daring-rss

Absolutely scathing dissection of what’s gone wrong at Google Search, by Ed Zitron for his newsletter/blog:

In an interview with FastCompany’s Harry McCracken from
2018, Gomes framed Google’s challenge as “taking [the
PageRank algorithm] from one machine to a whole bunch of machines,
and they weren’t very good machines at the time.” Despite his
impact and tenure, Gomes had only been made Head of Search in the
middle of 2018 after John Giannandrea moved to Apple to work on
its machine learning and AI strategy. Gomes had been described as
Google’s “search czar,” beloved for his ability to communicate
across departments.

Every single article I’ve read about Gomes’ tenure at Google spoke
of a man deeply ingrained in the foundation of one of the most
important technologies ever made, who had dedicated decades to
maintaining a product with a — to quote Gomes himself — “guiding light of serving the user and using technology to do
that.” And when finally given the keys to the kingdom — the ability to elevate Google Search even further — he was
ratfucked by a series of rotten careerists trying to please Wall
Street, led by Prabhakar Raghavan.

Do you want to know what Prabhakar Raghavan’s old job was? What
Prabhakar Raghavan, the new head of Google Search, the guy that
has run Google Search into the ground, the guy who is currently
destroying search, did before his job at Google?

He was the head of search for Yahoo from 2005 through 2012 — a
tumultuous period that cemented its terminal decline, and
effectively saw the company bow out of the search market
altogether. His responsibilities? Research and development for
Yahoo’s search and ads products.

Long story short, Ben Gomes was a search guy who’d been at Google since 1999, before they even had any ads in search results. He was replaced by Prabhakar Raghavan, who previously was Head of Ads at the company. So instead of there being any sort of firewall between search and ads, search became a subsidiary of ads.

Zitron’s compelling narrative is largely gleaned through emails released as part of the DOJ’s antitrust case against Google. Is the story really that simple? That around 2019 or so Google Search’s institutional priorities flipped from quality-first/revenue-second, to revenue-first/quality-second? It might be more complicated than that, but the timeline sure does add up.

And as a truism this feels right: if content reports to ads, content will go to hell. Publications, TV networks, operating systems, search engines — no matter the medium, you can’t let the advertising sales inmates run the asylum.

 ★ 

Absolutely scathing dissection of what’s gone wrong at Google Search, by Ed Zitron for his newsletter/blog:

In an interview with FastCompany’s Harry McCracken from
2018, Gomes framed Google’s challenge as “taking [the
PageRank algorithm] from one machine to a whole bunch of machines,
and they weren’t very good machines at the time.” Despite his
impact and tenure, Gomes had only been made Head of Search in the
middle of 2018 after John Giannandrea moved to Apple to work on
its machine learning and AI strategy. Gomes had been described as
Google’s “search czar,” beloved for his ability to communicate
across departments.

Every single article I’ve read about Gomes’ tenure at Google spoke
of a man deeply ingrained in the foundation of one of the most
important technologies ever made, who had dedicated decades to
maintaining a product with a — to quote Gomes himself — “guiding light of serving the user and using technology to do
that.” And when finally given the keys to the kingdom — the ability to elevate Google Search even further — he was
ratfucked by a series of rotten careerists trying to please Wall
Street, led by Prabhakar Raghavan.

Do you want to know what Prabhakar Raghavan’s old job was? What
Prabhakar Raghavan, the new head of Google Search, the guy that
has run Google Search into the ground, the guy who is currently
destroying search, did before his job at Google?

He was the head of search for Yahoo from 2005 through 2012 — a
tumultuous period that cemented its terminal decline, and
effectively saw the company bow out of the search market
altogether. His responsibilities? Research and development for
Yahoo’s search and ads products.

Long story short, Ben Gomes was a search guy who’d been at Google since 1999, before they even had any ads in search results. He was replaced by Prabhakar Raghavan, who previously was Head of Ads at the company. So instead of there being any sort of firewall between search and ads, search became a subsidiary of ads.

Zitron’s compelling narrative is largely gleaned through emails released as part of the DOJ’s antitrust case against Google. Is the story really that simple? That around 2019 or so Google Search’s institutional priorities flipped from quality-first/revenue-second, to revenue-first/quality-second? It might be more complicated than that, but the timeline sure does add up.

And as a truism this feels right: if content reports to ads, content will go to hell. Publications, TV networks, operating systems, search engines — no matter the medium, you can’t let the advertising sales inmates run the asylum.

Read More 

Jeff Gamet on Mastodon:

Know why you can’t clean the greasy spots off your compute
keyboard? Because that isn’t grease. Lots of computer keys are
made from ABS plastic, which is soft and cheaper than PBT plastic.
Those shiny spots are where you polished the keys by typing.

I’m at least somewhat of a keyboard nerd, but somehow I only learned this a few years ago. The way worn-down ABS keycaps looks greasy, even though they’re not, reminds me of how snakes look wet, even though they’re not.

Over the last 30 years I’ve primarily used two Apple Extended Keyboard II’s at my desk (the “e” key’s switch died on my first one in 2006) and the only key that’s gotten a tad shiny on either of them is the space bar, where my right thumb hits it. You can literally see how the space bar eroded on the one I used from 1992–2006, which, not coincidentally, was a time when I played a lot of games on my Mac. The Extended Keyboard II I’ve been using since 2006 — which I’m using to type this sentence — shows some shine on the space bar, but no erosion.

Those old keycaps clearly weren’t made from cheap ABS plastic. But in recent decades, Apple’s keyboard keycaps have been made from ABS plastic (or, at least, some sort of plastic that develops a greasy-looking shine through use). I’d love to see Apple fix this problem. Apple’s just not known for cheaping out on materials.

 ★ 

Jeff Gamet on Mastodon:

Know why you can’t clean the greasy spots off your compute
keyboard? Because that isn’t grease. Lots of computer keys are
made from ABS plastic, which is soft and cheaper than PBT plastic.
Those shiny spots are where you polished the keys by typing.

I’m at least somewhat of a keyboard nerd, but somehow I only learned this a few years ago. The way worn-down ABS keycaps looks greasy, even though they’re not, reminds me of how snakes look wet, even though they’re not.

Over the last 30 years I’ve primarily used two Apple Extended Keyboard II’s at my desk (the “e” key’s switch died on my first one in 2006) and the only key that’s gotten a tad shiny on either of them is the space bar, where my right thumb hits it. You can literally see how the space bar eroded on the one I used from 1992–2006, which, not coincidentally, was a time when I played a lot of games on my Mac. The Extended Keyboard II I’ve been using since 2006 — which I’m using to type this sentence — shows some shine on the space bar, but no erosion.

Those old keycaps clearly weren’t made from cheap ABS plastic. But in recent decades, Apple’s keyboard keycaps have been made from ABS plastic (or, at least, some sort of plastic that develops a greasy-looking shine through use). I’d love to see Apple fix this problem. Apple’s just not known for cheaping out on materials.

Read More 

Cristiano Lima-Strong, reporting for The Washington Post:

Congress late Tuesday passed legislation to ban or force a sale of TikTok, delivering a historic rebuke of the video-sharing platform’s Chinese ownership after years of failed attempts to tackle the app’s alleged national security risks.

The Senate approved the measure 79 to 18 as part of a sprawling package offering aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, sending the proposal to President Biden’s desk — with the House having passed it Saturday. Biden issued a statement minutes after the Senate vote saying he plans to sign the bill into law on Wednesday.

Once signed, the provision will give TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, roughly nine months to sell the wildly popular app or face a national ban, a deadline the president could extend by 90 days.

Finally.

 ★ 

Cristiano Lima-Strong, reporting for The Washington Post:

Congress late Tuesday passed legislation to ban or force a sale of TikTok, delivering a historic rebuke of the video-sharing platform’s Chinese ownership after years of failed attempts to tackle the app’s alleged national security risks.

The Senate approved the measure 79 to 18 as part of a sprawling package offering aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan, sending the proposal to President Biden’s desk — with the House having passed it Saturday. Biden issued a statement minutes after the Senate vote saying he plans to sign the bill into law on Wednesday.

Once signed, the provision will give TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, roughly nine months to sell the wildly popular app or face a national ban, a deadline the president could extend by 90 days.

Finally.

Read More 

Apple Newsroom:

Following its critically acclaimed fourth season, which has been
praised as “the best-written show on all of television” and
“superior sci-fi,” Apple TV+’s hit, award-winning space drama
series “For All Mankind” has landed a renewal for season five.
Additionally, Apple TV+ and “For All Mankind” creators Ronald D.
Moore, Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi will expand the “For All
Mankind” universe with a brand-new spinoff series, “Star City,”
which will be showrun by Nedivi and Wolpert. […]

A robust expansion of the “For All Mankind” universe, “Star City”
is a propulsive, paranoid thriller that takes us back to the key
moment in the alt-history retelling of the space race — when the
Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the moon. But
this time, we explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain,
showing the lives of the cosmonauts, the engineers and the
intelligence officers embedded among them in the Soviet space
program, and the risks they all took to propel humanity forward.

I can’t think of another show quite like For All Mankind. For one thing, there just aren’t many “alternate history” shows or movies, even though I tend to think it’s a great genre — a way to ground fantastic inventions with familiar elements. But the biggest distinction is the way For All Mankind has decade-long gaps in the timeline between seasons. We’ve seen some characters age 30+ years over just four seasons.

 ★ 

Apple Newsroom:

Following its critically acclaimed fourth season, which has been
praised as “the best-written show on all of television” and
“superior sci-fi,” Apple TV+’s hit, award-winning space drama
series “For All Mankind” has landed a renewal for season five.
Additionally, Apple TV+ and “For All Mankind” creators Ronald D.
Moore, Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi will expand the “For All
Mankind” universe with a brand-new spinoff series, “Star City,”
which will be showrun by Nedivi and Wolpert. […]

A robust expansion of the “For All Mankind” universe, “Star City”
is a propulsive, paranoid thriller that takes us back to the key
moment in the alt-history retelling of the space race — when the
Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the moon. But
this time, we explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain,
showing the lives of the cosmonauts, the engineers and the
intelligence officers embedded among them in the Soviet space
program, and the risks they all took to propel humanity forward.

I can’t think of another show quite like For All Mankind. For one thing, there just aren’t many “alternate history” shows or movies, even though I tend to think it’s a great genre — a way to ground fantastic inventions with familiar elements. But the biggest distinction is the way For All Mankind has decade-long gaps in the timeline between seasons. We’ve seen some characters age 30+ years over just four seasons.

Read More 

Bertrand Serlet — who was Apple’s SVP of software engineering from 2003–2011 and a staple during WWDC keynotes during that era — is now a YouTuber. Great 30-minute lecture explaining how LLMs and AI in general actually work.

 ★ 

Bertrand Serlet — who was Apple’s SVP of software engineering from 2003–2011 and a staple during WWDC keynotes during that era — is now a YouTuber. Great 30-minute lecture explaining how LLMs and AI in general actually work.

Read More 

Happy ending to this saga. Remarkable engineering.

 ★ 

Happy ending to this saga. Remarkable engineering.

Read More 

Adam Engst, writing at TidBITS:

This one is way too close to home. News started to spread this
morning on the MacAdmins Slack, Rich Trouton’s Der Flounder
blog, and Tom Bridge’s site about how our friend and
Take Control author Charles Edge died suddenly and
unexpectedly on 19 April 2024. He was in his late 40s, and yes,
his standard bio picture below gives you a feel for his sense of
humor and irreverence.

Tom Bridge:

I don’t know what we’ll do without him.

But I can tell you how I’ll remember him, always. Charles always
had a kind word for people. He always would take your call. He was
the kind of friend who’d drop everything to help you, or to see if
he could connect you to someone that could if he couldn’t.

I will miss his levity, his wisdom, his inescapable drive for
knowledge, his passion for his friends and family, and his
humbleness.

The MacAdmins Podcast has a nice In Memorium page, collecting a slew of other remembrances. Nothing but good thoughts to all of his friends and family.

 ★ 

Adam Engst, writing at TidBITS:

This one is way too close to home. News started to spread this
morning on the MacAdmins Slack, Rich Trouton’s Der Flounder
blog, and Tom Bridge’s site about how our friend and
Take Control author Charles Edge died suddenly and
unexpectedly on 19 April 2024. He was in his late 40s, and yes,
his standard bio picture below gives you a feel for his sense of
humor and irreverence.

Tom Bridge:

I don’t know what we’ll do without him.

But I can tell you how I’ll remember him, always. Charles always
had a kind word for people. He always would take your call. He was
the kind of friend who’d drop everything to help you, or to see if
he could connect you to someone that could if he couldn’t.

I will miss his levity, his wisdom, his inescapable drive for
knowledge, his passion for his friends and family, and his
humbleness.

The MacAdmins Podcast has a nice In Memorium page, collecting a slew of other remembrances. Nothing but good thoughts to all of his friends and family.

Read More 

Viola Zhou, reporting for Rest of World on TSMC’s massive, but now much-delayed, chip fabrication campus outside Phoenix:

The American engineers complained of rigid, counterproductive
hierarchies at the company; Taiwanese TSMC veterans described
their American counterparts as lacking the kind of dedication and
obedience they believe to be the foundation of their company’s
world-leading success.

Some 2,200 employees now work at TSMC’s Arizona plant, with about
half of them deployed from Taiwan. While tension at the plant
simmers, TSMC has been ramping up its investments, recently
securing billions of dollars in grants and loans from the U.S.
government. Whether or not the plant succeeds in making
cutting-edge chips with the same speed, efficiency, and
profitability as facilities in Asia remains to be seen, with many
skeptical about a U.S. workforce under TSMC’s army-like command
system. “[The company] tried to make Arizona Taiwanese,” G. Dan
Hutcheson, a semiconductor industry analyst at the research firm
TechInsights, told Rest of World. “And it’s just not going to
work.” […]

TSMC’s work culture is notoriously rigorous, even by Taiwanese
standards. Former executives have hailed the Confucian
culture, which promotes diligence and respect for
authority, as well as Taiwan’s strict work ethic as key to the
company’s success. Chang, speaking last year about
Taiwan’s competitiveness compared to the U.S., said that “if [a
machine] breaks down at one in the morning, in the U.S. it will be
fixed in the next morning. But in Taiwan, it will be fixed at 2
a.m.” And, he added, the wife of a Taiwanese engineer would “go
back to sleep without saying another word.”

Even the use of wife rather than spouse speaks to the culture clash.

 ★ 

Viola Zhou, reporting for Rest of World on TSMC’s massive, but now much-delayed, chip fabrication campus outside Phoenix:

The American engineers complained of rigid, counterproductive
hierarchies at the company; Taiwanese TSMC veterans described
their American counterparts as lacking the kind of dedication and
obedience they believe to be the foundation of their company’s
world-leading success.

Some 2,200 employees now work at TSMC’s Arizona plant, with about
half of them deployed from Taiwan. While tension at the plant
simmers, TSMC has been ramping up its investments, recently
securing billions of dollars in grants and loans from the U.S.
government. Whether or not the plant succeeds in making
cutting-edge chips with the same speed, efficiency, and
profitability as facilities in Asia remains to be seen, with many
skeptical about a U.S. workforce under TSMC’s army-like command
system. “[The company] tried to make Arizona Taiwanese,” G. Dan
Hutcheson, a semiconductor industry analyst at the research firm
TechInsights, told Rest of World. “And it’s just not going to
work.” […]

TSMC’s work culture is notoriously rigorous, even by Taiwanese
standards. Former executives have hailed the Confucian
culture, which promotes diligence and respect for
authority, as well as Taiwan’s strict work ethic as key to the
company’s success. Chang, speaking last year about
Taiwan’s competitiveness compared to the U.S., said that “if [a
machine] breaks down at one in the morning, in the U.S. it will be
fixed in the next morning. But in Taiwan, it will be fixed at 2
a.m.” And, he added, the wife of a Taiwanese engineer would “go
back to sleep without saying another word.”

Even the use of wife rather than spouse speaks to the culture clash.

Read More 

Made by Windmill recently launched a fantastic Mac App for GitHub and GitLab issues. When it launched two months ago (and sponsored DF), it was named Sonar. They’ve changed the name to Taska, but it’s the same great app from the same great team. As I wrote when thanking them (now with the new name):

Taska combines the lightweight UI of a to-do app with the power of
enterprise-level issue tracking, all in a native app built by
long-time Mac nerds. The interface is deceptively simple, and very
intuitive. Fast and fluid too. Everything that’s great about
native Mac apps is exemplified by Taska. If you’ve ever thought,
“Man, if only Apple made a native GitHub client…”, you should
run, not walk, to download it.

Taska saves all your changes directly to GitHub/GitLab using their
official APIs, so your data remains secure on GitHub’s servers — not Taska’s. Do you have team members not using Taska? No problem.
Changes you make in Taska are 100% compatible with the web UI.

Free to try for 14 days — no subscriptions or purchases required. Taska remains my favorite new Mac app of the year.

 ★ 

Made by Windmill recently launched a fantastic Mac App for GitHub and GitLab issues. When it launched two months ago (and sponsored DF), it was named Sonar. They’ve changed the name to Taska, but it’s the same great app from the same great team. As I wrote when thanking them (now with the new name):

Taska combines the lightweight UI of a to-do app with the power of
enterprise-level issue tracking, all in a native app built by
long-time Mac nerds. The interface is deceptively simple, and very
intuitive. Fast and fluid too. Everything that’s great about
native Mac apps is exemplified by Taska. If you’ve ever thought,
“Man, if only Apple made a native GitHub client…”, you should
run, not walk, to download it.

Taska saves all your changes directly to GitHub/GitLab using their
official APIs, so your data remains secure on GitHub’s servers — not Taska’s. Do you have team members not using Taska? No problem.
Changes you make in Taska are 100% compatible with the web UI.

Free to try for 14 days — no subscriptions or purchases required. Taska remains my favorite new Mac app of the year.

Read More 

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on
Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern
Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on
YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a
tagline of “Let Loose” and shows an artistic render of an Apple
Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event.

Tim Cook, on Twitter/X:

Pencil us in for May 7! ✏️ #AppleEvent

The entirety of the iPad lineup is due for updates, and the rumor mill expects a new model, a 13-inch-ish iPad Air. It seems clear a new Apple Pencil is forthcoming. The Pencil 2 launched in 2018, alongside the 3rd-gen iPads Pro, which sport A12X chips that benchmark comparably to the then-fastest MacBook Pros available. Those were fantastic iPads that foretold the Apple silicon revolution. My personal iPad remains a 2018 11-inch iPad Pro.

Also rumored: a new Magic Keyboard, with a more MacBook-like (and hopefully more durable) aluminum body and a larger trackpad. The current Magic Keyboards are now four years old. Apple might be settling all iPad family business in two weeks.

What I hope to see:

New Pencil and new Magic Keyboards (11- and 13-inch) that work with all new iPads, Air and Pro alike. The Pencil compatibility situation has been a mess the last few years; now is the time to clean that up with a Pencil 3 that works across all new iPads.
All new iPads with the front-facing camera on the long side, optimized for use in landscape/laptop orientation.
Face ID replacing top-button Touch ID in the iPad Airs.

 ★ 

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors:

Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on
Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern
Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on
YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a
tagline of “Let Loose” and shows an artistic render of an Apple
Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event.

Tim Cook, on Twitter/X:

Pencil us in for May 7! ✏️ #AppleEvent

The entirety of the iPad lineup is due for updates, and the rumor mill expects a new model, a 13-inch-ish iPad Air. It seems clear a new Apple Pencil is forthcoming. The Pencil 2 launched in 2018, alongside the 3rd-gen iPads Pro, which sport A12X chips that benchmark comparably to the then-fastest MacBook Pros available. Those were fantastic iPads that foretold the Apple silicon revolution. My personal iPad remains a 2018 11-inch iPad Pro.

Also rumored: a new Magic Keyboard, with a more MacBook-like (and hopefully more durable) aluminum body and a larger trackpad. The current Magic Keyboards are now four years old. Apple might be settling all iPad family business in two weeks.

What I hope to see:

New Pencil and new Magic Keyboards (11- and 13-inch) that work with all new iPads, Air and Pro alike. The Pencil compatibility situation has been a mess the last few years; now is the time to clean that up with a Pencil 3 that works across all new iPads.
All new iPads with the front-facing camera on the long side, optimized for use in landscape/laptop orientation.
Face ID replacing top-button Touch ID in the iPad Airs.

Read More