1. Why should Trump deliver for anyone but Trump?
This Bloomberg piece forgets one important fact: Donald Trump is not going to be on the ticket next time. He doesn’t have to deliver a dime for ordinary voters, and will act accordingly.
2. You can now sync Apple Passwords with Firefox… sort of
I don’t use Apple Passwords. It’s not that it’s not a good product (and if you aren’t using a password manager at all and you use Apple stuff, use it) but I simply hate putting all my eggs in one basket. Imagine losing access to your Apple account, and losing your cloud files, music, photos, and your passwords too. If you use it, the company has now released a Firefox extension so you can have access to passwords in that browser too… but only on Mac. I don’t really get this. Apple already has a pluging for Passwords which works in Edge, so why not Windows too? Why not Linux? Why not try and make a useful service usable everywhere?
3. AI is about personal efficiency
Rachel Coldicutt has been doing some interesting work this year on many things, including working with non-technical organisations figuring out how to use AI. One of the points she makes – which I think is brilliant – is that at the moment, AI is about “personal efficiencies rather than organisational gains”. That tallies with my experience too: the way that generative AI is being used is similar to the first wave of search engines, when ordinary workers started the process by using search to do their jobs more efficiently without input from managers. And that usage isn’t just writing stuff: it’s brainstorming, playing with ideas, working out the right structure to create a document, and more.
4. Trust in Apple
Nick Heer, writing about Spencer Ackerman’s posts on Apple Intelligence, make a good point: while Spencer is wrong about the some of default settings for Apple Intelligence, it’s not surprising that he, and many others, just don’t trust any big tech company on this kind of stuff.
5. Dropping diversity now it’s politically expedient shows capitalism’s true colours
Efforts to improve diversity in business were, in my experience, mostly about… well, business. There is a tonne of research demonstrating that, even leaving aside the issue of ethics, DEI is good for business. When even the Harvard Business Review says you need to be doing it, it’s probably best to listen.
Of course now we’re in the second reign of King Donald, where facts are whatever the feelings of right wingers say they are. So it’s no surprise that some of the old white men who run companies like Boeing, Walmart and more are pulling back from diversity.
But surely the markets will correct this, I hear you free-marketers cry. Well, no. Capitalism isn’t about free markets (every society since the year dot has had markets). Capitalism is about the primacy of capital, and a power structure where the owners of capital have ultimate power. It doesn’t matter if companies are more efficient, when you have billionaires that will prop them up or monopolies which are “too big to fail, too important to jail”.
This is how it is: A post-factual world, where very rich men get to run things. And those very rich men happy to be white.
6. What does Apple do in a world of AGI?
I would hate to interview Tim Cook, because the frustration of knowing how much he knows while also knowing you are not going to get a word of it out of him would drive me crazy. This interview is par for the course, although it contains some interesting points. One small point: when asked how artificial general intelligence (AGI) would affect Apple, Tim says “that’s a discussion we will continue to have”. Perhaps he should take a a look in the archives.
7. Farming hoo-ha
If you’re in the UK you may have noticed farmers protesting about the plans to change inheritance tax in a way which will make farms worth over £3m subject to some level of inheritance tax. Unsurprisingly the likes of James Dyson, the Brexit-supporting idiot who owns £550m of farming land, are not happy about being unable to capitalise on what’s been an excellent way of dodging tax. As this article points out, the likes of Dyson buying up vast swathes of farm land mainly to avoid tax has driven up the price of farming land to the point where it’s not worth buying if you actually want to farm somewhere and live off the income. This of course prevents real farmers – people who want to work the land in a way that produces crops and is profitable – from expanding their farms. On the other hand, it makes the land more valuable for children who just want to sell up and don’t give a damn about the provision of food. So excuse me if I raise an eyebrow at those “no farmers no food” banners.
8. AI and everything else
I love Benedict Evans’ occasional long presentations, because they are always a great summary of what’s going on even when I don’t always agree with them. With that in mind it’s well worth watching his talk on AI and everything else, which posits that generative AI is a platform shift. I agree with that: I think, in particular, conversational interfaces are the most exciting and interesting development in computing since the GUI itself.
9. Ha ha ha ha no
Humane wants to put the software from its failed AI pin into cars, phones and smart speakers. To a degree, this is what it should have been doing all along, but also: what, exactly, is the point? Why not simple integrate ChatGPT, Claude, or whatever in your existing products?
10. Dystopias are not aspirational
I love this piece on how “Trump’s Fans Are Suffering From Tony Soprano Syndrome” – or, to put it another way, they are mistaking villains for heroes and desiring distopias rather than utopias. It’s been said before that the number of Silicon Valley sorts who took one look at William Gibson’s Sprawl series and thought “I’d like to live there” is astounding, and I agree that this admiration of immorality in individuals is fascinating. But the really interesting area is why this has happened.
There is, of course a relation to the morals of the era of post-collective selfishness which we call either Reaganomics or Thatcherism depending on what side of the Atlantic you reside. But I think there is also a kind of boredom involved. By historical standards, we have “never had it so good”, but we don’t appreciate it. Or at least, we didn’t until we started to lose it – at which point we started blame the systems which had protected us, fed us and more. I want to read – and write – more about this.