Google Search is now using AI to replace headlines

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From The Verge:

Now, Google is beginning to replace news headlines in its search results with ones that are AI-generated. After doing something similar in its Google Discover news feed, it’s starting to mess with headlines in the traditional “10 blue links,” too. We’ve found multiple examples where Google replaced headlines we wrote with ones we did not, sometimes changing their meaning in the process.

This is pretty gross. AI tools have tons of really amazing applications. Rewriting people’s titles to ostensibly A/B test engagement ain’t one of them.

You really should be trying out Kagi, DuckDuckGo, or literally any other search provider.

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I’m shutting down the post -> WP Plugin -> Mastodon as @blog -> replies-as-comments workflow.

I wrote about this a while back and thought it might be a great idea. The short version: WordPress posts share automatically to Mastodon, and replies on Mastodon show up as comments on my blog. I’d been running it as an experiment and was hopeful. Turns out it’s not ready for prime time, so I’m shutting it down and moving back to posting links from assortednerdery@mastodon.social instead.

The first part worked well. Posts go out automatically under @blog@danielandrews.com. The rest? Kind of a shit show.

A couple things I’d love to see improve:

  • It posts from its own Mastodon account, not your personal one. Minor, but it bothers me.
  • It was, broadly speaking, pretty unreliable. Posts would publish and then disappear after some time. No idea why. If it annoyed me, I’m sure it annoyed anyone following along.
  • The default template is super opinionated, so you basically have to build an override to nuke the entire thing or it won’t bring along custom fields or anything else.
  • No spam control. When I did a batch import of old posts recently, the account blasted out a wave of “edited” notifications to anyone following it. I took every precaution I knew of to suppress the RSS feed updates. Didn’t matter. Sorry to anyone who follows @blog@danielandrews.com and watched their timeline get buried.

The thing I keep coming back to, though, is something the tooling doesn’t really support yet: I want my short Mastodon posts to interweave with my longer writing on the site, as their own post type. A kind of unified stream.

I think I might just be describing micro.blog.

How a MacBook Neo bought for a high school student is worth $50k to Apple

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From 9to5Mac:

Way back in the 1980s, In Search of Excellence author Tom Peters wrote about the concept of the lifetime value of a customer. Lifetime Value (LV) or Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a way of thinking about the total profit a company will make during the entire life of a loyal customer if they can keep them happy. That’s a very different mindset to thinking only about a present-day sale.

I think the specific numbers are overly optimistic, but the idea does hold true. Getting new users into the Apple ecosystem can have a huge impact in their subsequent tech purchase decisions. I don’t think Chromebooks always guarantee someone will end up buying an Android phone either, but getting in on the ground floor certainly increases either company’s odds of a lifelong customer.

What US Spending on the War in Iran Could Fund Instead

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From Time:

The United States has spent at least $12 billion on its war with Iran in just the first two weeks of the conflict, according to Trump Administration officials, a figure that is quickly becoming a flashpoint among the war’s critics who argue the money could instead fund health care, education, and other domestic programs.

Great read of some of the things we could do with the initial costs of the war in Iran. Funny how easy it is to find this money when it’s for the military-industrial complex.

What an absolute waste of blood and treasure.

The most brilliant move in corporate history?

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From Asymco:

But that all changed with AI. Amazon is spending $200 billion this year on AI data centers. Google, $185 billion. Microsoft, $114 billion. Meta, $135 billion. Combined: $650 billion. [Not including OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX/XAI.] That is like buying the US Navy every year. And yet Apple’s capital budget is still a modest $14 billion, oscillating with new hardware tooling cycles.

This logic is akin to Hanlon’s Razor: “Don’t attribute to malice that which can be attributed to incompetence”.

This was not a strategic move by Apple, but one that does appear to be lining up decently for Apple. If AI is being commoditized by OpenAI, Google and Anthropic amongst others, renting one of the best models for 1B/year is a steal.

The Scoreboard Changed

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The highest leverage version of you is not the one writing the most code or touching every ticket. It is the one who makes it obvious what the most important thing is right now, and then removes whatever is standing between the team and that thing.

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Meta acquires Moltbook, the AI agent social network

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From Ars Technica:

As for what interested Meta about the work done on Moltbook, there is a clue in the statement issued to press by a Meta spokesperson, who flagged the Moltbook founders’ “approach to connecting agents through an always-on directory,” saying it “is a novel step in a rapidly developing space.” They added, “We look forward to working together to bring innovative, secure agentic experiences to everyone.”

What a time to be alive.

Introducing Sonos Play – Our Most Versatile Speaker

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From Sonos Blog:

Sonos Play doesn’t just sound good. It pushes the limits of what a portable speaker this size can deliver, thanks to an acoustic architecture similar to that of its larger sibling, Move 2. This innovative design is capable of generating deep, room-filling bass — on par with what you might expect from a home stereo system.

I have a Sonos Roam 2 and it’s a great portable speaker, although a bit underpowered in some environments. This seems like a great middle ground for folks who don’t want to lug a beast of a speaker out on a camping trip or to the beach but still might want a little more ooomph. Looks impressive, and I’m considering buying one.

I love all the little details that show Sonos is listening to their customers – replaceable battery, actual buttons, USB-C cable that can be used for charging, reverse charging or even as audio output. Is it beach-capable, though? I’ve been hanging onto a “cheap” JBL Charge 3 for the better part of a decade now.