Here’s the Google blog post announcing it: https://blog.google/products/android/quick-share-airdrop/

Anyone know what the embargo that wound up lasting 3 months was about? I’m assuming a security vulnerability that is now fixed?

I’m sure there are many jobs AI is not capable of doing but some CEOs probably do a bad enough job that an AI chat bot could probably do better.

I know we like to dump on CEOs all the time but a good CEO does not seem like one that could be replaced by AI, certainly not by what is currently being hyped. There are just a lot of highly visible companies with CEOs who aren’t actually very good. I suspect the dysfunction of publicly traded companies and the goals of Wall Street investors (or other nations’ equivalents) frequently not aligning with a good long-term health of a company has a strong influence on this.

And of course these guys will be happy to have AI replace them; they’ve already made boatloads of money and think they’ll be able to keep that going even if they lose their job.

I can’t remember if it’s announced or rumored, but I think there’s an entry-level MacBook coming with an A17?

The one area I would sorta disagree is on updates, although only inasmuch as they’re needed for security fixes on things connected to the internet. But if it’s not connected? No, no updates needed unless I encounter a bug or they add a new feature I really want.

To tag along with this, I remember this becoming an issue 10 or 15 years ago and a lot of the big lyrics websites were forced to reach licensing agreements with the songwriting groups like ASCAP and BMI (they collect and distribute royalties on behalf of the writers). I think a couple sites tried going to court to claim fair use but lost pretty quickly. That’s pretty established law going back to the earliest days of music publishing. Just because they were publishing online instead of printing up songbooks doesn’t mean the laws change.

Marrow was interested in “how public institutions decide what’s worth showing, and what happens when something outside that system appears within it”.

He said using artificial intelligence to create it was “part of the natural evolution of artistic tools”, adding he sketched the image before he used AI.

“AI is here to stay, to gatekeep its capability would be against the beliefs I hold dear about art,” he said.

[…]

The artist, who said similar stunts he had carried out at Bristol Museum and Tate Modern were not “approved, sanctioned, or acknowledged”, denied it was vandalism.

“The work isn’t about disruption. It’s about participation without permission,” he said.

“I’m not asking permission, but I’m not causing harm either.”

It’s like the same “logic” AI companies use when they take copyrighted content without permission: claim you’re not causing harm so you don’t need permission. They don’t see the harm, so from their perspective it’s fine, even if the creator doesn’t want them taking their work.

Railing at the institution as being gatekeepers might reveal the flaw in their logic. People or institutions are entitled to decide what belongs in their collection and what does not. Random outsiders are not entitled to be a part of that collection. They can be invited in if the curators are interested in their work, but the curators are generally not required to add them just because they’ve made something. The artist can create their own collection and invite others to be a part of it, but they’re not entitled to be in anyone’s collection. They also can’t just go and take something from someone else’s collection without permission, and even taking a photo of someone else’s work and placing it in their collection would at the very least be bad form. The other artist is just as entitled to decide where they do or don’t want their work displayed.

With encryption and encryption backdoors I often use the illustration that I put a lock on the door of my house, not because I have something to hide, but because I have things valuable to me that I want to protect. Just because I have nothing to hide, it doesn’t mean I give the police a key to my house or let them add their own lock to my door. I wouldn’t want to come home one day and discover a random policeman had let himself in and was making copies of all my documents and photos just to make sure I wasn’t doing something bad. I’d be even more upset if I came home and discovered a policeman from another country had let himself in because he’d gotten a copy of the same key, or a thief was doing the same because he’d gotten a copy of the key.

Building off that illustration, I might have a collection of art in my house. This guy is not entitled to come into my house and look at my art, nor is he entitled to come into my house and put a picture on an empty space on my wall just because he thinks it should be there. Railing against gatekeepers keeping his slop out to me seems as ridiculous as him being mad that I won’t open my door and let him put a picture on my wall. He might not be damaging my walls, but just forcing his way in against my wishes is something I would view as harmful.

Sneaked is the traditional form as the past tense of a regular verb, dating back to at least the 1500s, whereas snuck only appeared as an irregular form in the 1800s and it’s not clear why. It’s very unusual for a regular verb to become irregular. Snuck is more common in US English than British English, although sneaked and snuck appear in both variants. Sneaked would seem more correct especially for British English.

They realized how much revenue they were leaving on the table

I remember a Scottish lady telling us in the ’90s about how they had vans that would drive around to find illegal TVs and the whole thing was just mind-boggling to me!

I really don’t know enough about Perplexity AI to have an opinion one way or another, which is why I’m upvoting for awareness. I can’t say whether it’s a good or bad thing, although I’m not optimistic given the general trend of shoehorning “AI” in whether it makes sense or not, but I’m sure there are actually useful applications for the product and a better search engine could be one. I want actual search results, though, not a generated slop answer.

I’m not upvoting out of support for this move but to spread awareness

Can you have your job pay for an iPhone while you have a different personal phone? I’m a big fan of keeping a work device that’s separate from a personal device.

No, I think that was always pretty obvious. There are other times (like this with Cracker Barrel) where it’s more up for debate

Cleaner, not cheaper. Waffle House has always been cheaper. If you’re on a road trip with kids it’s nicer to feel reasonably confident you’re taking them into clean restrooms.

People have been suggesting this as a strategy at least since New Coke debuted. We can’t always definitively say that was actually the plan, but sometimes we can like with IHOP.

Cracker Barrel was usually cleaner than Waffle House, though, if that’s important to you while on road trips

While forensic examination of these devices is ongoing, early analysis indicates cellular communications between nation-state threat actors and individuals that are known to federal law enforcement.

They have images in the link. They sure don’t look like actual phones. I hope more information comes out about what was being used and where they were sourced. Were they devices that have a legitimate use as well or something more custom for nefarious purposes? They don’t look like they take a lot of room, so this might not be the last time we hear of something using this or similar equipment. Doesn’t seem like it would be hard to put these all over the world.