Adam Lisagor returns to the show to talk about Hovercraft, his new virtual presentation camera app for Mac, and how he’s developing it with AI coding tools. Also, delicious Japanese spite sandwich cookies.
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Yesterday, regarding the “Magic Cursor” feature Google teased for its upcoming Googlebook/Aluminium OS platform, I wrote:
Shaking your cursor over something is an interesting gesture. The
only feature I’m aware of that uses that gesture is MacOS’s
feature that makes your...
Update: I originally posted this item thinking the aluminium-os.com website was official. It’s not. And the fact that it’s not is only mentioned in small print in the page footer. My bad, and my apologies for not noticing. No wonder I thought the descriptions were so un-Goog...
Elizabeth Lopatto, reporting for The Verge (gift link):
Today was closing arguments in the Musk v. Altman trial, and I
almost feel bad writing about the unbelievable demolition derby I
just witnessed. Steven Molo, Musk’s lawyer, stumbled over his
words. He at one point c...
After posting the previous item referencing dickpanels, a term I’ve been using since 2022, it occurred to me that they could also be called dickovers (like popovers, but dickheaded). The latter sounds more clever, but I worry it’s less clear. I’m seldom so indecisive, so I’m running a Mastodon poll.
Una Hajdari, reporting for Euronews:
A new independent institute dedicated to making artificial
intelligence safer for children will beformally [sic] presented at the
Danish Parliament on Tuesday, with former European Commission
executive vice-president Margrethe Vestage...
Calif, a security research team, on their blog:
Many security experts consider Apple devices to be the most secure
consumer platform. The latest flagship example is MIE (Memory
Integrity Enforcement), Apple’s hardware-assisted memory safety
system built around ARM’s MTE ...
Paresh Dave, Lauren Goode, Steven Levy, and Zoë Schiffer, reporting for Wired (News+ link):
As Meta employees brace for layoffs next Wednesday, May 20, many
say the vibes are horrifically, historically low. “Everyone is
unhappy; the only people who are not unhappy are, l...
Geoffrey Fowler, on his blog, which, alas, he calls “a Substack”:
I’m joining the Youth AI Safety Institute as its first new
employee. It’s a research and testing organization launching today
under the umbrella of children’s nonprofit Common Sense
Media. Backed by a $20 ...
The list of tech and financial industry titans joining the
commander-in-chief during his summit with China’s president Xi
Jinping includes Elon Musk, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, and Apple
CEO Tim Cook. [...]
Trump earlier confirmed a number of high-profile attendees in a
lengthy post on Truth Social, albeit referring to Cook as “Tim
Apple” in the process.
While he’s in such a jocular nickname-y mood, he should drop a reference to Winnie the Pooh into some of these posts on his blog.
Antonio G. Di Benedetto, reporting for The Verge (gift link):
Google is announcing a new line of laptops coming in the fall
called Googlebooks. Details are sparse for now, as the
tease is just a small part of various Android announcements
during Google’s Android Show. Bu...
Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg under the headline, “Apple-OpenAI Alliance Frays, Setting Up Possible Legal Fight”:
OpenAI lawyers are actively working with an outside legal firm on
a range of options that could be formally executed in the near
future, said the peop...
Dominic Preston, at The Verge:
Trump Mobile CEO Pat O’Brien first confirmed the release plans to
USA Today, telling the outlet that all preorders will be
fulfilled within the next few weeks. The company later confirmed
the news on its social media accounts, using a very ...
Well, this is ridiculous. Klack is a $5 Mac utility by Henrik Ruscon that simulates mechanical keyboard clacking while you type. Absurd. My keyboard makes its own beautiful sounds as I type.
So of course I went to buy a copy immediately, because I love an absurd utility, that serves no purpose other than fun, crafted with exquisite attention to detail. But when I did, the Mac App Store informed me that a member of my family sharing group had already purchased it. (I presume that was my son, not my wife.)
Update: From a DF reader who shall remain nameless:
I bought Klack out of spite. One of my colleagues brought a
mechanical keyboard to use in an open office space and I figured
it’d be funny to troll him by setting my Mac system volume to 10 and
letting it rip.
James Lockman:
This small driver enables the Griffin PowerMate, a nifty little
device from days gone by. What does the PowerMate do? It is a knob
that you can twist or that you can press. That’s it. It also has a
blue LED in the base that can change intensity based on wh...
Windows Notepad is, more or less, the Windows peer to MacOS’s TextEdit — the built-in system text editor. For years, it was really basic — so much more basic than TextEdit that it engendered no affection. You don’t see paeans to Notepad in The New Yorker. Recently though, Mi...
Windows Notepad is, more or less, the Windows peer to MacOS’s TextEdit — the built-in system text editor. For years, it was really basic — more basic than TextEdit. Recently Microsoft has started beefing it up, though, culminating last year when they added fucking Markdown s...
Kagi’s documentation:
Typing @r headphones will search for “headphones” but limit the
results to reddit.com (r is the short code for Reddit). This
allows you to quickly find relevant content on a specific site
using Kagi’s powerful index. It is effectively the same as do...
Quoting from a post I wrote a year ago:
Like, even if I use the magic &udm=14 parameter with
Google search, to get “disenshittified” results from
Google, I find I get better results from Kagi. When I
know there’s one right answer (say, a specific article I remember
r...
Dawn Gilbertson, writing for The Wall Street Journal (gift link):
Calder says that he tried to rebook at the given link a few times
but that it wouldn’t work. He became worried new flight options
were dwindling, so he googled the airline’s customer-service
number. (There...
Jacob Parry and Laura Greenhalgh, reporting for Politico, one month ago:
The EU’s landmark tech regulations are a “success story” that are
beginning to level the playing field between Silicon Valley’s
giants and their digital competitors in Europe, said European
Competit...
Foo Yun Chee, reporting for Reuters back on March 23:
Google, Amazon, Apple and Samsung’s smart TVs and virtual
assistants should fall under the EU’s toughest tech rules because
of their growing market power, the world’s largest broadcasters
told EU antitrust chief Teres...
Juli Clover, MacRumors:
To comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act, Apple is letting
third-party wearables access some features that have historically
been limited to the Apple Watch and AirPods.
Proximity pairing — Third-party earbuds are able to use
proximity pairin...
Apple Newsroom:
Starting today, end-to-end encrypted RCS messaging begins rolling
out in beta for iPhone users running iOS 26.5 with supported
carriers and Android users on the latest version of Google
Messages. When RCS messages are end-to-end encrypted, they can’t
be r...
Samsung phones took spots 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9. The one phone not from Apple or Samsung in the top 10 was the Xiaomi Redmi A5 at #10. As I always say, take these numbers with a grain of salt, but according to Counterpoint, the bestselling phones, in order, are:
iPhone 17
iPhone 17 Pro Max
iPhone 17 Pro
And Apple’s phone in spot #6 was not the iPhone Air, alas, but the year-old iPhone 16.
Apple stopped selling the Power Mac G5 (with space) in August 2006, so I’m not sure how much they care about Kraft using “PowerMac” (sans space) as a trademark for protein-enhanced macaroni and cheese. (I feel like there’s got to be a joke to be made here about a “cheese grater”...)
Mark Gurman, in his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg over the weekend:
Though the Mac software introduced the same Liquid Glass
interface seen in iOS 26, the design language hasn’t translated
as smoothly to the larger displays and different input methods of
desktops and...
My thanks for WorkOS for, once again, sponsoring Daring Fireball for the last week. If you’re ready to sell to enterprise customers, your product may be ready — but is your auth infrastructure?
If you’re building B2B SaaS, especially AI, you quickly need enterprise features like SSO, SCIM, and audit logs. Your developers shouldn’t waste cycles rebuilding that infrastructure. Free them to focus on what sets you apart. WorkOS gives you production-ready APIs for auth and access control that integrate directly into your product. Trusted by over 2,000 companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel.
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