From an allegedly Humane-authored press release that reads more like something HP cooked up at the last minute—even the headline, HP Accelerates AI Software Investments to Transform the Future of Work, couldn’t be bothered to mention “Humane”:

HP Inc. announced a definitive agreement to acquire key AI capabilities from Humane, including their AI-powered platform Cosmos, highly skilled technical talent, and intellectual property with more than 300 patents and patent applications. The acquisition advances HP’s transformation into a more experience-led company.

We’re really just buying the patents, and the rest of it was thrown in with the deal.

Also, WTF is an “experience-led company”?

“This investment will rapidly accelerate our ability to develop a new generation of devices that seamlessly orchestrate AI requests both locally and in the cloud,” said Tuan Tran, President of Technology and Innovation at HP.

The Humane device is not that next generation of devices. Nobody wanted it. Not even us.

“Humane’s AI platform Cosmos, backed by an incredible group of engineers, will help us create an intelligent ecosystem across all HP devices from AI PCs to smart printers and connected conference rooms. This will unlock new levels of functionality for our customers and deliver on the promises of AI.”

We want to continue our product enshittification, and Humane’s AI helps that.

The acquisition brings a highly skilled group of Humane engineers, architects, and product innovators to HP’s Technology and Innovation Organization. They will form HP IQ, HP’s new AI innovation lab focused on building an intelligent ecosystem across HP’s products and services for the future of work.

We’ll stick ’em in a corner and see if anything interesting or useful develops. If not, we’ll write ’em off for the tax deduction.

“We’re excited to join HP at such a pivotal moment in the industry and help shape the future of intelligent experiences,” said Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri, Co-founders of Humane. “HP’s scale, global reach, and operational excellence—combined with our design-led approach, integration technology, and engineering expertise—will redefine workforce productivity.”

We smoked $241 million of our investors’ money, and, out of abject desperation, are joining the only company dumb enough to take us.

I’ll wager one can of Barq’s that we never hear about Humane or Cosmos again. Bongiorno and Chaudhri, on the other hand—they’re sure to turn up: nothing a venture capitalist loves more than a repeat founder, even one who returned less than $0.50 on the dollar.

(I wonder how much of the $116 million price tag these two will see?)

Meanwhile, current Humane customers are screwed:

We are writing to inform you that, effective immediately, we are winding down the consumer Ai Pin as our business priorities have shifted.

Our focus was selling ourselves to the highest bidder. There was just the one.

Your Ai Pin will continue to function normally until 12pm PST on February 28, 2025. After this date, it will no longer connect to Humane’s servers, and .Center access will be fully retired.

We’re leading with a statement that makes it sound like business-as-usual to hide the real truth: you bought a $700 brick. Suckers.

Your Ai Pin features will no longer include calling, messaging, Ai queries/responses, or cloud access.

Bricked.

We strongly encourage you to sync your Ai Pin over Wi-Fi and download any stored pictures, videos, and notes from .Center before February 28, 2025. If you do not do this, your data will be lost upon deletion on February 28, 2025 at 12pm PST.

So bricked.

On February 28, 2025 at 12pm PST all remaining consumer data will be permanently deleted.

So f-ing bricked.

Melissa Fernandes created a gorgeously photographed, unexpectedly moving short film on the “problematic” use of the word curry—and why she disagrees:

So rather than seeing curry as an erasure of culture, I see it as the thread that connects me to my roots. It gives me the freedom to choose for myself and carve my own path.

For her, curry is “a symbol of connection.”

I went in expecting the history lesson: that it’s derived from the Tamil word kari; that it’s a catch-all term for a stunningly broad array of dishes, spices, and flavors; and that it’s a byproduct of British colonialism. I wasn’t expecting the personal aspect. Curry is a fundamental part of my Trinidadian culture (which she and I share—her family hails from Trinidad, Goa, Tanzania, and Guyana), and it was a delight to see Fernandes embrace curry—both the word and the food—to connect with each of her cultures.

As a bonus, the two curry chicken recipes featured in the film are also available. Her Trinidadian “Grandma’s Curry Chicken” is, unsurprisingly, very similar to one I sometimes make, while her Nana’s Chicken Curry is a delectable blend of African and South Asian/South Indian flavors.

The unfortunate news was shared on his Mastodon account:

Martin passed away yesterday, peacefully in his sleep. He was a true fighter until the bitter end but he is now pain free and at peace.

Fuck—and I mean this sincerely—cancer.

I didn’t know “Pilky” personally and wasn’t aware of his battles with cancer, but he—or rather, his work—was well known to me, and within Apple. Not for his software; for his other claim-to-fame: Fix Radar or GTFO.

If you’re unfamiliar with Fix Radar or GTFO, The Next Web explained its genesis shortly after it launched in 2012. Briefly, it was a plea from Pilkington to Apple to improve its Bug Reporter tool and process, itself submitted in the form of a bug report (and online petition)—with a request to other developers to file their own copy of that bug report.

I’ll save stories of the broader impact of his petition—and my and others’ attempts to improve the bug reporting experience over the years—for another post, and note only this:

Soon after that first bug report, there were dozens, then hundreds more. Some of the bugs were actual duplicates, following Pilkington’s guidelines. Others were dupes in spirit, with unique… requests. A surprising amount were angry, vitriolic rants that challenged the team’s equanimity as they parsed out the actionable bits from the hate.

It was a veritable deluge, catching us all by surprise, and sparking hundreds of rock tumbler debates.

Some six or seven years after that first report, I inherited the WWDR bug screening team, and they were still feeling the reverberations of that bug. By the time I left Apple in 2023, I estimate it had well over a thousand duplicates, near duplicates, and related complaints. 

One visible result of Pilkington’s pleas came in 2019 when Feedback Assistant replaced Bug Reporter—an attempt to address several of the issues he’d raised, to varying degrees of success.

“Pilky” took a principled stance, and I respect him for it. He cared enough to take action and galvanized hundreds of developers to stand with him in advocating for a better developer experience. He left his mark, and his influence endures.

I wish him and his loved ones peace.

MacRumors:

Apple this month started advertising on X for the first time in more than a year. The company had stopped advertising on the social media platform in November 2023 following controversial remarks made by its owner Elon Musk.

Tim Cook “personally” donated $1,000,000 to, and attended, Donald Trump’s inauguration. Then Apple complied with the Gulf of Mexico name-change nonsense, despite no legal requirement to do so. Now, they’ve restarted advertising on Elon Musk’s toxic social media service, just weeks after Musk gave a Nazi salute.

My only conclusion is that Tim Cook and Apple support this autocratic regime and its brazen, systematic destruction of American democracy.

This latest act of acquiescence is clearly meant to curry favor with Trump and co-President Musk^[1] out of fear of retaliation—especially from Musk, who’s actively suing companies who stopped advertising on X/Twitter^[2]. No doubt Cook and Co. are hoping to avoid that, making the resumption of ads a bribe to Musk—or, if you’d like to be more generous to Apple, a payoff coerced through blackmail and extortion.

At this point, if Trump demanded that Apple create a backdoor allowing access to every customer’s device, I have very little reason to believe they’ll refuse the request.

I’ve been following Apple for over four decades, first as a customer, then as an employee for twenty-two years. While I won’t claim any unique insight from this tenure, it forged in me a belief that Apple always tries to do the right thing, even when it doesn’t appear that way from the outside. Or, in human terms, their heart was always in the right place.

I can no longer confidently say I believe that.

Yes, it’s absolutely possible to take an epic, cross-country road trip in an electric vehicle (despite my skepticism!), as wonderfully captured by my friends (and former colleagues) Myke and James in their three-part travelogue.

One standout of their travelogue was The Trip in Numbers, which captures the unique experience of road-tripping with an EV (a Rivian R1T truck). They had to navigate different charging networks (they used five of them across 40 stops) and work through “EV deserts” and non-functional chargers.

And they included some nerd-bait, too! They created a meticulous spreadsheet of their entire trip—routes, hotels, charging stops, even the exact cost of and time at each one. That’s my kind of obsessive! 

Their conclusion:

It’s definitely possible to road trip cross-country in an EV! We probably spent a little longer at charging stops than we would in a gas vehicle, and there still aren’t as many chargers as there are gas stations in the country. But with just a little planning ahead, it’s definitely possible.

Seeing Myke and James complete this trip gives me more confidence, while simultaneously highlighting the importance of improved charging infrastructure. We’re moving closer to “don’t worry, just drive,” but we’re not quite there yet. Soon, I hope. Soon.

Tim Levin reports on an InsideEVs interview with Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson:

… the California-based EV startup’s CEO and CTO, thinks the future of transportation hinges on EVs with less range—way less, in fact.

I definitely didn’t expect that from the CEO of the electric vehicle company selling the only car to over 500 miles on a full charge.

Rawlinson’s argument is very forward-looking. Convincing more people to buy 180-mile EVs anticipates significant improvements to the charging infrastructure—basically, chargers everywhere you park, especially the slower, less expensive “Level 2 chargers”—which can in turn shift consumer thinking about how much range they need. If drivers can find charging stations as easily as they do gas stations (or parking meters), they may be more accepting of lower range cars, which would mean smaller batteries, which in turn would lead to cheaper electric vehicles. Of course, that puts the industry in a chicken-and-egg conundrum: Getting more 180-mile EVs works only if Level 2 chargers are ubiquitous, which no one wants to build out without enough EVs to use them, and around we go.

I’m excited for a-charger-on-every-block future, and for most of my daily driving, a reduced-range EV would be fine (as it could be for many urban dwellers)—I’ve investigated several lower-range EVs myself— but I remain skeptical about its broader appeal and practicality. In 2010 I wrote (on my now-defunct personal blog) that there was one reason I thought pure electric cars weren’t ready for the real world:

Road trips.

Call me when I can drive to Disneyland from San Francisco with nothing more than 10 minutes to top off.

We’re almost there, 15 years on—assuming the right car and the right chargers—but most EVs still require both a longer charge time and a longer route to find a charger. That 6.5-hour drive to Disneyland could take eight hours or more in a 180-mile electric car—that’s hardly progress.

Admittedly, most people might make a trip of such distance only once or twice a year, and could rent a more capable car instead, but I doubt many people would bother. Who wants the hassle and the additional expense?

We absolutely need massive improvements to our vehicle charging infrastructure, but I don’t believe the answer is a reduced range car that needs to be constantly charged, anymore than it makes sense to buy a low-MPG car that demands weekly or more top-ups at a gas station.

Less expensive EVs are an important step toward the mass marketization of electric vehicles, and 180-mile variants could be a necessary component of that evolution, but I don’t expect such vehicles represent their final form.

(Via mmalc.)

A dozen years after John Scalzi wrote this, it continues to resonate—perhaps even more so now than then:

Dudes. Imagine life here in the US — or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world — is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?

Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.

This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.

I have been sharing this concept since I first read it in 2012. It’s instantly understood and makes for great fodder for… discussion. The strongest pushback I received (and I always received pushback) was invariably some form of “Not all straight, White Males”. Which, of course, was missing the point.

The follow-ups (first, second) are also important reads, but especially Ten Years On, where Scalzi reflects on the impact of his post, and adds the very important cis identifier to his description.

This crossed my mind again because so much of America’s problems can be traced directly to Cis, Straight, White Males complaining the game has gotten harder for them, and that “DEI” makes it harder still.

This was brought into stark relief by a Mastodon post from @susankayequinn, which included this (altered) Calvin and Hobbes image:

Or, I didn’t have to compete before, now I do, and I don’t like it.

Quinn added:

Thing is, the lower-qualified white people understand this, it’s why they’re Big Mad about white dudes losing their divine right to run everything with zero consequences.

Cis, Straight, White Males want to reset the game to when they had all of the advantages. It’s a driving motivator for the Trump regime, and a significant reason why they’re in power.

Joseph Menn, writing at The Washington Post:

Security officials in the United Kingdom have demanded that Apple create a back door allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.

The British government’s undisclosed order, issued last month, requires blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not merely assistance in cracking a specific account, and has no known precedent in major democracies. Its application would mark a significant defeat for tech companies in their decades-long battle to avoid being wielded as government tools against their users, the people said, speaking under the condition of anonymity to discuss legally and politically sensitive issues.

It’s extraordinary for the U.K. to demand this disastrous, privacy-wrecking access for its own citizens. It’s beyond audacious to do so for the 2.35 billion Apple devices in use in the world.

At issue is Apple’s Advanced Data Protection for iCloud, which, per Apple’s support document:

is an optional setting that offers Apple’s highest level of cloud data security. If you choose to enable Advanced Data Protection, the majority of your iCloud data — including iCloud Backup, Photos, Notes, and more — is protected using end-to-end encryption. No one else can access your end-to-end encrypted data, not even Apple, and this data remains secure even in the case of a data breach in the cloud.

To simplify greatly, without Advanced Data Protection, your data is stored in an impenetrable safe with a ridiculously strong lock, and you and Apple each hold a key. If the government wants access, they approach Apple and ask them to unlock the safe with their key.

After enabling Advanced Data Protection, you are the only one who has a key. If you lose the key, you lose your data, but! no one else—Apple, governments, jilted exes—can get to your data either, even if they abscond with the safe itself.

What the U.K. is proposing is adding a tiny pinhole to every single safe, into which they can stick a paperclip and pop them open, anytime they want—no requests, no approvals, no notifications.

And Apple would be prevented from telling anyone that they’ve added the pinhole.

I would think every government official in every country in the world would raise hell over this: why would you subject your subjects to possible surveillance from a foreign power?

From The Verge’s story:

If Apple grants the UK government access to encrypted data, it’s likely that other countries, including the US and China, will see the opportunity to demand the same right. Apple will have to decide whether to comply, or remove its encryption service entirely. Other tech companies would almost certainly face similar requests next.

Indeed they would, and it’s possible—dare I suggest likely?—this is part of a coordinated effort by members of the Five Eyes to gain access to our devices.

In the past, I would have strenuously argued that Apple would defend our right to privacy. Privacy. That’s Apple.

Today, I’m less confident. Not because I believe Apple’s commitment to privacy has waned. On the contrary, I think it’s as strong as ever. Rather, it’s because governments are recognizing they can coerce Apple via threats of sales bans, catastrophic fines, or tariffs.

Apple is much more likely to comply when their bottom line is at stake.

One of my favorite uses of AI: to create silly, fun things (and heaven knows we can use those right now). And the remix is as good as its musical influences. A year old, but new to me.

Also: Wilford Brimley’s appearance was 🤌🏽. The man’s got flow.

From the always creative Auralnauts.

Update: Perhaps not AI? In which case, how’d they do it?! And wow, impressive!

(Via @codinghorror.)

Food scientist Richard Hartel (writing for The Conversation) explains the science of making nougat, caramel, and chocolate for this top-selling candy bar:

Let’s look at the elements of a Snickers bar as an example of candy science. As with almost everything, once you get into it, each component is more complex than you might think.

See also: The process of making Snickers in this Unwrapped segment.

Nougat, caramel, chocolate, and peanuts: a delicious confectionery combination—which I much prefer in a Baby Ruth.

I love the expressiveness of the lamp in the video accompanying this research paper from the Apple Machine Learning Research team. It will seem immediately familiar to anyone who’s watched a Pixar movie.

The paper explores the benefits of expressive and human-relatable movement in non-anthropomorphic robots:

Nonverbal behaviors such as posture, gestures, and gaze are essential for conveying internal states, both consciously and unconsciously, in human interaction. For robots to interact more naturally with humans, robot movement design should likewise integrate expressive qualities—such as intention, attention, and emotions—alongside traditional functional considerations like task fulfillment, spatial constraints, and time efficiency. In this paper, we present the design and prototyping of a lamp-like robot that explores the interplay between functional and expressive objectives in movement design.

The robot lamp—I’m going to name it Elle, after its project name, ELEGNT—Elle reacts to the researcher’s voice and hand gestures, and responds with movement, sound, video, and voice. When the researcher asks Elle about the weather, Elle gazes out the window, then turns back and answers. After the researcher suggests it’s a nice day for a walk, Elle asks if it can go too, and hangs its lamp-head dejectedly when told no.

(I actually went awww!)

One of the (many) things that makes robotic characters like R2D2, Wall•E, or C1-10P so endearing is their obvious personality. They couldn’t speak words, yet we understood them, as we do Elle. (I’m hoping the name sticks!)

In the video, Elle has a less expressive, more functional counterpart—I’ll just call it Al—which performs the same tasks, but without the playfulness. Al got the job done, but was more direct and, well, robotic. The video shows them in split-screen, and I found Elle to be infinitely more delightful.

(The research suggests appreciation for the playful Elle drops with age. I may be an outlier here, though I could see myself getting frustrated if I continuously have to wait for answers while it emotes.)

One of Apple’s best designs (and one of my favorites) was the iMac G4—an all-in-one with an LCD screen atop an articulating arm that’s attached to a snow cone white dome. The ad for that iMac shows it mimicking—some might say mocking—a man on the street with very expressive movements, even sticking out its “tongue” in the form of an ejectable CD holder.

There’s been a long-standing rumor that Apple is working on robots for the home. When I saw the research video, I immediately hoped Apple would revive that iMac G4 design for Elle—I would buy one in a heartbeat.

The research highlights one of Apple’s best traits: a desire to go beyond the mere functional, and to imbue objects with personality. Whether it’s the original Macintosh (“It sure is nice to get out of that bag!”), the sad low-battery tones of AirPods, or the kinetic bounciness of the iPhone Dynamic Island, Apple’s magic is in building expressive, not just functional, products.

As my friend @Denisvengeance@sfba.social astutely noted, “this is what makes Apple Apple.”

Jeff Atwood hosted an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit last week:

I co-founded Stack Overflow and Discourse, and made more money than a lot of folks could ever imagine. I’m worried that huge cost increases for healthcare, education, and housing are putting the opportunities I had out of reach.

I'm giving away half my wealth over 5 years - not in my will, not after I die, right now. I’ve already sent $1M to eight organizations working to help Americans. There’s a lot more to come.

Atwood writes at CodingHorror (since 2004, in fact), where he explains his goals and reasoning for donating—and for doing so now, while he’s alive. Unsurprisingly, it’s partly tied to the elections and the apparent death of the American Dream:

In November 2024, enough of us voted for people who interpret the dream in a way that I don't understand.

34% of adults in America did not exercise their right to vote. Why? Is it voter suppression, gerrymandering causing indifference, or people who felt their vote didn't matter? The 7.6% that are ineligible to vote are mostly adults living in America who have not managed to attain citizenship, or people convicted of a felony. Whatever the reasons, 42% of adults living in America had no say in the 2024 election. The vote failed to represent everyone.

The Q&A was mostly focused on his approach, mindset, and the eventual impact of his pledge. I wish it was more well-attended, but there were a handful of good questions and interesting answers.

In response to a question about what he’d like to tackle beyond his aspirations to help people Atwood said:

Mostly I want to make sure that everyone else has the same chance that I had to get ahead! I didn't want to be one of those "climb up the ladder and pull it up behind you" people.

The objective here being, I take it, to instead lift as you climb, an action too few successful people seem willing to take.

On the suggestion of making smaller, direct donations to individuals and small organizations, rather than to large charities:

I have low key done a LOT of donations and charity leading up to this, but quietly. It is no longer a time to be quiet in my opinion.

And in an unrelated followup suggesting Atwood should instead fund a media company ”to actually make news free from pressure of the rich and make news which would benefit the working class”:

I do send many, many donations to lots of independent news organizations, and have been doing so for a while. I've given a similar size donation to two independent news organizations, I just didn't talk about it. Heck, I even donated to the The Guardian (UK) recently.. doesn't get more "independent" than that ;)

I took this as a reminder: I need to redirect my news media spending away from traditional outlets and toward publications which will do the challenging work of standing up for democracy rather than capitulating to autocrats.

On maximizing the efficiency of his donations and potentially creating a charity fund:

I prefer to work with existing organizations that are already effective, and help them become more effective. I do not want to create an "Atwood Foundation" because I think the goal is more important than my family's name. I will participate and advise, and be a "hype man" to whatever extent is necessary (or excessive, pick whichever word fits), but I mostly want to lift up and empower (or combine) other organizations doing great, effective work helping people living in America.

I’ve sometimes imagined being wealthy enough to have a family foundation. Now it seems like the wrong approach.

I did have a minor quibble with one of his answers, on the high cost of education:

The cost of higher education has risen so rapidly in the last 30 years. It's not good. I personally feel that we all need to open up to the idea that a "good college" is .. any college. There need to be less exclusive, less expensive forms of college that hiring managers will accept.

I agree that any college can be a good college. My nit is with the last sentence, and the last half, especially.

My interpretation is Atwood is suggesting that “less exclusive, less expensive forms of college” don’t exist, while I know from direct experience ”that hiring managers will accept” is the bigger issue.

Deceptive.Design:

Deceptive patterns (also known as “dark patterns”) are tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn't mean to, like buying or signing up for something.

If you use a website or app today, I can guarantee you’ve run into one or more of these deceptive design patterns. For example, I’m constantly encountering Confirmshaming when unsubscribing from a list or declining an offer to sign up for discounts:

Confirmshaming works by triggering uncomfortable emotions, such as guilt or shame, to influence users' decision-making. Websites or apps employing this deceptive pattern often present users with opt-out button labels that are worded in a derogatory or belittling manner, making users feel bad about choosing not to engage with the offered service or feature. By targeting users' emotions and self-image, confirmshaming aims to increase the likelihood that users will give in to the desired action, ultimately benefiting the service provider.

I was reminded to post this remaindered link thanks to its appearance in Elie Mystal’s recently linked piece at The Nation—which, sadly, engages in confirmshaming: If you’re using an ad blocker (and you should be), they display a dialog window with a big red “Disable” button, and below that, tiny text that reads “Continue without supporting us”.

Since I started using Duolingo again, I’m also experiencing other deceptive patterns daily—especially Nagging. Oh boy, the nagging.

See also: Dark Patterns Hall of Shame.

“Parenting In the Age of Trump,” from the irreplaceable Elie Mystal in The Nation, is a brilliant examination of the mechanisms of resistance his kids (and we) need to employ. I’m tempted to quote the piece at length, but it’s best if you just read the whole thing.

But allow me these two:

I already know that my kids will encounter a civil rights environment more like the one faced by my grandparents in the segregated South in the 1920s, than the one I faced in 1980s Queens. My skills of fighting the white man through argument and lawsuits seem completely irrelevant to the lives MAGA will force them to live. I’m a classically trained effete liberal columnist trying to prepare children to live in a Hobbesian state of perpetual white violence against us. What the hell do I know about what they must learn to do? We are well past the point where “pulling your pants up” and engaging in respectability politics designed to appease “reasonable” white folks is of any use.

And:

People can entirely miss me with “But golly gee, Elie. If we use the tactics of our enemy we are no better than them.” That way of thinking is obsolete. That way of thinking is how you get whatever the hell the “Democratic Party” is doing right now. Everybody wants to raise Barack Obama. I’ve got to start trying to raise Harriet Tubman. In a worst case scenario, I have to be raising Oskar Schindler. I need my kids to be able to chloroform a baby they’re hiding in their attic when ICE comes around, then walk downstairs and pay Musk’s troops in Bitcoin to make them go away.

Seriously, just go read it.

(Via @echoz@kopiti.am.)

After mentioning 1967 The Fantastic 4 series in my aforelinked piece, I searched for it on the major streaming services. For apparent legal reasons, it’s not available on any of them.

I found a few stray episodes on YouTube, but only one place had all 20 episodes:

The Internet Archive.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Protect the Internet Archive.

As media companies merge and movies and TV shows stop being profitable, classics like this will simply disappear, as if they never existed—unless we take strides to preserve them. I’m glad someone cared enough about this show to upload it to the Internet Archive, and I hope IA will continue to exist long into the future to host it. Just in case, though, I’ve downloaded my own archive of the show.

Having watched a few episodes, a couple of thoughts:

• The opening sequence is still etched in my brain: the theme song (especially the sound effects!), the four-hands-to-the-center, The Thing toppling Dr. Doom, and Johnny hot-footing some guards—all like I’d watched it yesterday.
• I was struck by how wonderfully, hilariously, extra cheesy it was. From line readings to jokes to painfully expository dialogue. It was a joy. I’m confident my 12-year-old self had no idea.
• Sue “Invisible Girl” Richards was voiced by Jo Ann Pflug. For reasons I can’t quite fathom, I very clearly remember her as a panelist on Match Game.

I’m nostalgically inclined to like this trailer: Growing up, I was a huge fan of The Fantastic 4 (especially the 1967 animated series—in reruns, thank you very much!). I was especially fond of Johnny “Human Torch” Storm and his catchphrase “Flame on!”. I would doodle him in my notebooks (very elementary stuff, mind you; basically stacks of rectangles representing a body, arms, and legs, in red marker). I’m definitely digging the aesthetic here—the retro-’60s-high-tech vibe works for me—and the soundtrack is, well, fantastic. I’m excited.

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today introduced Apple Invites, a new app for iPhone that helps users create custom invitations to gather friends and family for any occasion. With Apple Invites, users can create and easily share invitations, RSVP, contribute to Shared Albums, and engage with Apple Music playlists.

An app to manage invitations was not on my 2025 Apple bingo card. My only question is which Apple executive did Evite piss off to get themselves Sherlocked?

Surprisingly (or not), it requires an iCloud+ subscription to create invitations.

This feature is cool:

Additionally, participants can easily contribute photos and videos to a dedicated Shared Album within each invite to help preserve memories and relive the event.

It looks like an extension of Apple’s current Sharing Suggestions, plus uploading from the web for non-iPhone users.

And of course, it comes with the inescapable and obligatory Apple Intelligence features, including Image Playground and Writing Tools.

I’m looking forward to playing with this.

This Terry Gross interview with Questlove is a great companion to yesterday’s piece.

My favorite part comes about midway through, when Gross asks Questlove about Ashlee Simpson’s lip-synching failure and the rumors that “lots of acts” lip-synced. Questlove offers a thoughtful defense of Simpson and ties the rise of lip-synching to the popularity of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which he suggests redefined audience expectations—that what they see in videos is what they’ll get at concerts. Then, this (from the interview transcript):

You know, I think people - again, the Thriller effect is it must be perfect. I’m kind of from the school of warts and all. Like, I love seeing the warts. I love seeing the pimples, the mistakes. Like, to me, that’s the human touch. And I think people need to trust that more. Like, you know, things don’t have to be Instagram filter perfect 24/7.

That’s a perspective I’m working on achieving myself.

And we both appreciate the view from behind the scenes:

Like, for me, the best part of the show is what happens in the commercials. Like, watching the teamster guys and the crew guys, like, a furious pace in two minutes, like, build an entire set while you know, the artists are quick changing in the back, and will they make it in in two minutes flat? And to me, that’s the best part of the show, like, watching the choreography of a well-oiled machine.

I always loved those fleeting backstage moments we’d sometimes catch during commercial breaks. I’d happily watch entire episodes of just that.

I finally watched this marvelous talk from legendary game designer Jordan Mechner on the development of his groundbreaking game, Karateka, presented at GHC ’24, 40 years after the game’s debut.

I enjoyed hearing Mechner discuss his inspirations, development process, and challenges. He has kept journals since college and uses them to illustrate his story. His ambition is evident in his writings. In one entry, he noted:

My goal for this summer is to finish Karateka. If it’s half as big as I dream it may be, that should be enough to launch me into the video game world.

In another:

I can’t help vaguely dreaming about doing for video games what Walt Disney did for animation.

No doubt that ambition was a major contributor to his eventual success.

He also shared constructive insights:

This is the phase when it’s tempting to just wrap it up, but it’s also the phase that makes the different (sic) between an okay product and a really outstanding one.

Karateka was one of a handful of games I played obsessively on my Apple //c during high school and beyond (others include Lode Runner and Mechner’s second game, Prince of Persia). There was nothing quite like Karateka at the time. The combination of mechanics, storytelling, and music created a classic game and an unforgettable experience. The talk transported me back to my youth, a wonderful opportunity to reminisce.

Mechner also has two books based on the journals he kept: “The Making of Karateka” (also an interactive documentary) and “The Making of Prince of Persia”.

For the techies, he also released the source code for Prince of Persia on the Apple II and related technical information. Reading 6502 assembly after 40 years is a trip!

Yair Rosenberg at The Atlantic reviews another delightful time-waster from Neal Agarwal (Apple News+):

The name of this monstrosity, which was released earlier this month, is Stimulation Clicker, and it is more than a game. It is a reenactment of the evolution of the internet, a loving parody of its contents, and a pointed commentary on how our online life went wrong. In bringing each element of the web to life and layering them on top of one another, the game ingeniously re-creates the paradox of the modern internet: Individually, the components are enjoyable. But collectively, they are unbearable. When everything on the internet demands attention, paying attention to anything becomes impossible.

At one point I had LoFi beats, a true-crime podcast, rain sounds, a streamer, an exercise guru, and a few more things all vying for my audio attention. I found the cacophony surprisingly soothing: Unable to focus on everything, I ended up focusing on nothing. It became meditative—an unexpected cheat code that disconnected my brain, allowing it to relax in the clamor.

I played for about 15 minutes. That’s 14 minutes more than I expected—or wanted. Eventually, I was generating 8,000 stimulations per second without having to click a thing.

After buying a bunch of stuff, including a full-screen Subway Surfer, one more item appeared. It cost 2,000,000 stimulations and came with a warning that it could not be undone. I bought it.

It was the perfect reward.

The enormously talented Joan Westenberg launched her “self funded and independent” publication The Index earlier this year. From her launch announcement:

Today, I’m launching The Index - a new publication focused on thoughtful, independent journalism and editorial opinion that matters. It’s always free to read, and never ad-supported.

From day one, we’re taking a stance that’s both principled and practical.

We’ll be funded solely by donations and by our readers through pledges and donations, not venture capital or billionaire ownership.

I learned about The Index because these fantastically written blog posts, all with evocative titles, kept popping up on my social media and RSS feeds. For example:

• “Flags at Full Staff, Discourse at Half-Mast: How Trump’s Inauguration Turned Protocol into Protest”:

But why? Why are we talking about flagpoles? When did the vertical position of a piece of cloth become a measure of patriotic devotion?

Like much of what happens in Trumpworld, it’s a game of performative signaling. Abbott’s order demonstrates loyalty to Trump, broadcasts defiance of federal (and therefore, Democrat) authority, and frames respect for Carter as subordinate to celebrating Trump’s return to power. The technical violation of flag protocol is a feature rather than a bug; and it allows Abbott to position himself as a bold defender of Trump against an *entirely imagined *conspiracy of Democratic flag-lowerers.

• “What Does “Masculine Energy” Even Mean, Mark?”:

He means being an asshole. Full stop.

He means the Trump approach to leadership: belittling opponents, dismissing criticism as weakness, and treating basic human dignity as optional. He means the Andrew Tate brand of masculinity: performing dominance while calling it strength. He means the Elon Musk school of management: firing people via tweet and calling it efficiency.

• “This Man is a Nazi.”

If it walks like a Nazi and talks like a Nazi, there is a good chance it’s Elon Musk.

• “This Man is a Coward.”

Power corrupts, but cowardice corrupts more completely. It corrupts not through excess but through absence - the absence of backbone, principle, and basic human courage. Zuckerberg had every resource needed to stand up to Trump’s assault on American institutions. He chose weak-willed submission in its place.

• “Nobody Wants a Nazi Electric Car”:

Remember 2015? A Tesla parked in your driveway announced something specific: innovation, environmental consciousness, and a stake in the future. The cars weren’t perfect, but they meant something. They represented hope - for clean energy, American manufacturing, and a world beyond fossil fuels. That Tesla is dead. Elon Musk killed it. He took it out back and strangled it with his sweaty, bare hands.

There are more, and that’s my point: They’re all really good. Sharp, pithy, often brutal, remarkably forthright. As I read them I find myself ruefully muttering “Damn, wish I’d written that.”

If you want more from her (and you will!), she also writes at the self-titled westenberg.

I’m a massive fan of Apple’s 1987 Knowledge Navigator concept video. Like other tech nerds, I often filter technology advancements through the lens of that vision: How close are we to that future?

Much of what it anticipates has come to pass in the ensuing four decades—video streaming, touchscreens, globally connected computers, wireless networking, and more.

Even some portions of the most fantastical and oft-discussed aspect of the video—the human-like digital assistant, Phil—are possible today; for example, Phil’s ability to summarize vast amounts of data, understand the spoken word, or speak in a voice that’s virtually indistinguishable from human.

However, the core of the video—where a professor has a human-like conversation with his digital assistant, which can anticipate needs and act autonomously on the professor’s behalf—well, we’re not quite there yet.

This fascinating research paper (PDF, video summary) attempts to answer the questions I’ve often asked myself: Why aren’t we there yet? What’s preventing us from having a “conversational agent” like Phil? Is it purely technological limitations, or are there other issues at play?

What struck me the most about this paper was the systematic approach the authors took to identify the nature of the interactions between the professor and Phil: What is Phil’s role at any given moment? Is it proactive, interruptive, collaborative, or passive?

The researchers looked at every verbal exchange between the professor and his digital assistant, then identified what those exchanges represent and how various “constraints” might prevent or delay the implementation and adoption of conversational agents today.

The authors applied three frameworks to analyze the interactions between the professor and Phil, and using these frameworks, they captured “dialogue, actions, and agent capabilities” and identified “events” that were:

[…] feasible and common today, feasible and not common today, or not feasible today. Feasibility was determined by comparing the demonstrated agent capabilities to those of widely adopted agents like Apple’s Siri and to current trends in HCI [Human Computer Interaction] research and development. These characterizations were then used to consider why the Phil agent differs from today’s personal digital assistants.

From this effort, they identified

[…] a list of 26 agent capabilities, such as “Knowledge of contacts and relationships” (e.g., Mike’s mother) and “Can accurately extract data from a publication” (e.g., Phil summarizes the results of an academic paper using a graph).

Those 26 agent capabilities were condensed into nine broad capabilities—knowledge of user history, knowledge of the user, advanced analytic skills, and so on. For each of those, they focused on two actionable categories (“currently feasible but not common today” and “not currently feasible”).

For me, these “agent capabilities” and their feasibility were the most intriguing part of the study. When Apple announced Apple Intelligence last June, I did a very naïve version of this with their demos. I wish I was familiar then with the frameworks and methodology this paper used! 

Back to the paper…. The nine broad capabilities were then:

[…] tagged with constraints that restrict their adoption or development […]. Some were based on the user, such as trust or privacy, and some were based on available technology itself. The authors used categories similar to those used in previous studies of barriers to technology adoption to group the constraints into three user-centered categories (privacy, social and situational, trust and perceived reliability), and one technology category.

Those “constraints” are effectively reasons why it may be difficult—or impossible—to develop and deploy a “conversational agent” today. A few reasons, from my perspective:

• Technology. With today’s available systems, two-way conversation with a digital assistant is just barely possible, and the ability for those systems to interrupt a conversation to provide answers to unasked questions is nonexistent. We’re barely at a level where questions we ask are answered correctly. While tools enabling autonomous behavior are coming online, they remain highly experimental and limited in scope.
• Privacy. Phil seemingly knows everything about Professor Mike, and is actively listening at all times. There remains an inherent distrust of systems that are “always on.” Many consumers today already (wrongly) believe their Siri, Google, or Alexa devices are “spying” on them. It will take a concerted effort to convince customers to allow the kind of constant, active listening that’s demonstrated in the video.
• Trust and Reliability. The professor implicitly trusts Phil to accomplish assigned tasks, without requiring confirmation, and without concerns about Phil’s ability to successfully complete those tasks. Even with an extremely competent human assistant, such trust can take significant time to establish, and a single mistake can erode that trust completely. Meanwhile, we’ve all had that experience where “Call mom” becomes “Call Ron”, or our dictated text message shows up as unintelligible on the other side. We’re currently a long way from trust and reliability.
• Social and Situational. Phil and the professor primarily communicate verbally. While they appear to be in a large, private (home) office, making these interactions feasible, it would limit functionality in most other spaces, including traditional offices, libraries, and classrooms. Even with headphones, talking out loud “to yourself”—even if others are doing the same thing—might be a stigma that’s difficult to overcome. Apple introduced “Type to Siri” in iOS 18, partly as a way to allow non-verbal users to benefit from Siri, but also with an explicit acknowledgment that “out loud” communications are frowned upon in some environments.

My takeaway from the paper is that while (much) improved technology is a necessary component to enable conversational agents, it is not sufficient. Overcoming the technical hurdles does not immediately bring us the kind of human/digital assistant engagement we see Knowledge Navigator. Even if there’s an unanticipated technological leap forward, the other three constraints remain as significant barriers to the introduction and eventual adoption of a Phil-level agent.

Technology, it seems, is the easy part.

Produced and directed by my friend (and former colleague) Thaddeus Cooper and his partner Kevin Kreitman, this award-winning 90-minute documentary (subtitled The Real Story of the Beautiful Game of Skee-Ball) is the culmination of thirteen years of meticulous research, writing, and production. It tells the fascinating—and unexpectedly involved—story of how “the 116 year old game of Skee-Ball survived wars, depressions, [and] tech revolutions to become the most beloved game in arcade history.”

The documentary is based on Thad and Kevin’s 464-page book on the history of Skee-Ball, so calling this documentary “deeply researched” is truly a massive understatement. It uses hundreds of historic photographs, newspaper clippings, even personal letters—some from Thad’s own collection—to give life to the narrative. I was thoroughly engrossed. Who knew there was so much history behind this ubiquitous arcade game?

And the Ball Rolls On…: The Real Story of the Beautiful Game of Skee-Ball is now available for purchase or rent on AppleTV, Amazon Prime Video, and YouTube.

Over the weekend and into this morning, seemingly every entry in my newsfeed was about DeepSeek, a China-based AI lab which rolled out a highly capable AI model called R1. By far the best of the summaries I saw was from Ben Thompson at Stratechery.

The long and short of it: DeepSeek’s newly announced R1 model reportedly equaled the capabilities of OpenAI’s o1 model, which is considered the leader in the space, but uses vastly less powerful—and vastly less expensive—hardware to do so. This led to a meltdown of sorts in both the AI community at large, and the tech stock market. Nvidia, the world’s most valuable “AI” company, cratered nearly 17% on the news, and other AI-adjacent companies were also affected, both positively and negatively.

(Thompson’s podcast partner, John Gruber, helpfully distills the market impact over at Daring Fireball.)

Thompson delves into the backstory of DeepSeek, explains some of the technical underpinnings, and assesses the ramifications (real and imagined) on the future of AI computing.

He also highlights a tweet from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella suggesting one future we can certainly anticipate (and introducing me to Jevons paradox): 

Jevons paradox strikes again! As AI gets more efficient and accessible, we will see its use skyrocket, turning it into a commodity we just can't get enough of.

Cheaper and ubiquitous AI is coming. We’re edging ever closer to an intelligent agent future.

Clever design, powered by two AA batteries, and waterproof. I went from viewing to buying in under a minute. Usually that kind of purchasing abandon is reserved for Apple products.

We’re all in on AirTags—they’re in all of our suitcases, purses, and backpacks, on my bike, plus a spare one for rental cars. I’ve always worried about an AirTag battery dying just when it was needed^[1]—the very inspiration for this product.

Now, about the name TimeCapsule….

(Via Kottke.)

In an article for The Conversation, Dr. David Sterling Brown draws surprising parallels between Shakespeare’s Richard III and Donald Trump, while wielding his hyperlinks like a blade:

As Shakespeare depicts the king’s reign from June 1483 to August 1485, Richard III’s kingdom was wrought with chaos, confusion and corruption that fueled civil conflict in England. […]

Shakespeare’s play highlights the flawed character of a man who wanted to be, in modern terms, a dictator, someone who could do whatever he pleased without any consequences.

Dr. Brown is a scholar of Shakespeare and Associate Professor of English at Trinity College. In his piece, he lays out several more striking similarities between the two men:

Much like Trump during his first term, Shakespeare’s Richard did not lead with morals, ethics or integrity.

Richard lied compulsively to everyone, as his soliloquys (sic) that contain his innermost thoughts make clear.

Like Trump, Richard used empty rhetoric to persuade people with “sugared words” — he was not interested in speaking or promoting truth.

Moreover, Shakespeare’s Richard was a sexist and misogynist who verbally and physically disrespected women, including his wife and mother.

Each link is a swordsman’s cut, underscoring an already compelling case.

He wraps with this:

As a political leader, Richard III left a legacy in English history as one of England’s worst monarchs.

Thus hath history spoken, the comparison is complete.

Jared Newman at Fast Company rediscovers paper note-taking (because Field Notes):

I’ve never been much of a paper person. Although I did carry around a reporter’s notebook for a newspaper job in the pre-iPhone era, I prefer to file my thoughts away in digital form, where they can be categorized, backed up online, and accessed from any device.

By contrast, I love stationery and notebooks and have dallied, on and off for over twenty years, with ink-on-paper for my note-taking. But, for many of the same reasons Newman gives, it doesn’t tend to keep. Plus, I type infinitely faster than I write, and seldom struggle to decipher my own typing.

However—

Perhaps best of all—at least for me—is that you can’t delete what you’ve written in ink. I’ve tried using an iPad with an Apple Pencil for handwritten notes and have reviewed a few digital writing tablets, and they always feel counterproductive to me. As an obsessive self-editor, I can’t resist the erase and undo tools that digital notepads provide. The only option with paper is to forge ahead.

This resonated deeply. I, too, am an “obsessive self-editor”—for me, writing and editing are inextricably linked. (Or, as I first wrote, the act of editing is inextricably linked to the act of writing.) I’ll often spend more time editing a piece than I writing it, as I get bogged down on how to express this thought here rather than getting the broader ideas out.

When I use an iPad and Apple Pencil, I end up with the worst of both worlds: a slower, harder-to-decipher output that I still endlessly edit as I write—truly a hell-on-earth scenario.

I’m going to experiment with drafting a few future pieces on paper. Will I find it “relaxing” and “less stressful,” as Newman did, or be frustrated by my inability to refine as I go? It’s been years since I wrote more than a few sentences by hand. I’m as worried about cramps in my hand as I am in my writing style.

Paul Kafasis engages in some excellent, self-inflicted nerd-snipping on One Foot Tsunami:

I asked my iPhone who won Super Bowls 1 through 60 (that’s “I” through “LX” in Super Bowl styling) and captured a screenshot of each result.

The results are utterly appalling:

So, how did Siri do? With the absolute most charitable interpretation, Siri correctly provided the winner of just 20 of the 58 Super Bowls that have been played. That’s an absolutely abysmal 34% completion percentage. If Siri were a quarterback, it would be drummed out of the NFL.

Some of the results are especially awful. For example, to the question “Who won Super Bowl XXIII?”, Siri responds with the number of times Bill Belichick has won or appeared in the Super Bowl—completely irrelevant.

John Gruber at Daring Fireball wrote a brutally (but fairly) titled follow-up, Siri Is Super Dumb and Getting Dumber, sharing the appalling results to his own query, “Who won the 2004 North Dakota high school boys’ state basketball championship?”

New Siri — powered by Apple Intelligence™ with ChatGPT integration enabled — gets the answer completely but plausibly wrong, which is the worst way to get it wrong. It’s also inconsistently wrong — I tried the same question four times, and got a different answer, all of them wrong, each time. It’s a complete failure.

We’ve all had the Siri experience of getting a clearly wrong or patently useless answer to our query. It’s gotten to the point where I merely roll my eyes and move on—I rarely even screenshot mistakes anymore.

But I do feel sorry for the Siri team. I have some good friends who work there, and I had occasion to work with the team on Siri responses a few years back. I know they cringe every time these failures hit the blogs. They know more than anyone just how much Siri needs to improve.

The latest scuttlebutt (from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg) is that longtime Apple exec Kim Vorrath is moving to Apple Intelligence in an effort to whip it into shape. I’ve watched Vorrath and her Program Office teams operate from the inside for many years. The biggest impact she and her team had across engineering was instilling discipline: every feature or bug fix had to be approved; tied to a specific release; and built, tested, and submitted on time. It was (is!) a time-intensive process—and engineering often complained about it, sometimes vocally—but the end result was a more defined, less kitchen-sink release each year. To a significant extent, her team is the reason why a feature may get announced at WWDC but not get released until the following spring. She provided engineering risk management.

I hope the Vorrath and the Siri team can make this work. I need them to make this work. The future promised by Apple Intelligence is too compelling for it to fail.