News Links

Tony Isaac quotes a report from NPR: The rise of AI assistants is rewriting the rhythms of everyday life: People are feeding their blood test results into chatbots, turning to ChatGPT for advice on their love lives and leaning on AI for everything from planning trips to finishing homework assignment...

Watch out for what you’ve been watching.

The Fall Detection feature of the Apple Watch helped save a hiker after he had a treacherous, blindfolded fall down a Colorado mountainside.

A well-known security researcher reports that Apple has slashed its bounties for finding vulnerabilities in macOS. Many have been halved,...

"Apt." was the number one song on Apple Music overall this year.

Anti-AI sentiment might or might not be rational, but it certainly relies on a lot of bad arguments.

Richard Weiss managed to get Claude 4.5 Opus to spit out this 14,000 token document which Claude called the "Soul overview". Richard says: While extracting Claude 4.5 Opus' system message …

Apple does not plan to comply with a mandate to preload its smartphones with a state-owned cyber safety app and will convey its concerns to New Delhi, three sources said, after the government's move sparked surveillance concerns and a political uproar.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Monday told employees he was declaring a “code red” to marshalmore resources to improve ChatGPT as threats rise from Google and other artificial intelligence competitors, according to an internal memo. As a result,OpenAI plans to delay other initiatives, such as ...

Google’s efforts to sell or lease its artificial intelligence server chips so they can run in any company’s data center—and not just in Google Cloud—have generated headlines, stock moves and a noteworthy response from AI chip leader Nvidia. It’s not lost on Nvidia that two of the world’s best AI ...

Explore this post and more from the MacOS community

Remember when you thought age verification laws couldn’t get any worse? Well, lawmakers in Wisconsin, Michigan, and beyond are about to blow you away. It’s unfo…

New York has become the first state in the nation to enact a law requiring retailers to disclose when AI and personal data are being used to set individualized prices [non-paywalled source] -- a measure that lawyers say will make algorithmic pricing "the next big battleground in A.I. regulation." ...

By Natasha Singer / New York Times. View the full context on Techmeme.

Beginning February 2, Instagram employees will be expected to spend five days a week working in person in offices.

OpenAI risks increased fines after deleting pirated books datasets.

Justices want Cox to crack down on piracy, but question Sony’s strict demands.

Three Austrian nuns in their 80s who escaped a care home and reclaimed their old convent are refusing the church's offer to stay because it requires them to quit Instagram, stop speaking to the press, and avoid legal counsel -- conditions they call a gag order. Their standoff with church authorities...

Amazon said Monday it has started testing a new ultrafast delivery service aimed at getting groceries and other staple items to shoppers in as little as 30 minutes, confirming an earlier report from The Information. The service is now live in Seattle and Philadelphia, Amazon said, and deliveries will cost $3.99 per order for Prime members and $13.99 for non-members, with additional fees for

The technology has previously been available in Europe and Asia but is now rolling out in the United States.

The 2025 selection follows its predecessors, "brain rot" from 2024, "rizz" from 2023 and "goblin mode" from 2022.

Apple's longtime AI chief John Giannandrea is retiring after the company's repeated delays in delivering its revamped Siri and internal turmoil that led to an AI team exodus, with former Microsoft and Google AI leader Amar Subramanya stepping in to take over. MacRumors reports: Giannandrea will ser...

Amar Subramanya will likely become one of the most closely watched hires Apple has made in years. Here’s what he needs to do first.

From the time Brownlee launched Panels in September 2024, the app struggled to find an audience of its own. "We knew it was niche … and ultimately, we weren't able to turn it into the vision I had," Marques Brownlee said.

David Sacks, the Trump administration’s A.I. and crypto czar, has helped formulate policies that aid his Silicon Valley friends and many of his own tech investments.

Modern cars are collecting more data than ever, raising privacy concerns. The Mozilla Foundation says cars are the worst product category for privacy.

By Kamya Pandey / MediaNama. View the full context on Techmeme.

This holiday, remember that friendship is a gift.In this handcrafted film, a ragtag group of woodland critters discover a lost iPhone 17 Pro and use it to fi...

There is a rush for AI companies to team up with space launch/satellite companies to build datacenters in space. TL;DR: It's not going to work.

Although U.S. consumers spent more this Black Friday compared to last year, price increases hampered online demand, according to Salesforce.