Microsoft’s April 1998 Meeting With Steve Jobs

Internal Tech Emails has an interesting letter from Microsoft’s Ben Waldman that discusses negotiations over ClarisWorks (Apple agreed not to advertise their own product and instead preload a video promoting Microsoft Office), QuickTime, and Interne…

WWDC 2014 Video With Larry David

Sam Henri-Gold: today’s vibe: scrapped WWDC 2014 intro film feat. Larry David, JB Smoove, and Evan Spiegel See also: YouTube. John Gruber: One joke that might have played as funny in 2014 but wouldn’t in 2021 is the central conceit of the video — th…

Software Vulnerabilities in the Boeing 787

Ruben Santamarta (PDF): IOActive has documented our detailed attack paths and component vulnerabilities to describe the first plausible, detailed public attack paths to effectively reach the avionics network on a commercial airplane from either non-…

Backblaze Computer Backup 8.0

Yev Pusin: Our latest version is pretty great: It cranks up the speed—letting you upload at whatever rate your local system can attain—all while reducing stress on key elements of your computer by an order of magnitude. […] We’ve also re-architected…

iOS: Closing of the Frontier

Francisco Tolmasky: I think the @AppStore may represent a “Closing of the Frontier” moment (in the American history “Frontier Thesis” sense) that may in part explain the dramatic slowdown in UI and UX innovation in iOS (and even more so in iPadOS) f…

GitHub Copilot and Copyright

Rian Hunter (via Hacker News): I do not agree with GitHub’s unauthorized and unlicensed use of copyrighted source code as training data for their ML-powered GitHub Copilot product. This product injects source code derived from copyrighted sources in…

GitHub Copilot and API Keys

Mohammed Abubakar: For starters, it’s an assistant that can help you with better code suggestions, but it has been recently brought to notice that the AI is leaking API keys that are valid and still functional. First reported by a SendGrid engineer,…

Trump Files Class Action Lawsuits Targeting Facebook, Google, and Twitter Over ‘Censorship’ of Conservatives

Apple to Decentralize From Silicon Valley

Mark Gurman: Just a few years after completing the multibillion-dollar Apple Park headquarters in Cupertino, California, Apple Inc. is ramping up efforts to decentralize out of Silicon Valley. I’m told that executives at the highest levels of the co…

Audacity’s New Privacy Policy

Tim Hardwick: Two months ago, Audacity was acquired by Muse Group, which owns other audio-related projects including the Ultimate Guitar website and the MuseScore app. According to Fosspost, changes to the privacy policy section on the Audacity webs…

Boop 1.3.1

Ivan Mathy (via Matt Birchler): Sometimes you need to do something, and it’s just way easier to Google something like “json formatter online” and paste your data into whatever the first result is. It’s not your fault Xcode prints out escaped strings…

Didi Chuxing Removed From Chinese App Store

Tim Hardwick: Apple has been informed by China’s cyberspace regulator that it must remove the Didi Chuxing ride hailing app from the Chinese App Store following concerns about the Uber rival’s possible misuse of personal data. The app in question is…

Scrapped Intro From WWDC 2014 With Larry David as Head App Reviewer

Critic Markup for Note Tags

Readers of this blog may have guessed it, but I don't do a whole lot of copy editing these days. That means I don't have a lot of need for CriticMarkup (CM) in my daily life. But, I do still use one feature of the syntax almost everyday: comments. M…

Acquisitions

PDFPen and Gaia GPS have both been acquired. I can’t think of many products that were better after they were acquired. I’m disappointed because I genuinely like Gaia GPS for iPhone. I’ve also been close to purchasing a PDFPen upgrade for a few week…

[Sponsor] Literati

[Sponsor] Literati

Brickit

Jason Kottke (also: David Pogue, Hacker News): A new iOS app called Brickit has been developed to breathe new life into your old Lego pile. Just dump your bricks out into a pile and the app will analyze what Lego bricks you have, what new creations …

Brave Search Public Beta

Yan Zhu: the new search engine we’ve been working on at @brave is now in public beta! search.brave.comwe don’t track clicks or querieswe don’t profile youfor localized results, we only use IP and don’t store itwe show you what % of results are serve…

PDFpen Acquired for $6 Million

Sam Chandler: Today, I’m excited to announce Nitro’s acquisition of PDFpen, the much-loved suite of PDF productivity apps for Mac, iPad and iPhone developed by Smile, Inc.[…]With the acquisition of PDFpen, we have found the perfect complement and ad…

Gaia GPS Acquired

Kristin Hostetter (via Matt Stoller): Pocket Outdoor Media (parent company to SNEWS, Backpacker, and nearly 30 other active living brands) announced news that will catapult the Boulder-based company into a powerful position in these industries: It h…