, is that he’ll push us through talking about a new iPhone model in 30 minutes. If I were hosting it’d be two hours. But the first hour would be about the whole James Bond film rights thing.
Special guest: Paul Kafasis. Special topics: Siri/Super Bowl nonsense, “Gulf of Mexico/America” nonsense, the iPhone 16e gets announced, and a veritable Bond villain buys the rights to the James Bond movie franchise.
Sponsored by:
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Mike Allen, writing for Axios, under the headline “Trump Manufacturing Win: Apple to Spend $500 Billion in U.S., Hire 20,000”:
Trump met with Cook on Thursday in the Oval Office. Then Trump got
so excited that he revealed the plans prematurely, saying
on-camera while mee...
Apple Newsroom:
Apple today announced its largest-ever spend commitment, with
plans to spend and invest more than $500 billion in the U.S. over
the next four years.
The context of making a big deal over this announcement, of course, is that Apple is seeking exemptions ...
Paul Kunert, reporting for The Register last week:
HP Inc is trying to force consumer PC and print customers to use
online and other digital support channels by setting a minimum
15-minute wait time for anyone that phones the call center to get
answers to troublesome que...
Absolutely beautiful new camera from Sigma. Full-size sensor, interchangeable lens system, but it’s the camera design that jumps out:
The Sigma BF represents a new, more intuitive way to use a camera.
It is streamlined to make the act of photography as effortless as
poss...
I’ve been meaning, since it came out in December, to link to this video from Linus Sebastian of “Linus Tech Tips” fame, and with the iPhone 16e dropping this week, now seems like a good time. It’s a common genre that dates back decades before YouTube was even a thing: longti...
Katy Steinmetz, writing for The Washington Post (via Mignon Fogarty):
But lately, one meaning has become trendier than the rest. Close
ties to artificial intelligence have led to a surge in “deep”
being used for AI-related endeavors, to the point that the word is
fast be...
File this one under “precise words matter”. Remember the whole thing a few weeks back, where AltStore PAL — an EU alternative app marketplace for iOS — published Hot Tub, a hardcore porno app, and billed it as “approved” by Apple because that’s the word Apple used for apps t...
Jim Rea:
Forty years ago today the doors opened for the very first
Macworld Expo in the Brooks Hall basement in San Francisco.
For most of you this event probably seems like ancient history,
somewhere back in the mists of time. But for me this was a very
real and excitin...
Apple, in a very precisely worded statement issued to the media (including me) this morning:
Apple can no longer offer Advanced Data Protection (ADP) in the
United Kingdom to new users and current UK users will eventually
need to disable this security feature. ADP protec...
Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner:
“In recent weeks I have spoken to a large number of former and
current Yankees — spanning several eras — to elicit their
perspectives on our longstanding facial hair and grooming policy,
and I appreciate their earnest and varied feedback. ...
Erich Schwartzel and Jessica Toonkel, reporting for The Wall Street Journal back on December 19, under the headline “Where Is James Bond? Trapped in an Ugly Stalemate With Amazon” (News+ link):
Nearly three years after Amazon acquired the right to release Bond
movies thr...
Alex Ritman, with blockbuster news at Variety:
Amazon MGM Studios is set to take creative control of the James
Bond franchise. The shock announcement — which is sure to shake
and, indeed, stir the industry — was made Thursday, alongside the
news that long-time producers ...
Last week Tim Cook teased a “newest member of the family” product announcement coming today; turns out it was the iPhone 16e, a device whose name briefly paralyzed me with indecision regarding how to capitalize it,1 which replaces the three-year-old iPhone SE (3rd generation...
A regular person might read that headline and think, “wow, a
startup sold for nine-figures — impressive.” Of course, it’s
not impressive in this case. It’s a fire sale for a company that
has been under duress for months after their product, the Ai Pin,
failed to catch fire in the market. Actually, that’s not
technically true. There was a literal risk of fire when charging
the device, which led to a recall. And so you’ll forgive
me for sort of re-using a headline here — but this
situation is much more akin to the Hindenburg disaster from which
the phrase originates.
From Humane’s “AI Pin Consumers FAQ”, which they link to with one of the best euphemisms of the year thus far — “We understand this transition may be difficult, and you may have questions”:
Key Dates to Remember:
Effective immediately: Ai Pin is no longer available fo...
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