Notices by Guy English (gte@mastodon.social)

Shit is getting real.

Swift Language is now posting directly to Mastodon. If you’re interested in Swift give them a follow. You’ll be up to date with their work and they’ll see support on this open platform.
https://mastodon.social/@swiftlang/114043297878525911

Super cool that America’s National Transportation Safety Board, which Elon Musk’s Tesla is often at odds with due to poor safety, has now decided that it will communicate only through Elon Musk’s Twitter. There is no conflict of interest because there is only one interest.
https://techhub.social/@Techmeme/113930329158083673

John is also mostly right. I think his reasoning through the hierarchy of Apple concerns doesn’t result in the wrong conclusion. So it still (as usual) holds up. My quibble is that they probably also don’t want third parties opting out because everyone would do so obviating the platform benefit of the feature. Who’d want the marketing copy the social media intern wrote being summarized by AI?

https://daringfireball.net/2025/01/bbc_news_apple_intelligence_notification_summaries

I agree with Jason. I’ll maybe go further—If Apple Intelligence summarizes your notifications then Apple *should* badge it with *their* Apple logo. Not some weird cog or brain or some other such icon. Put your name on it! Apple is the one presenting this information to you and they should be held accountable for the veracity of it. Put your highly regarded Apple logo on your AI work or get outta here. It’s either an Apple product or it’s not.
https://zeppelin.flights/@jsnell/113784134408384347

@gruber @rileytestut @Jann @caseyliss Good citizens follow the law and challenge it in court if needed. They don’t flout it and then try to escape the consequences. We’ve seen what happens with that attitude—it lands you in the White House.

Also, the coward Jeff Bezos is claiming that Americans don’t trust news media. What Americans, and everyone else, don’t trust are the billionaires who own the media. A distinction he cannot appreciate but one his choices have only served to underscore.

I called it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/28/jeff-bezos-washington-post-trust/

“Neville Chamberlain: A Role Model For Dangerous Times”—Washington Post’s upcoming op-Ed by the cowardly Jeff Bezos.

“Come back later today to get ready for pre‑order on 9.13.”

What does this even mean?

Regarding the macOS screen capture weekly warnings: If adopting new APIs is what developers need to do in order to avoid these user hostile dialogs is what is needed then Apple should provide sample code showing how to move from the old to the new. If the App is on the Mac AppStore they could and should reach out to apps with that entitlement and point the developers in the right direction. For extra points allot Apple dev rel folks to do the conversion for them if needed.
This helps the *user*.

Meanwhile, with regards to EU regulations: if you’ve been paying any attention over the past thirty years you’ll note that once some level of bullshit bites the EU hard enough then you’re bound to get a law that is very vague but tries to outline an expected behaviour. Bucking the EU is why the UK is now floundering to be taken seriously. If you don’t like dumb regulations fix the problems before they come down hard on you. And quit pretending there aren’t problems.

Twitter (X) is entirely owned by one person and it is abundantly clear just how odious that one person is. They have not only enabled hate speech but embraced it. Apple spends advertising money supporting this one person hoping it will somehow reap them some benefit. This is misguided, ugly, and demonstrative of a lack of the moral clarity they’ve worked so hard to foster as part of their brand.

https://technovia.co.uk/2023/09/04/its-long-past.html

@film_girl BSD was embroiled in legal BS when Linux came along and took off.

I swear to God this little bastard is like a Weeping Angel. Every time I blink she’s an inch closer and stone cold determined.

DUNE
https://youtu.be/Way9Dexny3w

I don’t subscribe to the “open always wins” philosophy of software but for protocols and interchange, wow, agreed upon standards controlled by no single entity are the force multiplier that’s made everything we know about our technological world work. If the demise of Twitter is the end of the CompuServe era of this form of communication then it really does feel like we’re on the cusp of something broader and hopefully better.

Brief review of a couple of other networks I’ve tried recently:
HIVE: I dig the name. The app looks quite nice. The issue with duplicate handles is bananas and doesn’t give me a lot of hope that they’ve thought this through. They also require full access to your photos which in this day and age should be a non-starter. And apparently the team is small and has no moderation strategy or security framework.
POST.news: No app. Less space than a Nomad. No idea how to find friends. Mostly links?

@charlesesmith @atpfm I think a path forward is ActivityPub as a common protocol. It has some room to evolve to be more network efficient to scale well first. But if Tumblr, Flickr, Micro.blog, Mastodon, and others adopt a common protocol we can build out a post sharing ecosystem. Nb: this doesn’t solve content moderation or legal liabilities. This is where companies come in—providing that value atop a common protocol. (Like email providers and spam filtering sort of)