Pew Research Centre made headlines this week when it released a report on the effects of Google’s A.I. Overviews on user behaviour. It provided apparent evidence searchers do not explore much beyond the summary when presented with one. This caused understandable alarm among journalists who focused on two stats in particular: a reduction from 15% […]| pxlnv.com
Mary Cunningham, CBS News: Tesla was found partly liable in a wrongful death case involving the electric vehicle company’s Autopilot system, with a jury awarding the plaintiffs $200 million in punitive damages plus additional money in compensatory damages. […] “What we ultimately learned from that augmented video is that the vehicle 100% knew that it […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Andy Baio: This minute-long clip of a Will Smith concert is blowing up online for all the wrong reasons, with people accusing him of using AI to generate fake crowds filled with fake fans carrying fake signs. The story’s blown up a bit, with coverage in Rolling Stone, NME, The Independent, and Consequence of Sound. […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Joseph Cox, 404 Media: A man holds an orange and white device in his hand, about the size of his palm, with an antenna sticking out. He enters some commands with the built-in buttons, then walks over to a nearby car. At first, its doors are locked, and the man tugs on one of them […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
The United States government has long had an interest in boosting its high technology sector, with manifold objectives: for soft power, espionage, and financial dominance, at least. It has accomplished this through tax incentives, funding some of the best universities in the world, lax antitrust and privacy enforcement, and — in some cases — direct […]| Pixel Envy
Michelle Bellefontaine, CBC News: “Any publicly funded immunization in B.C. can be provided at no cost to any Canadian travelling within the province,” a statement from the ministry said. “This includes providing publicly funded COVID-19 vaccine to people of Alberta.” […] Alberta is the only Canadian province that will not provide free universal access to […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Jane Mundy, writing at the imaginatively named Lawyers and Settlements in December: A former Apple executive has filed a California labor complaint against Apple and Jay Blahnik, the company’s vice president of fitness technologies. Mandana Mofidi accuses Apple of retaliation after she reported sexual harassment and raised concerns about receiving less pay than her male […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Emily Price, Fast Company: Meta’s Threads is on a roll. The social networking app is now home to more than 400 million monthly active users, Meta shared with Fast Company on Tuesday. That’s 50 million more than just a few months ago, and a long way from the 175 million it had around its first […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Adam Engst, TidBits: I’m certainly aware that many readers venture outside the Apple ecosystem for certain devices, but I’ve always assumed that most people would opt for Apple’s device in any given category. TidBITS does focus on Apple, after all, and Apple works hard to provide an integrated experience for those who go all-in on […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Apple: Apple today announced the expansion of its Self Service Repair and Genuine Parts Distributor programs to Canada, providing individuals and independent repair professionals across the country broader access to the parts, tools, and manuals needed to repair Apple devices. As with other regions where Self-Service Repair is available, manuals are available on Apple’s website, […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, in a tweet that happens to be the only communication of this news so far: Over the past few months, I’ve been working closely with our partners in the UK, alongside @POTUS and @VP, to ensure Americans’ private data remains private and our Constitutional rights and civil liberties […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
When I watched Tim Cook, in the White House, carefully assemble a glass-and-gold trophy fit for a king, it felt to me like a natural outcome of the events and actions exhaustively documented by Patrick McGee in “Apple in China”. It was a reflection of the arc of Cook’s career, and of Apple’s turnaround from […]| Pixel Envy
Nice scoop from Eric Schwarz: Over the past week, I’ve been working to track down the new owner of MacSurfer’s Headline News, a beloved site that shut down in 2020 and has recently had somewhat mysterious revival. Fortunately, after some digging that didn’t really lead anywhere, I received an email from its new owner, Ken […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
My thanks to Magic Lasso Adblock for sponsoring Pixel Envy this week. With over 5,000 five star reviews, Magic Lasso Adblock is simply the best ad blocker for your iPhone, iPad, and Mac. As an efficient, high performance and native Safari ad blocker, Magic Lasso blocks all intrusive ads, trackers and annoyances – delivering a […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Joseph Cox, 404 Media: Members of a law enforcement group chat including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies inadvertently added a random person to the group called “Mass Text” where they exposed highly sensitive information about an active search for a convicted attempted murderer seemingly marked for deportation, 404 Media has learned. […] […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Five years ago, Apple and tech news aggregator MacSurfer announced it was shutting down. The site was still accessible albeit in a stopped-time state, and it seemed that is how it would sit until the server died. In June, though, MacSurfer was relaunched. The design has been updated and it is no longer as technically […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Two presentations I watched recently and I wish to share: A couple of months ago, Deviant Ollam posted a copy of his CackalackyCon 2025 talk — nearly two hours about high-security safes and vaults from the Cold War to present day. Earlier this week, Micah Lee posted the video of his DEF CON 33 talk […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Sydney Bradley, Business Insider, last week: The viral Tea app, which lets women post anonymously about men, has a new rival: TeaOnHer. In a gender flip, the new app is for men. TeaOnHer is largely a copy of the original, but for men instead of women. Its description in Apple’s App Store is nearly identical […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
The top two stories on Techmeme right now are lies. What I mean by that is not that the reporters are lying, but that the stories themselves are fundamentally dishonest because of who and what they are about. The first is by Katherine Blunt, of the Wall Street Journal: Artificial-intelligence startup Perplexity on Tuesday offered […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Colin Lecher and Tomas Apodaca, the Markup: Data brokers nationwide must register in California under the state’s Consumer Privacy Act, which allows Californians to request that their information be removed, that it not be sold or that they get access to it. After reviewing the websites of all 499 data brokers registered with the state, […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Manuel Moreale: And the thing I love the most about sticking with tools for the long run is that you get to know the people behind them, and you learn to appreciate those individuals and what they do. That is especially true in my case because most of the tools I use are built by […]| pxlnv.com
Thomas Germain, BBC News, covered the Pew report about the relationship between Google’s A.I. Overviews and click-through traffic: Pew says it’s confident in its research. “Our findings are broadly consistent with independent studies conducted by web analytics firms,” [Pew’s Aaron] Smith says. Dozens of reports show AI Overviews cut search traffic as much as 30% […]| pxlnv.com
Vjosa Isai, New York Times: Some of the most popular bike lanes were making Toronto’s notorious traffic worse, according to the provincial government. So Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier, passed a law to rip out 14 miles of the lanes from three major streets that serve the core of the city. Toronto’s mayor, Olivia Chow, arrived […]| pxlnv.com
Natasha Tiku, Washington Post: Influential tech investor and Trump adviser Marc Andreessen recently said universities will “pay the price” for promoting diversity and allegedly discriminating against supporters of President Donald Trump, according to messages he sent to a group chat with White House officials and technology leaders reviewed by The Washington Post. The messages the […]| pxlnv.com
Apple: Apple today announced the global App Store ecosystem facilitated $1.3 trillion in developer billings and sales in 2024, according to a new study by economists Professor Andrey Fradkin from Boston University Questrom School of Business and Dr. Jessica Burley from Analysis Group. For more than 90 percent of the billings and sales facilitated by […]| pxlnv.com
In September 2021, U.S. judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers issued a judgement in Epic Games’ case against Apple. She mostly sided with Apple but, critically, ruled third-party developers must be permitted to link to external purchasing mechanisms from within their apps. Even that barest of changes, however, has apparently been too onerous for Apple to comply […]| pxlnv.com
Mike Masnick, Techdirt, reacting to Grok’s Nazi turn: We need to take back control over the tools that we use. Especially these days, as so many people have started (dangerously) treating AI tools as “objective” sources of truth, people need to understand that they are all subject to biases. Some of these biases are in […]| pxlnv.com
Michal Tsai: I find this really confusing, but I think when they say “single business model” they mean unifying the CTF and the CTC and the previous “alternative” terms for apps that are not using the traditional App Store model. There are still two models in that you can do the simple flat rate that’s […]| pxlnv.com
Apple: The European Commission has required Apple to make a series of additional changes under the Digital Markets Act: […] The wording of this sentence makes it sound like the list of specific policies following it were dictated by the European Commission, but I am not sure that is true. John Voorhees, MacStories: Fees have changed for […]| pxlnv.com
A sassy weblog written by Nick Heer with topics including technology and policy, Apple, Silicon Valley, and privacy.| pxlnv.com
Dan Moren ended his “Stay Foolish” column at Macworld with a tremendous essay about what it means to be a “fan” of Apple or its products in 2025: Over the years, those in the Apple community have long been called everything from the liturgical “Apple faithful” to the insipid “iSheep”, dating back to the days […]| pxlnv.com
With this week’s public release of Apple’s operating system updates comes Apple Intelligence now on by default. More users will be discovering its “beta” features and Apple will, in theory, be collecting even more feedback about their quality. There are certainly issues with the output of Notification Summaries, Siri, and more.1 The flaws in results […]| pxlnv.com
Apple Publishes Its Latest Analysis Group App Store Report| pxlnv.com
Apple spokesperson Jacqueline Roy, in a statement provided seemingly first to both Stephen Nellis, of Reuters, and John Gruber: […] We’ve also been working on a more personalized Siri, giving it more awareness of your personal context, as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps. It’s going to […]| pxlnv.com
Michael Tsai, commenting in relation to the “tyranny of apps” article: I think Apple News would have a better user experience with a Web site and an RSS feed than as an app. I agree, but I think it is a worse situation than that suggests. Apple News is not only a mediocre app experience, […]| pxlnv.com
Jason Koebler, 404 Media: Meta deleted nonbinary and trans themes for its Messenger app this week, around the same time that the company announced it would change its rules to allow users to declare that LGBTQ+ people are “mentally ill,” 404 Media has learned. […] The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine shows these posts [announcing the […]| pxlnv.com
Zoe Kleinman, Liv McMahon, and Natalie Sherman, BBC News: “Apple Intelligence features are in beta and we are continuously making improvements with the help of user feedback,” the company said in a statement on Monday, adding that receiving the summaries is optional. “A software update in the coming weeks will further clarify when the text […]| pxlnv.com
The ads for Apple Intelligence have mostly been noted for what they show, but there is also something missing: in the fine print and in its operating systems, Apple still calls it a “beta” release, but not in its ads. Given the exuberance with which Apple is marketing these features, that label seems less like […]| pxlnv.com
Matthew Green on Bluesky: I love that Apple is trying to do privacy-related services, but this [“Enhanced Visual Search” setting] just appeared at the bottom of my Settings screen over the holiday break when I wasn’t paying attention. It sends data about my private photos to Apple. The first mention of this preference I can […]| pxlnv.com
In the United States, donations to the extravagant presidential inauguration ceremony by U.S. citizens and corporations are unlimited. As a result, it is the perfect vehicle with which to get comfortable with the incoming administration. It is not a bribe, though. Money or goods given to holders of public office with the implication of favours […]| pxlnv.com
The Economist: So how big is too big? At what point do the costs of the heaviest vehicles — measured in lives lost — vastly exceed their benefits? To answer this question, The Economist compiled ten years’ worth of crash data from more than a dozen states. Like the data compiled by Messrs Anderson and […]| pxlnv.com
Sérgio Spagnuolo, Sofia Schurig, and Pedro Nakamura, Núcleo: A Supreme Court Justice ordered, on Friday (August 30, 2024), the complete suspension of all access to X (formerly Twitter) across the entire Brazilian territory, in an unprecedented ruling against the social platform. […] In a ruling issued on the afternoon of Aug. 31, Justice Alexandre de […]| pxlnv.com
Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor for the Clinton administration and Sam Reich’s dad, wrote about Elon Musk’s political influence in an editorial for the Guardian. It begins as a decent piece, comparing the power of owning a social media platform with Musk’s childlike gullibility — my words, not Reich’s. But, in a section […]| pxlnv.com
Cyrille Louis, Le Figaro, originally in French and translated here with DeepL: After four days in police custody, Pavel Dourov, founder and boss of the encrypted messaging service Telegram, was indicted in Paris on Wednesday evening by two examining magistrates for a litany of offences relating to organised crime, Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau announced in […]| pxlnv.com
French magistrate Laure Beccuau (PDF) on Monday disclosed the reasons for Pavel Durov’s arrest and detainment. The first two pages are in French; the last two are in English. Mike Masnick, Techdirt: In the end, though, a lot of this does seem potentially very problematic. So far, there’s been no revelation of anything that makes […]| pxlnv.com
The extremely normal U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary posted a letter sent from Mark Zuckerberg to Chairman Jim Jordan.1 In it, Zuckerberg says Meta felt “pressured” by the Biden administration to more aggressively moderate users’ posts during the COVID-19 pandemic, that the administration was “wrong” for doing so, and says he “regret[s] that we […]| pxlnv.com
Jess Weatherbed, the Verge: Image manipulation techniques and other methods of fakery have existed for close to 200 years — almost as long as photography itself. (Cases in point: 19th-century spirit photography and the Cottingley Fairies.) But the skill requirements and time investment needed to make those changes are why we don’t think to inspect […]| pxlnv.com
Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, in an excerpt from their forthcoming book “Character Limit” published in the New York Times: Mr. Musk’s fixation on Blue extended beyond the design, and he engaged in lengthy deliberations about how much it should cost. Mr. [David] Sacks insisted that they should raise the price to $20 a month, […]| pxlnv.com
An un-bylined report in Le Monde: French judicial authorities on Sunday extended the detention of the Russian-born founder and chief of Telegram Pavel Durov after his arrest at a Paris airport over alleged offenses related to the popular but controversial messaging app. I believe it is best to wait until there is a full description […]| pxlnv.com
Paris Marx: […] If he [Sam Altman] was serious about wanting to extend people’s lifespans by 10 years, he wouldn’t be looking at sci-fi fantasies, but at the policies that can deliver those benefits and how to get the US political system to move them forward. […] Silicon Valley claims we can solve these serious […]| pxlnv.com
My home computer in 1998 had a 56K modem connected to our telephone line; we were allowed a maximum of thirty minutes of computer usage a day, because my parents — quite reasonably — did not want to have their telephone shut off for an evening at a time. I remember webpages loading slowly: ten […]| pxlnv.com
