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The urge that comes with power
Nilay Patel on this week's The Vergecast:
You can just see that they picked the finances over the product over and over again. And if they had just figured out a way to make in-app purchases worth more to developers than leaving the ecosystem, developers, I think, would have picked in-app
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Strong (fanboy) opinions loosely held
Tim Hardwick writing for MacRumors: iPhone 17 Air USB-C Port May Have This Unusual Design Quirk
Dummy models shared by AppleTrack suggest that Apple has made some subtle adjustments to accommodate internal components in the tighter chassis. Most notably, the USB-C port on the bottom edge is no longer centered front-to-back.
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The prices, they keep a-rising
Microsoft in a support document today:
As of May 1, we have adjusted recommended retailer pricing for our consoles and controllers worldwide. We also expect to adjust the pricing of some of our new, first-party games starting this holiday season to $79.99.
This PDF shows the new pricing in the US, which includes
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Some low-stakes misinformation spread like wildfire, and I got it wrong too
Giovanni Colantonio writing for Digital Trends: The Confusion Around $90 Switch 2 Games Proves How Broken the Internet Is
There’s just one problem: *Mario Kart World* does not cost $90, at least based on what we know right now. No currently announced Nintendo Switch 2 game appears to either, but it hasn’t stopped
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A clear-eyed look at LLM energy use
Andy Masley: A Cheat Sheet for Why Using ChatGPT Is Not Bad for the Environment
If you want to prompt ChatGPT 40 times, you can just stop your shower 1 second early. If you normally take a 5 minute shower, set a timer for 299 seconds instead, and you’ll have saved enough water to
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Here we go…
Jay Peters reporting on yesterday's Epic vs Apple trial decision:
Epic Games v. Apple judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers just ruled that, effective immediately, Apple is no longer allowed to collect fees on purchases made outside apps and blocks the company from restricting how developers can point users to where they can make purchases
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It's a legal issue, not something AI is here to fix
Microsoft has released a demo of an AI-generated version of Quake you can play in the browser (well, desktop browsers, iPads aren’t good enough, apparently). And I don’t mean a version of the game vibe-coded, I mean one that takes your inputs and generates every updated frame using an LLM. They’
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Foo Fighers, but ska (trust me)
JER is awesome, and he's been doing these ska covers of pop songs for years now. They're a surefire way to brighten your day.
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The Academy makes another reasonable choice!
Brooks Barnes: Oscars OK the Use of A.I., With Caveats
A.I. and other digital tools “neither help nor harm the chances of achieving a nomination,” the Oscar rules now state. The academy added, however, that the more a human played a role in a film’s creation, the better. (“The academy and each
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You don't have to be famous to be great at your job
Christopher Butler: You Can Be a Great Designer and Be Completely Unknown
Especially today, when we live in an attention economy that equates visibility with value. Social media follower counts, speaking engagements, press mentions, and industry awards have become the measuring sticks of design success. This creates a distorted picture of what greatness in design
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The Intuit vs the government cage fight
Daniel Boguslaw: Intuit, Owner of TurboTax, Wins Battle Against America’s Taxpayers
Even when the Biden administration broke through in the Inflation Reduction Act to fund a pilot program for Direct File, which expanded to 25 states this tax season, Intuit didn’t stop fighting. Instead, it continued cajoling lawmakers and the White House into
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Chrome might be for sale. OpenAI says they'd buy it.
Ryan Whitwam: ChatGPT Head Tells Court OpenAI Is Interested in Buying Chrome
According to Turley, OpenAI would throw its proverbial hat in the ring if Google had to sell. When asked if OpenAI would want Chrome, he was unequivocal. "Yes, we would, as would many other parties," Turley said.
And:
If OpenAI were
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If this post isn’t a joke, it’ll win my “most cringe blog post of 2025” award
I don’t have time to read every dumb post about AI that comes across my feeds (it’s a new, massive, growing market so of course there are a bunch of people who are getting it way wrong), so I didn’t think much about this post when I saw it glide by in
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AI as Normal Technology
Arvind Narayanan & Sayash Kapoor: AI as Normal Technology
We articulate a vision of artificial intelligence (AI) as normal technology. To view AI as normal is not to understate its impact—even transformative, general-purpose technologies such as electricity and the internet are “normal” in our conception. But it is in contrast to both utopian
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Slamming Into Walls
Mark Crump: Slamming Into Walls
The thought process behind this current post, was a long decision made quickly. It was a difficult decision as I spent a lot of time reconciling where I believe the future of computing to lie, and the reality of where computing is. The hard fact is, I can’t currently
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Stunts are getting their Oscar in 2028
Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences: Academy Establishes Stunt Design Award for 100th Oscars
The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today the creation of an annual competitive Academy Award® for Achievement in Stunt Design, beginning with the 100th Academy Awards® for films released in 2027.
Good!
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Apple hits a major milestone in greenhouse emissions
Apple Newsroom: Apple Surpasses 60 Percent Reduction in Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Apple today announced that the company has surpassed a 60 percent reduction in its global greenhouse gas emissions compared to 2015 levels, as part of its Apple 2030 goal to become carbon neutral across its entire footprint in the next five years.
I
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Tariffs, integrity, and chaos
Ben Thompson: American Disruption (emphasis mine):
[T]he most important components for executing a fundamental shift in trade are those that go into building actual factories, or equipment for those factories. In the vast sea of stupidity that are these tariffs this is perhaps the stupidest detail of all: the U.S. is tariffing raw