Defense secretary Pete Hegseth designates Anthropic a supply chain risk

Posted on

From The Verge:

Nearly two hours after President Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that he was banning Anthropic products from the federal government, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth took it one step further and announced that he was now designating the AI company as a “supply-chain risk”. The decision could immediately impact numerous major tech companies that use Claude in their line of work for the Pentagon, including Palantir and AWS. It is not immediately clear to what extent the Pentagon may blacklist companies that contract with Claude for other services outside of national security.

Good for Anthropic. It’s a shame that the other AI companies aren’t lining up behind them.

Makes me happy that I’m a subscriber to Claude, relatively speaking.

Introducing Acme Weather

Posted on

From Introducing Acme Weather:

Fifteen years ago, we started work on the Dark Sky weather app. Over the years it went through numerous iterations — including more than one major redesign — as we worked our way through the process of learning what makes a great weather app. Eventually, in time, it was acquired by Apple, where the forecast and some core features were incorporated into Apple Weather. We enjoyed our time at Apple. So why did we leave to start another weather company? It’s simple: when looking at the landscape of the countless weather apps out there, many of them lovely, we found ourselves feeling unsatisfied. The more we spoke to friends and family, the more we heard that many of them did too. And, of course, we missed those days as a small scrappy shop. So let’s try this again…
Acme Weather App

This is a really great looking app from the developers of Dark Sky before they were acquired by Apple. It’s super glancebale, has great typography, and nearly perfect information density.

I’ll likely give it a shot to see if it can dethrone Carrot Weather, the gold standard in my opinion.

The only downside I see thus far is the icon. As long as there’s a decent home screen widget it’s not a dealbreaker, though.

My Software Curmudgeon Era

Posted on

A funny thing has happened to me in my 40s. I have started to understand how people end up set in their ways. I think it’s often not because they stop paying attention, but because they have seen enough to recognize patterns and make choices based on their values. Reading recent critiques of macOS Tahoe’s direction [1][2] and broader discussions about dark patterns in software development these days [1][2] helped me realize how much of my reaction to this change isn’t just because I’m naturally pulling back, but instead because so much about what is changing is in stark contrast to what I value.

While some tech like AI has really broadened my perspective at home and at work, a lot of other opinions have really started to reveal to me how I’ll likely never come around to the “new way” of doing things. I’d like to think I am still open to new tech when it’s useful to me or aligns with my values, but I do find that it takes a lot more to get me to really change my ways these days.

Through that lens, I present you with a few hot take old guy opinions. These aren’t just gripes, but instead me settling on certain tech that align best with my values.

RSS vs Social Media for News

This is one thing that I’ve stuck to for the longest time. RSS is truly the best way to keep up with the sites and content that you care about. Heck, Michael Cantrell and I built our own short-lived RSS reader when Google Reader shut down. So I’m a true believer.

Modern RSS services like Feedbin even add another layer on top, letting you add newsletters, create filters and even add pages to read later in the same interface. You can use one of many amazing apps (NetNewsWire and Reeder are my favorites but there are a zillion great choices here), and use a service like Feedbin or just bring your own OPML file.

The important news will find you. You don’t need to be refreshing and seeking this stuff out. You also don’t need to be wasting your time on an algorithm-based timeline that is feeding you junk that it knows you’re going to react to. That leads me to my next point…

Blogging vs Social Media for “Thinking Out Loud”

It’s so easy to fire off a hot take on social media without really thinking through your stance on something, essentially yelling into the void.

Now I’m not a great writer but the act of sitting down and yelling into my own void actually does help me crystalize my thinking a bit as well as practice the art of writing. When I do this regularly I find that I am better at fleshing out my thoughts and that’s a good thing both professionally and personally.

Things like Mastodon and Bluesky are great Twitter alternatives that are much better open web citizens, but getting back to a world of writing a bit more and linking to our friends while using the aforementioned RSS more to stitch things together would be so healthy for state of our discourse. Less quote-post-dunkng, more linking to posts you disagree with and explaining why, please.

Computers vs iPad/iPhone as my primary computing device

I covered this last summer, but I just can’t fit an iPad into my life. Believe me, I’ve tried. Every time I get rid of mine I get sucked back in and buy a new Air or Pro, get the keyboard and an Apple Pencil and then proceed to use it to watch videos a few times a month. It’s not as good for writing, the battery life is good but not as good as a Mac, and it’s overall a compromised device.

It’s a little closer when thinking about the iPhone vs the Mac as my primary device just due to the amount of time that it’s by my side on non-work days, but even then I’d much rather be using a nice laptop on a comfortable couch than screwing around on my phone.

Streaming Services are Actually Not Great

I’m still working this one out a bit.

I’ve written about my love of album focused music apps before, but lately I’ve been thinking more about what it would look like to bring back my circa-2016 MP3 collection and start building up anything new I’ve added since then. What would that cost? What would I get in return?

I’ve spent approximately $10/month since around 2011 or so. Some napkin math says that’s about 15 years, or $1,800 to rent my music since then. If I stopped tomorrow, I’d have nothing to show for it. That “sunk cost” only increases over time. Ouch.

Music isn’t like TV or movies, where you consume it once and with a few exceptions, move on. It’s single-serve entertainment for the most part. We develop relationships and memories with our music and come back to favorites time and time again. I use apps like Albums and Longplay to recapture that feeling of when I was younger where I’d plow through the same album for months at a time, but still hate knowing that I’m renting my music.

What makes this hard is not that the options are unclear, but that streaming has hidden all of this labor for so long. Ownership means thinking about formats, storage, and where things live when the subscription ends. It means dusting off a NAS, ripping discs, and making decisions I have been deferring for years. Even Apple seems to acknowledge this gap, given that iTunes Match is somehow still available. None of this is elegant, and that is exactly what streaming has spared us from.

Dark mode is actually bad

This is a quick one. As I’ve gotten older, I just can’t do it anymore. Maybe on the phone, but on a laptop it just makes things impossible to read for me. Even with glasses on, it’s just not happening any more.

Get off my lawn!

The bottom line is that I am losing interest in software that assumes it knows better than I do how I should think, read, write, or listen. It’s similar to this post I put up a while back about algorithms but I think it goes even deeper than that. I know it makes me sound old and out of touch, but I suppose that’s increasingly true.

Pentagon Used Anthropic’s Claude in Maduro Venezuela Raid

Posted on

From The Wall Street Journal:

“Anthropic’s artificial-intelligence tool Claude was used in the U.S. military’s operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, highlighting how AI models are gaining traction in the Pentagon, according to people familiar with the matter. The mission to capture Maduro and his wife included bombing several sites in Caracas last month. Anthropic’s usage guidelines prohibit Claude from being used to facilitate violence, develop weapons or conduct surveillance.”

Apple News+ Link

Not great, bob.

Apple Should Rethink Face ID Settings for our Current Era

Posted on

From Phillip Michaels at Six Colors:

The central role that phones play in our lives coupled with uncertain times at home and abroad have people rethinking how they should approach Face ID. Apple needs to be doing the same.

One thing I’ve always appreciated about Android is how many automation apps exist that let you configure settings much closer to the metal than iOS Shortcuts allows. Tasker was my go-to for this back in the day. It could set DND based on calendar events, change deep settings based on location or WiFi network amongst other things. This allowed me to me keep my phone unlocked at home while requiring fingerprint authentication everywhere else.

I love Shortcuts and have a ridiculous number of automations set up myself, but there’s a handful of things I genuinely need to automate that Apple simply won’t let me touch. The most glaring one? Location-based security policies. You could imagine a world where users choose between no barriers at home, biometrics when out and about, and a long password at protests or border crossings. It’s not a wild ask. It’s just basic threat modeling.

Apple could open up APIs to make this possible via Shortcuts automations. In addition, they could create sensible defaults and ask users about their preferences when upgrading to a new OS. I know there are complexity costs and geolocation is only so reliable so there are risks involved. But the risks of imperfect geolocation seem a lot more acceptable than the alternative: leaving users vulnerable to compelled unlocking at protests, airports, or anywhere else someone with a badge decides your face is the key to your entire digital life.

Apple has built its recent brand on privacy. They run TV spots about keeping your browsing data safe. They’ve position themselves as the antidote to Big Tech surveillance. And yet, when it comes to giving users the tools to actually protect themselves from state-level threats, Apple’s response is basically “hold down some buttons and hope for the best.” They could do better. If Apple genuinely believes privacy is a human right, exposing more control here could go a long way to walking that walk.

Where are all the “Don’t tread on me” Americans?

Posted on

From Chris Truax:

So is getting immigrant criminals off the street a justification for ICE’s behavior? Constitution says no. Of course, some immigrants are criminals who shouldn’t be on the streets. Some Americans are criminals who shouldn’t be on the streets either. Nonetheless, we have a Constitution that prevents police from roving those streets and demanding that people present their papers, or from breaking into someone’s house without probable cause and a warrant signed by a judge. Those rights don’t exist to protect criminals. They exist to protect innocent people. And it is innocent people who suffer when those rights are ignored, whether the government is hunting criminals or immigrants.

Concise, well written breakdown of what’s at stake here. No notes.

Dot: The Menu Bar Calendar That’s Become My Main Calendar

Posted on

From John Vorhees at MacStories:

So if you use a calendar app that doesn’t have a great menu bar app or live in your menu bar calendar more than your main calendar app like I do, give Dot a try. There’s a 14-day free trial, and at the moment, the app is just $9.99 during its launch window when you use the code LAUNCH, with an eventual planned price of $14.99.

I’ve used Dato for a while and am generally happy with it, but I really like the little UX wins Dot offers along with the insane amount of customization. I love apps like Fantastical but can’t see myself subscribing to a calendar app given my needs. Paying one-time for this type of thing is more my speed.

Resist and Unsubscribe

Posted on

From Resist and Unsubscribe:

First, we must recognize that the president is unfazed by citizen outrage, the courts, or the media. He responds to one thing: the market. The most potent weapon to resist the administration is a targeted, month-long national economic strike — a coordinated campaign that attacks tech companies and firms enabling ICE — to inflict maximum damage with minimal impact on consumers. In sum, the shortest path to change without hurting consumers is an economic strike targeted at the companies driving the markets and enabling our president.

I don’t think every person can or will drop every single thing in this list, but look at this list and try to decouple yourself from the companies that are facilitating the harm being done to our country and fight the oligarchy.

Every little bit can make a difference.

How to Leave the U.S.A.

Posted on

From The New Yorker:

Nevertheless, “The Family of Migrants” was a reminder that Americans’ growing appetite for expatriation is a historical anomaly. For centuries, tens of millions of impoverished immigrants have settled in the U.S. seeking safety, prosperity, and happiness, transforming the country in indelible, wonderful ways. I came to the U.S. from Switzerland as a student in 2004, and ran the gantlet of visa and green-card applications before naturalizing, in 2022, but I’m not so sure I’d be welcome now. I’m not even sure I’d move here at all.

For no particular reason, I’ve been thinking a lot about the DAFT visa and other potential ways out. This is a great article about what it’s actually like to leave it all behind.

The Fallen Apple

Posted on

From Matt Gemmell:

Whatever the nuance, Apple’s old and hard-won reputation just doesn’t ring true now. The company feels like a performance of itself, diverging farther and farther from the original, shuddering with escalating dysfunction, and held together by the sheer, grotesque extent of its indentured income.

Brutal, but fair takedown of what it is like to be an Apple “fan” right now. The hardware is great, the software is generally getting worse, the “services” are getting more entrenched in the ecosystem, and the general cozying up to the government is a huge turn off.

For me, the following things need to happen to help rebuild my hope that I don’t need to reboot my “should I ditch Apple stuff?” blog subgenre:

  • Show small but meaningful progress towards design that is usable. Bring back some whimsy into your brand identity.
  • Find a way to make the developer community happy by making changes that are EU regulator-friendly & dev friendly. This could be commission simplification and reduction, opening up key parts of their OSes, and allowing categories of apps that are currently impossible to build on their platforms.
  • Finding a way to humanize the company better. I know it sounds silly to say “live keynotes will fix everything” but the Apple leadership slinking away to their ivory tower over the past few years has been unfortunate timing.
  • Don’t make it so easy to identify yourself as part of the Oligarchy. I don’t expect a public break from the Trump admin but maybe don’t go to the Meliana movie premiere on the same night that ICE murders someone. Find ways to tactfully distance yourself while still doing right by your shareholders. I get that it’s tough, but what’s happening right now is sleazy.

I want to be optimistic about Apple and feel confident that my investment of time, money, and attention is still worthwhile. But the trend line isn’t encouraging.