The Public Domain Review is one of many organizations that puts together a terrific list celebrating the works entering the public domain every year. It is like an annual reminder that most copyright terms are far too long.
This year in Canada — and in other countries with life plus fifty year terms — the list includes works by Louis Armstrong, Jim Morrison, and Stravinsky.
Tim Hardwick, MacRumors:
Apple has an agreement with Google that it won’t develop its own internet search engine so long as Google pays it to remain the default option in Safari, a new class action alleges.
Filed in a California court earlier this week against Apple, Google, and their respective CEOs, the lawsuit alleges the two companies have a non-compete agreement in the internet search business that violates US antitrust laws.
This is one hell of a lawsuit; you can read the complaint here (PDF). Unlike many antitrust suits, it does not argue solely that Google’s presence as the default browser on all of Apple’s platforms — and its multibillion-dollar annual payments for its position — is illegally hampering competition. Rather, it claims that Apple has agreed not to develop a search engine to avoid giving Google any competition. It also says that Tim Cook derived personal bonuses based on this agreement.
I am not a lawyer; I have no idea if this case is legally sound. But the evidence for these allegations amounts to, more or less, a couple of photographs of Cook and Sundar Pichai at dinner, and some out-of-context quotes. The complainants say that the talks during these dinners were “taped by bystanders” but I see no recordings or transcripts in the docket. I will also note that Apple has, in Spotlight, its own general-purpose web search engine built into its platforms.
PCs used to crash a lot, a whole lot. PCs routinely crashing, freezing, hanging (various ways to describe a computer that has ceased to function) and losing work was the norm. Over about twenty years of engineering and iteration, the PC experience changed dramatically for the better, with vastly more reliability and higher quality. Now I recognize even typing that should make for a protracted thread on Hacker News or Reddit where everyone shares the crashes that just happened today or happen “constantly”. This is the story of going from a world of nearly universal quality and reliability problems to a literal world-changing invention that dramatically altered the path of PC quality.
I really enjoyed this essay about learning how to capture and share debugging information with the software vendor — in this case, Microsoft. I have to wonder what today’s systems look like, given that users of Windows now measure in the many billions. How does debugging scale to the users of products from Microsoft or Apple or Google today? Submitting reports through Feedback Assistant feels almost quaint in its similarity to the developments described by Sinofsky.
Sarah Hagi, Gawker:
Leaving a writing job in a huff to join the truth warriors of the newsletteratti has worked incredibly well for well-known journalists like former New York Times editor and columnist Bari Weiss, Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald, former New York Magazine writer Andrew Sullivan and Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias.
Usually, this approach only works well for people with name recognition, but one fellow Canadian has proved you don’t even need that to be hoisted up as a free speech warrior as long as you type the correct words in the correct order.
Tara Henley’s screed against the CBC’s editorial direction is almost transparently insincere. Our national broadcaster is a institution worth changing for the better, but Henley’s criticisms simply do not match the CBC’s actual output. I have seen CBC stories of everything she says it does not cover with some frequency.
There is nothing wrong with starting a newsletter or going indie. But the way some of these journalists and commentators carry on, you would think they are bravely publishing in the storm of a totalitarian dictatorship. That does not match the reality of journalists in the U.S. or Canada or the U.K. or the E.U. who are afforded broad rights and freedoms, as are the rest of us, and who have a wide choice of outlets and employers.
You started a blog. So did lots of other people. Stop making a big thing out of it.
Apple (PDF), via Michael Tsai:
iCloud Private Relay is a new internet privacy service from Apple that allows users with iOS 15, iPadOS 15, or macOS Monterey on their devices and an iCloud+ subscription to connect to the internet and browse with Safari in a more secure and private way.
[…]
Private Relay is built on the principle that IP addresses that identify users need to be separated from the names of websites that users access. To achieve this separation, Apple has engineered an innovative dual-hop architecture in which users’ requests are sent through two separate internet relays operated by different entities. Private Relay’s dual-hop architecture protects the privacy of users by separating who can observe their IP addresses from who can see the websites they visit.
Compared to some of Apple’s more detailed technical documentation, this white paper has noticeable omissions. For example, it does not name the providers of the second hop “egress” proxy, only stating that they are “some of the largest content delivery networks (CDNs) in the world”.
Thankfully, it does shed some light on the protocols and technologies Apple is using:
DNS is the system that translates server names into IP addresses when using the internet. The ability to observe DNS lookups allows potential trackers to monitor user activity. To protect the privacy of DNS name resolution for all queries sent by the device and prevent such tracking, Private Relay uses Oblivious DNS over HTTPS (ODoH).
Apple also lists circumstances where Private Relay may be unavailable, saying that it is “designed to provide clear status information and control to the user”. Among the reasons it may not be available include local network settings, devices under certain management profiles, and DNS settings. Not listed are countries where it is unavailable for regulatory reasons.
Speaking of respect, Wordle is a great game that is free and has no growth hacking nonsense. One word a day, six attempts to solve it. It clocks in at less than 400 KB, too. I know this is probably not breaking news for many of you, but it is delightful.
Benjamin Mullin of the Wall Street Journal broke today’s biggest media news:
Bloomberg Media Chief Executive Justin Smith stepped down effective immediately to found a new media company, and tapped New York Times media columnist Ben Smith to lead its future newsroom.
“The news industry is facing a crisis in consumer trust and confidence due to the distorting influence of social media and rising levels of polarization and parochialism,” Justin Smith said in an email Tuesday. “My plan is to launch a premium news business that serves unbiased journalism to a global audience and provides a high-quality platform for the best journalists in the world.”
The New Yorker’s Lauren Collins on Twitter:
By MAN
MAN leaving news org to start news org with MAN. “We will miss MAN,” MAN said. MAN took over column from MAN, who succeeded other MAN. MAN pubbed report on MAN compiled by MAN, which led to inquiry by MAN. “MAN helped transform media,” said MAN.
Collins wrote this in the context of the New York Times’ story about this news, but surely it applies equally to Mullin’s coverage.
Clare Malone, of the New Yorker, asked Ben Smith some good questions but received frustratingly empty answers (Malone’s questions are italicized):
Do you have any people whom you see as competitors in mind? For those of us who are not in your and Justin’s mind — the two Mr. Smiths — what is it?
We’re thinking more about the audience than about competitors, I would say. And I think there is a big audience of people who are dissatisfied with their current options. There’s a lot of research that suggests that, for sort of a range of overlapping reasons.
Like what? Tell me more about that.
I think there are a lot of people who want to be treated with respect. We want to serve the highest common denominator, and I think there’s an opportunity for that.
Sometimes, being vague is tantalizing; sometimes, it is just being vague. What does Smith — the Ben one — really mean when he says that they are seeking an audience within the English-speaking world of “200 million people who are college educated”? Is that not pretty much how every English-language broadsheet newspaper or bookish magazine would describe itself? Nevertheless, I am interested in this venture, if only because I really like Ben Smith’s work.
I am particularly interested in this concept of respect for readers. Does that mean this media outlet will be one of very few that does not interrupt your reading with a prompt to subscribe to its newsletter? Perhaps it will not have third-party tracking, or precisely target audiences using third-party data, right? The Markup has proved that media outlets can respect readers in all of these ways. Will the Smiths follow suit?
Hartley Charlton, MacRumors:
Apple’s second-generation AirPods Pro will feature support for Lossless audio and a charging case that can emit a sound for location tracking purposes, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo.
In a note to investors, seen by MacRumors, Kuo explained that the second-generation AirPods Pro will feature new selling points that will lead to strong demand, including support for Apple Lossless (ALAC) audio and a charging case that users can trigger a sound from to highlight its location.
The first thought which occurred to me is the undertaking required to replace a metre or two of wire. Just last month, Apple’s vice president of acoustics said in an interview that Bluetooth’s bandwidth was an impediment to supporting lossless audio in AirPods. It seems that a different standard or perhaps a proprietary protocol will be needed to enable the same quality of playback in a wireless headphone that I achieve today through a physical connection.
But then it occurred to me how strange it is that I am able to wirelessly transmit lossless audio until I need to transfer it the short distance between my device and my ears. I can stream it over a cellular connection, or download lossless files to my Mac and sync them to my iPhone over Wi-Fi, but a cable is needed for playback. For now, anyway.
Ben Smith, in his column for the New York Times this weekend, profiled CrowdTangle’s founder Brandon Silverman. CrowdTangle was acquired by Facebook in 2016, but its team was effectively dismantled in 2021 after information surfaced by the software became embarrassing to the company. Facebook’s spokespeople have disputed any connection.
Anyway, Smith’s column covers some proposed legislation that Silverman helped write, which is intended to increase transparency around algorithmic platform decisions. Smith:
Much of what Americans know about what happens inside companies like Google and Facebook these days comes from employees who tire of the corporate spin and leak internal documents. Congress is responding to documents leaked first to The Wall Street Journal by a former Facebook product manager, Frances Haugen. The revelations in those documents confirmed and deepened the perception of an out-of-control information wasteland hinted at by CrowdTangle’s data.
Mr. Silverman isn’t a leaker or a whistle-blower, and he declined to discuss details of his time at Facebook. But his defection from Silicon Valley to Capitol Hill is significant. He arrived with detailed knowledge of perhaps the most effective transparency tool in the history of social media, and he has helped write it into a piece of legislation that is notable for its technical savvy.
“Defection” is an interesting choice of word, given Silverman’s history later disclosed by Smith:
For Mr. Silverman, the legislation is a return to politics. He came to the tech industry through an unusual path, which began in 2005 at the Center for Progressive Leadership, a nonprofit organization aimed at training a new generation of political leaders. He became interested in building online communities as a way to keep the program’s alumni connected. In 2011, he helped found a company then called OpenPage Labs, aimed at building social networks for progressive nonprofits using Facebook’s “open graph,” a short-lived program that allowed software developers to integrate their applications with Facebook.
The Center for Progressive Leadership was based in Washington D.C., while OpenPage Labs was founded and run out of Baltimore, which is economically and politically tied with D.C. through its close proximity. I do not see this as a story of “defection” as much as it is about Silverman continuing a career.
Mathäus Jagielski has updated SKRWT, making one of my very favourite iPhone photography utilities even better. New in this version: better support for iPhones with notches, and bundled versions of Jagielski’s two other photo editing apps. It is just $1.99 — a bargain, if you ask me.
In the time Tim Cook has been CEO of Apple, the company’s value has grown from around $350 billion to today’s high of just over $3 trillion. Remember the steady drumbeat of analysts calling for Cook’s resignation many years ago? Good times.