daring-rss

Dan Moren, writing at Six Colors:

Not all features, as I said, will be available to try out in this
release. Among those included are the systemwide Writing Tools
features to help proofread and rewrite text; inbox prioritization,
summaries, and smart reply in Mail; the new Reduce Interruptions
focus mode; natural language search for photos and videos as well
as the ability to create Memories movies on demands; summaries for
transcriptions; and, perhaps most enticingly, improved Siri
functionality, including the ability to move between voice and
typing, more resilient requests for when you stumble over your
words, and answering questions about Apple products.

As for what you won’t find here, don’t expect the contentious
image generation features like Image Playground, the ability to
clean up and remove unwanted details from photos, and integration
with ChatGPT. It’s unclear if those will appear in future builds
of these betas, or as subsequent updates after public release.
Also unclear is whether there will be a public beta of these
versions down the road for non-developers.

I wish I would have predicted that Apple was going to start seeding these .1 OS betas previewing Apple Intelligence features while the .0 versions remain in beta until (presumably) release in September, because in hindsight it seems obvious. Will there be public betas of these Apple Intelligence OS versions soon? Unknown at the moment.

 ★ 

Dan Moren, writing at Six Colors:

Not all features, as I said, will be available to try out in this
release. Among those included are the systemwide Writing Tools
features to help proofread and rewrite text; inbox prioritization,
summaries, and smart reply in Mail; the new Reduce Interruptions
focus mode; natural language search for photos and videos as well
as the ability to create Memories movies on demands; summaries for
transcriptions; and, perhaps most enticingly, improved Siri
functionality, including the ability to move between voice and
typing, more resilient requests for when you stumble over your
words, and answering questions about Apple products.

As for what you won’t find here, don’t expect the contentious
image generation features like Image Playground, the ability to
clean up and remove unwanted details from photos, and integration
with ChatGPT. It’s unclear if those will appear in future builds
of these betas, or as subsequent updates after public release.
Also unclear is whether there will be a public beta of these
versions down the road for non-developers.

I wish I would have predicted that Apple was going to start seeding these .1 OS betas previewing Apple Intelligence features while the .0 versions remain in beta until (presumably) release in September, because in hindsight it seems obvious. Will there be public betas of these Apple Intelligence OS versions soon? Unknown at the moment.

Read More 

Apple Newsroom, last week:

Today, Apple Maps on the web is available in public beta,
allowing users around the world to access Maps directly from their
browser.

Now, users can get driving and walking directions; find great
places and useful information including photos, hours, ratings,
and reviews; take actions like ordering food directly from the
Maps place card; and browse curated Guides to discover places
to eat, shop, and explore in cities around the world.
Additional features, including Look Around, will be available
in the coming months.

All developers, including those using MapKit JS, can also link out
to Maps on the web, so their users can get driving directions, see
detailed place information, and more.

Apple Maps is one of the best examples of the power of persistence I can think of. It started as a laughing stock, but now, for people in many countries, it’s arguably the best maps service.

 ★ 

Apple Newsroom, last week:

Today, Apple Maps on the web is available in public beta,
allowing users around the world to access Maps directly from their
browser.

Now, users can get driving and walking directions; find great
places and useful information including photos, hours, ratings,
and reviews; take actions like ordering food directly from the
Maps place card; and browse curated Guides to discover places
to eat, shop, and explore in cities around the world.
Additional features, including Look Around, will be available
in the coming months.

All developers, including those using MapKit JS, can also link out
to Maps on the web, so their users can get driving directions, see
detailed place information, and more.

Apple Maps is one of the best examples of the power of persistence I can think of. It started as a laughing stock, but now, for people in many countries, it’s arguably the best maps service.

Read More 

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, writing for TechCrunch:

CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that crashed millions of
computers with a botched update all over the world last
week, is offering its partners a $10 Uber Eats gift card as an
apology, according to several people who
say they received the gift card, as well
as a source who also received one. […]

On Wednesday, some of the people who posted about the gift card
said that when they went to redeem the offer, they got an error
message saying the voucher had been canceled. When TechCrunch
checked the voucher, the Uber Eats page provided an error message
that said the gift card “has been canceled by the issuing party
and is no longer valid.”

CrowdStrike spokesperson Kevin Benacci confirmed to TechCrunch
that the company sent the gift cards. “We did send these to our
teammates and partners who have been helping customers through
this situation. Uber flagged it as fraud because of high usage
rates,” Benacci said in an email.

I’d say the odds are pretty high that CrowdStrike renames itself, like ValuJet and Philip Morris did. That’ll solve the problem.

 ★ 

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, writing for TechCrunch:

CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm that crashed millions of
computers with a botched update all over the world last
week, is offering its partners a $10 Uber Eats gift card as an
apology, according to several people who
say they received the gift card, as well
as a source who also received one. […]

On Wednesday, some of the people who posted about the gift card
said that when they went to redeem the offer, they got an error
message saying the voucher had been canceled. When TechCrunch
checked the voucher, the Uber Eats page provided an error message
that said the gift card “has been canceled by the issuing party
and is no longer valid.”

CrowdStrike spokesperson Kevin Benacci confirmed to TechCrunch
that the company sent the gift cards. “We did send these to our
teammates and partners who have been helping customers through
this situation. Uber flagged it as fraud because of high usage
rates,” Benacci said in an email.

I’d say the odds are pretty high that CrowdStrike renames itself, like ValuJet and Philip Morris did. That’ll solve the problem.

Read More 

Mark Zuckerberg, in an essay extolling the virtues of Meta’s open source approach to AI development:

People often ask if I’m worried about giving up a technical
advantage by open sourcing Llama, but I think this misses the big
picture for a few reasons:

First, to ensure that we have access to the best technology and
aren’t locked into a closed ecosystem over the long term, Llama
needs to develop into a full ecosystem of tools, efficiency
improvements, silicon optimizations, and other integrations. If we
were the only company using Llama, this ecosystem wouldn’t develop
and we’d fare no better than the closed variants of Unix.

Second, I expect AI development will continue to be very
competitive, which means that open sourcing any given model isn’t
giving away a massive advantage over the next best models at that
point in time. The path for Llama to become the industry standard
is by being consistently competitive, efficient, and open
generation after generation.

Third, a key difference between Meta and closed model providers is
that selling access to AI models isn’t our business model. That
means openly releasing Llama doesn’t undercut our revenue,
sustainability, or ability to invest in research like it does for
closed providers. (This is one reason several closed providers
consistently lobby governments against open source.)

Zuckerberg’s argument makes numerous references to Linux winning the war against proprietary Unix variants. I’m not sure how good an analogy that is. Perhaps a better analogy is to programming languages, where instead of one winner (like Linux in the field of operating systems) there are dozens, but they’re all open source, even the ones spearheaded by commercial companies. I’ve been on board with the argument that there is no moat with LLMs, and if there’s no moat, there’s little reason to bank on proprietary solutions. Proprietary solutions require a moat.

One of my formative experiences has been building our services
constrained by what Apple will let us build on their platforms.
Between the way they tax developers, the arbitrary rules they
apply, and all the product innovations they block from shipping,
it’s clear that Meta and many other companies would be freed up to
build much better services for people if we could build the best
versions of our products and competitors were not able to
constrain what we could build. On a philosophical level, this is a
major reason why I believe so strongly in building open ecosystems
in AI and AR/VR for the next generation of computing.

Apple’s App Store payments commission — which most definitely is not a “tax” — is what it is. But it’s just about money. As for the “product innovations they block from shipping”, one man’s product innovation is another man’s CrowdStrike.

I realize this is an aside in an essay that otherwise has nothing to do with Apple or iOS, but to me it speaks to how obsessed Zuckerberg is with the subordinant role Meta has been relegated to on mobile platforms — which of course are the platforms where Meta’s platforms are primarily used. But what exactly are the innovations Apple has blocked Meta from shipping? Why haven’t they shipped those same innovations on Android, which is significantly more open? Why doesn’t Meta just ship its own phone? Oh wait.

As frustrating as Apple’s control over iOS can be at times — for users, for developers, and for the fifth-wealthiest man on the planet — there are really compelling arguments that iOS has succeeded, and remained so popular for so long, not despite Apple’s opinionated control over the platform but because of it.

 ★ 

Mark Zuckerberg, in an essay extolling the virtues of Meta’s open source approach to AI development:

People often ask if I’m worried about giving up a technical
advantage by open sourcing Llama, but I think this misses the big
picture for a few reasons:

First, to ensure that we have access to the best technology and
aren’t locked into a closed ecosystem over the long term, Llama
needs to develop into a full ecosystem of tools, efficiency
improvements, silicon optimizations, and other integrations. If we
were the only company using Llama, this ecosystem wouldn’t develop
and we’d fare no better than the closed variants of Unix.

Second, I expect AI development will continue to be very
competitive, which means that open sourcing any given model isn’t
giving away a massive advantage over the next best models at that
point in time. The path for Llama to become the industry standard
is by being consistently competitive, efficient, and open
generation after generation.

Third, a key difference between Meta and closed model providers is
that selling access to AI models isn’t our business model. That
means openly releasing Llama doesn’t undercut our revenue,
sustainability, or ability to invest in research like it does for
closed providers. (This is one reason several closed providers
consistently lobby governments against open source.)

Zuckerberg’s argument makes numerous references to Linux winning the war against proprietary Unix variants. I’m not sure how good an analogy that is. Perhaps a better analogy is to programming languages, where instead of one winner (like Linux in the field of operating systems) there are dozens, but they’re all open source, even the ones spearheaded by commercial companies. I’ve been on board with the argument that there is no moat with LLMs, and if there’s no moat, there’s little reason to bank on proprietary solutions. Proprietary solutions require a moat.

One of my formative experiences has been building our services
constrained by what Apple will let us build on their platforms.
Between the way they tax developers, the arbitrary rules they
apply, and all the product innovations they block from shipping,
it’s clear that Meta and many other companies would be freed up to
build much better services for people if we could build the best
versions of our products and competitors were not able to
constrain what we could build. On a philosophical level, this is a
major reason why I believe so strongly in building open ecosystems
in AI and AR/VR for the next generation of computing.

Apple’s App Store payments commission — which most definitely is not a “tax” — is what it is. But it’s just about money. As for the “product innovations they block from shipping”, one man’s product innovation is another man’s CrowdStrike.

I realize this is an aside in an essay that otherwise has nothing to do with Apple or iOS, but to me it speaks to how obsessed Zuckerberg is with the subordinant role Meta has been relegated to on mobile platforms — which of course are the platforms where Meta’s platforms are primarily used. But what exactly are the innovations Apple has blocked Meta from shipping? Why haven’t they shipped those same innovations on Android, which is significantly more open? Why doesn’t Meta just ship its own phone? Oh wait.

As frustrating as Apple’s control over iOS can be at times — for users, for developers, and for the fifth-wealthiest man on the planet — there are really compelling arguments that iOS has succeeded, and remained so popular for so long, not despite Apple’s opinionated control over the platform but because of it.

Read More 

Emanuel Maiberg, reporting for 404 Media:

If you use Bing, DuckDuckGo, Mojeek, Qwant or any other
alternative search engine that doesn’t rely on Google’s indexing
and search Reddit by using “site:reddit.com,” you will not see any
results from the last week. DuckDuckGo is currently turning up
seven links when searching Reddit, but provides no data on where
the links go or why, instead only saying that “We would like to
show you a description here but the site won’t allow us.” Older
results will still show up, but these search engines are no longer
able to “crawl” Reddit, meaning that Google is the only search
engine that will turn up results from Reddit going forward.
Searching for Reddit still works on Kagi, an independent, paid
search engine that buys part of its search index from Google.

The news shows how Google’s near monopoly on search is now
actively hindering other companies’ ability to compete at a time
when Google is facing increasing criticism over the quality of its
search results. This exclusion of other search engines also comes
after Reddit locked down access to its site to stop companies from
scraping it for AI training data, which at the moment only Google
can do as a result of a multi-million dollar deal that gives
Google the right to scrape Reddit for data to train its AI
products.

“They’re [Reddit] killing everything for search but Google,”
Colin Hayhurst, CEO of the search engine Mojeek told me on a call.

I have to blame Reddit for this, not Google. But it’s not a good look for Google, either.

 ★ 

Emanuel Maiberg, reporting for 404 Media:

If you use Bing, DuckDuckGo, Mojeek, Qwant or any other
alternative search engine that doesn’t rely on Google’s indexing
and search Reddit by using “site:reddit.com,” you will not see any
results from the last week. DuckDuckGo is currently turning up
seven links when searching Reddit, but provides no data on where
the links go or why, instead only saying that “We would like to
show you a description here but the site won’t allow us.” Older
results will still show up, but these search engines are no longer
able to “crawl” Reddit, meaning that Google is the only search
engine that will turn up results from Reddit going forward.
Searching for Reddit still works on Kagi, an independent, paid
search engine that buys part of its search index from Google.

The news shows how Google’s near monopoly on search is now
actively hindering other companies’ ability to compete at a time
when Google is facing increasing criticism over the quality of its
search results. This exclusion of other search engines also comes
after Reddit locked down access to its site to stop companies from
scraping it for AI training data, which at the moment only Google
can do as a result of a multi-million dollar deal that gives
Google the right to scrape Reddit for data to train its AI
products.

“They’re [Reddit] killing everything for search but Google,”
Colin Hayhurst, CEO of the search engine Mojeek told me on a call.

I have to blame Reddit for this, not Google. But it’s not a good look for Google, either.

Read More 

Marco Arment, introducing the 10th-anniversary re-write of Overcast:

Most of Overcast’s core code was 10 years old, which made it
cumbersome or impossible to easily move with the times, adopt new
iOS functionality, or add new features, especially as one person.

That’s why there haven’t been many new features or changes
in years.

You saw it, and I saw it. I wasn’t able to serve my customers as
well as I wanted.

For Overcast to have a future, it needed a modern foundation for
its second decade. I’ve spent the past 18 months rebuilding most
of the app with Swift, SwiftUI, Blackbird, and modern
Swift concurrency.

Now, development is rapidly accelerating. I’m more
responsive, iterating more quickly, and ultimately making the
app much better.

Promotions for podcasts will often end with a call to action along the lines of “Available wherever you get your podcasts.” As Anil Dash noted a few months ago, that’s a radical statement. Using whatever client software you want to access content published using open standards on the internet is the way the internet was designed to be. But it’s not the way it’s worked out, by and large. Streaming video is largely available only via proprietary apps from each individual service. Same with streaming music.

But not so with podcasts. Podcasts, more than any other medium, exemplify the original spirit of the open internet. “Wherever you get your podcasts”, for me, has meant Overcast for the last decade. And I feel confident that will be true for the next decade. I’ve got a few small gripes with this major update, but overall it’s clear that Overcast is better than ever.

 ★ 

Marco Arment, introducing the 10th-anniversary re-write of Overcast:

Most of Overcast’s core code was 10 years old, which made it
cumbersome or impossible to easily move with the times, adopt new
iOS functionality, or add new features, especially as one person.

That’s why there haven’t been many new features or changes
in years.

You saw it, and I saw it. I wasn’t able to serve my customers as
well as I wanted.

For Overcast to have a future, it needed a modern foundation for
its second decade. I’ve spent the past 18 months rebuilding most
of the app with Swift, SwiftUI, Blackbird, and modern
Swift concurrency.

Now, development is rapidly accelerating. I’m more
responsive, iterating more quickly, and ultimately making the
app much better.

Promotions for podcasts will often end with a call to action along the lines of “Available wherever you get your podcasts.” As Anil Dash noted a few months ago, that’s a radical statement. Using whatever client software you want to access content published using open standards on the internet is the way the internet was designed to be. But it’s not the way it’s worked out, by and large. Streaming video is largely available only via proprietary apps from each individual service. Same with streaming music.

But not so with podcasts. Podcasts, more than any other medium, exemplify the original spirit of the open internet. “Wherever you get your podcasts”, for me, has meant Overcast for the last decade. And I feel confident that will be true for the next decade. I’ve got a few small gripes with this major update, but overall it’s clear that Overcast is better than ever.

Read More 

Margi Murphy and Katrina Manson, reporting for Bloomberg:

The local FBI bureau in Pittsburgh held a license for Cellebrite
software, which lets law enforcement identify or bypass a phone’s
passcode. But it didn’t work with Crooks’ device, according to the
people, who said the deceased shooter owned a newer Samsung model
that runs Android’s operating system.

The agents called Cellebrite’s federal team, which liaises with
law enforcement and government agencies, according to the people.

Within hours, Cellebrite transferred to the FBI in Quantico,
Virginia, additional technical support and new software that was
still being developed. The details about the unsuccessful initial
attempt to access the phone, and the unreleased software, haven’t
been previously reported.

Once the FBI had the Cellebrite software update, unlocking the
phone took 40 minutes, according to reporting in the Washington
Post, which first detailed the FBI’s use of Cellebrite.

Reporting it like this is like running a commercial advertisement for Cellebrite. What kind of passcode was Crooks using on his phone? Digits only or alphanumeric? How many characters? Did they crack the passcode or get in some other way?

Without that information all that should have been reported here is that the FBI was able to get access to his phone’s contents, and that the phone was from Samsung. That’s it. I totally understand why the FBI — and Cellebrite — might not want to say how they got in, but without that context, there’s no reason to sing their praises for having gotten in.

 ★ 

Margi Murphy and Katrina Manson, reporting for Bloomberg:

The local FBI bureau in Pittsburgh held a license for Cellebrite
software, which lets law enforcement identify or bypass a phone’s
passcode. But it didn’t work with Crooks’ device, according to the
people, who said the deceased shooter owned a newer Samsung model
that runs Android’s operating system.

The agents called Cellebrite’s federal team, which liaises with
law enforcement and government agencies, according to the people.

Within hours, Cellebrite transferred to the FBI in Quantico,
Virginia, additional technical support and new software that was
still being developed. The details about the unsuccessful initial
attempt to access the phone, and the unreleased software, haven’t
been previously reported.

Once the FBI had the Cellebrite software update, unlocking the
phone took 40 minutes, according to reporting in the Washington
Post, which first detailed the FBI’s use of Cellebrite.

Reporting it like this is like running a commercial advertisement for Cellebrite. What kind of passcode was Crooks using on his phone? Digits only or alphanumeric? How many characters? Did they crack the passcode or get in some other way?

Without that information all that should have been reported here is that the FBI was able to get access to his phone’s contents, and that the phone was from Samsung. That’s it. I totally understand why the FBI — and Cellebrite — might not want to say how they got in, but without that context, there’s no reason to sing their praises for having gotten in.

Read More 

Joe Biden, in a letter to the nation (same post, on Instagram):

It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your
President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection,
I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country
for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties
as President for the remainder of my term.

And in a follow-up post on X:

My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination
and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the
remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee
in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s
been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full
support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party
this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump.
Let’s do this.

I’ve been ambivalent about Biden dropping out since The Debate. I see clearly that he’s diminished. He’s lost his fastball. Watch Biden on 60 Minutes from just four years ago, on the cusp of the 2020 election. That’s Joe Biden. Biden today, even at his best, doesn’t have that zip. He’s no longer able to serve as a compelling communicator but a communicator is first and foremost what a candidate needs to be. I admire Biden more than ever for coming to grips with and accepting this inconvenient truth, and putting both his country and party above his own ambition. More than any other fissure in our fractious, highly-polarized politics today, the difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats tend to face and address inconvenient truths, and Republicans are nothing more than a weird, gross, terrifying personality cult worshipping one old corrupt man.

Here’s how I think it will play out. This might be wishful thinking, but it’s what I’d bet on. The entire Democratic establishment will get behind Kamala Harris as the nominee. Ambitious and popular Democratic leaders like Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Andy Beshear, and Pete Buttigieg won’t challenge her for the nomination. They’ll compete only to be her pick for VP. (Except Newsom, who, coming from the same state as Harris, wouldn’t work). My top two picks for VP would be Buttigieg and Whitmer. Watch Buttigieg on Bill Maher’s show this weekend, talking about J.D. Vance and why Peter Thiel backs him. He’s so smart, and so good at explaining things.

The knee-jerk reaction to my suggestion of picking Buttigieg or Whitmer is obvious: isn’t a black woman at the top of the ticket already asking a lot? Why go with two women, or a black woman and a gay man? Because they’re smart and they’re sharp and they’re good on TV. If you don’t like their message or platform, don’t vote for them. But if you don’t want to vote for a ticket with two women, or a ticket with gay man as VP, just because, then fuck you. Go vote for Trump, because you’re a bigot, and he’s the candidate for you. There are too many racists and sexists in America, but they’re not a majority.

Like I wrote last weekend after the assassination attempt against Trump: this will be old news by November. The reason why U.S. presidential candidates tend to announce their campaigns two years before elections is because unlike parliamentary systems, our election dates and presidential terms are set in stone. Candidates announce early in the U.S. simply because they can. It’s a good thing, in an election where the overwhelming majority of independent voters wanted both Biden and Trump to drop out of the race, for the Democrats to start fresh, with almost four full months to run a campaign emphasizing youth, intelligence, competence, honesty, and change. New is a positive adjective in America.

November is a long way out. Buckle up.

 ★ 

Joe Biden, in a letter to the nation (same post, on Instagram):

It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your
President. And while it has been my intention to seek reelection,
I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country
for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties
as President for the remainder of my term.

And in a follow-up post on X:

My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination
and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the
remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee
in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s
been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full
support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party
this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump.
Let’s do this.

I’ve been ambivalent about Biden dropping out since The Debate. I see clearly that he’s diminished. He’s lost his fastball. Watch Biden on 60 Minutes from just four years ago, on the cusp of the 2020 election. That’s Joe Biden. Biden today, even at his best, doesn’t have that zip. He’s no longer able to serve as a compelling communicator but a communicator is first and foremost what a candidate needs to be. I admire Biden more than ever for coming to grips with and accepting this inconvenient truth, and putting both his country and party above his own ambition. More than any other fissure in our fractious, highly-polarized politics today, the difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Democrats tend to face and address inconvenient truths, and Republicans are nothing more than a weird, gross, terrifying personality cult worshipping one old corrupt man.

Here’s how I think it will play out. This might be wishful thinking, but it’s what I’d bet on. The entire Democratic establishment will get behind Kamala Harris as the nominee. Ambitious and popular Democratic leaders like Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, Andy Beshear, and Pete Buttigieg won’t challenge her for the nomination. They’ll compete only to be her pick for VP. (Except Newsom, who, coming from the same state as Harris, wouldn’t work). My top two picks for VP would be Buttigieg and Whitmer. Watch Buttigieg on Bill Maher’s show this weekend, talking about J.D. Vance and why Peter Thiel backs him. He’s so smart, and so good at explaining things.

The knee-jerk reaction to my suggestion of picking Buttigieg or Whitmer is obvious: isn’t a black woman at the top of the ticket already asking a lot? Why go with two women, or a black woman and a gay man? Because they’re smart and they’re sharp and they’re good on TV. If you don’t like their message or platform, don’t vote for them. But if you don’t want to vote for a ticket with two women, or a ticket with gay man as VP, just because, then fuck you. Go vote for Trump, because you’re a bigot, and he’s the candidate for you. There are too many racists and sexists in America, but they’re not a majority.

Like I wrote last weekend after the assassination attempt against Trump: this will be old news by November. The reason why U.S. presidential candidates tend to announce their campaigns two years before elections is because unlike parliamentary systems, our election dates and presidential terms are set in stone. Candidates announce early in the U.S. simply because they can. It’s a good thing, in an election where the overwhelming majority of independent voters wanted both Biden and Trump to drop out of the race, for the Democrats to start fresh, with almost four full months to run a campaign emphasizing youth, intelligence, competence, honesty, and change. New is a positive adjective in America.

November is a long way out. Buckle up.

Read More 

So while I don’t think it’s good news that Apple is partnering with Taboola, I don’t expect it to make any discernible difference in the ad quality or frequency.

Sara Fischer, reporting this week for Axios:

Ad tech giant Taboola has struck a deal with Apple to power native
advertising within the Apple News and Apple Stocks apps,
Taboola founder and CEO Adam Singolda told Axios. The deal
provides new validation for Taboola’s business, which has
ballooned to over $1.4 billion in annual revenue as of
2023. […]

As an authorized advertising reseller for Apple News and Apple
Stocks, Taboola will power native advertising placements within
those two apps in every market available. […]

Most people know Taboola as the company responsible for placing
chumbox ads at the bottom of many news stories online.

Eric Seufert, on Threads:

Regarding Taboola’s partnership with Apple: I’ve seen people claim
that this is somehow hypocritical from a privacy perspective,
assuming that Taboola’s somewhat obnoxious, clickbait-style ads
must invasively target user profiles and browsing histories.

They don’t. They are targeted entirely contextually. That’s
the point.

Want brash, garish advertising plastered all over the web? Reject
ads personalization. Want relevant, informed advertising? Embrace
ads personalization.

If you told me that the ads in Apple News have been sold by Taboola for the last few years, I’d have said, “Oh, that makes sense.” Because the ads in Apple News — at least the ones I see1 — already look like chumbox Taboola ads. Even worse, they’re incredibly repetitious.

Here’s an example. Today a friend sent me a link to an article at Rolling Stone. The article was behind a paywall on their website, so I used the Share sheet to open the article in Apple News. (Rolling Stone is one of many publications included with a News+ subscription, which I get through the Apple One bundle. This is pretty much the only reason I use Apple News — for reading stories that are paywalled on the web.) I made screen recordings showing me scrolling through the entire article, twice. I got different ads each time, but on both page loads there was at least one ad shown four times, and at least one other ad shown twice. That’s a lot of ads, and a lot of repetition.

And, by sheer coincidence, on the web Rolling Stone is a Taboola partner. Here’s a screenshot of the box of “suggested stories” chum that Taboola offered. It’s pretty much exactly the sort of stuff I see in the ads on Apple News.

So while I don’t think it’s good news that Apple is partnering with Taboola, I don’t expect it to make any discernible difference in the ad quality or frequency. Maybe it will improve the variety?

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Sumit Chandel and Eldhose Mathokkil Babu, writing for the Google Developers blog:

In 2018, we announced the deprecation and transition of Google
URL Shortener to Firebase Dynamic Links because of the changes
we’ve seen in how people find content on the internet, and the
number of new popular URL shortening services that emerged in that
time. This meant that we no longer accepted new URLs to shorten
but that we would continue serving existing URLs.

Today, the time has come to turn off the serving portion of Google
URL Shortener. Please read on below to understand more about how
this will impact you if you’re using Google URL Shortener.

Any developers using links built with the Google URL Shortener in
the form https://goo.gl/* will be impacted, and these URLs will
no longer return a response after August 25th, 2025.

How much money could it possible cost to just keep this service running in perpetuity? Tim Berners-Lee wrote his seminal essay, “Cool URIs Don’t Change” back in 1998. It’s bad enough when companies go out of business, taking their web servers down with them. But Google isn’t struggling financially. In fact, they’re thriving.

 ★ 

Sumit Chandel and Eldhose Mathokkil Babu, writing for the Google Developers blog:

In 2018, we announced the deprecation and transition of Google
URL Shortener to Firebase Dynamic Links because of the changes
we’ve seen in how people find content on the internet, and the
number of new popular URL shortening services that emerged in that
time. This meant that we no longer accepted new URLs to shorten
but that we would continue serving existing URLs.

Today, the time has come to turn off the serving portion of Google
URL Shortener. Please read on below to understand more about how
this will impact you if you’re using Google URL Shortener.

Any developers using links built with the Google URL Shortener in
the form https://goo.gl/* will be impacted, and these URLs will
no longer return a response after August 25th, 2025.

How much money could it possible cost to just keep this service running in perpetuity? Tim Berners-Lee wrote his seminal essay, “Cool URIs Don’t Change” back in 1998. It’s bad enough when companies go out of business, taking their web servers down with them. But Google isn’t struggling financially. In fact, they’re thriving.

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