Month: September 2024

I loved this essay from Thea Lim, as published in the Walrus, about our quantified digital lives subsuming our reality, but I have a quibble with this otherwise excellent paragraph:

[…] What we hardly talk about is how we’ve reorganized not just industrial activity but any activity to be capturable by computer, a radical expansion of what can be mined. Friendship is ground zero for the metrics of the inner world, the first unquantifiable shorn into data points: Friendster testimonials, the MySpace Top 8, friending. […]

To the contrary, this is something we not only talk about with frequency, but usually with anxiety approaching a moral panic. I share those worries, for what it is worth; I am not sure it is a positive thing to have constant reminders of our social and physical performance. I am sometimes upset I do not scrobble my vinyl records with Last.fm, even though I also know this is very silly. Since I stopped wearing a smartwatch or any kind of fitness tracker, I am no longer recording health metrics and I feel healthier as a result. I track webpage views here and have a vanity search for the site URL because it lets me see when cool people have noticed something I wrote. Your experience may vary.

This next paragraph in Lim’s essay, though, is noteworthy:

And those ascetics who disavow all socials? They are still caught in the network. Acts of pure leisure — photographing a sidewalk cat with a camera app or watching a video on how to make a curry — are transmuted into data to grade how well the app or the creators’ deliverables are delivering. If we’re not being tallied, we affect the tally of others. We are all data workers.

We are all helping create webpage views, ad impressions, and video plays, all of which are reported to people who are ostensibly concerned with accuracy. But all of these stats lie. If one’s livelihood depends on what they report, it is hard not to see why they are taken so seriously, even if everyone kind of knows they are not real. We are all participants in this shared delusion.

Until this week, the most recent data available about the moderation activities of the company formerly known as Twitter could be found in a report covering the last six months of 2021. Maybe you heard, but Elon Musk began his process for acquiring the company in April 2022, and it concluded in October the same year. I am working my way through “Character Limit”, so I have just relived the experience of that era, and it was not good! Anyway, despite being enthusiastic about transparency, Musk’s X had not released any updates. Now, though, we have data for the first half of 2024 (PDF), and it is quite interesting.

Vittoria Elliott, Wired:

While some numbers remain seemingly consistent across the reports — reports of abuse and harassment are, somewhat predictably, high — in other areas, there’s a stark difference. For instance, in the 2021 report, accounts reported for hateful content accounted for nearly half of all reports, and 1 million of the 4.3 million accounts actioned. (The reports used to be interactive on the website; the current PDF no longer allows users to flip through the data for more granular breakdowns.) In the new X report, the company says it has taken action on only 2,361 accounts for posting hateful content.

Elliott quotes Michael Abboud, a spokesperson for X, saying “[a]s an entirely new company, we took time to rethink how best to transparently share data” about moderation activity. Nonsense. X is not really an “entirely new company”, and this is not a rethought report. It is very similar to the ones which came before, though it is less comprehensive and now in a slick PDF instead of on a slick webpage.

One of the key differences between the two reports is the way total reports of violative behaviour are measured. Twitter says over 11.6 million accounts were reported between July and December 2021. The company said these are de-duplicated; these are 11.6 million accounts against which the company received at least one report. In the X report, it says it received over 224 million “user reports” for the first six months of this year. The company does not share a comparable de-duplicated figure for how many individual accounts were reported, however, nor could I find a comparable total metric reported by Twitter.

Karissa Bell, Engadget:

The report, which details content takedowns and account suspensions from the first half of 2024, shows that suspensions have more than tripled since the last time the company shared data. X suspended just under 5.3 million accounts during the period, compared with 1.6 million suspensions during the first six months of 2022.

In addition to the suspensions, X says it “removed or labeled” more than 10.6 million posts for violating its rules. Violations of the company’s hateful conduct policy accounted for nearly half of that number, with X taking action on 4.9 million such posts. Posts containing abuse and harassment (2.6 million) and violent content (2.2 million) also accounted for a significant percentage of the takedowns and labels.

Abuse and harassment suspensions are up, from 82,971 in the July–December 2021 report to over 1.1 million in the 2024 one. There were 182,536 suspensions between January–June 2021, and 86,202 in July–December 2020. Perhaps X is more responsive to abuse and harassment reports compared to Twitter. But I bet this is indicative of the more abusive and harassing environment that is X today.

Cristiano Lima-Strong, Washington Post:

The site acted on 71 percent of the legal requests it received to remove content in the first half of this year, up 20 percent from the last time it reported the figure in 2021 and more than double the rate in preceding years, according to a new transparency report X published Wednesday and a Washington Post review of past disclosure data.

So X in 2024 is happier to grant government censorship requests — particularly from more authoritarian countries — more abusive, and more lenient with hateful posts than Twitter used to be. Sounds about right.

Christiaan Hetzner, Fortune:

Ferguson based his assessment on internal second-quarter figures recently obtained by the New York Times. According to this report, X booked $114 million worth of revenue in the U.S., its largest market by far. This represented a 25% drop over the preceding three months and a 53% drop over the year-ago period.

That already sounds bad. But it gets worse. The last publicly available figures prior to Musk’s acquisition, from Q2 of 2022, had revenue at $661 million. After you account for inflation, revenue has actually collapsed by 84%, in today’s dollars.

Advertisers do not want to prop up the expensive soapbox of an unhinged billionaire as the site becomes increasingly occupied by hostile squatters? What a surprise.

One could make a quite reasonable argument that businesses should not be so beholden to the desires of advertisers. The appeal of a publication or website to advertisers is not necessarily reflective of its quality. There is plenty of room for anti-advertising, anti-corporate media. But the failure of X to attract advertisers is not so much a subversive statement as it is an understandable free market response.

Allow me to set the scene: you have been seated with a group of your friends at a restaurant, catching up in a lively discussion, when a member of the waitstaff shows up. They take everyone’s orders, then the discussion resumes — but they return a short while later to ask if you heard about the specials. You had and, anyway, you have already ordered what you want, so the waiter leaves. You chat amongst yourselves again.

But then they appear again. Might they suggest some drinks? How about a side? Every couple of minutes, they reliably return, breaking your discussion to sell you on something else.

Would you like to see the menu again? Here, try this new thing. Here, try this classic thing we brought back. Here is a different chair. How about we swap the candles on the table for a disco ball? Would you like to hear the specials again? Have you visited our other locations?

It is weird because you had been to this restaurant a few times before and the service was attentive, but not a nuisance. Now that you think of it, though, the waitstaff became increasingly desperate after your first visit. Those first interruptions were fine because they were expected — even desired. But there is a balance. You are coming to this restaurant because the food and the drinks are good, sure, but you are there with friends to catch up.

Now, pressured by management, the waiters have become a constant irritant instead of helpful, and there is nothing you can do. You can ask them to leave you alone, but they only promise a slightly longer gap. There is no way to have a moment to yourselves. Do you get up and leave? Do you come back? I would not. In actual experience, there are restaurants I avoid because the service is just too needy.

Also, apps.

When I open any of the official clients for the most popular social media platforms — Instagram, Threads, X, or YouTube — I am thrust into an environment where I am no longer encouraged to have a good time on my own terms. From home feeds containing a blend of posts from accounts I follow and those I do not, to all manner of elements encouraging me to explore other stuff — the platform is never satisfied with my engagement. I have not even factored in ads; this is solely about my time commitment. These platforms expect more of it.

These are decisions made by people who, it would seem, have little trust in users. There is rarely an off switch for any of these features — at best, there is most often only a way to temporarily hide them.

These choices illustrate the sharply divergent goals of these platforms and my own wishes. I would like to check out the latest posts from the accounts I follow, maybe browse around a bit, and then get out. That is a complete experience for me. Not so for these platforms.

Which makes it all the more interesting when platforms try new things they think will be compelling, like this announcement from Meta:

We’re expanding Meta AI’s Imagine features, so you can now imagine yourself as a superhero or anything else right in feed, Stories and your Facebook profile pictures. You can then easily share your AI-generated images so your friends can see, react to or mimic them. Meta AI can also suggest captions for your Stories on Facebook and Instagram.

[…]

And we’re testing new Meta AI-generated content in your Facebook and Instagram feeds, so you may see images from Meta AI created just for you (based on your interests or current trends). You can tap a suggested prompt to take that content in a new direction or swipe to Imagine new content in real time.

Perhaps this is appealing to you, but I find this revolting. Meta’s superficially appealing generated images have no place in my Instagram feed; they do not reflect how I actually want to use Instagram at all.

Decisions like these have infected the biggest platforms in various ways, which explains why I cannot stand to use most of them any longer. The one notable asterisk is YouTube which, as of last year, allows you to hide suggested videos on the homepage, which also turns off Shorts’ infinite scrolling. However, every video page still contains suggestions for what you should watch next. Each additional minute of your time is never enough for any of these platforms; they always want the minute after that, too.

You really notice the difference in respect when you compare these platforms against smaller, less established competitors. When I open Bluesky or my current favourite Mastodon client, it feels similar to the way social media did about ten years ago blended with an updated understanding of platform moderation. Glass is another tremendous product which lets me see exactly what I want, and discover more if I would like to — but there is no pressure.

The business models of these companies are obviously and notably very different from those of incumbent players. Bluesky and Mastodon are both built atop open protocols, so their future is kind of independent of whether the companies themselves exist. But, also, it is possible there will come a time when those protocols lack the funding to be updated, and are only used by not more than a handful of people each running their own instance. Glass, on the other hand, is just a regular boring business: users pay money for it.

Is the future of some of these smaller players going to mimic those which have come before? Must they ultimately disrespect their users? I hope that is not the roadmap for any of them. It should not be necessary to slowly increase the level of hostility between product and user. It should be possible to build a successful business by treating people with respect.

The biggest social platforms are fond of reminding us about how they facilitate connections and help us communicate around the world. They are a little bit like a digital third place. And, just as you would not hang out somewhere that was actively trying to sabotage your ability to chat with your friends in real life, it is hard to know why you would do so online, either. Happily, where Google and Meta and X exhaust me with their choices, there are a wealth of new ideas that bring back joy.

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

With the iPhone 15 models that came out last year, Apple added an opt-in battery setting that limits maximum charge to 80 percent. The idea is that never charging the iPhone above 80 percent will increase battery longevity, so I kept my iPhone at that 80 percent limit from September 2023 to now, with no cheating.

My iPhone 15 Pro Max battery level is currently at 94 percent with 299 cycles. For a lot of 2024, my battery level stayed above 97 percent, but it started dropping more rapidly over the last couple of months.

I am grateful to Clover for running such a long experiment.

John Gruber:

My year-old iPhone 15 Pro (not Max) which I simply used every day and charged to 100 percent overnight: max capacity: 89 percent, 344 charge cycles.

Glenn Fleishman:

@gruber My iPhone 15 Pro is set to optimized charging up to 100%: 411 cycles, 91%. It seems like her Pro Max actually performed…worse than yours and mine? (Every battery is a little different.)

I received my iPhone 15 Pro on the first day it was available. Its battery is reporting 95% of its maximum capacity with 273 cycles. I use it normally, have never changed battery settings from the default, and it often runs beta iOS releases.

Some caveats: all of us are our own n of 1 study; a handful of those is not data. I would imagine Apple has a reason for creating this preference, too.

Karen Hao, the Atlantic:

Microsoft isn’t a company that exists to fight climate change, and it doesn’t have to assume responsibility for saving our planet. Yet the company is trying to convince the public that by investing in a technology that is also being used to enrich fossil-fuel companies, society will be better equipped to resolve the environmental crisis. Some of the company’s own employees described this idea to me as ridiculous. To these workers, Microsoft’s energy contracts demonstrate only the unsavory reality of how the company’s AI investments are actually used. Driving sustainability forward? Maybe. Digging up fossil fuels? As Prapoo put it in that September conference call, it’s a “game changer.”

Josh Saul, Naureen S. Malik, and Mark Chediak, Bloomberg:

From Florida to Oregon, utilities are racing to meet a surge in demand from power-hungry AI data centers, manufacturing facilities and electric vehicles. The staying power of gas, which in 2016 overtook coal as the No. 1 US source of electricity, has surprised some experts who not so long ago had projected the era of frenzied domestic demand growth for the fuel might soon come to an end.

[…]

Still, the booming power needs are hard to ignore. Electricity usage by data centers is poised to surge as much as ten times current levels by 2030. In addition to building new plants, some power companies will retire gas plants at a slower rate than previously expected, said power market analyst Patrick Finn of energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie. “It makes clean energy goals that much more difficult to attain,” he said.

Brian Merchant:

It’s also worth noting that data centers are at the moment a relatively small slice of total worldwide energy usage — currently something like 1%, dwarfed by cars, heavy industry, commercial buildings, and so on. That could change — a report from the Electric Power Research Institute projected that the electricity required by AI companies could rise to reach up to 9% of the United States’ energy mix, which would, quite frankly, be insane. (If you think the web is overrun with AI content now, imagine a world where one tenth of all the electricity we generate is going into pumping out more of the stuff.)

BUT. There’s another element at work here, and that, as energy analysts have pointed out, is that utilities have a self-interested reason to take AI companies’ energy projections at face value, or even to inflate them: It means they can raise rates and lobby to build more gas plants!

Between these reports and the last batch I linked to, the non-A.I.-generated summary seems to be: businesses are largely entrusted with setting their own environmental targets by the accounting measures of their own design, which they are bending in order to hurriedly launch A.I. features.

I am not an A.I. doomer; I am also not a cheerleader. That umbrella of technologies covers a bunch of exciting innovations, many of which are already finding their way into many of our lives, whether we have agreed to that or not. But it is alarming to see the flexibility of even mediocre environmental targets because of this admittedly interesting technology. Yet I am not convinced it is worth accelerating the damage we are inflicting upon our world.

Akshat Rathi, Bloomberg, in July:

The Alphabet Inc. unit [Google] has claimed that it’s been carbon neutral in its operations since 2007. The status was based on purchasing carbon offsets to match the volume of emissions that were generated from its buildings, data centers and business travel. But in its latest report, the company states: “Starting in 2023, we’re no longer maintaining operational carbon neutrality.”

It’s a sign of a company learning to adapt to strengthening sustainability criteria. “In line with a changing market — including a more robust carbon-removal ecosystem we helped catalyze — we’ve shifted our strategy,” a Google spokesperson said. “We aim to avoid or reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to reach our absolute emissions reduction target.”

Kenza Bryan, Camilla Hodgson, and Jana Tauschinski, Financial Times, in August:

Companies including Amazon, Meta and Google have funded and lobbied the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the carbon accounting oversight body, and financed research that helps back up their positions, according to documents seen by the FT.

But Big Tech is itself split on how to craft the rules. A coalition that includes Amazon and Meta is pushing a plan that critics fear will allow companies to report emissions numbers that bear little relation to their real-world pollution and not fully compensate for those emissions.

One person familiar with the reform discussions describes the proposal as “a way to rig the rules so the whole ecosystem can obfuscate what they are up to”. The coalition said its approach “emphasises accurate emissions data and transparency”.

The battle reported in this Times article is over renewable energy credits — previously — which are different than carbon offsets. This article paints Google’s credit accounting approach as more honest than the proposal from Amazon and Meta.

Isabel O’Brien, the Guardian:

According to a Guardian analysis, from 2020 to 2022 the real emissions from the “in-house” or company-owned data centers of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple are probably about 662% — or 7.62 times — higher than officially reported.

These businesses have different emissions sources — Amazon, for example, also factors deliveries into its environmental reporting; Apple accounts for device manufacturing and transportation. But the overall impact of these companies is far greater than they admit to. It is frustrating to constantly see messages of “net zero” accomplishments and know it is, by some measure, fake — but by how much is difficult to know for most of us laypersons.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission:

A new Federal Trade Commission staff report that examines the data collection and use practices of major social media and video streaming services shows they engaged in vast surveillance of consumers in order to monetize their personal information while failing to adequately protect users online, especially children and teens.

The staff report is based on responses to 6(b) orders issued in December 2020 to nine companies including some of the largest social media and video streaming services: Amazon.com, Inc., which owns the gaming platform Twitch; Facebook, Inc. (now Meta Platforms, Inc.); YouTube LLC; Twitter, Inc. (now X Corp.); Snap Inc.; ByteDance Ltd., which owns the video-sharing platform TikTok; Discord Inc.; Reddit, Inc.; and WhatsApp Inc.

This is, even for me, a surprisingly dry report. I really struggled to get through it — in part, perhaps, because many of these behaviours are well known to me and, probably, you. But it is, I think, worthwhile having a single document laying out how these companies are hostile to personal privacy.

My copy contains dozens of highlighted passages from where companies have reported ingesting and exploiting non-user data, inferred demographic and personal details not disclosed by users, and enriched their own collected data from the libraries of third-parties. The latter is illustrated on page 33 like a biology diagram of creepy behaviour. Other highlights include an entire section dedicated to U.S. users’ access to the rights conferred to European users under the GDPR, poor or nonexistent user testing of privacy controls, and bad documentation of data handling and minimization practices.

Much of this is either stuff I know or things I could assume, but that is not to say I did not learn anything. One notable finding is how “most Companies did not proactively delete inactive or abandoned accounts”, which makes sense in a vacuum — but, when paired with the possibility of data being used in the training of machine learning and A.I. features, is less comforting.

As the Commission says, this report also looks at how these platforms are used by children and teens, and what safeguards are in place. I understand this is a controversial issue, and it is unclear which findings are legitimately concerning and which are a moral panic. I will note that endless machine-powered suggestions are a relatively new phenomenon; Instagram only switched to that format in its feed eight years ago. I think it is fair to be worried about the effects these devices and services are having on young brains without following it to Jonathan Haidt’s questionable conclusions.

If you are using an app that requires persistent permission to access what is visible onscreen, Jeff Johnson shares a tip to grant longstanding permission on a per-app basis. Instead of timing out after a month, you can extend the permission a thousand years into the future.

This does not appear to be an officially sanctioned workaround. It is possible this method will be broken in a future update, especially if Apple is serious about locking down screen recording under a privacy or security explanation. Ultimately, there should be real APIs available for utility apps which require similar ongoing, latent access.

Cristina Criddle, Financial Times:

At present, Perplexity’s AI chatbot gives a comprehensive response to user questions based on information from the internet, citing sources and including links to web pages. Below this, Perplexity offers suggested follow-up queries.

Under its new advertising model, brands will be able to bid for a “sponsored” question, which features an AI-generated answer approved by the advertiser.

Perplexity has held talks with a small number of top companies, including Nike and Marriott, according to correspondence seen by the Financial Times. The company said it hoped to roll out the ads system by the end of the year and was targeting “premium” brands. Nike and Marriott declined to comment.

I will try to withhold judgement about this, but I am confused by the premise of a “‘sponsored’ question”. In a sense, the current search engine advertising model creates sponsored answers to queries. My assumption is that this is like if you ask Perplexity about — to pick an example off its homepage — the “top cookbooks in 2024”, and then its “Related” questions include an ad purchased by, say, Masterclass. Or a website owner could buy an ad which runs below their articles scraped without permission — that kind of thing.

Perhaps I will find more clues in this month-old Digiday article written by Marty Swant, who obtained Perplexity’s pitch to advertisers:

One example in the pitch deck shows a Nike ad sponsoring a related question when a user asked about basketball shoes or options for sponsored videos alongside a desktop version. Another shows a sponsored Marriott Bonvoy video ad next to someone asking about “best European travel destinations for families.” Another option is to have “branded explanatory text” that appears above sponsored and organic related questions.

That is a funny coincidence; those are the two companies in Criddle’s report. Swant’s story has a lot more details. Unfortunately, it lacks on-the-record comments from Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, which Criddle’s does, almost as though the Times article is part of a campaign or something, one could reasonably speculate.

What is notable is the lack of any credit whatsoever in Criddle’s story to Swant for accurately describing Perplexity’s advertising strategy. Shameful.

Suzanne Smalley, the Record:

Ford Motor Company is seeking a patent for technology that would allow it to tailor in-car advertising by listening to conversations among vehicle occupants, as well as by analyzing a car’s historical location and other data, according to a patent application published late last month.

Two things to keep in mind: there is still no proof anyone is using microphones for targeted advertising in this way, and patents do not necessarily indicate future plans. Still, that is little reassurance when there is a major car company desperately protecting its research into spying on passengers for another revenue stream.

Nobody wants this. Nobody at Ford woke up and thought they were making a better world by working on this — or by patenting it, for that matter. I cannot imagine anyone would defend this or think it is a good idea. At best, this is a worrisome example of the broken concepts of intellectual property and inventions.

Kevin V. Nguyen, San Francisco Standard:

In a wide-ranging, 45-minute set, [John] Mulaney did not hold back when it came to joking about the cartoonish conference, which aspired to be the “largest AI event in the world.”

“You’re an account executive at Top Low?” Mulaney asked an audience member, who clarified that she works at Tableau, a data visualization company. “You know in your goddamn bones that a bunch of you are working on products that are just OK, but you have to vamp and make up terms to make it sound more awesome than it is.”

I would like to know who managed to get Mulaney to play Dreamforce. I would like to know who passed him through layers of corporate bureaucracy and managerial sign-off, and I would like to give them a high-five.

Jay Tan and Alexis Copeland, of Microsoft:

Our studies showed that while our illustrations could be described as colorful, inclusive, and genial on a surface level, they were received within consumer culture as uninteresting and emotionless. The flat vectorized style that was once hugely popular across the industry was now communicating sub-optimally and potentially evoking ideas and themes that were misaligned with our company values.

To continue being relevant and create delightful customer experiences, we had to apply the lessons we were learning from our current illustrations and progress in tandem with Microsoft’s evolving brand and culture.

Without intending to be cruel to the two credited authors of Microsoft’s blog post, the language used is indicative of a pretty bleak design practice. Over a thousand words are used to say there is a new suite of illustrations which is more dimensional in a soft and trendy way, and based on a new palette of colours. There is some reasonable justification, too. But most of this feels like it was written by an MBA who once heard about the value of design thinking from a TED Talk.

Also, while there are plenty of visuals shown, there are only two examples of these icons in use — and only one of those feels beneficial to its context. This is true despite Microsoft insisting “illustrations were approached more as an afterthought” but is now “turning them into visuals that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also rich in meaning and emotion”.

Sebastiaan de With reacted to the embedded sizzle reel:

My theory is that the designers making all these slick marketing graphics are kept away from the people making the software at all costs. Armed guards are involved. Whatever happens, this joy and whimsy cannot touch the actual software.

This is a consistent problem with Microsoft’s concept videos and the reality of its products. I use a Windows 11 PC at work and it is fine — it is probably the nicest Windows has ever looked. But these concept videos give the system an unearned abundance of richness, texture, and visual interest. The actual system has vast swathes of off-greys, brittle buttons, and misaligned window elements. There are plenty of hard-to-read panels made of a material that looks simultaneously very thick, owing to the amount of background blur, yet entirely lacks any feeling of depth.

Apple is not innocent of this crime, either. Its MacOS Big Sur design video presents window elements and the Control Centre with a structure and crispness not actually present in the shipping version. Instead, we are treated to a sea of blur.

Kyle Orland, Ars Technica:

Fans of ultra-viral mobile gaming hit Flappy Bird who were stunned by the game’s sudden removal from the iOS App Store 10 years ago were probably even more stunned by last week’s equally sudden announcement that Flappy Bird is coming back with a raft of new characters and game modes. Unfortunately, the new version of Flappy Bird seems to be the result of a yearslong set of legal maneuvers by a crypto-adjacent game developer intent on taking the “Flappy Bird” name from the game’s original creator, Dong Nguyen.

The new owners responded in a post on X.

An ignominious resurrection of an all-time classic. I am not saying you should not play this, but I am not going anywhere near it — not with these owners.

Last night, I watched the finale of the “Grand Tour” and, with it, the end of the on-screen constant of three British car journalists who have entertained me since I was a teenager. It was good; I am glad they wrapped in such a touching way. Also, I suddenly want to go to Zimbabwe.

I was struck by something Jeremy Clarkson said. He is a comically out-of-touch old man whose politics are often vile and whose oafish behaviour was tolerated for far too long. But, in this clip, I found a feeling we have in common:

[Imitating the sound of the engine in his Lancia:] bum, bum, bum, bum…

Love that sound. And all you lot growing up today with your electric cars, you’re never gonna hear it.

There are lots of reasons why we’re jacking this show in, but for me, one of the main ones is I’m simply not interested in electric cars. They are just white goods — they’re washing machines, they’re microwave ovens. You can’t review those. You can’t enjoy them.

I am not co-signing this hatred of electric cars, nor am I disinterested in them. I am not even signing onto Clarkson’s joy of a loud engine because I live near a road down which people drive their burble-tuned 3-series BMWs and Subarus, and it is terrible.

But I do find common ground in the need for the objects in our lives to remain characterful. We have spent an awful lot of time making things more perfect, refined, and efficient. In the process, though, I worry we are losing some of the things which make them interesting. Perhaps efficiency and refinement are an enemy of personality — the vibration of an engine is lost energy; a needle reading a vinyl record is not nearly as precise as a laser reading a compact disc.

I wrote something about this feeling last year, and I think it holds up:

[…] I, for one, do not want to live in a world dominated by appliances. I want to love the things I use, and I am sure I am not alone. Do not get me wrong: I appreciate so many of these things; they are brilliant in ways I can barely comprehend. But clever is not a substitute for soul. Too many of the products and services I use feel more advanced and less compelling than those of, say, ten or twenty years ago. We should find that quality again.

We see people turning to things like film photography to recapture some nostalgic charm, even if they are so young the nostalgia is not even their own. This is purely speculative, but perhaps the reason it speaks to us in a way modern digital photography does not is because our memories are imperfect. The world in our head is a little bit fuzzier. All things digital do not capture that imprecision quite as well.

Maybe the way we make things more likeable is to make them a little bit worse than they could be. That should not be at the expense of our environment, but not everything should feel like a functional tool, either. I do not think that means recapturing the way old technologies worked. It means doing new things with a sense of character which, sometimes, might mean sacrificing precision.

For a review of this year’s new iPhone Pro models, Nilay Patel, of the Verge, asked Apple about the company’s view of photography. There is a really good, on-the-record response which seems to draw a clear line on the processing of an image. Put simply, it seems Apple’s perspective is to try to accurately capture a scene as it occurred. While images may have taken on a too-processed look for my liking, the intention seems to be to capture light as it was, not simulate a memory which never occurred.

Patel:

That’s a sharp and clear answer, but I’m curious how Apple contends with the relentless addition of AI editing to the iPhone’s competitors. The company is already taking small steps in that direction: a feature called “Clean Up” will arrive with Apple Intelligence, which will allow you to remove objects from photos like Google’s Magic Eraser. McCormack told me that feature will somehow mark the resulting images as having been generatively edited, although he didn’t say how.

In my testing of Clean Up on an image on the latest iOS 18.1 beta build, Apple adds EXIF tags to the image to mark it as being edited with generative A.I. tools. EXIF tags can be erased, though, and I do not see any other indicators. It is possible they exist and I missed them.

Apple’s tools are more cautious, so far, compared to those from its competitors. Even if you include the unreleased Image Playground product — something which I do not see much value in Apple releasing at all — nothing the company is doing on the generative A.I. front is so far allowing people to create entirely fraudulent photos. It is possible Apple does not have the technology of Google’s Magic Editor and, so, perhaps this is an unfair comparison. If it does, though, it should elect not to release it — a choice Google ought to have made as well.

Apple:

[…] When messaging contacts who do not have an Apple device, the Messages app now supports RCS for richer media and more reliable group messaging compared to SMS and MMS.

RCS rolled out in a relatively early beta release for my iPhone — perhaps in July — and I have appreciated both typing indicators and read receipts when chatting with friends who do not have iPhones. But none of those conversations have been end-to-end encrypted. That is not a change from when I messaged them over SMS, but it is not an improvement, either. RCS does not specify end-to-end encryption, and Apple, understandably, does not want to support Google’s proprietary implementation.

But it seems at least one — and perhaps both — of those things may be changing.

Tom Van Pelt, GSMA technical director:

While this is a major milestone, it is just the beginning. The next major milestone is for the RCS Universal Profile to add important user protections such as interoperable end-to-end encryption. This will be the first deployment of standardized, interoperable messaging encryption between different computing platforms, addressing significant technical challenges such as key federation and cryptographically-enforced group membership. Additionally, users will benefit from stronger protections from scam, fraud, and other security threats.

This seems like good news. I have friends who do not use iPhones and, while there are lots of messaging app options for our group chats, it also feels odd to keep an app on your phone for the more-or-less dedicated purpose of maintaining a single conversation.

However, I have at least two questions. The first: how will users be able to tell the difference between a private RCS discussion and one which is not end-to-end encrypted? Apple has several visual indicator options. For example, a message thread could have a persistent padlock or bubbles could use a different colour. Both add a layer of visual complexity which could raise questions or add confusion.

Perhaps a simpler choice would be better. The placeholder text in the compose box, for example, now says “Text Message • SMS” or “Text Message • RCS” depending on which protocol is being used. Surely it could also say something like “Encrypted • RCS” and, if Apple wanted to, it could make iMessage threads match with an “Encrypted • iMessage” placeholder.

This is a solvable problem, but it adds a new dimension to Messages. In all versions since iOS 5, conversations with green bubbles are not end-to-end encrypted, and conversations with blue bubbles are. At some point in the future, those categories will become further bifurcated, with some non-iMessage conversations becoming end-to-end encrypted, and some iMessage conversations becoming more securely protected.

My second question: what protocol is becoming standardized? The answer, it seems, might be a version of Google’s own.

Elmar Weber is a general manager at Google:

We’re proud to have offered end-to-end encryption (E2EE) in Google Messages with #RCS since 2020. We believe that #E2EE is a critical component of secure messaging, and we have been working with the broader ecosystem to bring cross-platform E2EE to RCS chats as soon as possible. Google is committed to providing a secure and private messaging experience for users, and we remain dedicated to making E2EE standard for all RCS users regardless of the platform.

Perhaps there is a different standard which will be met by all RCS providers, but it would be reasonable to guess Google’s existing protocol will form the backbone of this effort. Not only has Apple been apparently pressured into adopting RCS — something I wish it had done without dragging its feet so much — it may be implementing some version of Google’s end-to-encryption after all.

Ultimately, the politics of protocols and promulgated specifications are not much concern to users — or me, frankly. What I hope to see is a future in which end-to-end messaging is the standard for one-on-one and small group conversations, without needing to download anything extra. At some point, a conversation in Messages without the protection of end-to-end encryption will be so rare Apple will feel comfortable animating a warning beacon in the app if you so much as think about sending an SMS. Worldwide attempts to subvert or kneecap end-to-end encryption are also an ongoing threat to these improved expectations of privacy.

Update: In July of last year, the Messaging Layer Security protocol was published as a new standard. It will probably be the cross-platform solution to end-to-end encryption.

Also, for clarity, RCS in iOS also depends on carrier support. If you do not see it, perhaps your carrier has not yet rolled it out.

Chiara Castro, TechRadar:

Hungary, the country that now heads the Council of Europe after Belgium, has resurrected what’s been deemed by critics as Chat Control, and MEPs are expected to vote on it at the end of the month. After proposing a new version in June, the Belgian presidency had to take the proposal off the agenda last minute amid harsh backlash.

Popular encrypted messaging apps, including Signal and Threema, have already announced their intention to rather shut down their operations in the EU instead of undermining users’ privacy. Keep reading as I walk you through what we know so far, and how one of the best VPN apps could help in case the proposal becomes law.

This news was broken by Politico, but their story is in the “Pro” section, which is not just a paywall. One cannot just sign up for it; you need to “Request a Demo” and then you can be granted access for no less than €7,000 per year. I had to settle for this re-reported version. And because online media is so broken — in part because of my selfish refusal to register for this advanced version of Politico — news outlets like TechRadar find any way of funding themselves. In this case, the words “best VPN” are linked to a list of affiliate-linked VPN apps. Smooth.

Patrick Breyer:

[…] According to the latest proposal providers would be free whether or not to use ‘artificial intelligence’ to classify unknown images and text chats as ‘suspicious’. However they would be obliged to search all chats for known illegal content and report them, even at the cost of breaking secure end-to-end messenger encryption. The EU governments are to position themselves on the proposal by 23 September, and the EU interior ministers are to endorse it on 10 October. […]

This is a similar effort to that postponed earlier this year. The proposal (PDF) has several changes, but it still appears to poke holes in end-to-end encryption, and require providers to detect possible known CSAM before it is sent. A noble effort, absolutely, but also one which fundamentally upsets the privacy of one-on-one communications to restrict its abuse by a few.

Michael Tsai has a good roundup of the generally muted responses to Apple’s annual September product presentation. This year’s bit of consumerist fun did feel overlong and tedious to me, too — like homework for understanding the lineup rather than an exciting demonstration of tomorrow’s technology available today. Apple’s employees were doing their best onscreen to show excitement. Yet it did not translate so well for me and, it would seem, many others.

Riccardo Mori:

[…] Ever since Apple switched to this pre-packaged delivery format, the novelty has worn down quickly and these events all look like sophisticated PowerPoint presentations and, worse, they all look alike. When I try to isolate one from the last dozen I’ve watched, I can’t. They’re all a blur. If you ask me, “Remember the launch of the Apple Watch?”, I’ll tell you, “Oh yeah, I do!”. If you ask me, “Remember when Jobs announced the switch to Intel processors?”, I can still picture in my head some of the slides that were used. If you ask me to remember something about an iPhone event since the launch of the iPhone 11, my mind draws a blank. iPhone 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16… Yeah, nothing.

I think Mori’s perspective about the presentation’s format is correct, but I disagree with the choice of examples. My memories of the iPhone 6S, iPhone 7, and iPhone 8 launches, for example, entirely blur together in the same way as for the recent years of iPhone launches. Routine updates tend to do that.

What is more notable is that I, like Mori, remember the Intel switch like it happened yesterday. It is not as though I obsessively rewatch it, and perhaps my sharp memory is because I first saw it when I was young and impressionable. But it meant something. Yet I could not tell you anything about the announcement of Apple silicon Macs.

Perhaps that is because that specific media event happened during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was the first in Apple’s pre-recorded style. This format also allows Apple to jam more stuff into its presentations, which is useful with a more extensive product line. But surely these prerecorded infomercials are not made more memorable by being relatively undifferentiated pieces of high-gloss marketing.

I was proved wrong after I speculated last month the new monthly permissions prompt for legacy screen recording might not be in the released build of MacOS Sequoia:

I think it is possible MacOS 15.0 ships without this dialog. In part, that is because its text — “requesting to bypass the system window picker” — is technical and abstruse, written with seemingly little care for average user comprehension. I also think that could be true because it is what happened last year with MacOS 14.0. […]

It turns out this prompt, awkward language and all, made it into the public release.

Andrew Cunningham, in his review for Ars Technica, thinks this is a good idea in isolation:

The recurring screen recording permissions request is especially justifiable — it’s good for macOS to check in periodically about this kind of potentially data-scraping app, so attackers or domestic abusers can’t just install one once, click through the initial permissions requests, and have access for as long as you have the computer.

However, he dislikes the cumulative “constant barrage of requests and notifications [which] is an element of confusion and fatigue and of users clicking through boxes just to make them go away”.

Jason Snell, of Six Colors, is also frustrated:

In the name of making the Mac a safer place to be, right now Apple’s also making it a worse place to be. This is not an acceptable trade-off. It’s incumbent on Apple to make the Mac safer without compromising usability.

Put bluntly, macOS Sequoia fails this test.

In the latest beta release of MacOS 15.1, Apple added a new device management key, forceBypassScreenCaptureAlert, to override the monthly permissions request. (Thanks to Josh Calvetti.) However, my understanding is this cannot be used by more general users; it is only for managed devices.

Update: Added more context to my summary of Cunningham’s position.

Congratulations to Jason Snell and Dan Moren for ten years of Six Colors. From its beginning as a result of a painful media layoff, it is wonderful to see its continued independent success. I have read it just about daily since its launch, and have quoted Snell, Moren, and other contributors more times than I can count. I must still actively remind myself not to put a “u” in the site’s name, though.