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Social Media’s Walled Gardens ⇥ mastodon.ar.al

Aral Balkan:

When you post things on Instagram, Facebook, and X, this is what they look like to people who don’t use those platforms.

They are login walls. Sometimes, these platforms will let you see an individual post without having an account or logging in, but very often they do not. This sucks for many reasons, but one thing I remain surprised by is how the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seems completely okay with Meta using Mark Zuckerberg’s login-walled Facebook and Instagram pages to disclose material information about the company.

Sucker ⇥ theatlantic.com

McKay Coppins, the Atlantic (gift link):

When I set out to report on the sports-betting industry—its explosive growth, its sudden cultural ubiquity, and what it’s doing to America—my editors thought I should experience the phenomenon firsthand. Mindful of my religious constraints, they proposed a work-around: The Atlantic would stake me $10,000 to gamble with over the course of the upcoming NFL season. The magazine would cover any losses, and—to ensure my ongoing emotional investment—split any winnings with me, 50–50. Surely God would approve of such an arrangement, my editors reasoned, because I wouldn’t be risking my own hard-earned money.

[…]

I promised the bishop that I would steer clear of slippery slopes. “This will really just be a journalistic exercise,” I assured him.

I rarely think much of anything published in the Atlantic, and I cannot recall the last time I thought something from Coppins was worth recommending, but you should take the time to read this gut-wrenching reflection on the saturation of gambling in sports and, increasingly, media as a whole. I have read and watched countless stories about the fallout from the legalization of gambling in the United States and Canada — in particular, I think CBC News covered it well in an episode of the “Fifth Estate” (that video might be geographically restricted), while Drew Gooden’s video reflected on it from a fan’s perspective. But Coppin lived it.

This comparison is intriguing:

Executives at the major online sportsbooks are quick to trumpet their commitment to “responsible gaming.” But that purported commitment runs up against an economic reality: As much as 90 percent of the sportsbooks’ revenue comes from less than 10 percent of their users. Their apps seem clearly designed, much like TikTok and Candy Crush, to keep users scrolling and tapping in a hypnotic stupor. If your account is nearing empty, DraftKings will offer a “reload bonus” of gambling credits to entice you to deposit more money; if you’ve gone a couple of days without making a wager, you might get a push alert from FanDuel offering a “no sweat bet,” promising to refund a loss with site credits to be used for more gambling.

Social media is commonly compared to gambling. I recently wrote a headline referring to it as a “slot machine for feelings”. Coppins flips that around, pointing to the personalized notifications that lure people back, a feature that was also presented in the “Fifth Estate” documentary. There is no way for your phone to dispense cigarettes or alcohol, but gambling is right there, all the time.

Regardless of whether prohibition was the right call for gambling — and there is compelling evidence for that — I think the advertising and integration into sports and other media must be stopped.

‘This Is Not the Computer for You’ ⇥ samhenri.gold

Sam Henri Gold:

The consensus is reasonable: $599, A18 Pro, 8GB RAM, stripped-down I/O. A Chromebook killer, a first laptop, a sensible machine for sensible tasks. “If you are thinking about Xcode or Final Cut, this is not the computer for you.” The people saying this are not wrong. It is also not the point.

Nobody starts in the right place. You don’t begin with the correct tool and work sensibly within its constraints until you organically graduate to a more capable one. That is not how obsession works. Obsession works by taking whatever is available and pressing on it until it either breaks or reveals something. The machine’s limits become a map of the territory. You learn what computing actually costs by paying too much of it on hardware that can barely afford it.

This is such a good essay. It takes me right back to the first computers I used when I was a kid, trying everything and finding whatever limits exist. And they do exist, but they are far beyond what most people will even attempt because technology has far outpaced our typical use. Apple can make a full-on Mac with “a phone chip” because that phone has a display with nearly as many pixels as were in the 30-inch Cinema Display you used to need Apple’s most expensive Mac and a specific graphics card to run.

People are going to use this Mac like a Mac.

TechCrunch: L3Harris, a U.S. Military Contractor, Likely Built ‘Coruna’ iPhone Hacking Toolkit ⇥ techcrunch.com

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, TechCrunch:

A mass hacking campaign targeting iPhone users in Ukraine and China used tools that were likely designed by U.S. military contractor L3Harris, TechCrunch has learned. The tools, which were intended for Western spies, wound up in the hands of various hacking groups, including Russian government spooks and Chinese cybercriminals.

While Franceschi-Bicchierai notes the case of a former L3Harris executive who sold exploits to a Russian company, it remains unclear how this specific toolkit was leaked.

Grammarly Is Facing a Class Action Lawsuit Over Its A.I. ‘Expert Review’ Feature ⇥ wired.com

Shishir Mehrotra, CEO of Grammarly’s parent company Superhuman, on LinkedIn of all places:

Back in August, we launched a Grammarly agent called Expert Review. The agent draws on publicly available information from third-party LLMs to surface writing suggestions inspired by the published work of influential voices.

[…]

After careful consideration, we have decided to disable Expert Review while we reimagine the feature to make it more useful for users, while giving experts real control over how they want to be represented — or not represented at all.

This has been around since August without anyone noticing until recently, which likely means few people used it. Certainly none of the experts, whose likenesses were being used without permission to give advice, had any idea.

Regardless, I do not think this is something Mehrotra or Superhuman can duck out from with a simple my bad.

Miles Klee, Wired:

Superhuman, the tech company behind the writing software Grammarly, is facing a class action lawsuit over an AI tool that presented editing suggestions as if they came from established authors and academics—none of whom consented to have their names appear within the product.

Good.

MacBook Neo Teardown Reveals a Highly Repairable Laptop ⇥ youtube.com

Earlier this week, I linked to iFixit’s exploration of ways Apple used to prioritize repairability in its laptops. The headline on the article is “How Apple Used to Design Its Laptops for Repairability”, but the <title> tag reveals a more incendiary thesis:

Macbook Neo Shows how far Apple’s repairability design has fallen – iFixit

That is quite the bold statement for an article published just a few days after the MacBook Neo was announced and nearly a week before it became available.

Luckily, the good people at Tech Re-Nu in Melbourne got their hands on a Neo on launch day in Australia, and took it apart. They found modular internals held in place with dozens of screws. They only found adhesive on the back of the trackpad — hardly the end of the world. It is a far cry from the glued-in battery of the MacBook Pro. (Warning: that link goes to a page where Apple has decided to use PNGs for photographs instead of JPEGs, rendering the guide hundreds of megabytes large. Embarrassing.) Tech Re-Nu does not entirely disassemble the Neo, but it is possible to remove the keyboard for repair without replacing the entire top case.

This does not entirely invalidate iFixit’s argument, of course. Apple’s laptops used to have replaceable memory and storage, but none of that can be changed post-purchase. But the Neo is way more repairable than I think iFixit expected it to be. I wish that were true for the other laptops Apple introduced last week, both of which still use adhesive to secure the battery, and seemingly do not permit replacing the keyboard independently of the top case.

Also, it is always worth putting iFixit’s advocacy in the context of a company that also sells parts and tools. A conflict of interest, to be sure, but not invalidating — just something to be mindful of.

Online Age Verification Tools for Child Safety Are Surveilling Adults ⇥ cnbc.com

Barbara Booth, CNBC:

Civil liberties’ advocates warn that concentrating large volumes of identity data among a small number of verification vendors can create attractive targets for hackers and government demands. Earlier this year, Discord disclosed a data breach that exposed ID images belonging to approximately 70,000 users through a compromised third-party service, highlighting the security risks associated with storing sensitive identity information.

[…]

According to Tandy, as more states adopt age-verification mandates and companies race to comply, the infrastructure behind those systems is likely to become a permanent fixture of online life. Taken together, industry leaders say the rapid spread of age-verification laws may push platforms toward systems that verify age once and reuse that credential across services.

The hurried implementation of age verification sounds fairly terrible, counterproductive, illegal in the U.S., and discriminatory, but we should not pretend that we are only now being subject to risky and overbearing surveillance on the web. The ecosystem powering behavioural ad targeting — including data brokers, the biggest of which have reported staggering data breaches for a decade — has all but ensured our behaviour on popular websites and in mobile apps is already tracked and tied to some proxy for our identity.

That is not an excuse for the poor implementation of age verification, nor justification for its existence. If anything, it is a condemnation of the current state of the web that this barely moves the needle on privacy. If I had to choose whether to compromise for commerce or for the children, it would be the latter, but the correct answer is, likely, neither.

Grammarly’s ‘Expert Review’ Feature Presents Fake Advice in the Names of Real Journalists and Authors ⇥ platformer.news

Casey Newton, Platformer:

On Friday I learned to my surprise that I had become an editor for Grammarly. The subscription-based writing assistant has introduced a feature named “expert review” that, in the company’s words, “is designed to take your writing to the next level — with insights from leading professionals, authors, and subject-matter experts.”

Read a little further, though, and you’ll learn that these “insights” are not actually “from” leading professionals, or any human person at all. Rather, they are AI-generated text, which may or may not reflect whichever “leading professional” Grammarly slapped their names on.

Miles Klee, Wired:

As advertised on a support page, Grammarly users can solicit tips from virtual versions of living writers and scholars such as Stephen King and Neil deGrasse Tyson (neither of whom responded to a request for comment) as well as the deceased, like the editor William Zinsser and astronomer Carl Sagan. Presumably, these different AI agents are trained on the oeuvres of the people they are meant to imitate, though the legality of this content-harvesting remains murky at best, and the subject of many, many copyright lawsuits.

I do not think a disclaimer explaining it does “not indicate any affiliation with Grammarly or endorsement by those individuals or entities” will sufficiently distance the company from its claim of providing “insights from leading professionals, authors, and subject-matter experts” attributed to the names of people who did not agree to participate in this. Apparently, it is incumbent upon them to opt out by emailing expertoptout@superhuman.com. Most people will obviously not do this — because why would anyone realize they need to opt out? — but especially those who are dead yet are still being called upon for their expertise. Let Carl Sagan rest.

Apple Used to Design Its Laptops for Repairability ⇥ ifixit.com

Charlie Sorrel, of iFixit:

Apple’s MacBooks haven’t always been monolithic, barely repairable slabs of aluminum, glass, and glue. They used to be almost delightful in their repairable features, from their batteries to their Wi-Fi cards. Powerbooks, iBooks, and especially early MacBooks showed what happens when Apple applies its design skills directly to repairability and maintenance, instead of to thinness above all. Today we’re going to take a look at the best repairability features that Apple has ditched.

These four complaints range from the somewhat quaint — swappable Wi-Fi cards — to the stuff I actually miss, which is everything else. RAM and disk upgrades are a gimme since the cost-per-gigabyte (generally) declines over time, and I would love easily swappable batteries. But right now, nearly four years into owning this MacBook Pro, I would also really like to be able to swap in a new keyboard in the future. Not only are the keycaps unintentionally becoming polished, some oft-used keys feel a little mushy. Not much, and barely enough to notice, but I imagine their clickiness will not improve over time.

One quibble, emphasis mine:

[…] I have an old 2012 MacBook Air running Linux. I swapped the HDD for an SSD, maxed out the RAM, and dropped in a new battery, and I see no reason it wouldn’t easily keep rolling for another 10 years.

Unlikely. The 2012 MacBook Air only came with an SSD; a standard hard disk was not an option.

Another Appearance Control Is Coming to Accessibility Settings in iOS 26.4 ⇥ macrumors.com

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

Apple renamed the prior Reduce Highlighting Effects Accessibility setting to “Reduce Bright Effects,” and explained what it does.

Apple says the feature “minimizes highlighting and flashing when interacting with onscreen elements, such as buttons or the keyboard.

In my testing, this does exactly what you would expect. In places like toolbar buttons — or the buttons in the area of what is left of a toolbar, anyhow — the passcode entry screen, and Control Centre, the glowing tap effects are minimized or removed.

I do not find those effects particularly distracting, and I think turning them off saps some of the life out of the Liquid Glass design language, but I can see why some would be bothered by them. It is not the case that iOS 26 would be better if none of these appearance controls were present, only that they should not be necessary.

Minister for Innovation, Science, and Economic Development Announces ‘Guardrails’ for TikTok Canada Operations ⇥ canada.ca

There are three agreed-upon policies which, in the airy language of a government press release, seem reasonable enough to apply to all social platforms, yet are only relevant to TikTok. The first is exceedingly vague:

TikTok will implement enhanced protection for Canadians’ personal information, including new security gateways and privacy-enhancing technologies to control access to Canadian user data in order to reduce the risk of unauthorized or prohibited access.

There are no details about what the “new security gateways and privacy-enhancing technologies” are, nor why the sole goal is preventing “prohibited access” rather than “exploitative access”.

The second — complying with the recommendations of the Privacy Commissioner — was already underway, and the third is an “independent third-party monitor”, which seems fine.

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Mixing News Coverage and ‘Prediction Markets’ Is a Dangerous Gamble ⇥ theverge.com

Nilay Patel and Liz Lopatto discussed “prediction markets” on the Verge’s “Decoder” podcast; here is Patel’s summary:

Insider trading is supposed to be illegal, and so is operating an unregulated sports book. So you’re now starting to see Kalshi and Polymarket getting hit from both sides of this broader regulatory debate, and 2026 is shaping up to be the year that all of this really comes to a head. To what end? It’s hard to say, especially as these companies cozy up to the Trump administration.

But it’s also becoming increasingly untenable for prediction markets to sit in the middle of the tension between gambling on the news and trying to self-regulate such that they don’t encourage insider trading.

A little under a month after Gallup announced it would stop polling for presidential approval, the Associated Press said it would begin integrating Kalshi bets into its election coverage. As Patel and Lopatto say, however, election betting is among the least problematic news gambling.

The Central Lie of Prediction Markets ⇥ theatlantic.com

Charlie Warzel, the Atlantic (gift link):

Prediction markets claim to harness the wisdom of crowds to provide reliable public data: Because people are putting real money behind their opinions, they are expressing what they actually believe is most likely to happen, which, according to the reasoning of these platforms, means that events will unfold accordingly. Many news organizations, and Substack, now have partnerships with prediction markets — the subtext being that they provide some kind of news-gathering function. Some users who distrust mainstream media turn to the markets in place of traditional journalism.

But in reality, prediction markets produce the opposite of accurate, unbiased information. They encourage anyone with an informational edge to use their knowledge for personal financial gain. In this way, prediction markets are the perfect technology for a low-trust society, simultaneously exploiting and reifying an environment in which believing the motives behind any person or action becomes harder.

I had no idea so-called “prediction markets” like Kalshi and Polymarket were promoting themselves as forecasters of real information, let alone that anyone believed them. I always assumed “prediction markets” was a euphemism.

A spokesperson for Kalshi told Warzel that betting on current events is a way to “create accurate, unbiased forecasts”, and that is something we can verify. If this were true, bettors should have been able to forecast, for example, the popular vote split of the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Polls had Harris and Trump neck and neck, but on election day, 75.8% of Kalshi bettors believed Harris would prevail. There is not much granularity to Kalshi’s charts, but the forecast on Polymarket was favourable to Harris at 5:00 PM on November 5 — election day — and it flips to a Trump lead at the next available data point, 5:00 AM the following day, and well after it was obvious Trump won the popular vote.

This is just a way to gamble on current events, which is tragic and pathetic. We do not need to pretend these sites are anything more substantial than that.

Google and Epic Games Announce Settlement ⇥ theregister.com

Sameer Samat, Google’s president of Android Ecosystem:

Today we are announcing substantial updates that evolve our business model and build on our long history of openness globally.  We’re doing that in three ways: more billing options, a program for registered app stores, and lower fees and new programs for developers.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney on X:

Google is opening up Android all the way with robust support for competing stores, competing payments, and a better deal for all developers. So, we’ve settled all of our disputes worldwide. THANKS GOOGLE!

Simon Sharwood, the Register:

Epic Games approved of the changes.

“These changes will evolve Android into a true open platform with competition among stores,” the company stated. “Globally, developers will have choices in how they make payments using Google Play’s payment system and competing payment systems, with reduced fees and the ability to point users outside apps to make purchases.

Epic also said “Google will take steps to support the future open metaverse,” a probable reference to the deal that will see games made with the Unity engine made available within Fortnite.

Neither Sweeney nor Epic Games can express anything less than elation with this outcome in no small part because they signed away their ability to do that. It still amazes me that concession ended up in the final agreement. It seems like the kind of thing that Google’s very expensive lawyers would pitch as leverage with Epic Games’ not-quite-as-expensive lawyers. In an interview with Dean Takahashi, of GamesBeat, it seems like Epic was eager to settle with terms that apply worldwide:

Asked why Sweeney decided to settle rather than litigate in every court in the world, he said, “This is just a really important thing that people should understand. The Epic versus Google court decision in the United States only has effect in the United States. It does nothing about the rest of the world. And the United States is about 30% of Google Play revenue and about 5% of Google Play users.”

He said it was never going to be a complete worldwide solution, and the court, throughout the proceedings, very clearly, said that the court wanted to establish competition among stores and competition among payments without setting prices in the market.

Curiously, not long before this settlement, Google announced it would begin requiring Android developers to be verified for their software to be installable, even by side-loading. I am curious if the combination of these changes meaningfully impacts users’ security or privacy. At a glance, the changes that settled this lawsuit seem like a welcome set of improvements that, sure, was assuredly not an altruistic fight by Epic Games, and will probably result in Sweeney getting even richer.

Regardless, it is notable for these sweeping changes to be brought to Android phones worldwide in the coming years, while Apple’s App Store is a patchwork of region-specific policies difficult for developers to navigate. It is too bad there is not really competition between these stores. Most people who buy smartphones choose the platform as a whole and accept whatever software experience they are provided. They do not need to bother themselves with the business terms of each store. With the improvements to third-party stores on Android, it sets up the possibility for greater competition within that platform. Apple should do the same.

Apple’s New Studio Displays, Plural ⇥ 512pixels.net

In hardware terms alone, Apple has been delivering an incredible run of Macs arguably since 2020, and easily since 2021. There are quibbles, sure — the display notch still bugs some people, the keyboard material wears poorly, and repairability has declined — but these are, overall, pretty sweet machines. The Macs announced this week seem like they will continue that hot streak.

I happen to be in the market for a new Mac, perhaps this year, and I should be spoiled for choice. I kind of am — the Mac Mini and Mac Studio are both alluring. But I am sadly attached to the room offered by my beloved 27-inch iMac, and Apple’s new lineup of displays is a sore point.

Stephen Hackett, 512 Pixels:

Yes, those are two different products, but they both feature 27-inch, 5K displays in the same enclosure as the previous Studio Display.

Starting at $1599, the new Studio Display is a slight upgrade to the 2022 model.

[…]

The much more interesting of the pair is the $3299 Studio Display XDR.

Those prices are, respectively, $2,100 and $4,500 in Canada. I am not a stranger to spending a lot of money on a screen — I bought a Thunderbolt Display at $1,000 — but that is a lot of money for even the basest of base models, especially since I have no idea whether the sketchy firmware issues have been resolved.

It is not that these displays are bad — far from it — but it is extraordinary that we are ten years removed from 27-inch Retina iMacs that started at just $200 more than the Studio Display is today. Only recently are we seeing more choice in 27-inch 5K displays at considerably lower prices, though without Apple’s very nice stand and quality of materials. At least the XDR has a seemingly new panel.

Three of the seven models in the Mac lineup require an external display. Apple has two choices: one really advanced one that costs as much as a generously-specced Mac Studio, and another that feels like it is stumbling along.

Anyway, here I go again looking for a sick deal I will not find on a Pro Display XDR. Those things really hold their value. Pity.

Tim Sweeney Is Contractually Prohibited from Criticizing Google’s Developer Terms for Years ⇥ theverge.com

Sean Hollister, the Verge:

But Google has finally muzzled Tim Sweeney. It’s right there in a binding term sheet for his settlement with Google.

On March 3rd, he not only signed away Epic’s rights to sue and disparage the company, he signed away his right to advocate for any further changes to Google’s app store polices. He can’t criticize Google’s app store practices. In fact, he has to praise them.

The terms (PDF) helpfully clarify that Epic is still allowed to “advocat[e] changes to the policies or practices of […] other companies, including Apple”. This does not mean future criticism of Apple’s business practices — or past criticism, for that matter — is unwarranted or invalid, but it now carries the blunted quality of someone who is not allowed to make the same complaints about Google.

A Toolkit for Hacking iPhones, Possibly Created for the U.S. Government, Has Leaked ⇥ cloud.google.com

Google’s Threat Intelligence Group:

Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) has identified a new and powerful exploit kit targeting Apple iPhone models running iOS version 13.0 (released in September 2019) up to version 17.2.1 (released in December 2023). The exploit kit, named “Coruna” by its developers, contained five full iOS exploit chains and a total of 23 exploits. The core technical value of this exploit kit lies in its comprehensive collection of iOS exploits, with the most advanced ones using non-public exploitation techniques and mitigation bypasses.

The Coruna exploit kit provides another example of how sophisticated capabilities proliferate. Over the course of 2025, GTIG tracked its use in highly targeted operations initially conducted by a customer of a surveillance vendor, then observed its deployment in watering hole attacks targeting Ukrainian users by UNC6353, a suspected Russian espionage group. We then retrieved the complete exploit kit when it was later used in broad-scale campaigns by UNC6691, a financially motivated threat actor operating from China. […]

Andy Greenberg, Wired:

Conspicuously absent from Google’s report is any mention of who the original surveillance company “customer” that deployed Coruna may have been. But the mobile security company iVerify, which also analyzed a version of Coruna it obtained from one of the infected Chinese sites, suggests the code may well have started life as a hacking kit built for or purchased by the US government. Google and iVerify both note that Coruna contains multiple components previously used in a hacking operation known as “Triangulation” that was discovered targeting Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky in 2023, which the Russian government claimed was the work of the NSA. (The US government didn’t respond to Russia’s claim.)

I am so curious to know how this thing made it outside the carefully guarded digital walls of the U.S. government or a contractor. While a rare event, it is not the first time the classified weapons of espionage have become public.

U.S. Immigration Police Bought Real-Time Ad Bidding Data for Automated Tracking System ⇥ 404media.co

Joseph Cox, 404 Media:

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) bought data from the online advertising ecosystem to track peoples’ precise movements over time, in a process that often involves siphoning data from ordinary apps like video games, dating services, and fitness trackers, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document obtained by 404 Media.

[…]

Although CBP described the move as a pilot, the DHS Office of the Inspector General (OIG) later found both CBP and ICE did not limit themselves to non-operational use. The OIG found that CBP, ICE, and the Secret Service all illegally used the smartphone location data, and found a CBP official used the data to track coworkers with no investigative purpose. CBP and ICE went on to repeatedly purchase access to location data.

There are people out there who will insist, to this day, that behaviourally targeted advertising is not actually a mechanism for surveillance despite all the evidence showing it is, in fact, an essential component.