Although I’m happy with 1Password, I’ve been using iCloud Passwords for the past month in Arc to see if I could recommend iCloud Passwords for those who don’t rely on Safari. While I miss features from 1Password, the answer is yes: iCloud Passwords works fine. At least that’s true for me—I see reviews on the Chrome Web Store page that claim it doesn’t work or broke after some update, but I’ve been using it long enough that I’m comfortable saying it’s functional.
Apple researchers have developed a new artificial intelligence system that can understand ambiguous references to on-screen entities as well as conversational and background context, enabling more natural interactions with voice assistants, according to a paper published on Friday.
The system, called ReALM (Reference Resolution As Language Modeling), leverages large language models to convert the complex task of reference resolution — including understanding references to visual elements on a screen — into a pure language modeling problem. This allows ReALM to achieve substantial performance gains compared to existing methods.
“People assume that surgical healthcare has got to be sophisticated and modern. The reality is the way we organize it is probably the most archaic of all the major industries on the planet,” said Robert Masson, MD, a practicing neurosurgeon and CEO of eXeX. “It’s all memorization and guesswork with scribbles on pieces of paper. It’s total chaos theory.”
According to Masson, surgical care is stuck in the distant past, with all of the work going towards groundbreaking treatments, but almost no focus on the most basic foundational standards that keep the process moving. It’s the little things: eXeX is setting up the surgery room, helping nurses keep track of which tools the doctor needs and when, and keeping documents organized. Streamlining these processes could amount to a revolution in healthcare, a revolution that is going to make someone a lot of money if they can develop a widely adopted platform.
Secrecy and speed are incompatible in some ways, mutually beneficial in others. Engineering this fact for best results will always be a compromise, but that's what engineering's all about. Chip companies would be doing everyone a huge favor if they re-engineered their philosophy, not just their chips, to recognize this.
To comply with the new European law, Apple is introducing APIs and frameworks that allow developers to distribute apps independently of the App Store. The AltStore was quick to capitalize on this possibility, and last week, AltStore developer Riley Testut shared screenshots of the up-and-coming version of his app store that will be offered in the EU.
Instead of relying only on ads, paid downloads or in-app purchases to monetize, the AltStore will allow developers to use its custom Patreon integration to market their apps directly to consumers.
However, some security experts note that Apple’s App Store is indeed safer than those on Android phones.
“Our data from millions of device scans on iOS and Android devices around the world suggests that open app stores lead to more malicious activity than closed ecosystems,” said Danny Rogers, the CEO of the cybersecurity company iVerify, whose app detects malware on phones and computers. “So while opening up app stores to third parties might be good for competition, it will likely increase malicious activity as well.”
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For now, it’s simply too soon to say how iPhone users’ privacy will be affected — we don’t even yet know what the Justice Department wants as a remedy if it wins, let alone what it will actually get. (And all of that, of course, is contingent on it winning in the first place.) “There are so many different pieces of this,” Steinhauer said. “I don’t see how they could possibly win all or lose all.”
Nearly 300 current and former Apple employees have published an open letter alleging that several retail and corporate employees of the company have been disciplined or “wrongfully terminated” for expressing support for Palestinian people through pins, bracelets, or keffiyeh.
The group, which calls itself Apples4Ceasefire, is planning a protest outside Apple’s retail store in Lincoln Park, Chicago, Saturday. In a podcast published last week with media outlet Palestine in America, the group alleges a Palestinian retail employee at that location was wrongly fired for wearing clothing and accessories showing support for Palestinian people. The podcast episode also elaborates on allegations made in the letter, making detailed claims about multiple Apple employees experiencing retaliation from managers.
It’s probably most useful if you think of your calorie burn as a number you cannot measure directly. Treat it as a black box: I burn some unknowable number of calories, now what?
The only common reason you would need an accurate estimate of calorie burn is if you are trying to figure out how much food you need to eat. If you want to lose weight, you want to eat less than you burn; if you want to gain weight, you want the reverse; and if you’re trying to maintain your weight, you want to eat roughly the same as what you burn.
“I’ve got to tell you, I wanted to have you on a podcast and Apple asked us not to do it, to have you. They literally said, ‘please don’t talk to her’,” Stewart said. “I don’t think they cared for you,” he then joked.
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Stewart added that Apple were also concerned about the way The Problem would tackle the issue of AI. “They wouldn’t let us do that dumb thing we did in the first act on AI,” Stewart said, referring to a segment from earlier in the show that mocked some of the promises of AI.
Turns out there is a huge bug in my hobby project that prevented the AppIntent to work properly at all times. But now that I understand a bit more on how widgets work, I am tempted to just redo the whole AppIntent from scratch.
Okay, tempted no more. I've decided to redo the whole AppIntent from scratch.
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