My wife is leading the charge on tough contract negotiations for her ER team after receiving disrespectful (hostile?) offers. It seems they scheduled her meeting first as the youngest, newest member, but they’ll find she’s not to be trifled with. Send her some good vibes while she holds her ground!
🔗 Disney+ app debuts new ESPN tile, adds free Hulu and sports content (Ryan Christoffel / 9to5mac.com):
To get all of the content available inside the Disney+ app’s ESPN and Hulu tiles, you’ll need to subscribe to the three-service bundle.
However, Disney is offering a nice perk for standalone Disney+ subscribers too.
Line 10: Bundle
Line 20: Unbundle
Line 30: GOTO Line 10
(I don’t mind the integration, though.)
Alex Heath: ‘Xreal’s new glasses are a surprisingly good TV for your face’
The Xreal One uses a custom birdbath lens system to achieve what the company says is equivalent to a 1080p display with a 50-degree field of view. Practically, based on my experience watching Netflix’s Rebel Ridge from my plane seat (a very good movie), that translates to a fairly immersive viewing experience.
I think these kinds of dedicated, personal display glasses have some legs (well, arms, I s’pose) while the AR/VR wars wage on.
🔗 Guess What Apple Paid to “Buy” the Firefox Extension for iCloud Keychain (Erlend / havn.blog):
“But now Apple has managed to scrape together the cash to build one themselves??"
Not quite… Apple reached out to Aurélien, through Mozilla, to ask if Apple could simply get the code of the unofficial plugin. (Source)
“Ah, so instead of starting from scratch, they instead bought a good starting-point. Smart."
Well, not quite…
The developer asked for a $1 GitHub sponsorship in recognition of the “sale”. Apparently, it’s been crickets.
Gross, Apple, your cheapness is showing.
PSA for Micro.blog app users: If you can’t scroll to see the text you’re composing (🤯), try showing the title field (in post settings). That’ll allow you to scroll for some reason. Until you hit a character limit, then you need to tap into the title field and back out to reenable scrolling. Wild.
Emma Roth, theverge.com:
Max is joining the growing list of streaming services that offer 24/7 cable-like channels. On Wednesday, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that it’s testing a set of always-on channels with collections of HBO shows, movies, and documentaries and it’s rolling them out to a small group of ad-free subscribers in the US.
Max is launching five channels to start, including one called HBO Comedy for original series like Curb Your Enthusiasm, documentaries about comedians, and comedy films.
I’ve not tried one of these themed, always-on streaming channels, but I like the idea!
We’re now learning that China has penetrated America’s telecommunications systems deeply, in a breathtaking hack whose scope is still being revealed. It appears this was accomplished using backdoors mandated back in 1994 for use by law enforcement. This should not be surprising. When it comes to backdoors being exploited maliciously, it’s a matter of “when”, not “if”.
As a result of this hack, government officials are making an abrupt about-face. Americans are now being urged to use encrypted communications whenever possible. That is a good idea.
😳 I did not hear about this.
David Sparks, on Apple’s AI Writing Tools:
Another problem with the text tools is the implementation of recommended changes. You can have it either replace your text entirely (without any indicator of what exactly was changed) or give you a list of suggested edits, which you must implement manually. Other players in this space, like Grammarly, highlight recommended changes and make it easy to implement or ignore them with a button.
He’s right. Not only is the proofreading not good enough despite being text-based (AI’s bread and butter), but the interface (Apple’s bread and butter) sucks too.
PSA: For many truncated RSS feeds, most RSS clients have the option to try to pull an article’s full text from its webpage. In Reeder Classic, for example, simply right-click (long-press) a feed and enable the automatic reader view. Works on the newly truncated Verge feed!
Oooh I can’t wait to try this out!
🆕📝 The Verge (finally) gets a subscription
I'm not mad about it, but I am curious to see where they draw the line for metered stories. (And the second "finally" in one day!? December 3rd's got some mojo.)
A perfect scene in Illumination’s The Grinch with superb music from Pentatonix that makes me laugh every single time. 😂
🔗 Manton Reece: ‘Wrapstodon’
Good points throughout. I appreciated the bits Manton quoted from others in the community. People can like different things, but I encourage folks to question whether post stats are actually doing them any favors.
Tim Hardwick, MacRumors: ‘Apple Raises Indonesia Investment Offer to $1B Amid iPhone Ban’
The negotiation stems from Indonesia’s October ban on iPhone 16 sales after authorities determined Apple had not met the country’s requirement for 40% domestic content in smartphones. The government previously rejected Apple’s initial $10 million offer, followed by a $100 million proposal that included plans for research and development facilities and developer academies.
Play a little hardball and Apple will raise their offer 100-fold! 😯
🆕📝 Holy smokes, Apple finally brought Replay to the Music app*
They finally brought the might of their engineering talent to bear... to add a web view. 😆
People have ideas. I'm mostly worried.
I’m feeling pretty good about the business cards and thank you postcards I’ve made for Onward Mountain Guides! Any suggestions before I send them off the printer?
Charlie Chapman is checkmating in chess while we’re all playing checkers. He instructed ChatGPT’s advanced voice to translate his natural language requests into ones a HomePod can understand. It totally works!
He’s tongue-in-cheek about it being a preview of LLM Siri, but it will be pretty great.
🔗 Apple TV+ announces “Lucky,” new limited series starring Anya Taylor-Joy:
In “Lucky,” Taylor-Joy stars as a young woman who left behind the life of crime she was raised in years ago, but must now embrace her darker, criminal side one final time in a desperate attempt to escape her past.
Sign me up! ATJ is great in everything, and we know she kills it in book adaptations. Its to be produced by Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine media company and will be an Apple Studios production.
Ryan Christoffel, at 9to5Mac, on Pat Gelsinger’s ouster at Intel and how Apple has avoided repercussions with its move to Apple silicon four years ago:
However, even though Apple can’t actually take much responsibility for its former partner’s decline, this story is a big win for Apple silicon nonetheless.
Why? Because not only has Apple silicon revitalized the Mac like Intel never could—it has also safeguarded Apple against being harmed by Intel’s rough patch.
It’s true. I never worry* about how Intel is doing anymore.
*Not that I ever lost sleep over the behemoth chipmaker’s prospects.
Bluesky’s notification settings are notably lacking over a year into their service. Even Threads has pretty good granular control. I want to trim down to notifications for replies only, Micro.blog-style.
And while he’s at it, President Biden should also pardon himself, for every act he’s ever committed — or may commit up until January 20, 2025.
One way or another, the question of whether the President can pardon himself is going to be tested in front of the Supreme Court this decade. It might as well be decided based on the case of an innocent man — and it will force the Trump Justice Department to argue that a President can’t pardon himself.
It’s beyond disappointing that “strike first” is where we are with our judicial system. But it might work.
Well, shit. There goes my automatic Instagram → Micro.blog (& Threads & Bluesky) cross-poster. I can’t be too mad—I knew Meta was a fickle, closed-web-loving beast when I made it. But it let me post to Instagram (where my friends are) and my microblog (where I wish they were) without any hassle. 🙁
🆕📝 A new Dia for web browsing?
The Browser Company is taking another big swing. I admire their creativity and think their vision is mostly on-point. I just don't know if it's going to revolve around the web browser.