Who ruined Google? - Mastodon

nixCraft 🐧 @nixCraft@mastodon.social I asked Google "who ruined Google" and they replied honestly using their AI, which is now forced on all of us. It's too funny not to share! 11:36 AM • May 20, 2024 (UTC)

I’m so glad public libraries already exist… - Mastodon

Qasim Rashid, Esq. @QasimRashid@mastodon.social I’m so glad public libraries already exist. Could you I magine trying to sell the idea of libraries to politicians in 2024? “You want to build a large public complex on prime real estate that gives away free books & education & community events—paid for by our tax dollars? Are you crazy??” 2:56 AM • May 19, 2024 (UTC)

For the first time I used Safari’s “Listen to page” feature to listen to an article while I cleaned up the kitchen. It was pretty great!

I expect to see a bunch of “the iPhone is powerful enough” takes in September when the new iPhone is launched.

The Man Who Killed Google Search

Great write up from Ed Zitron on how and why Google’s search has gotten worse. The thread is a dark window into the world of growth-focused tech, where Thakur listed the multiple points of disconnection between the ads and search teams, discussing how the search team wasn’t able to finely optimize engagement on Google without “hacking engagement,” a term that means effectively tricking users into spending more time on a site, and that doing so would lead them to “abandon work on efficient journeys.” In one email, Fox adds that there was a “pretty big disconnect between what finance and ads want” and what search was doing.

AI Apocalypse: Only Apple Can Win

Remember before the Vision Pro was released there were rumours about using Siri to develop apps for VisionOS. Given how well generative AI can be at programming and all the chatter about Apple’s AI efforts this year, I wonder if we’ll see something around that at this year’s #WWDC.

Apple Intelligence

I’ve been wondering why everyone seems so interested in what Apple is going to do with regards to AI, or why there’s so much reporting about how Apple needs to “catch up” to others in the industry. Are Apple users unable to do AI things on their iPhones? No, because the majority of AI right now is a cloud service, accessed through apps or websites just as usable on an iPhone as on Google’s Android or Microsoft’s Windows. So why all pressure for Apple to “catch up”?

Marques Brownlee gets a look at the Disney Holotile

This is the first video I’ve seen that explains how these things actually work. Like Marques, I’m excited for the future of this tech.

X-Men ‘97 Lego Intro

The Long Comics History Behind X-Men's Sentinel Program

For all those enjoying the new X-Men ‘97 cartoon I liked this article from Gizmodo. Since almost the very beginning, the X-Men and their people have been hunted by the Sentinel Program—and now X-Men ‘97 is playing with that legacy too. The sentinels have always been my favourite X-Men villains. Probably because I grew up watching the original X-Men cartoon and they were featured pretty heavily in that.

This whole YouTube, AppleTV, screensaver thing really pisses me off. Why the fuck does Google think I want to see some random bullshit from YouTube rather than my photos on the screen as a screensaver!?

Does everything need to be an ad?

Joe Rosensteel writing for Six Colors Last week, YouTube rolled out a new version of its app for Apple TV. It overrides the screensaver by starting a slideshow just before the Apple TV’s screensaver is supposed to come on. If you’re watching a video, it’ll be an endless loop zooming into the video’s thumbnail and fading to black. If you were just paused somewhere in the app’s interface, it’ll be stills taken from a random assortment of YouTube videos on nature, or stills from drone footage.

Premier Doug Ford, Ontario medical group warn Ottawa’s capital-gains tax increase will hurt doctors

Laura Stone and Marieke Walsh writing for The Globe and Mail (Apple News+ Link) “I’ve been getting more messages from doctors than ever before this morning,” Mr. Ford said at an unrelated news conference in Oakville, Ont., west of Toronto. Don’t tell me Ford is all of a sudden concerned about doctors. He’s concerned for his coporate donors and developer buddies who are going to be impacted by this.

Elon Musk’s X botched an attempt to replace “twitter.com” links with “x.com”

Jon Brodkin writing for Ars Technica Security reporter Brian Krebs called the move “a gift to phishers” in an article yesterday. It was a phishing risk because scammers could register a domain name like “netflitwitter.com,” which would appear as “netflix.com” in posts on X, but clicking the link would take a user to netflitwitter.com. This is something you’d expect from a high school computer science assignment, not a company that’s supposed to be worth $44 billion.

Facebook Notifications

I have Facebook notifications set to deliver in the scheduled summary. It’s worked fine for a long time, but now all of a sudden I’m getting these notifications each day. These are not time sensitive Facebook. Needless to say I’ve disabled Facebook’s ability to send me “time sensitive” notifications.

Destiny 2 is getting a surprise new subclass and a lot more in The Final Shape

Ryan Gilliam writing at Polygon: The star of the trailer is the new Prismatic subclass, which allows players to combine all of the other game’s subclasses into one. Bungie calls this an “advanced” subclass, and it looks like it’ll offer an entirely new way to play. Prismatic Guardians even gain the ability to use a super-powered grenade that combines darkness and light together. Other subclasses will be getting grenades as well that combine elements: stasis and void for Warlocks; strand and arc for Titans; and solar and statis for Hunters.

The #eclipse was pretty amazing. Completely overcast, but when totality happened, everything went dark, like all of a sudden it was the middle of the night. At the horizon it looked like sunset.

YouTube CEO warns OpenAI that training models on its videos is against the rules

Sarah Fielding writing for Engadget Now, YouTube’s CEO Neal Mohan has responded with a clear warning to OpenAI that using its videos to teach Sora would be a “clear violation” of the platform’s terms of use. That’s pretty rich coming from Google.

My family and I ate a reasonable amount of chocolate this weekend, which is to say a copious amount!

Google’s self-designed office swallows Wi-Fi “like the Bermuda Triangle”

Ron Amadeo writing for Ars Technica Having an office with barely working Wi-Fi sure is awkward for a company pushing a “return to office” plan that includes at least three days a week at Google’s Wi-Fi desert.

Once More With Feeling: Banning TikTok Doesn’t Do Much If We Don’t Regulate Data Brokers And Pass A Privacy Law

Karl Bode writing for TechDirt You could ban TikTok with a patriotic flourish from the heavens immediately, but if we fail to regulate data brokers, pass a privacy law, or combat corruption, Chinese (or Russian, or Iranian) intelligence can simply turn around and buy that same data (and detailed profiles of American consumers) from an unlimited parade of different data brokers, telecoms, app makers, marketing companies, or services.

A Roku Terms of Service Update Locks Up Your TV Until You Agree

Scharon Harding writing for Wired If you want to opt out of the new “Dispute Resolution Terms,” you have to write a letter. I never really liked Roku.

I hate daylight saving time…

Google says the AI-focused Pixel 8 can’t run its latest smartphone AI models

Ron Amadeo writing for Ars Technica We’re five months removed from the launch of the Pixel 8, and that doesn’t seem like a justifiable position anymore: Google says its latest AI models can’t run on the Pixel 8. 🤦🏻‍♂️