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There’s a new iMessage for Android app — and it actually works

Jacob Kastrenakes writing for The Verge Messages sent from Beeper Mini on my Pixel 8 appear as blue bubbles on the iPhones of my friends and family members. Group chats I’m on automatically switched over to iMessage as soon as someone fired off a meme. Reactions, threads, photos, and videos (without the messy text message compression) all came through. The best thing I can say about Beeper Mini is that almost no one noticed I was using it: blue bubbles just started appearing — no lost messages to speak of.

Chrome’s next weapon in the War on Ad Blockers: Slower extension updates

Ron Amadeo writing for Ars Technica Google’s first attack on ad blockers is blowing up the “WebRequest API”—the primary API that ad blockers use—and replacing it with a more limited filtering API that Google has more control over. The new declarativeNetRequest API now has extensions ask Chrome to block a network request on their behalf, features arbitrary limits on the number of filtering rules, and puts limits on how effective individual rules can be.

YouTube punishes ad-blocker users with slower videos on all browsers

Jay Bonggolto writing for Android Central Some people have speculated that this delay might be a clumsy attempt by YouTube to force ads on users who block them. The code in question might be trying to make sure that an ad plays for at least five seconds before the actual video starts. The fact that Google is attempting to block adblockers on YouTube tells you who Google considers the real customers to be. Users are blocking ads because the experience sucks, but rather than trying to improve the experience for the users, Google chooses to force the enshittification on them.

All the fuss about opening up iMessage doesn’t make sense to me. Is the messaging situation on android so bad that it needs governments to intervene?

Humane officially launches the AI Pin, its OpenAI-powered wearable

David Pierce writing for The Verge (Apple News) The AI Pin is powered by a Snapdragon processor — though it’s not clear which one — and you control it with a combination of voice control, a camera, gestures, and a small built-in projector. This is a weird product. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone out and about talking to their phone other than when they’re on a phone call. Everyone I see using their phones are holding it in their hand and interacting with the screen. The fact that this thing doesn’t have a screen and it’s primary interaction method is by voice makes me think it won’t last very long. But maybe im wrong, maybe this thing will be a hit and it’ll be commonplace overnight for everyone to be talking to a little device on their shirt. But I think it’s more likely it’ll fizzle out. Maybe some pieces of it will be bought by one of the bigger tech giants, but I’m not even sure about that.

Apple “Scary Fast” Mac launch event: the 4 biggest announcements

Emma Roth writing for The Verge (Apple News) The new lineup includes the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips, which Apple says mark the “first personal computer chips” made using the more efficient 3-nanometer process. In addition to offering a “faster and more efficient CPU,” the trio of chips comes with an updated GPU that supports ray tracing, mesh shading, and Dynamic Caching — a feature that optimizes the amount of memory the device uses during tasks.

WordPress now offers official support for ActivityPub

Mia Sato writing for The Verge (Apple News) In the case of a WordPress.com blog, audiences will be able to follow a publisher through other federated platforms like Mastodon. Responses on other platforms will automatically turn into comments on a publisher’s WordPress post, allowing them to interact directly with off-platform audiences. The setting is available across WordPress sites on free, personal, and premium tiers — millions of blogs will now be able to join the fediverse in a few seconds.

Baldur’s Gate 3 Mac countdown: Exact release date and time

Max Miceli writing for DOT ESPORTS (Apple News) Baldur’s Gate 3 officially launches for Mac on Thursday, Sept. 21. The launch will coincide with the release of the game’s third patch. Larian Studios has not yet released an exact time for the launch. I’ve been playing the pre-release version on my Mac for a couple of weeks now, just trying to get a sense of the gameplay, controls and classes. Can’t wait to dive into the full thing!

Bought #BaldursGate3 on MacOS assuming it was coming out Sep 6. When I found out it wasn’t coming out until later in Sep I decided I’d wait to play until the full game was released. Well, today I decided to just play around in the character creator, then I started playing the starting mission, and man, I just wish the full game was released for Mac already!

Elon Musk can filter offensive tweets for advertisers. Why not for users?

Chris Taylor writing for Mashable (Apple News) But there’s another reason why the advertising options are self-defeating: Because they bring up another troubling question for users who are sick of the site’s lack of content moderation. If Twitter/X can identify and filter out content such as hate speech “with a 99% efficacy rate,” according to the company’s blog, why only offer that service to advertisers? Plenty of users would also prefer a version of Twitter that is 99% Nazi free, too. By offering that option to advertisers but not caring about the potential customers they’re trying to reach, Musk’s company is drawing attention to the fact in a way that serves neither.