Dan Mangan, CNBC: Google on Friday joined Apple in removing from its online store apps that can be used to anonymously report sightings of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and other law-enforcement authorities. Apple on Thursday night said it was removing ICEBlock and other similar apps from its App Store that are used to […]| pxlnv.com
Adam Engst, TidBits, had some very kind things to say about my Liquid Glass piece, which I do appreciate. I liked Engst’s attempt to answer the question of “why?”: Why now? The answer may partly lie in available processing power. The balance between usability and aesthetics has always been informed by technical capabilities. Consider a […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Jason Koebler and Jules Roscoe, 404 Media: To do this, we used a crowdsourced database of AI hallucination cases maintained by the researcher Damien Charlotin, which so far contains more than 410 cases worldwide, including 269 in the United States. Charlotin’s database is an incredible resource, but it largely focuses on what happened in any […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Anna Gross and Tim Bradshaw, Financial Times: The UK government has issued a new order to Apple to create a backdoor into its cloud storage service, this time targeting only British users’ data, despite US claims that Britain had abandoned all attempts to break the tech giant’s encryption. […] Apple made a complaint to the […]| pxlnv.com
A brief, throat-clearing caveat: while I had written most of this pre-launch, I was unable to complete it by the time Apple shipped its annual round of operating system updates. Real life, and all that. I have avoided reading reviews; aside from the excerpt I quoted from Dan Moren’s, I have seen almost nothing. Even […]| pxlnv.com
Robert Graham, clarifying the bad reporting of the big SIM farm bust in New York: The Secret Service is lying to the press. They know it’s just a normal criminal SIM farm and are hyping it into some sort of national security or espionage threat. We know this because they are using the correct technical […]| pxlnv.com
Something I missed in posting about Apple’s critical appraisal of the Digital Markets Act is its timing. Why now? Well, it turns out the European Commission sought feedback beginning in July, and with a deadline of just before midnight on 24 September. That is why it published that statement, and why Google did the same. […]| pxlnv.com
In 2023 Lina Khan, then-chair of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, sued Amazon over using (PDF) “manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user-interface designs known as ‘dark patterns’ to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically-renewing Prime subscriptions” and “knowingly complicat[ing] the cancellation process”. Some people thought this case was a long-shot, or attempted to use Khan’s scholarship […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Catharine Tunney, CBC News: The immensely popular social media app TikTok has been collecting sensitive information from hundreds of thousands of Canadians under 13 years old, a joint investigation by privacy authorities found. […] The privacy commissioners said TikTok agreed to enhance its age verification and provide up-front notices about its wide-ranging collection of data. […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Apple issued a press release criticizing the E.U.’s Digital Markets Act in a curious mix of countries. It published it on its European sites — of course — and in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, all English-speaking. It also issued the same press release in Brazil, China, Guinea-Bissau, Indonesia, and Thailand — […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Oscar Godsell, Sky News: The opposition’s shadow finance minister James Paterson has since urged the Australian Labor government to follow suit. Mr Paterson told Sky News if the US was able to create a “safer version” of TikTok, then Australia should liaise with the Trump administration to become part of that solution. “It would be […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Do you manage a Patreon page as a “creator”? I do; it is where you can give me five dollars per month to add to my guilt over not finishing my thoughts about Liquid Glass.1 You do not have to give me five dollars. I feel guilty enough as it is. Anyway, you might have […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Tonight, I set up a new Apple TV — well, as “new” as a refurbished 2022-though-still-current-generation model can be — and it was not a good time. I know Apple might be releasing a new model later this year, but any upgrades are probably irrelevant for how I have used my existing ten-year-old model. I […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
The U.S. Secret Service: The U.S. Secret Service dismantled a network of electronic devices located throughout the New York tristate area that were used to conduct multiple telecommunications-related threats directed towards senior U.S. government officials, which represented an imminent threat to the agency’s protective operations. This protective intelligence investigation led to the discovery of more […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
This story of how Full Fact geolocated a viral video claiming to be shot in London is intriguing because it disproves its own headline’s claim that “A.I. helped”. Charlotte Green, Full Fact: But in this case, directly reverse image searching through Google took me to a TikTok video with a location marker for ‘Pondok Pesantren […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Allison Smith, Modern Retail (via Michael Tsai): Amazon revealed at its annual Accelerate seller conference in Seattle that it is shutting down its long-running “commingling” program — a move that drew louder applause from sellers than any other update of the morning. The decision marks the end of a controversial practice in which Amazon pooled […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
John Walker, Kotaku Rather than because of wifi, the reason this happened is because these so-called AIs are just regurgitating information that has been parsed from scanning the internet. It will have been trained on recipes written by professional chefs, home cooks and cookery sites, then combined this information to create something that sounds a […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
In 2018, the Toronto Star and CBC News jointly published an investigation into Ticketmaster’s sales practices: Data journalists monitored Ticketmaster’s website for seven months leading up to this weekend’s show at Scotiabank Arena, closely tracking seats and prices to find out exactly how the box-office system works. Here are the key findings: Ticketmaster doesn’t list […]⌥ 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. Designed from the ground up to protect your privacy, Magic Lasso blocks all intrusive ads, trackers, and annoyances. It stops you from […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Rani Molla, Sherwood News: While the prerecorded videos of the products in use were slick and highly produced, some of the live demos simply failed. “Glasses are the ideal form factor for personal superintelligence because they let you stay present in the moment while getting access to all of these AI capabilities to make you […]⌥ Permalink| Pixel Envy
Craig Grannell, Wired: Apple revealed Liquid Glass as part of its WWDC announcement this June, with all the pomp usually reserved for shiny new gear. The press release promised a “delightful and elegant new software design” that “reflects and refracts its surroundings while dynamically transforming to bring greater focus to content.” Today it launches globally […]| pxlnv.com
Tim Hardwick, MacRumors: Apple says on its feature availability webpage that “Apple Intelligence: Live Translation with AirPods” won’t be available if both the user is physically in the EU and their Apple Account region is in the EU. Apple doesn’t give a reason for the restriction, but legal and regulatory pressures seem the most plausible […]| pxlnv.com
A sassy weblog written by Nick Heer with topics including technology and policy, Apple, Silicon Valley, and privacy.| pxlnv.com
Last year, Robb Knight figured out how Perplexity, an artificial intelligence search engine, was evading instructions not to crawl particular sites. Knight learned that Perplexity’s engine would use an unlisted user agent to scrape summaries of pages on websites where Perplexity was blocked. In my testing, I found the summaries were outdated by hours-to-days, indicating […]| pxlnv.com
It is baffling to me that, in 2021, I still do not know the security practices of the devices and cloud services I use more frequently than ever. This became particularly worrisome last year when I began working my day job from my personal computer. I have several things in my favour: it is an […]| pxlnv.com
Following Up on That xAI v. Apple and OpenAI Situation| pxlnv.com
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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