Pressly trained as a philosopher, and he has a philosopher’s fondness for sniffing out unspoken assumptions. He finds one that he considers fundamental to our networked era: “the idea that information has a natural existence in human affairs, and that there are no aspects of human life which cannot be translated somehow into data.” This belief, which he calls the “ideology of information,” has an obvious instrumental value to companies whose business models depend on the mass production of data, and to government agencies whose machinery of monitoring and repression rely on the same.
But Pressly also sees the ideology of information lurking in a less likely place—among privacy advocates trying to defend us from digital intrusions. This is because the standard view of privacy assumes there is “some information that already exists,” and what matters is keeping it out of the wrong hands. Such an assumption, for Pressly, is fatal. It “misses privacy’s true value and unwittingly aids the forces it takes itself to be resisting,” he writes. To be clear, Pressly is not opposed to reforms that would give us more power over our data—but it is a mistake “to think that this is what privacy is for.” “Privacy is valuable not because it empowers us to exercise control over our information,” he argues, “but because it protects against the creation of such information in the first place.”
Although Apple never says anything along these lines, there are essentially two macro modes. We’ll call the first Auto Macro mode, which is what we’re used to and is limited to 12-megapixel photos, and the second Manual Macro mode, which takes 48-megapixel shots.
I ask Williams how important it is for Apple to continue to exploit the sensors which are in the Watch to address further features. The latest example is the sleep apnoea notifications which use the accelerometer in the Watch to new effect.
In a moment of candour, Williams says, “I have sleep apnoea and when I discovered it, it was a complete game-changer. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I would wake up in the morning exhausted. I went through all kinds of tests. I finally did a sleep test and they said, you have sleep apnoea. And then I got a CPAP machine, and it was like a new lease of life.”
As Alan Dye, Apple’s head of Human Interface Design, says, Apple Watch was launched just as Apple first sat its human interface and industrial design team together in one combined studio. ‘The watch represents so many firsts for us and it's near and dear to our hearts because it was one of the first products born out of this really tight collaboration.
‘We want to create really singular experiences where we deeply integrate hardware and software and where, ideally, you don’t know where one begins and the other one ends. So having one studio is really core to who we are and how we think about design.’
Cybersecurity researchers have reported finding multiple mobile applications used in so-called ‘pig butchering’ schemes, lurking on the official Google and Apple repositories.
‘Pig butchering’ is a type of financial fraud in which the victims - called ‘pigs’ - are first “stuffed”, before being “slaughtered”. In other words, the victims get led on for weeks and months, and their wallets drained and drained, before the fraudsters finally pull the trigger and disappear with the money, completely.
Apple today shared a video ad that highlights the new Camera Control on the latest iPhone 16 models, offering a quick look at the button in action.
Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami team will be playing their first playoff match on Friday, October 25. When that happens, it will be streamed for free to everyone via the Apple TV app. And soccer fans in New York will get a special Times Square treat.
The day I started working on this story about Duolingo it seemed to be everywhere. I heard from a friend who was celebrating her 800-day Spanish practice streak on the app. I read about a journalist from The Guardian who became addicted to learning Italian. A Sri Lankan waitress in Brooklyn switched from English to Spanish when she heard my mother and I speaking, crediting Duolingo for her skills.
But my deep interest in the world's most downloaded language-learning app truly began last year when I saw first-hand its significant impact on new migrants to the US, a country undergoing one of the largest migration waves of the decade. At some point in their long journeys, Duolingo becomes an essential tool for these people on the move.
Bic, the company best known for ballpoint pens, razors, and lighters, has just revealed a collaboration that no one could have possibly had on their 2024 bingo cards. Its new Hold the Phone case has a molded cutout on the back to hold one of Bic’s EZ Reach lighters, specifically those designed by Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg as part of a collaboration with the company.
NBA 2K25 Arcade Edition is now available in Apple Arcade on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro, and the latest version of the game offers many new features.
Apple’s AI research team has developed a new model that could significantly advance how machines perceive depth, potentially transforming industries ranging from augmented reality to autonomous vehicles.
The system, called Depth Pro, is able to generate detailed 3D depth maps from single 2D images in a fraction of a second—without relying on the camera data traditionally needed to make such predictions.
It is a spectacular success. But it has also created a problem that could threaten the future prosperity of both the sector and the island. As the age of energy-hungry artificial intelligence dawns, Taiwan is facing a multifaceted energy crisis: It depends heavily on imported fossil fuels, it has ambitious clean energy targets that it is failing to meet, and it can barely keep up with current demand. Addressing this problem, government critics say, is growing increasingly urgent.
I've spend today with SwiftUI. I'm probably not experienced enough with this stuff, but I am still not convinced of write-once run everywhere. Even when everywhere all bears the Apple logo.
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