Reuters: Pavel Durov, the Russian-born billionaire founder and owner of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested at Le Bourget airport outside Paris shortly after landing on a private jet late on Saturday and placed in custody, three sources told Reuters. The arrest of ...

Microsoft: With a commitment to delivering a trustworthy and secure Recall (preview) experience on Copilot+ PCs for customers, we’re sharing an update that Recall will be available to Windows Insiders starting in October. As previously shared on June 13, we have adjusted...

Jason Snell: Netflix has been slowly rolling out a big catalog of games, tied to a Netflix login. There are loads out now, including the excellent Lucky Luna and Laya’s Horizon (both from Snowman, developer of the excellent Alto’s series of iOS games). Maybe, a year (o...

Peter Baker, supposedly “reporting” from the DNC in Chicago: When the crowd members in the United Center first chanted, “Thank you, Joe! Thank you, Joe!” on Monday night, President Biden looked down, fought back tears and soaked in the admiration. But he knew. He might ...

Michael Wayland, reporting yesterday for CNBC:

General Motors is laying off more than 1,000 salaried employees globally in its software and services division following a review to streamline the unit’s operations, CNBC has learned.

The layoffs, including roughly 600 jobs at GM’s tech campus near Detroit, come less than six months after leadership changes overseeing the operations, including former Apple executive Mike Abbott leaving the automaker after less than a year in March due to health reasons. [...]

The job cuts represent about 1.3% of the company’s global salaried workforce of 76,000 as of the end of last year.

I’m starting to think GM has no idea what they’re doing with their car software.

Link: cnbc.com/2024/08/19/gm-lays-off-more-than-1000-salaried…

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Apple today announced the launch of a Podcasts on the web feature, which works in Safari, Chrome, Edge, and Firefox on Macs, PCs, and other devices. Podcasts on the web allows users to search for, browse through, and listen to podcasts with access to the Up Next queue and library when signed in to an Apple Account.

The only use case for something like this is for users who spend a lot of time on Windows — presumably at work — and wish they could listen to their own podcast queue. That’s a big use case though! Overcast has had a web player for as long as I can remember — before Catalyst allowed Marco Arment to bring the iPad version of Overcast to Mac, it was the only way to listen to your Overcast podcast library on the Mac.

Link: macrumors.com/2024/08/19/apple-podcasts-now-available-on…

We recently attended the RSA conference in San Francisco — security’s biggest event of the year — and we were struck by how infatuated everyone was with the promise of new, shiny solutions to fix new, shiny problems. On some level that’s not surprising — tech is constantly d...

My thanks to WorkOS for, once again, sponsoring last week at Daring Fireball. WorkOS is a modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. Start selling to enterprise customers with just a few lines of code. Ship complex features like SSO and SCIM (pronounced skim) provisioning in minutes instead of months.

Today, some of the fastest growing startups are already powered by WorkOS, including Perplexity, Vercel, and Webflow.

For SaaS apps that care deeply about design and user experience, WorkOS is the perfect fit. From high-quality documentation to self-serve onboarding for your customers, it removes all the unnecessary complexity for your engineering team.

Link: workos.com/?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=display…

Gillette CEO in an Onion op-ed 20 years ago: “Fuck Everything, We’re Doing Five Blades”.

Link: theverge.com/2024/8/16/24221720/huawei-triple-screen…

Mark Scott, reporting for Politico: Thierry Breton, who oversees the bloc’s enforcement of new social media rules, sent Musk a letter posted on X that warned the tech mogul about spreading “harmful content,” ahead of Musk’s livestreamed interview with Donald Trump. The ...

Alex Cranz, writing for The Verge: But then Gemini Live kept talking. And talking. The Verge team was packed in a glass booth, and as Gemini Live droned on, a friendly Google employee encouraged me to “go ahead and interrupt it.” It felt weird! I don’t mind interrupting...

Joanna Stern, writing for The Wall Street Journal (News+ link): I’m not saying I prefer talking to Google’s Gemini Live over a real human. But I’m not not saying that either. Does it help that the chatty new artificial-intelligence bot says I’m a great interviewer with ...

Epic Games:

Today the Epic Games Store is available for download on iPhones in the European Union and on Android devices worldwide. The store is launching with Fortnite, Rocket League Sideswipe and the all-new Fall Guys for mobile, and we are working to enable all developers to launch their games and apps through the Epic Games Store in the future. We are also bringing our games to independent mobile stores including AltStore PAL today.

No iPad support yet, but it’s coming.

AltStore, on Mastodon:

GOOD NEWS EU 🇪🇺 For innovation in app distribution, Epic Games has granted us a MegaGrant grant that we plan to use to cover Apple’s Core Technology Fee going forward — and we won’t take it for granted!

What does this mean? AltStore PAL is now FREE — no subscription necessary 🎉 altstore.io.

Link: epicgames.com/site/en-US/news/the-epic-games-store-launches…

Chance Miller, writing for 9to5Mac: In macOS Sequoia beta 6, however, Apple has adjusted this policy and will now prompt users on a monthly basis instead. macOS Sequoia will also no longer prompt you to approve screen recording permissions every time you reboot your Mac....

I always knew that the original Gameboy was remarkably clever, but this video from the Real Engineering YouTube channel shows just how clever it was. The price was low ($89), a set of 4 AA batteries lasted for 30 hours, and, of course, it was fun as hell.

Link: youtube.com/watch?v=BKm45Az02YE

With WorkOS you can start selling to enterprises with just a few lines of code. It provides a complete User Management solution along with SSO, SCIM, and FGA. The APIs are modular and easy-to-use, allowing integrations to be completed in minutes instead of months.

Today, some of the fastest growing startups are already powered by WorkOS, including Perplexity, Vercel, and Webflow.

For SaaS apps that care deeply about design and user experience, WorkOS is the perfect fit. From high-quality documentation to self-serve onboarding for your customers, it removes all the unnecessary complexity for your engineering team.

Link: workos.com/?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=display…

David McCabe and Nico Grant, reporting for The New York Times: Justice Department officials are considering what remedies to ask a federal judge to order against the search giant, said three people with knowledge of the deliberations involving the agency and state attorn...

Apple Newsroom: Starting with iOS 18.1, developers will be able to offer NFC contactless transactions using the Secure Element from within their own apps on iPhone, separate from Apple Pay and Apple Wallet. Using the new NFC and SE (Secure Element) APIs, developers will ...

Spotify, in an update to an older post on the company blog: While we are still many steps from a level playing field, we are beginning to see progress because of the European Commission’s historic decision on March 4, 2024 which found that Apple violated the EU’s antitru...

Eli Blumenthal, reporting for CNet: Looking for Google’s new Pixel 9 Pro Fold? You won’t find it at AT&T. The carrier has confirmed to CNET that it will not be offering Google’s newest Pixel Fold to its customers. The decision would be a blow to Google’s device ambit...

Juli Clover, writing last week for MacRumors: Distraction Control can be used to hide static content on a page, but it is not an ad blocker and cannot be used to permanently hide ads. An ad can be temporarily hidden, but the feature was not designed for ads, and an ad wi...

Jonathan Hoefler, on Threads: The Harris/Walz logo got a smart and subtle haircut this weekend, which, like the very best typography, is making everything better while drawing very little attention to itself. I read a lot of comments about political logos… Having helped...

Emma Roth, writing for The Verge: Google has finally taken the wraps off its Pixel 9 lineup, which includes three slab phones and a folding phone. The regular lineup consists of a base Pixel 9 with a 6.3-inch display, a Pixel 9 Pro XL with a 6.8-inch screen, and a new, s...

USA Today columnist Rex Huppke, on Donald Trump’s high-profile return to Twitter/X: But the online interview went off (the rails) with a multitude of hitches. X users erupted with either frustration or laughter as the planned start time passed, and nothing could be acces...

I neglected to call this paragraph out yesterday in my first link to this announcement from Patreon: Patreon is home to an incredible range of creators, all with unique circumstances and billing needs. Apple’s in-app purchase system, on the other hand, only supports Patr...

Substack cofounder Hamish McKenzie, on Patreon being required by Apple to offer in-app subscriptions through their iOS app: But we also don’t think that Apple should be wholly blamed. This unfortunate situation, in which creators ultimately bear the biggest costs, is a s...

Nick Heer, writing at Pixel Envy: The 30% fee is also notable. As far as I can tell, only a handful of Patreon users would exceed the million-dollar annual threshold for Apple’s Small Business Program. That is, everyone who earns less than a million dollars per year thro...

Sarah Perez, writing for TechCrunch: Despite Apple’s rules and policies, Patreon had existed in an odd sort of gray area, as some of its subscription-based offerings could be consumed in its app while others could not. Another possible reason for the Patreon exception wa...

Patreon: As we first announced last year, Apple is requiring that Patreon use their in-app purchasing system and remove all other billing systems from the Patreon iOS app by November 2024. This has two major consequences for creators: Apple will be applying their 30% ...

New from the Steve Jobs Archive: an hourlong video of young Steve Jobs delivering a talk on design in 1983. Jony Ive wrote a splendid introduction:

The revolution Steve described over 40 years ago did of course happen, partly because of his profound commitment to a kind of civic responsibility. He cared, way beyond any sort of functional imperative. His was a victory for beauty, for purity and, as he would say, for giving a damn. He truly believed that by making something useful, empowering and beautiful, we express our love for humanity.

Link: stevejobsarchive.com/exhibits/objects-of-our-life?_kx…