Incidents 1 & 2, ~June 2025: Missing contacts & then contacts duplication. My father in law purchased a new iPhone, so I inquired about using his old phone (an iPhone 14 Pro) as a testing device. He said absolutely, but that he was keeping it around “because it has some recent contacts that did not… Continue reading Apple contacts management madness
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 open source software a risk worth acknowledging?
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 activist Tim Sweeney agrees to be muzzled about Google as part of a settlement that opened up the Play Store
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 times (even app processing delays), the Apple app developer experience is fraying
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 session?” prompt, as it may compromise your chat session’s privacy
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) about your product
(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 modes repeatedly, without an easy opt out
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 of lawsuits