Month: July 2026

Google Discontinues Google Earth Pro for Desktop ⇥ support.google.com

“Aamir F.”, on behalf of the Google Earth Team:

We’re continuing to make Google Earth on web and mobile (Android | iOS) the best place for people to get helpful geospatial insights. While you can continue using the legacy Google Earth Pro desktop app, it will no longer be available for new downloads beginning on June 25, 2027. We encourage using web and mobile for the best Google Earth experience.

This is a two-factor loss: the MacOS app is Intel-based and, thus, will no longer be supported by the system come next year.

Christoph Grützner, researcher at the University of Jena:

Discontinuing Google Earth desktop does not come unexpected, but it’s terrible news. The web tool is utterly useless for me and many geo folk.

There’ll be workarounds for most features, but not for easy 3D view of historical imagery and for sharing placemarks.

Carlos Moffat, faculty at the University of Delaware:

Still one of the most approachable and efficient tools for planning fieldwork. I used GEarth in our latest Antarctic cruise just a few months ago.

On the Google Earth community thread, you will find comments from people with all sorts of interesting use cases for the desktop app. I opened the web version today to see if it supports my limited use cases — it does — and I was greeted by a dialog advertising Gemini features, of course.

An Age-Gated Internet Is an Admission of Defeat ⇥ jamesrball.com

I am a tiny bit sorry for all the links I am posting regarding age gating. As I have written before, it is something I am still trying to work out for myself. After all, it seems straightforward why age verification is an easy way to reduce the risks to children of today’s platforms, the operators of which marketed their products directly to kids. But the trade-offs are numerous, whether from a predominantly U.S.-centric view of individual freedoms, or from the way such restrictions fail to address product safety concerns.

James Ball, Techtris:

In practice, of course, a social media ban would be widely circumvented. If we think the internet is bad for teenagers now, imagine a world in which all online access is illicit. Social platforms would have a new defence against online harms against that group: they’re just not meant to be there.

Provided Facebook, X, TikTok or whoever could show it had some legally compliant age verification system, harm befalling a teenager wouldn’t be their fault. They weren’t supposed to be there, after all. Instead of being the negligent owners of a space marketed to teens, they’re the blameless victims of trespass.

Age gates are such a procedural and mediocre response. Instead of reining in whatever broader risks may be invented or exacerbated by these companies’ products — and, in particular, the unique problems of each — we are throwing up our hands and pretending it is all too complicated.

Meta Laid Off Staff in Favour of Agentic Coding, and It Is Not Going Well ⇥ reuters.com

Katie Paul and Courtney Rozen, Reuters:

Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged shortcomings in the company’s sweeping restructuring at an internal town hall on Thursday, saying the systems known as AI agents had not progressed as quickly as he had expected, according to a recording heard by Reuters.

[…]

In retrospect, he said, the “trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected,” and ​that the company’s bets on the new structure “haven’t come to fruition yet.” Zuckerberg was referring to AI agents, automated systems that can ​execute tasks on behalf of a user.

A quintessentially Zuckerbergian premise: he pivots the whole company around whatever is the new thing, says oops, then reminds himself that nothing really matters as long as people keep looking at ads on Instagram.

For all Meta’s power and its massive base of users and ad buyers, the company’s YouTube channels are fascinating places. The main channel has a bunch of promo videos for the headlining products Meta wants people to associate with a world-changing company. There are corporate presentations hosted by Zuckerberg, ads for A.I. and glasses products, and little behind-the-scenes things, and all of them have hundreds-of-thousands to millions of views. That is what you would expect for an account with 456,000 subscribers and a household name. It really wants you to believe its leadership is made of visionary stuff.

But the way it actually makes its money — advertising — is nowhere to be found on that channel. For that, you need to go to the Meta for Business channel, which has a respectable 181,000 subscribers and lots of tips for how to use the company’s ad tools more effectively. But the view counts on those videos are, frankly, terrible. Most are in the dozens-to-hundreds; again, this is a channel with enough subscribers to get a famous silver plaque.

Meta can tell the world it is a revolutionary company while being internally honest about what it actually does. Many companies do that. But it is fairly troubling that Meta seemingly tricked itself into believing the external picture it paints.

Indonesia Is Also Facing Problems With Age-Gated Social Media ⇥ asia.nikkei.com

Marcel Thee, Nikkei Asia:

Following Australia’s move in late 2025, Indonesia became the first non-Western country to announce restrictions on social media access for users under 16. Rules unveiled on March 6 require platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Roblox to introduce age verification checks and remove underage accounts. The restrictions were supposed to take effect on March 28, but enforcement has been patchy, with tech companies largely ignoring the requirements and underage users continuing to access social media simply by lying about their ages.

As Michael Geist put it recently, “the better the privacy protection, the less effective the ban”.

Maestral, My Favourite Dropbox Client for MacOS, Is No Longer Being Maintained ⇥ github.com

Sam Schott:

As of 2026-07-28, this project is archived. It’s been a fun challenge to develop a syncing client, but unfortunately, I find too little time to invest in Maestral these days. I’ve also moved away from using Dropbox myself.

Maestral will still remain usable in the medium term, but will no longer be actively maintained or receive updates.

This is a bummer — understandable, but a bummer nevertheless. The official Dropbox app is hundreds of megabytes because, of course, it is a website masquerading as a native application with the help of Electron. Maestral is comparatively svelte, has a low memory footprint, and does not use Apple’s questionable File Provider API.

I use Dropbox only for some relatively basic but necessary things, like hosting PDFs for this very website, which is why Maestral has been the perfect client for me. It is a testament to the effect of a good third-party app that I have stuck with Dropbox despite its corporate-focused strategy pivot.

Anyway, many thanks to Schott for creating such a good little utility. Maestral is open source so I have hope somebody will take the baton.

A.I. and Liability ⇥ schneier.com

Bruce Schneier:

AI agents are agents of the person or organization that deploys them—and should be treated by the law as such. If a company hired human writers to write its summaries, that company would be liable for inaccuracies in those summaries. If a company’s human agent signed contracts in the company’s name, that company would be bound by those contracts. And if a doctor gave dangerously wrong medical advice, they would be liable for malpractice.

To allow businesses to hide behind the excuse of faulty AI in those same circumstances would be a massive handout to companies, and would introduce disastrous incentives for corporate misbehavior. Why hire human writers, lawyers or doctors when AIs are not only cheaper, but also absolve employers whenever they make a mistake?

In his video essay nominally about artificial intelligence, economist Cahal Moran repeatedly references the book “The Unaccountability Machine” by Dan Davies. I am only a couple of chapters in, but I think I am going to get a lot out of it, and I feel confident you should check it out from your local library.

An Updated Look at the Environmental Impact of A.I. Data Centres ⇥ wsj.com

Satya Nadella at Microsoft’s Build conference this year:

Perhaps the most important design criteria for us is: ‘how do we earn the permission from the communities in which we are building these data centres?’

That’s where these principles ground us and focus us. How do we ensure that the D.C.s do not increase the electricity prices? Making sure that we are replenishing all our water use. Creating jobs in the local communities for the local residents. Adding to the tax base. […]

Kate Brandt, chief sustainability officer at Google:

While we remain deeply committed to sustainability, reaching our climate moonshots is getting harder. It takes energy and resources to support the growing demand for AI that powers businesses and the tools we use every day. Like everyone in our industry, we experienced a surge in electricity demand last year. Our AI infrastructure buildout is accelerating faster than the grid is decarbonizing, and long waits to connect to the grid, fragmented markets, supply chain delays, and regulatory bottlenecks continue to slow down new carbon-free energy from coming online. We’re working within energy systems that simply aren’t clean enough or flexible enough yet.

Christopher Mims, Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft, Google and Amazon are among the tech companies spending an estimated $1 trillion on AI infrastructure this year and last. In some regions, they are using far more water than they report, depending on how data centers are powered. And their water consumption is projected to grow rapidly in coming years.

These companies produce annual sustainability reports that include water use at their data centers. But among this group of titans, only Meta tallies water used at the power stations that feed them electricity, in addition to the water used on-site.

Ketan Joshi:

Google’s power consumption rose by 7 TWh between 2023 and 2024. That was bad. But it rose by a whopping 12 TWh between 2024 and 2025, almost double last year’s increase. Google’s power consumption isn’t just growing — the rate at which it is growing is growing. We have a word for this: exponential growth.

Every time I look at this chart I have to go and double check every single Google number, because it just looks so ridiculous.

Google’s power consumption is now greater than the amount of electricity generated by New Zealand.

In their environmental reports (all PDF links), Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft all mention carbon capture or direct air capture as one strategy for minimizing the impact of their emissions. Reporters for Heated and ProPublica jointly published a look at carbon capture technologies. They found that carbon capture remains a basically theoretical technology despite decades of promotion. Meanwhile, solar energy installations have dramatically outpaced even the most optimistic projections.

Canada in the 1870s ⇥ petapixel.com

Matt Growcoot, PetaPixel:

Despite the technical difficulties, there are photographs of Canada in the 1860s — including one taken of the historic moment the proclamation of Confederation was read out at Market Square, Kingston, Ontario.

I had no idea there was a photo taken when this proclamation was read.

Apple’s ‘Trusted System Agent’ Proposal Has Not Actually Been Built ⇥ ft.com

When Apple announced Siri A.I. would not be available on E.U. iPhones or iPads at launch, it said:

Given the serious risks to users, Apple designed a solution called Trusted System Agent — an intermediary that would allow virtual assistants to safely access the same features and capabilities as Siri AI for devices in the EU. Apple also shared a plan to launch Siri AI in the EU while gradually rolling out this new solution over an 18-month period. The European Commission said no. In fact, the European Commission did not agree to any of Apple’s proposals.

I noted the curious mix between this pitch and Apple’s claim that — translated from French — “none of its engineers are currently working on solutions to open Siri A.I. to the competition”. I interpreted this to mean Apple was no longer working on the Agent idea for giving third-party A.I. systems comparable access. On reflection, I am more confused: is Apple throwing a red herring into the mix by claiming it is not giving competitors access to Siri A.I., something which I do not think the E.U. was asking for?

In that same post, I also reflected on how it was “refreshing to see Apple and the European Commission arguing in public and on the record instead of by leaking information to the Financial Times“.

Anyway, here are Michael Acton and Barbara Moens, reporting for the Financial Times:

A commission official said its contact with Apple on the idea was limited, and that it lacked a concrete proposal or details on how such an agent would work beyond the general concept. They said Apple “focused on obtaining a green light to delay the compliance”.

By contrast, the official said the commission’s process with Google after changes it made to its Android operating system led to a formal consultation on how the company could comply with the DMA and avoid massive fines.

To the extent Apple is not getting sufficient information about the validity of its proposals, the Commission is saying that is entirely Apple’s fault — obviously. I bet Apple thinks it is all the Commission’s fault, too. The DMA has been in effect for nearly four years and there is no reason why either party should be having so much difficulty with this proposal stage. Either the Commission is mischaracterizing Apple’s engagement, or Apple’s representatives need to be far better prepared.

One more thing I wrote last month:

Given Apple’s self-imposed problems with Apple Intelligence since WWDC 2024, I question whether many people in Europe will find this particularly disruptive or upsetting, however.

Well, according to Acton and Moens, I was quite wrong:

The dispute triggered a fierce public backlash against the commission, with European officials reporting hundreds of emails from consumers accusing Brussels of depriving Europeans of a new technology.

One EU official said that a commission spokesperson had received a stream of abusive messages, including several death threats.

A.I. really is breaking brains. Shameful behaviour.

Sony Announces Closure of PlayStation Store for PS3, Says Digital Distribution Is the Future ⇥ blog.playstation.com

Sony’s Sid Shuman:

As consumer preferences and the broader entertainment industry continue to shift away from physical discs to digital, physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028.  Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only. […]

Also Sony’s Sid Shuman:

After nearly two decades of supporting the PS3 console generation, we wanted to let you know we will be closing the PlayStation Store on PS3, as well as on PS Vita. […]

Incredibly, these announcements were made on the very same day, as if to illustrate the fragility and centralized control of the digital-only distribution Sony says is the new standard. At least physical versions of PS3 and Vita games will continue to function. Remember how, in 2023, Sony said it would yank access to media purchased by users because Sony did not renew its license with Discovery? If we cannot actually own something, I find it difficult to believe an unpaid reproduction of that thing is actually tantamount to theft.

Update: Just this week, Sony said it would remove hundreds more titles from users’ accounts in the U.K. due to its licensing with StudioCanal expiring. (Also, Sony and Discovery struck a new agreement in 2023.)

Is There a New Quantum Processor or Is Microsoft Lying? ⇥ mathewingram.com

Mathew Ingram:

So what, I can hear you thinking. I don’t know or care what anyons are, or how gallium arsenide works. Me neither! The interesting part of this story for me is that Microsoft — a company that has a market value of $2.7 trillion and almost single-handedly created the personal computing industry — has repeatedly claimed that its Majorana processor uses these particles, and that its new version is a thousand times more reliable, and yet some other theoretical physicists have called BS on these claims, not once but several times. In other words, Microsoft keeps putting out press releases saying it has done this, and that it will build a working quantum computer using said particles within the next three years, and a number of prominent members of the industry keep saying that the company and its research scientists are full of you-know-what.

It is fascinating to see academics call out one of the world’s most valuable companies for making claims that are “perhaps even ‘fraudulent’”.

Apple Has Known About a Hide My Email Vulnerability for Over a Year ⇥ easyoptouts.com

Tyler Murphy and Ben, co-founders of EasyOptOuts:

We’ve discovered vulnerabilities in Hide My Email that allow attackers to discover the meant-to-be-hidden address behind a Hide My Email address. We reported the issue to Apple over a year ago, and as of June 30, 2026, it still hasn’t been fixed. About a month ago, we realized that the vulnerabilities’ severity and scope are greater than we initially thought. […]

Apple replied — twice — that it had fixed these vulnerabilities, but Joseph Cox of 404 Media was able to reproduce the problem as recently as earlier this week. Very few details are available right now. I have seen speculation that the original email address is revealed when someone replies using their hidden email address, but the impression I get from Cox’s reporting is that no user interaction is necessary:

To test the issue I generated a new Hide My Email address and provided it to Murphy. Around five minutes later, he replied with my real email address linked to my Apple account which was supposed to be hidden.

I am also unclear about how, as of May, the EasyOptOuts guys found the “vulnerability may have greater severity and scope” than initially reported. Ominous, though.

Also, it is pretty shameful Apple has known about this for a year and has not actually fixed it. This seems to be a common occurrence when reporting bugs of any kind. There are plenty of times I have received responses to years-old bug reports claiming a fix was delivered recently, despite the issue still being easily reproducible. And those are little things; this is a bug that, if you believe this EasyOptOuts write-up and Cox’s reporting, fundamentally undermines a privacy feature that costs money.