1. The problem with cloud services is who owns them
Ahh, the cloud. Or, as we used to call it, The Cloud.
The cloud was the future! Apps were all going to be in the cloud! Clients would be thin! Everyone would use a Chromebook! Everything which could possibly have a connection to the internet in your house would be better, because of its connection to the internet!
I have to say that I fell for this one hook, line, and WiFi. Which is why the loss of basically every feature of the Bose SoundTouch “smart” speakers feels like they personally hate me. They’re great speakers! You could do cool things with them! And now, they basically don’t work!
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, I probably bought “smart” products.
2. ICE, ICE baby
You were warned. App stores, which have always been claimed to be “good for users”, are absolute crack for oppressive and abusive regimes. Now normally when we talk about stuff like this it’s to highlight what China, Russia or some other country is doing. But this time, we’re going to be talking about the USA.
There is absolutely nothing illegal under US law about ICEblock, an app which allows people to report the location of ICE agents. But in a repressive regime like the US, “the law” is whatever the President says it is – and Trump’s minion Pam Bondi told Apple to remove the app from its store, a request that Tim Cook was only too quick to say “yes ma’am” to.
And ICEblock isn’t the only app – Apple has done a general sweep of apps connected with tracking ICE actions, under the guise of “protecting” law enforcement. Although it’s also banned apps which simply preserve evidence of ICE brutality, which don’t identify or locate anyone.
What next? LGBTQ+ apps? Anything connected with Islam? Spanish-language apps? It almost doesn’t matter, because the problem is systemic: any system which centralises control over software distribution with a single company is open to being abused by governments.
Cory Doctorow has a term for the trade-off that we make with locked-down devices: feudal security. It’s trusting the local lord to protect you, which sometimes works but inevitably ends with the serfs getting the sharp end of the sword. Seems like Americans are now learning this the hard way.
3. Oh Apple (redux)
Oh, you thought that the UK government would just give up on breaking Apple’s encryption? Think again! Now it “just” wants the ability to tap into encrypted files on iCloud (including passwords and photos) for UK people only. Which, of course, just means that Apple will remove the ability for UK users to get the encryption at all, because there is no practical way it can give it to just a single government for use only on their citizens.
Completely by coincidence, I’m moving all my files to local storage, and all the important ones to Proton Drive.
4. America is toast and doesn’t know it yet, part 569
I was in Shanghai recently and the first thing you notice is the number of cars which have green license plates. Blue plates = traditional engines. Green plates = new electric vehicles (plug-in hybrids and battery EVs). And getting on for half of the cars I saw had green plates.
What should be scary for the US is the speed at which China has built a n industry which supplies the majority of the world’s batteries, EVs and more. So much so, in fact, that a group of Western venture capitalists came back from a visit there espousing the view that there’s simply no point in investing in a wide range of new companies in those product areas.
While China is building factories which run dark because they require no people at all, and have built a huge lead in robotics, Trump is trying to “make America great” by having more of the kind of jobs that really no longer exist. For better or worse, this is going to be the Chinese century, and it’s probably too late to change that.
5. So that’s what Tim got for his gift
The problem with political corruption is that it taints every decision the government makes. Small or large, important or trivial, once people believe the only way to get things done is through bribery, the game is over.
Which leads me nicely on to the news that the US Labor Board has abandoned an investigation into Apple. The fact that Tim Cook has been cozying up to Donald Trump will undoubtedly lead to speculation that the decision is down to favours being done, rather than the merits of the investigation.
6. The Vomit Comet
Comet, the agentic browser from Perplexity, is now available for anyone to download. I’ve been testing it for a while and it’s OK, although I found the agentic features hit or miss: when it works, it’s wondrous, but when it doesn’t, it’s exasperating.
7. They are genuinely insane
I am not a psychiatrist (I can barely spell the word) but even I can spot when someone has something deeply wrong with their mind.
If you want to see evidence that, once again, the lunatics have taken over the asylum then look no further than this interview with wanker-in-chief Marc Andreessen, where he talks about “The Elon Method” of management. In, of course, an approving way.
So what is the Elon Method? There’s the obvious stuff: interventionist CEOs who get in the face of anyone in the company and a cult of personality around the leader (he literally uses that phrase, which given its history is an astounding statement).
But there is also this: an aggressive legal stance as deterrence. The legal team’s primary function is filing suits against adversaries.
But let’s talk anybody who goes up against us, we are going to terrorise, we are going to declare war. And then of course as a consequence of declaring war, we’re not always going to win all the wars, but we’re going to establish massive deterrence. And so nobody will screw around with us.
That’s bad enough if you think he’s talking about other businesses. But he’s not, is he?
8. Nerds of a certain age will love this
Cambridge University Library has launched a project called Future Nostalgia to rescue data from old floppy disks. They have invited the public to bring in floppy disks, although they probably don’t want your copy of 1987’s MacPlaymate.
9. You know better than this, Steven
Steven Levy (one of the greatest tech writers all time, and no, I will not be commenting further) should know better than most to set this Betteridge's Law- baiting trap. I guess the only caveat is that AI is already shit, because essentially everyone with smart money knows it's a bubble and it just waiting for the right time to get out.
10. Political naivety is a terrible thing
There is a certain kind of tech person who wishes that politics would just go away. But I didn't expect that to include the executives at Framework, who have managed to get themselves in a complete pickle.
The short version: they company decided to donate money to two open source products which they like a lot, Omarchy and Hyprland. The issue is that the key people in both those projects -- DHH and Vaxry -- are, respectively, a right-wing douchebag who conflates white people with "native Brits" and a toxic young man who, and I quote, believes "there could be arguments to sway my opinion towards genocide".
This donation has caused a big controversy with Framework owners and supporters, who feel that donating to people best-described as "Nazi-curious" isn't really in tune with what they see as the (political) values of Framework. The right to repair and upgrade your own computer is a fundamental value that's often part of the modern left-wing mindset.
But not, it should be said, exclusively: right-to-repairers come from all kinds of places politically, from people like myself and my friend Cory to right-wing prepper crazies who have spare parts in their nuclear bunker.
I have no idea where, on the political spectrum, the people at Framework sit. What I do know, though, is that there is a big swathe of tech boys (and they almost always are boys) who don't see the world in political terms, don't want to think about politics, and just want to do cool things with computers. My gut feeling is that Framework falls into this category, and, having been called on it, did the thing which tech boys are most comfortable doing: avoided the issue like the plague.