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My phone has been pinging non-stop since yesterday. Everyone wants to know the backstory of the biggest acquihire in Silicon Valley history: Sam Altman’s OpenAI buying Jony Ive’s io Products for $6.5 billion. I have a few more clues. It’s why I’m updating my piece on the deal from yesterday. In their video announcing the …

Anthropic: Today, we’re introducing the next generation of Claude models: Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4, setting new standards for coding, advanced reasoning, and AI agents. Claude Opus 4 is the world’s best coding model, with sustained performance on complex, long-...

Juli Clover at MacRumors: To change your default app, you’ll need to install the latest version of the Google Translate app, which was released today. From there, you can open up the Settings app, select the Apps section, tap on Default Apps, tap Translation, and choose ...

Mark Gurman and Shirin Ghaffary, reporting yesterday for Bloomberg: Billionaire philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs is an io backer as well, through her firm the Emerson Collective. Other investors include Sutter Hill Ventures, Thrive Capital, Maverick Ventures and SV Ang...

MG Siegler, back on Sunday, before Judge Gonzales Rogers’s “settle this between yourselves or I’ll see you in court next week” order on Monday: Again, Sweeney is not a moron, he has to know all of this. But why simply sit quietly when you have an excuse to poke the bear...

PJ Vogt, in a very fun episode of his podcast, Search Engine:

A small group of Americans becomes convinced they’ve discovered something strange about their iPhones: a forbidden phrase the phone will refuse to transmit. A crack podcasting team searches for answers, wherever they may lead.

The bug is that if you send an audio voice message in Apple Messages, and mention the name “Dave & Busters”, the recipient will never receive the message. I had a good guess, right away, what was happening. But I don’t want to spoil it — it’s a fun listen.

But when you’re done listening, and you want a thorough explanation, check out Guilherme Rambo’s thorough investigation. So good.

The Beatles

Personal computers

The web

Napster

AI

The Daily Show:

Award-winning journalist Patrick McGee joins Jon Stewart to discuss how Apple built China in his new book Apple in China: The Capture of the World’s Greatest Company. They talk about Apple “sleepwalking” into this crisis, building a competitive market in Xi Jinping’s authoritarian state, the vocational training that boosted rivals, how Trump’s attempted Apple boycott backfired, and whether investments may be facilitating the annexation of Taiwan.

Terrific interview. I’m a few chapters into the book, and it’s good. McGee’s a good writer and a serious reporter — the depth of his research shows. It feels not like a few stories padded out to book length, but instead the distillation of a complex story that demands an entire book to tell.

The Sunday Times of London ran a good excerpt from Patrick McGee’s Apple in China (News+ link, in case you need it): The ripple effect from Apple’s investments across Chinese industry was accelerated by a rule imposed by Apple that its suppliers could be no more than 50 ...

Barry Ritholtz, in an excerpt from his brand-new book, How Not to Invest, marking the occasion of the 24th anniversary of Cliff Edwards’s claim chowder hall of famer, predicting doom for Apple’s then-new foray into its own chain of retail stores: There are many genuinely...

The Knicks got beat last night. And the game seemed so won. When Brunson sat down in the fourth period because he was in foul trouble, the Knicks and a huge run that put them up by 17 with less than 3 minutes remaining. My numbers might be slightly off. Then they brought Brun...

Whenever I write about our focus on cover letters during the hiring process, I'll inevitably receive the "cover letters are still a thing?" or "people still read cover letters?" response from a cadre of characters.Here's one from yesterday:https://x.com/amfonte/status/1924...

OpenAI, made the biggest acquihire in  Silicon Valley’s history. Sam Altman and his crew  bought Jony Ive and his coterie of ex-Apple hotshots for a whopping $6.5 billion. It is an all-stock deal for io Products, a 55-person company that is building an “amazing AI device.” It is hard to say what that device is because …

No details on what yet, but a lovely little 9-minute video on why. Sam Altman: “What it means to use technology can change in a profound way. I hope we can bring some of the delight, wonder and creative spirit that I first felt using an Apple Computer 30 years ago.” J...

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac: After a nearly five-year hiatus, Fortnite is back on the App Store for iPhone and iPad users in the United States. Epic Games announced the return of the battle royale gaming app this afternoon, and you can head to the App Store now to download it...

I mentioned Chris Lydon's weblog for the ears and got an email back, and this made me think some more. We need someone to do a canvas of how intellectuals use ChatGPT-like systems to advance their research and creativity, or just for learning or fun. It's the same kind of op...

Prompt: Draw me the cover of a fictitious magazine called RSS Land. On the cover a picture of a news room, and in small type along the right edge titles of stories. Make it interesting.

I turn off CNN when they start a segment on Jake Tapper’s book. The level of hypocrisy is intense. Who covered up what? Please. I remember Hillary's Emails. And weapons of mass destruction. And Trump may not be good for America but he's sure good for CBS. And on and on. They think we don't think. But their influence is getting close to nil. American news is one story at a time, debates between boring people saying the same bullshit over and over. Democrats who stumble over their words. An occasional glypse of Bernie or AOC. Something to get your bile up, and the next one and the one after that, but it doesn't work anymore. What Biden did or didn't do is no more relevant on CNN than it is on Fox.

Meet the Monster: a fountain pen so ambitious that it holds enough ink to write a short novel. The pen is a symbiosis of precision engineering, material science, and bold design choices. It is also the story of a young designer's journey.

MySQL, which I'm using for Daytona, has the idea of relevance in searches. Previously I had been showing results in reverse chronologic order. So now, a search for Matt Mullenweg gets the same results but prioritized by what MySQL thinks are the most relevant results.