Hugo Lowell, the Guardian:
According to three people briefed on the internal investigation, [the Atlantic’s Jeffrey] Goldberg had emailed the campaign about a story that criticized Trump for his attitude towards wounded service members. To push back against the story, the campaign enlisted the help of [Mike] Waltz, their national security surrogate.
Goldberg’s email was forwarded to then Trump spokesperson Brian Hughes, who then copied and pasted the content of the email – including the signature block with Goldberg’s phone number – into a text message that he sent to Waltz, so that he could be briefed on the forthcoming story.
Waltz did not ultimately call Goldberg, the people said, but in an extraordinary twist, inadvertently ended up saving Goldberg’s number in his iPhone – under the contact card for Hughes, now the spokesperson for the national security council.
Then, when Waltz went to add Hughes to the Signal chat, so this goes, he instead added Goldberg. Presumably, this is related to Siri suggestions. This version of events sounds plausible to me, if a little too perfect, but stranger things have happened.
The distrustful and cynical voice deep inside me wants to think Waltz has been a source or contact for Goldberg, and that this is a neat way to keep that secret. There is no evidence for this. The White House’s explanation really does sound right. But try telling anyone they should trust the results of an internal investigation into one of the most dunderheaded security breaches in living memory — even surpassing the time when a couple of lawyers during the first Trump administration were blabbing within earshot of a New York Times reporter.
Ivan Mehta, TechCrunch:
OpenAI is said to have discussed acquiring the AI hardware startup that former Apple design lead Jony Ive is building with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. According to The Information, OpenAI could pay around $500 million for the fledgling company, called io Products.
This feels less icky to me than the acquisition of X by xAI, but still the kind of thing that makes me tilt my head like a confused border collie.
Tom Singleton and Liv McMahon, BBC News:
The government argued it would damage national security if the nature of the legal action and the parties to it were made public — what are known as the “bare details of the case”.
In a ruling published on Monday morning, the tribunal rejected that request — pointing to the extensive media reporting of the row and highlighting the legal principle of open justice.
“It would have been a truly extraordinary step to conduct a hearing entirely in secret without any public revelation of the fact that a hearing was taking place,” it states.
The public copy of the ruling (PDF) is kind of funny to read because of the secrecy rules around the technical capability notice. Presumably, this judge would know whether Apple had been issued this demand, but cannot say so. They therefore extensively refer to media reporting about the demand; in response to a request from U.S. lawmakers, they write of “discuss[ing] an alleged technical capability notice”, emphasis my own.
Ultimately, this decision is a rare bit of good news in the world of secret orders and demands to compromise encryption. At least we will know something about how it all goes down, even if it is buried in the language of hypotheticals and non-denials.
Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, Foreign Affairs:
The global Internet will likely continue to exist in the form of shared technical infrastructure. But if U.S. companies persist in identifying with a U.S. administration that is hostile to Europe, it is likely that Europe will want its own companies and platforms to build technological fortifications against its former ally and protector. Chinese firms will try to expand in Europe, too, although they may also face greater public skepticism. Either way, the end result will be lower profits, weakened American innovation, and a more isolated and insecure United States.
I think the writers are positioning this as an argument to policymakers and leadership at tech companies — note again where this was published — so they have chosen appealing arguments for that audience. The opening of the essay repeatedly hammers the threat to the U.S. tech hegemony, as though that is an inherently bad thing. Fear not: the rest of this essay is far more nuanced than this suggests.
John Gruber:
It’s under-remarked upon, but Apple, to a point of almost obstinance, considers pricing part of the brand for its products. They tend not to raise or lower prices with the ebbs and flows of the world economy or even the obvious constraints of simple supply and demand. Throughout the entire COVID crisis, I don’t recall them changing their prices for anything.
Dan Moren, Six Colors:
In his piece, Gruber particularly calls out the trashcan Mac Pro sticking at $2999 throughout its existence, but I think an even more striking example is the iMac. Introduced in 1998 at a base price of $1299, today’s infinitely more powerful iMac M4 starts at… $1299.
This very astute point makes the excuse of inflation stand out even more when prices are increased.
Gianluca Guidi, et al., in a peer-reviewed article in Nature Communications:
[…] In this study, we located the 34 largest mines in the United States in 2022, identified the electricity-generating plants that responded to them, and pinpointed communities most harmed by Bitcoin mine-attributable air pollution. From mid-2022 to mid-2023, the 34 mines consumed 32.3 terawatt-hours of electricity — 33% more than Los Angeles — 85% of which came from fossil fuels. […]
To borrow a phrase: yes, the planet got destroyed, but for a beautiful moment in time we solved a lot of Sudokus to buy drugs. Hodl, and so forth.
A little over a month ago, I had the misfortune of breaking both a fifteen-year record of intact phone screens and, relatedly, my phone’s screen. This sucked in part because I can no longer be so smug about not using a case, and also because I do not have AppleCare. I do have insurance coverage on my credit card. I had never gone through this process before, but it would turn out to be perfectly adequate.
There was some paperwork involved, of course. There was a fair bit of waiting, too. But I got paid in full for the repair. That is, while I had to put $450 up front, I ultimately paid nothing to fix my own accidental damage. For comparison, if I had purchased AppleCare when I got my iPhone 15 Pro, at $13.50 per month, it would have cost me over $240, plus $40 for the screen replacement itself.
I am not saying you should not buy AppleCare or extended warranties in general. Go bananas. In my case, I do not think it would have been worth $280 to save some paperwork and time.
This is also an example of how having a lower income makes everything cost more. There are usually minimum financial requirements for having a card with insurance like this, a level I thankfully meet. It allowed me to briefly shoulder the out-of-warranty repair cost and, ultimately, gave me a free repair. If I did not meet that threshold, I would have had to pay instalments of $13.50 just in case I dropped my phone. It does not seem right I paid nothing for this repair when someone earning less than I do would have paid so much.
Jake Bleiberg, Bloomberg:
Oracle Corp. has told customers that a hacker broke into a computer system and stole old client log-in credentials, according to two people familiar with the matter. It’s the second cybersecurity breach that the software company has acknowledged to clients in the last month.
Here is one more excerpt from the Financial Times’ reporting of the proposed TikTok America ownership, which I linked to yesterday:
Oracle, co-founded by Trump ally Larry Ellison, would secure TikTok’s US data as part of the deal, people said.
Like poetry, these two stories were published on the same day. Sergiu Gatlan of Bleeping Computer broke the news of this Oracle breach last month.
Hannah Murphy, et al., Financial Times:
Under the terms of the transaction, a group of new outside investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Blackstone and other large private capital firms would own about half of TikTok’s US business, according to several people familiar with the matter. That US unit would be spun off from its Beijing-based parent ByteDance, these people said.
[…]
ByteDance would retain a stake at just below 20 per cent of the business, under the terms of the deal, in order to meet requirements in the US legislation that state that no more than a fifth be in the control of a “foreign adversary”.
A cool thing about this arrangement is how it will make everybody mad. ByteDance is still going to own a fifth of the business and it is possible, according to the Times, the U.S. business will still use its recommendation algorithm. But now the U.S. is also going to have majority ownership over one of TikTok’s most important and influential markets, continuing the dominance of U.S. social media companies. This solves nothing except the problem of a bunch of U.S. venture capitalists owning not enough stuff.
One question: will this cut off the U.S. version of TikTok from the rest of the world, exactly as the China-only Douyin is? Freedom, baby.
Alexander Martin, the Record:
Alongside the new Europol, the Commission said it would create roadmaps regarding both the “lawful and effective access to data for law enforcement” and on encryption.
The aim is to “identify and assess technological solutions that would enable law enforcement authorities to access encrypted data in a lawful manner, safeguarding cybersecurity and fundamental rights,” said the Commission. The identification of such solutions has been the subject of much controversy when attempted elsewhere.
The Commission has released no details yet, and it is hard to know what to expect given that what they want is — as experts keep pointing out — not possible. This keeps happening and the outcome is always a worry. Either lawmakers are going to permit end-to-end encryption, or they are not — with the “not” being a very wide range of compromises and backdoors, to outright criminalization.
Jason Snell, Six Colors:
I feel sympathy for whomever Netflix is paying to tag content for the best places to insert ads. There are no clear act breaks in “Adolescence,” and the fact that it’s one continuous shot means that literally any interruption is going to be incredibly disruptive to the content of the show. It was never intended to be shown with advertising inserted mid-stream.
Netflix programmed four separate ad breaks.
In much the same way as the oner format shaped the story of “Adolescence”, ads defined TV shows. I remember how every show would use the ad breaks to create its structure. When movies were aired on broadcast TV, the addition of ad breaks felt entirely unnatural. The lack of advertising on the BBC, for example, similarly defined the storytelling format of its shows. If I were responsible for creating a show for Netflix, it would frustrate me to not know for certain whether it would be broken up by ads.
Also: my dentist’s office has TVs overhead and, today, the one above me was tuned to an Idaho Fox affiliate — not sure why; I thought we were “Canada strong” — playing “Sherri”. I have nothing against that show in particular, but I have not watched daytime TV in many years and the amount of ads shocked me. Near the end of the show, there would be minutes of ads — mostly for medical products — interspersed with short show segments: a minute-long game with an audience member; another minute-long bit with a funny family photo submitted by a viewer. These segments were not back-to-back; they were between multi-minute ad breaks which, at that point, are substantively the show. It was exhausting.
