Inside Canadian Tech’s Shift to the Right ⇥ thelogic.co

Catherine McIntyre, Laura Osman, and Murad Hemmadi, the Logic:

In a WhatsApp group named Build Canada, some of the country’s most prominent technology leaders, including Shopify executives Tobi Lütke, Daniel Debow and Kaz Nejatian, as well as investor John Ruffolo, are developing a vision for where they think the country should go next.

[…]

While the members of the Build Canada WhatsApp group are saying little, elsewhere Canada’s tech sector and the Conservative party have gone public with their commitment to each other, frequently singing each others’ praises on social media.

I am fascinated to think about who would have leaked the existence of this WhatsApp group, which goes unmentioned in the article after the quotes above. There is no indication of how large it is, nor are any discussions disclosed. Whichever participants leaked it are seemingly okay with public knowledge of its existence but nothing more than that. Maybe it is an uninteresting chat among the investor class.

Another thing: the populist rhetoric of the Conservative Party is clearly fake. As in the U.S., the moneyed interests are simply aligning themselves with who will benefit them as the tide is turning. They had to have known the parties more amenable to regulation would propose legislation in response to corporate interests. The Conservatives are only too happy to give large corporations an easier time.

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PhysicsForums and the Dead Internet Theory ⇥ hallofdreams.org

“David and Felipe”, Hall of Impossible Dreams:

At first glance, ravenprp is a very impressive user, writing 2,891 posts in a mere seven-month span (from September 2006 to April 2007) for average of more than thirteen posts per day. […]

Impressively, these posts span from three years before the account was created to a year after the account was last logged into. And, as the icing on the cake, ravenprp is prescient enough that he can joke about being a language model developed by OpenAI, seven years before OpenAI was even founded; evidently he should have joined PsychicsForums instead.

Not just a story about an increasingly poisoned web, but also one about identity. For future reference, I will note X, with its integrated LLM, claims ownership of users’ accounts and has not been shy to steal usernames for its own purposes.

Century-Scale Storage ⇥ lil.law.harvard.edu

Maxwell Neely-Cohen, writing for Harvard Law School’s Library Innovation Lab:

This piece looks at a single question. If you, right now, had the goal of digitally storing something for 100 years, how should you even begin to think about making that happen? How should the bits in your stewardship be stored with such a target in mind? How do our methods and platforms look when considered under the harsh unknowns of a century? There are plenty of worthy related subjects and discourses that this piece does not touch at all. This is not a piece about the sheer volume of data we are creating each day, and how we might store all of it. Nor is it a piece about the extremely tough curatorial process of deciding what is and isn’t worth preserving and storing. It is about longevity, about the potential methods of preserving what we make for future generations, about how we make bits endure. If you had to store something for 100 years, how would you do it? That’s it.

This was published in December but I only read it today. Here is the thing: I am going to read a lot of stuff this year, but I already know this is going to be one of my favourite essays. Well told and beautifully designed. Make the time for this thoughtful work.

Cacio e Pepe e Corn Starch ⇥ nytimes.com

Alexander Nazaryan, New York Times:

A group of Italian physicists has dared to tinker with the traditional recipe for cacio e pepe, the challenging Roman dish consisting of pasta, pecorino cheese and black pepper. In a new study, the scientists claim to have “scientifically optimized” the recipe by adding an ingredient: cornstarch.

For some reason I cannot explain, the related paper was already in my history. It is an interesting read — no joke.

I am fascinated by the number of ways this simple recipe has been explored, from using two pans to incorporating cold water. I am not opposed to any of them on principle — I am not Italian, and anything that gets me closer to a perfectly smooth pasta-and-cheese snack is welcome — but there is something that feels a little perverse about an additional starch. Even though these science-backed techniques are tremendous, there is something very special about getting this emulsion just right without any real tricks.

X Is Barely Getting By ⇥ wsj.com

Justin Baer, Alexander Saeedy, and Alexa Corse, Wall Street Journal:

In a January email to staff, Musk pointed to the company’s growing influence and power, but said the finances remain problematic.

“Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we’re barely breaking even,” he said in the email, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

“Barely breaking even” would have been an improvement for most of Twitter’s life. Given this fascist’s predilection for dishonesty, I would be surprised if this is an accurate reflection of the current state of X.

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Returning to ‘Origins’ ⇥ unpopularfront.news

John Ganz:

If one reads closely, there is nothing in the ideology of the imperialist bourgeoisie that Arendt describes that is not shared by this new tech-oligarchy. What could explain better the apparent contradiction in the oscillation between their state-phobic libertarianism and sudden interest grasp for the reigns of state power; “What Imperialists actually wanted was expansion of political power without the foundation of a body politic.” Power without public accountability or a common good. And what about the strange transformation of many of these figures from Utopian “progressives” into dystopian reactionaries? Arendt account[s] for this as well. […]

File this under the essays that will be seen as either barely relevant or prescient for the next four-or-so years, all of which I hope are the former but will likely — and regrettably — fall into the latter camp.

Court Rules FBI’s Warrantless Searches Are Illegal ⇥ arstechnica.com

Ashley Belanger, Ars Technica:

It’s official: The FBI’s warrantless searches of communications seized to protect US national security have at last been ruled unconstitutional and in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

In a major December ruling made public this week, US District Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall settled one of the biggest debates about feared government overreach that has prompted calls to reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for more than a decade.

Critics’ primary concern was whether the FBI needed a warrant to search and query Americans’ communications that are often incidentally, inadvertently, or mistakenly seized during investigations of suspected foreign terrorists.

Some good news, American friends.

In 2023, then-FBI director Christopher Wray said a warrant “would amount to a de facto ban, because query applications either would not meet the legal standard to win court approval; or” because of the time required to meet legal obligations. To be sure, I bet there are lots of crimes the FBI could catch if it did more illegal stuff.

U.S. Cyberdefense Loses Its Head ⇥ wired.com

Lily Hay Newman, Wired, interviewed Easterly near the end of her time running CISA:

The timing couldn’t be worse for the nation to lose its top cybersecurity cop. A Beijing-linked group called Salt Typhoon spent months last year rampaging through American telecoms and siphoning call logs, recordings, text messages, and even potentially location data. Many experts have called it the biggest hack in US telecom history. Easterly and her agency unknowingly detected Salt Typhoon activity in federal networks early last year — warning signs that ultimately sped up the unraveling of the espionage campaign.

The work of banishing Chinese spies from victim networks isn’t over, but the walls are already closing in on CISA. Trump’s nominee to run the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, told a senate committee last week that CISA needs to be “smaller” and “more nimble.” And a day after the inauguration, all members of the Cyber Safety Review Board — who were appointed by Easterly and were actively investigating the Salt Typhoon breaches — were let go.

By “more nimble”, Noem means curtailing CISA’s work around misinformation and disinformation — work which has been wildly mischaracterized as engaging in censorship. These efforts include election security education, a role which was not appreciated by this administration four years ago.

Becky Bracken, Dark Reading:

In a letter dated Jan. 20, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Benjamine C. Huffman said the move was meant to avoid a “misuse of resources,” and terminated all current memberships on advisory committees immediately.

Ryan Naraine, SecurityWeek:

The CSRB was established under President Joe Biden’s Executive Order (EO) 14028 on “Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity” to study major cyber incidents and recommend improvements. Its members served in a volunteer capacity and did not have regulatory or enforcement authority.

The board conducted three investigations — the Log4Shell crisis, the high-profile Lapsus$ attacks and Microsoft’s Exchange Online breach — and gained the respect of security professionals for harshly calling out corporate and technical deficiencies at major corporations.

This is probably a pretty good time to be embedded in the communications infrastructure of an entire nation.

Leader Key ⇥ github.com

Leader Key is a neat new-ish app from Mikkel Malmberg:

Problems with traditional launchers:

  • Typing the name of the thing can be slow and give unpredictable results.

  • Global shortcuts have limited combinations.

  • Leader Key offers predictable, nested shortcuts — like combos in a fighting game.

Simple but powerful. Not a replacement for something like Keyboard Maestro or Spotlight, but totally comfortable alongside those two. Free on Github.

Million-Dollar Picture ⇥ forbes.com

Charitably, the best you can say about Tim Cook’s appearance at the inauguration this week is to presume he is there reluctantly. A million-dollar contribution bought him the same proximity to this nakedly transactional administration as executives from Amazon, Google, Meta, and Uber. It is not his presence that would be conspicuous to this administration, but his absence.

If you believe all that, this is a photo of someone whose face appears between those of J.D. Vance and Donald Trump. I hope Cook will keep a framed copy on his desk as a reminder every time those two do something cruel, inhumane, or bleak.

Apple’s Next Software Updates Will Enable Apple Intelligence Automatically ⇥ macrumors.com

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

When installing macOS Sequoia 15.3, iOS 18.3, or iPadOS 18.3, Apple Intelligence will be turned on automatically on compatible devices, Apple says in the developer release notes for the updates.

Eric Schwarz:

The documentation is for 15.3, so I suspect the version number is a typo. iOS 18.3 will also receive this “feature” — while there is a toggle to turn it back off, just having Apple Intelligence installed uses a lot of space. […]

This is a good point. According to my Mac, Apple Intelligence is consuming 5.75 GB of disk space. MacOS, as a whole and including Apple Intelligence, consumes 22 GB. The exact amount probably varies from device to device but, still, that is a considerable amount of new space required — a thirty-odd percent growth in operating system size in a nominally minor version update.

Apple still insists this is a beta, but it no longer has the excuse that users are opting in knowing the risks and flaws. These are just unfinished new features. It turns out problems and a lack of quality control magically become excusable if you just slap a beta badge on it. This is a trick Google has known about for decades.

The TikTok Executive Order ⇥ bbc.com

You are probably aware already of the flurry of executive orders signed on the first day of Donald Trump’s second presidential term, a phrase that will hopefully not become as infamous as it already feels. His attack on transgender people is particularly appalling despite its predictability. To my likely overwhelmed U.S. readers, I ask only that you take care of yourselves and each other as best you are able.

For whatever reason,1 among the highest of priorities for this new administration is the status of TikTok. Specifically, delaying enforcement of last year’s law requiring U.S. businesses to not facilitate TikTok’s availability lest they be subject to massive penalties. But laws are only as real as those with power demand them to be and, in this case, one man believes he can override both its enforcement and its stated goals.

Cristiano Lima-Strong and Drew Harwell, Washington Post:

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday aimed at halting the ban against TikTok for 75 days so he can “pursue a resolution” outside of a complete prohibition, a legally dubious maneuver that could test his power to stave off a measure he once championed.

The order directs the Justice Department to not take any action to enforce the law nor to “impose any penalties” against companies that carry TikTok for 75 days, a slightly shorter window than Trump had previously suggested. The goal, the order says, is to “determine the appropriate course forward in an orderly way that protects national security while avoiding an abrupt shutdown of a communications platform used by millions of Americans.”

I wish to issue a small correction. I wrote Sunday that the “leadership of Akamai and Oracle are quite possibly betting their companies on” deferred enforcement, and I am not sure why I hedged. Those leaders are most certainly not betting their companies. Four years down the line, do you really believe the Justice Department will go after Akamai and Oracle for breaking this law? It would be fully capable of doing so, but I guarantee it will not.

Alas, Apple and Google are still not taking that bet. They have enough high-profile legal drama for now.

Lily Jamali and Peter Hoskins, BBC News:

He floated the possibility of a joint venture running the company, saying he was seeking a 50-50 partnership between “the United States” and its Chinese owner ByteDance. But he did not give any further details on how that might work.

I am no legal scholar, but the law specifically says the ownership stake from adversary nations must be less than twenty percent. Not only does the president believe he is capable of nullifying this law’s penalties, he also thinks he can change its requirements on a whim. That is quite the precedent.

  1. Corruption and flattery. ↥︎

On Digital Sovereignty ⇥ mollywhite.net

Molly White:

The TikTok ban, the Musk Twitter takeover, the Facebook moderation policy changes, the Republicans’ rapidly intensifying crackdowns on speech… let these be the proof you needed to move anything you care about online to a space you control.

A good reminder, indeed. We can debate how much any of us control our spaces so long as any part of it is provided by someone else, but just having your own domain name is a fantastic starting point. Services like Micro.one and omg.lol make that first step super easy. Return proprietary social media to its rightful place as a nice addition to your online presence, not the centre of it. It is not much, and it is not something everyone can do, but it is a start.

A.I. Is the New Annoying Ad You Will See Everywhere ⇥ matduggan.com

Mat Duggan:

Last week I awoke to Google deciding I hadn’t had enough AI shoved down my throat. With no warning they decided to take the previously $20/user/month Gemini add-on and make it “free” and on by default. If that wasn’t bad enough, they also decided to remove my ability as an admin to turn it off. Despite me hitting all the Off buttons I could find: […]

Users were still seeing giant Gemini chat windows, advertisements and harassment to try out Gemini.

I am not sure I agree with Duggan’s conclusion — that the “A.I. bubble is bursting” — but I share his derision for how aggressively these features are being promoted. Ever since software updates became distributed regularly as part of the SaaS business model, it has become the vendors’ priority to show how clever they are through callouts, balloons, dialogs, toasts, and other in-product advertising. I understand why vendors want users to know about new features. But these promotions are way too much and way too often. Respecting users has long been deprioritized in favour of whatever new thing leads to promotions and bonuses.

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What Happens to the Great Apps Apple Acquires? ⇥ tapsmart.com

Craig Grannell:

In November 2024, Pixelmator announced that the company would join Apple. Although the post said there would be “no material changes” to the company’s apps, fans were worried. The assumption was that Photomator and Pixelmator (the latter being a rare sort-of-Photoshop for iPhone) were on borrowed time.

But is it always bad news for fans of an app when Apple buys it? Let’s explore some key examples from the past 30 years and see how they inform what Apple might do with Pixelmator’s apps.

One thing I noticed in Grannell’s analysis is that more recent acquisitions — with the exception of Dark Sky — are adopted somewhat whole, whereas the older examples are more like foundations. That could be a coincidence based on the specific examples Grannell chose — it bought Texture in 2018 and built Apple News Plus on top of it, for instance.

This reminded me of a different and unrelated part of Apple’s acquisition strategy, which is when it retains a standalone company. You might think of Beats or Claris, but there are a few others: BIS, Shazam, and — until recently — Beddit. Apple feels like such a monolithic brand to me, and it surprises me whenever I remember that it also has these somewhat independent subsidiaries.

TikTok’s Service Providers Risk Billions in Penalties for Bringing It Back Online ⇥ theverge.com

Lauren Feiner, the Verge:

Trump seems to want TikTok available for his inauguration on Monday, because “Americans deserve” to see the event. But TikTok is officially banned starting today until it sells to a non-Chinese company, and there’s no deal in sight. Flouting that ban could get Apple and Google’s app stores, as well as service providers Akamai and Oracle, dinged for potentially $850 billion in penalties. Despite all this, Trump has reportedly assured companies they won’t face these fines if they let TikTok keep operating. Now, the question is simple: will Trump-friendly companies risk breaking the law to make the president happy?

Trump is, as of writing, thirteen hours from having actual power, and already corporations and their leaders are proving their fealty. This whole spectacle is embarrassing to watch as a foreigner. Whether he is a true authoritarian or more of a La Croix-esque suggestion of an authoritarian is a matter debatable by political science types and historians. But he has still managed to get tech companies to fall in line behind his administration’s agenda. The leadership of Akamai and Oracle are quite possibly betting their companies on it. And that is before he has any power.

I am worried about how far they will go.

Apple Intelligence Is Inventing a Husband for Joanna Stern ⇥ techthings.cmail20.com

Joanna Stern, in her Tech Things newsletter:

Here’s a notification for you, Apple: There is no husband.

Despite what my iPhone’s frequent notification summaries report, my husband isn’t messy, he isn’t sad and he definitely didn’t take out the garbage — because, again, I don’t have one. Wife? Yes. Husband? No.

An Apple spokesperson told Stern the company’s A.I. services “were built with responsible AI principles to avoid perpetuating stereotypes and systemic biases”, but here we are.