FluxyNews

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

‘Anthropic’s Weak Watermarks Appease a Weak Law’

James Padolsey, on the Claude-text-watermarking-to-comply-with-an-EU-regulation imbroglio: The same thought that led to this law could have applied to calculators at the time of their inception, had their outputs revealed themselves through artefacts. Thankfully, a sum borne of the brain is treated no differently from one produced by a calculator. Likewise with spellcheckers. To make assistance suspect only once the tool becomes capable enough to compose a whole sentence is not a principled boun

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

The Information Profiles Cami Clark — Dario Amodei’s Wife, Ivanka Trump’s Friend, One-Time Would-Be Pornographer, and Anthropic’s ‘First Lady’

Cory Weinberg, Jemima McEvoy, Jessica E. Lessin, and Stephanie Palazzolo, writing for the paywalled-without-gift-links The Information: As Amodei has hopscotched the globe to preach about the potential and risks of AI — from New Delhi to Davos to Sun Valley — Clark has almost always been near his side. Several people who know the couple describe Clark as Amodei’s emotional ballast, someone he has sought counsel from during the turbulence of Anthropic’s growth and clashes with Washington over the

AI

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

No Update Since Early July Regarding Siri AI Coming to the EU, Ever

The Financial Times, back on July 1, with the transcontinental byline “Michael Acton in San Francisco and Barbara Moens in Brussels” (non-paywalled summaries from 9to5Mac and MacRumors ): Apple chief executive Tim Cook and EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen held “constructive” talks on Tuesday as the two sides aim to lower the temperature in a bitter dispute over the iPhone maker’s new “Siri AI.” An EU spokesperson said the virtual meeting had involved a “constructive exchange on topics of common int

AI

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

Apple TV Still Has No Start Date for ‘The Savant’

The Savant is a political thriller series starring Jessica Chastain that was supposed to debut a year ago . Apple “postponed” it, apparently out of fear of upsetting extremist right-wing nut jobs because the show is about an undercover investigator (Chastain) hunting down extremist right-wing nut jobs. Chastain was not happy about the show being delayed. Last we heard about the show was back in April, when Marc Malkin reported this for Variety : “Before it was like, ‘I don’t know if we’re going

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

★ Follow-Up Thoughts on Watermarking Schemes for AI-Generated Text

Some follow-up to this weekend’s stemwinder “ Anthropic’s ‘Watermark’ Text Adulteration in Claude Is a Perversion of Writing ”: Temperature Contra a bunch of idiots at Hacker News and elsewhere, I understand that popular LLMs do not just pick the “best” token (word) at each decision point. Counterintuitively, always selecting the highest-probability option produces undesirable results. So the models apply some randomization, and “temperature” is the term for the weighting that’s applied so that

AI

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

MacOS 26.7 Tahoe Release Candidate Contains a Video Demonstrating Camera-Equipped AirPods in Action

Oops. Link: macrumors.com/2026/08/17/camera-equipped-airpods-macos-26-7…

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

Nature Is Healing: MacOS 27 Golden Gate Beta 6 Adds Redesigned Traffic Light Window Controls

Zac Hall, 9to5Mac: macOS 27 Golden Gate beta 6 introduces redesigned traffic light window controls. The new look resembles older Mac OS X systems with more detail in each button. Nice. But these changes can’t improve fast enough for me — I am impatient. The MacOS user interface had been in a slow, steady, sad, no-fun decline for years, and then, a year ago, the bottom fell out with the disaster of 26 Tahoe. But all the changes in 27 Golden Gate are in the right direction. Golden Gate is not a mi

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

OpenAI Pot Complains That Google Kettle Is Black

Thibault Sottiaux, the OpenAI genius in charge of Codex and the new ChatGPT Homer Simpson car, on Twitter/X: I don’t come often to GMail [ sic ] (OpenAI is a Slack company), but I swear, every time I do open it, there is a new button somewhere around the top right corner. I mean, he’s right about Google’s zero-taste just-keep-cramming-shit-in approach to Gmail, but it’s almost hard to believe he could post this without any self-awareness that it’s the exact same approach his Codex team has appli

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

‘Dickover’ Makes It Into The Guardian

Stuart Heritage, writing for The Guardian, under the splendid headline “Dickovers, Baggravation and Botiquette: 18 New Words to Describe Our Tech Hellscape”: The “dickover” is the scourge of the modern age. Coined in May by John Gruber, a tech writer, it is defined as “a modal panel, popover, or curtain presented by a website or app, deliberately obscuring its own content to frustrate the user”. Essentially, it is the thing (or more often, things) you have to click away in order to read the thin

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

Organized Thieves Are Targeting AI Server Chips With Violent Highway Hijackings

Paresh Dave and Aarian Marshall, reporting for Wired ( News+ link in case Wired hits you with their paywall): The incidents involved two different shipments of high-value technology traveling from Silicon Valley to Southern California, according to Pachuca, who says he learned about the thefts from law enforcement authorities. Each truck was tailed by private security professionals driving unmarked escort vehicles, which were supposed to ensure the goods made it to their destinations safely. But

AI

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

Apple Gives Legal Middle Finger to DOJ Challenge on Apple’s July Discovery Win

Marcus Mendes at 9to5Mac has a fun update on U.S. v. Apple , the ill-considered antitrust case started by the Biden administration. A bunch of what the DOJ argues are anticompetitive features in Apple’s platforms, Apple argues are in fact privacy and security related. Back in July Apple won a big discovery ruling — Apple asked for documents from 14 federal agencies — including the CIA, FBI, Department of Defense, NSA, and State Department — to see the reasons why those agencies purchase iPhones,

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

Disney’s ABC Sues Trump’s FCC Over Challenge to Its Broadcast License

Joe Flint, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (gift link): Walt Disney’s ABC has sued the Federal Communications Commission alleging the agency’s efforts to challenge its broadcast licenses and regulate its talk show “The View” are illegal and an effort to quash speech the Trump administration finds objectionable. In a suit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, ABC said, “Again and again, the Administration has attacked ABC’s speech — the stories its journalists report and t

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

NBC News Strikes Ad Sales Deal With Taboola for Programmatic Display Ads

Sara Fischer, Axios: Ad tech giant Taboola has struck a deal with NBC News to exclusively power all of its programmatic, or automated, display advertising sales, CEO Adam Singolda tells Axios. Worked out great for Apple with Apple News. They struck a deal with Taboola two years ago and the ads in Apple News today are super premium and something the company can be really proud of . Link: axios.com/2026/08/18/nbc-news-taboola-programmatic-display…

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

Gurman Says No Camera-Equipped AirPods Until 2027

Mark Gurman, Bloomberg: Earlier this week, a developer version of a Mac computer software update accidentally included references to several upcoming Apple products, including a video of the AirPods with cameras in action. [...] But the product challenges are still being resolved, and the camera AirPods remain off the company’s 2026 release schedule. Apple continues to believe the earbuds will launch in 2027, said the people, who asked not to be identified when discussing unannounced products. I

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

★ Apple and European Commission Reach Agreement on App Payment Terms Under DMA, With Apple Conceding Very Little

Apple Newsroom, on Tuesday : Apple today announced changes to its business terms for apps in the European Union, following close collaboration with the European Commission. These changes resolve Apple’s disagreements with the Commission over business terms and alternative distribution. They also reduce complexity by moving every developer that distributes apps in the EU to a single set of business terms. Developers can sign the new terms today, and changes will go into effect on October 1. [...]

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

How Bluesky and Threads Sneak Their Logos Into iOS Screenshots

Bluesky and Threads both pull the same trick: When you take a screenshot on iOS of an individual tweet, they replace the “Follow” button in their user interface with their logo. Tim Marinin noticed this in the Bluesky app, got curious, and because they publish the app’s source code, he dug in to figure out how they do this: The answer was in the file literally called GrowthHack.tsx , introduced in January 2026 by mozzius . But it merely used a dependency, so to understand I looked into package e

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

Bluesky Is Full of Anti-AI Zealots

Mike Masnick, in a thread on Bluesky: Multiple people I know have told me that they love the idea of Bluesky, and want it to succeed, but have abandoned it for X because they use agentic tools in their work and find them incredibly useful, and feel that any mention of their usage here leads to hate and ridicule. I wouldn’t bring this up if it was just one person, but it was multiple people since the beginning of August who mentioned in passing something to the effect of either “I’d spend more ti

AI

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

Bluesky’s Active User Base Is Shrinking, and Remains Tiny Compared to Threads and Twitter/X

Sarah Perez, writing at TechCrunch last week: Decentralized social network Bluesky was one of the bigger beneficiaries of the exodus from Elon Musk’s X in November 2024, following the U.S. elections. But now, nearly two years later, the social network and would-be X competitor is struggling to hold on to its momentum. According to data from digital intelligence provider Similarweb , Bluesky’s mobile app had 10.4 million monthly active users worldwide in June 2026, down 27.2% year-over-year. In a

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

★ When New DF Posts Drop in a Forest and No One Is There to Read Them

It occurred to me last night that I’d gotten less feedback regarding recent posts than usual. There were a few items I’d posted in recent days that I felt sure to hear from readers about, both yea and nay. But: nothing. Crickets chirping. I almost always hear from squeaky wheels in the EU when I write about Apple and the DMA, for example, but I heard nothing about my take yesterday that Apple has effectively pantsed the European Commission regarding App Store commissions. I noticed this morning

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

Walmart Finally Caves, Will Soon Support Apple Pay

Walmart: When we think about convenience, we think about a lot of things, but making shopping feel simpler and more seamless from start to finish is a big part. And one of the moments where that matters most is at checkout. We want customers and members to have choice in how they pay, so they can check out in the way that works best for them. Now, beginning Aug. 24, we will be adding Tap to Pay to our payment options at select Walmart stores and Sam’s Club locations, with plans to roll it out to

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

The Fourth Horseman of the File-Format-Hegemony Apocalypse

Microsoft’s iPhone app for OneDrive has long supported creating three new document types via a big “+” button right in its file viewer: Excel, Word, PowerPoint. It recently came to my attention that they’ve added a fourth document type, and they even gave it real Microsoft-style “ they just have no taste ” file icon. Just look at it . The whole world’s coming to an end, Mallory. Link: techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/onedriveblog/introducing…

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

Dutch Regulator Fines Uber $1 Billion for Suspending Dishonest Drivers

Toby Sterling, reporting for Reuters: The Dutch Data Protection Authority has fined Uber €825 million ($966 million) for deactivating driver accounts through automated systems without adequately informing them, according to an August 17 decision reviewed by Reuters. The penalty would be the second-largest issued yet under Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation. It is behind only a €1.2 billion fine imposed on Meta by Ireland in 2023 for unlawfully transferring European ​Facebook users’ data

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

WorkOS: Agents Can Now Sign Up for Your App

My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring the Daring Fireball weekly newsletter this week to promote their Agent Registration. Agents are hitting your signup flow and they’re bouncing off a browser login that was designed for humans. Every one that gives up is a signup you never see. WorkOS Agent Registration turns that traffic into signups. Enroll via the dashboard and AuthKit publishes an auth.md file that agents read to register for scoped, short-lived credentials you control. Make your app agent-re

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

Mark Carney on the U.S. Under Trump: ‘Sometimes, Its Signature Is Written in Pencil’

Ian Austen, reporting for The New York Times (gift link): The morning after he pulled negotiators from trade talks in Washington and set off a new round of American tariffs, Prime Minister Mark Carney on Saturday explained to Canadians why he walked away, calling the U.S. proposal “a bad deal.” “We’ve recognized from the start that America has changed,” Mr. Carney said. “We recognize that sometimes, its signature is written in pencil.” “We cannot accept what they offered and we will not give wha

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

Cooper Sharp Proves That American Cheese Can Be Great Cheese

John Moltz, in his weekly members-only column for Six Colors (no gift links, but Moltz’s column is worth the subscription in and of itself): This week Anthropic announced that in order to identify AI from human-generated content it would be watermarking all text it generates by subtly altering the randomness at which its models picked the next word. While this might seem a perfectly cromulent means of accomplishing a worthy goal, it really rubbed John Gruber the wrong way, as if someone suggeste

AI

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

More on TestFlight’s Screwy Sort Order

I complained last week that starting with an update last month, the list of apps I’m testing in Apple’s TestFlight app has been sorted alphabetically, rather than by recency. Whatever is going on with this sort order, it isn’t affecting everyone. John Siracusa, amongst many others, has the same problem I do — his list is now alphabetical, and it’s driving him nuts too. Ryan Booker, amongst many others, still has his list sorted by recency . The weird thing is, back on August 13, the iPhone versi

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

BitCam: The 1-Bit Camera App Turns 2.0

10 years ago I wrote about BitCam 1.0 : Gorgeous, unbelievably faithful one-bit camera app for iPhone done in the style of the original Mac. A lovely tribute to Bill Atkinson’s remarkable dithering algorithm . “Catnip for old-school Mac users,” says John Siracusa . Check out the fun recent-hire-at-Apple Chris Espinosa is having with it . Originally a creation of The Iconfactory, BitCam is now in the good hands of Héliographe (coiners of the best icon-design zinger ever). Version 2.0 has everythi

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

Apple Rethinks Plan to Merge ‘Hide My Email’ Domain Name With ‘Sign In With Apple’

Apple Developer News: Starting later this year, new Sign in with Apple addresses, previously issued on privaterelay.appleid.com , will be issued on private.icloud.com . Existing addresses on privaterelay.appleid.com will continue to work and forward mail to users without interruption. After further consideration and reviewing community feedback, iCloud+ Hide My Email addresses will remain on icloud.com . Back in June, Apple announced plans to merge both systems onto the new private.icloud.com do

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

[Sponsor] Finalist 4: Inspired by Paper Day Planners

Finalist 4 is the biggest update yet to the paper-inspired day planner for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and now Apple Watch. The headline is Notes, in the app or as a folder of Markdown files that round-trips with Obsidian. Tasks in those files land on the right day, next to your reminders and events, even inside the macOS menu bar app. The rebuilt Timeline lets you pencil tasks into your day, and Apple Pencil gets special powers to sketch the plan in seconds. There’s tons more, brewed over four months wi

Daring Fireball 科技 2026-08-26

Footnote Regarding the GDPR and Cookie Permission Prompts

If you already read my “ What Is the Point of the DMA? ” piece yesterday, this morning I added a lengthy footnote regarding the DMA’s predecessor, the GDPR. Click through to read the entire note, but here’s the kicker: The GPDR went into effect 10 years ago. By their inaction, they obviously think it’s working just fine. I think they look at the situation and realize that every time any website presents a cookie-permission dickover, that dickover effectively has a “Brought to you by the European