Zac Hall, 9to5Mac: The new Meta AI desktop app is version 1.0 beta at launch and weighs just 16MB once installed. Based on initial inspection, it runs natively on Apple silicon Macs with macOS 15 or later, using an AppKit and SwiftUI shell with WebKit for richer chat content. In other words, this is not an […] ⌥ Permalink
Maggie Harrison Dupré, in a Guardian article about Meta Glasses: […] Smartglasses bring the functionality of smartphones, cameras included, into every moment. Several people I spoke to said that even when the LED is functioning as intended it can be subtle and difficult to spot from far away, especially if you aren’t aware of how […] ⌥ Permalink
Karl Bode: So prepare for a year of breathless and evidence-optional claims that Chinese AI is a dire threat to U.S. consumer privacy and national security, followed by an elaborate bipartisan train of bad policy and shitty new laws crafted by a clumsy coalition of technofascists, extremists, and competition-averse chickenshits. A bit rant-ish for my […] ⌥ Permalink
From the Bundeskartellamt’s press release: Under the commitments that have now been declared binding, Apple will align the consent prompts for its own offerings and for third-party apps much more closely. This involves removing possibly discouraging symbols and wording in Apple’s predefined requests for third-party providers. The design of the consent prompts will be neutral […] ⌥ Permalink
Here is a thought that must have occurred to someone on the MacOS user interface team: if Liquid Glass supports colour, why not use it to give more dimension to window controls? So Apple did just that in the latest Golden Gate beta, and it looks good. ⌥ Permalink ⌥ Permalink
Natasha of “Team YouTube: Last year, we updated how we count public views for Shorts to better capture how viewers watch on YouTube. Now, we’re aligning all other video formats to this same standard for consistency across the platform. Beginning on 8/24/2026, a view will be counted the moment a video begins to play—from the […] ⌥ Permalink
Mark Zuckerberg, in a (much) longer version of an essay originally published last month in the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal: The defining questions of our age are who will have access to superintelligence and what will we direct it towards. Will it be centralized and restricted to a few institutions, or will […]
Vass Bednar, the Walrus: […] the point has been made: looking after the information economy can no longer be a side project for underfunded institutions. Wikipedia is as miraculous as the Wayback Machine is indispensable. Still, we need to stop pretending volunteerism alone can hold up the public internet. We understand this duty more clearly […] ⌥ Permalink
Sarah Perez, in a TechCrunch story about monthly active user numbers for Bluesky, Threads, and X, using data provided by Similarweb: Instead, the data shows that X’s worldwide monthly active users on mobile were down around 3% year-over-year in June, and X’s mobile daily active users dropped 7% in July to 123.7 million. (Of course, […] ⌥ Permalink
Katie Baker, the Ringer: Look, there’s maybe nothing less cool than waxing nostalgic about Google of all things. It’s like mourning the Astor Place Starbucks (or getting sentimental about any Blockbuster Video — although most people aren’t ready for that conversation). But I don’t think I’m really missing Google Search as much as I’m missing […] ⌥ Permalink