are tech companies delivering on basic promises?
The Kessler Syndrome is a scenario where the density of objects and space debris in low Earth orbit becomes so high that collisions between them trigger a runaway chain reaction. Each crash generates thousands of new fragments, exponentially increasing the risk of further impacts and potentially rendering Earth s orbit unusable. Because of the rise in Continue reading Is a Kessler Syndrome for…
Meta s own research (and its use of it) has shown that it repeatedly ignores well-substantiated facts about the harms of its products. Now that Section 230 seems like a flawed shield, I fear the takeaway for other companies will be: never do the research in the first place to preserve plausible deniability. Meta has always Continue reading Meta shares drop on fears US verdicts open door to deluge…
A couple of weeks ago, there was a great blogpost Is Show HN Dead? No, But It s Drowning . And now we see HN s top moderator is discussing throttling Show HN somehow, responding in a thread with 600+ upvotes entitled Ask HN: Please restrict new accounts from posting. I am working on a broader think Continue reading Hacker News moves toward restricting Show HN posts, amid the AI slop wave
One thing you could always confidently say about Sweeney was he s going to speak his mind . Going back decades, he has consistently been outspoken against powerful platforms and gatekeepers, including Windows, Apple s App Stores, and Google s Google Play store. Five years ago Epic Games sued Apple and Google over their app store practices. Recently, the Continue reading Epic gagging: Industry…
This post was linked to by legendary link blog mjtsai, which features additional discussion. [Update: Since posting I have continued to face delays. I ve decided to log them: My Mac app s most approval time: Submitted mid-Saturday March 7, was Waiting for review until March 12 (the review itself was short).] Average app review times for Continue reading From Tahoe bugs to long app review wait…
You have to be obsessive compulsive to avoid the privacy landmines that companies like OpenAI and Anthropic spread throughout their products. Yesterday I wrote a blog post about how the “How is Claude doing this session?” prompt seemed like a feature just designed to sneak more data from paying Claude users who had opted out Continue reading Don t even Dismiss the “How is Claude doing this…
I am a power user of AI models, who pays a premium for plans claiming to better-respect the privacy of users. (Btw, I am not a lawyer.) With OpenAI, I pay $50/month (2 seats) for a business account vs a $20/month individual plan because of stronger privacy promises, and I don t even need the extra Continue reading Assume that How is Claude doing this session? is a privacy loophole
[If you re here for the worst AI fail, I ll spoil it: ChatGPT hallucinated my app s purpose and basically described it as some sort of keylogger, which it absolutely isn t 🤷♂️. Google AI Overviews also failed both of my tests. There is some discussion of it here. Now, the article:] Google search isn t what it used Continue reading Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT can get it wrong (or very wrong)…
(If you want to skip directly to the fixes, click here. If you want to skip to some genuine praise of Apple, feel free to jump to the next section. There s a lively discussion on HN here and 9to5mac here.) A couple of weeks ago I noticed my pair of AirPods Pro 2 aggressively switching Continue reading Apple starts pushing AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods 4 owners into Transparency or Noise Cancellation…
For years, analysts have gone on channels like CNBC calling Bitcoin digital gold , and many everyday crypto investors truly believe that. But gold has been a store of value for millennia. Could Bitcoin, as we know it today, retain its value long term, say even just fifty years? The simple math tells us it likely Continue reading Napkin math suggests Bitcoin will perish unless its mining incentives…