Meta Laid Off Staff in Favour of Agentic Coding, and It Is Not Going Well ⇥ reuters.com

Katie Paul and Courtney Rozen, Reuters:

Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged shortcomings in the company’s sweeping restructuring at an internal town hall on Thursday, saying the systems known as AI agents had not progressed as quickly as he had expected, according to a recording heard by Reuters.

[…]

In retrospect, he said, the “trajectory of the agentic development over at least the last four months hasn’t really accelerated in the way that we expected,” and ​that the company’s bets on the new structure “haven’t come to fruition yet.” Zuckerberg was referring to AI agents, automated systems that can ​execute tasks on behalf of a user.

A quintessentially Zuckerbergian premise: he pivots the whole company around whatever is the new thing, says oops, then reminds himself that nothing really matters as long as people keep looking at ads on Instagram.

For all Meta’s power and its massive base of users and ad buyers, the company’s YouTube channels are fascinating places. The main channel has a bunch of promo videos for the headlining products Meta wants people to associate with a world-changing company. There are corporate presentations hosted by Zuckerberg, ads for A.I. and glasses products, and little behind-the-scenes things, and all of them have hundreds-of-thousands to millions of views. That is what you would expect for an account with 456,000 subscribers and a household name. It really wants you to believe its leadership is made of visionary stuff.

But the way it actually makes its money — advertising — is nowhere to be found on that channel. For that, you need to go to the Meta for Business channel, which has a respectable 181,000 subscribers and lots of tips for how to use the company’s ad tools more effectively. But the view counts on those videos are, frankly, terrible. Most are in the dozens-to-hundreds; again, this is a channel with enough subscribers to get a famous silver plaque.

Meta can tell the world it is a revolutionary company while being internally honest about what it actually does. Many companies do that. But it is fairly troubling that Meta seemingly tricked itself into believing the external picture it paints.

Indonesia Is Also Facing Problems With Age-Gated Social Media ⇥ asia.nikkei.com

Marcel Thee, Nikkei Asia:

Following Australia’s move in late 2025, Indonesia became the first non-Western country to announce restrictions on social media access for users under 16. Rules unveiled on March 6 require platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Roblox to introduce age verification checks and remove underage accounts. The restrictions were supposed to take effect on March 28, but enforcement has been patchy, with tech companies largely ignoring the requirements and underage users continuing to access social media simply by lying about their ages.

As Michael Geist put it recently, “the better the privacy protection, the less effective the ban”.

Maestral, My Favourite Dropbox Client for MacOS, Is No Longer Being Maintained ⇥ github.com

Sam Schott:

As of 2026-07-28, this project is archived. It’s been a fun challenge to develop a syncing client, but unfortunately, I find too little time to invest in Maestral these days. I’ve also moved away from using Dropbox myself.

Maestral will still remain usable in the medium term, but will no longer be actively maintained or receive updates.

This is a bummer — understandable, but a bummer nevertheless. The official Dropbox app is hundreds of megabytes because, of course, it is a website masquerading as a native application with the help of Electron. Maestral is comparatively svelte, has a low memory footprint, and does not use Apple’s questionable File Provider API.

I use Dropbox only for some relatively basic but necessary things, like hosting PDFs for this very website, which is why Maestral has been the perfect client for me. It is a testament to the effect of a good third-party app that I have stuck with Dropbox despite its corporate-focused strategy pivot.

Anyway, many thanks to Schott for creating such a good little utility. Maestral is open source so I have hope somebody will take the baton.

A.I. and Liability ⇥ schneier.com

Bruce Schneier:

AI agents are agents of the person or organization that deploys them—and should be treated by the law as such. If a company hired human writers to write its summaries, that company would be liable for inaccuracies in those summaries. If a company’s human agent signed contracts in the company’s name, that company would be bound by those contracts. And if a doctor gave dangerously wrong medical advice, they would be liable for malpractice.

To allow businesses to hide behind the excuse of faulty AI in those same circumstances would be a massive handout to companies, and would introduce disastrous incentives for corporate misbehavior. Why hire human writers, lawyers or doctors when AIs are not only cheaper, but also absolve employers whenever they make a mistake?

In his video essay nominally about artificial intelligence, economist Cahal Moran repeatedly references the book “The Unaccountability Machine” by Dan Davies. I am only a couple of chapters in, but I think I am going to get a lot out of it, and I feel confident you should check it out from your local library.

An Updated Look at the Environmental Impact of A.I. Data Centres ⇥ wsj.com

Satya Nadella at Microsoft’s Build conference this year:

Perhaps the most important design criteria for us is: ‘how do we earn the permission from the communities in which we are building these data centres?’

That’s where these principles ground us and focus us. How do we ensure that the D.C.s do not increase the electricity prices? Making sure that we are replenishing all our water use. Creating jobs in the local communities for the local residents. Adding to the tax base. […]

Kate Brandt, chief sustainability officer at Google:

While we remain deeply committed to sustainability, reaching our climate moonshots is getting harder. It takes energy and resources to support the growing demand for AI that powers businesses and the tools we use every day. Like everyone in our industry, we experienced a surge in electricity demand last year. Our AI infrastructure buildout is accelerating faster than the grid is decarbonizing, and long waits to connect to the grid, fragmented markets, supply chain delays, and regulatory bottlenecks continue to slow down new carbon-free energy from coming online. We’re working within energy systems that simply aren’t clean enough or flexible enough yet.

Christopher Mims, Wall Street Journal:

Microsoft, Google and Amazon are among the tech companies spending an estimated $1 trillion on AI infrastructure this year and last. In some regions, they are using far more water than they report, depending on how data centers are powered. And their water consumption is projected to grow rapidly in coming years.

These companies produce annual sustainability reports that include water use at their data centers. But among this group of titans, only Meta tallies water used at the power stations that feed them electricity, in addition to the water used on-site.

Ketan Joshi:

Google’s power consumption rose by 7 TWh between 2023 and 2024. That was bad. But it rose by a whopping 12 TWh between 2024 and 2025, almost double last year’s increase. Google’s power consumption isn’t just growing — the rate at which it is growing is growing. We have a word for this: exponential growth.

Every time I look at this chart I have to go and double check every single Google number, because it just looks so ridiculous.

Google’s power consumption is now greater than the amount of electricity generated by New Zealand.

In their environmental reports (all PDF links), Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft all mention carbon capture or direct air capture as one strategy for minimizing the impact of their emissions. Reporters for Heated and ProPublica jointly published a look at carbon capture technologies. They found that carbon capture remains a basically theoretical technology despite decades of promotion. Meanwhile, solar energy installations have dramatically outpaced even the most optimistic projections.

Canada in the 1870s ⇥ petapixel.com

Matt Growcoot, PetaPixel:

Despite the technical difficulties, there are photographs of Canada in the 1860s — including one taken of the historic moment the proclamation of Confederation was read out at Market Square, Kingston, Ontario.

I had no idea there was a photo taken when this proclamation was read.

Apple’s ‘Trusted System Agent’ Proposal Has Not Actually Been Built ⇥ ft.com

When Apple announced Siri A.I. would not be available on E.U. iPhones or iPads at launch, it said:

Given the serious risks to users, Apple designed a solution called Trusted System Agent — an intermediary that would allow virtual assistants to safely access the same features and capabilities as Siri AI for devices in the EU. Apple also shared a plan to launch Siri AI in the EU while gradually rolling out this new solution over an 18-month period. The European Commission said no. In fact, the European Commission did not agree to any of Apple’s proposals.

I noted the curious mix between this pitch and Apple’s claim that — translated from French — “none of its engineers are currently working on solutions to open Siri A.I. to the competition”. I interpreted this to mean Apple was no longer working on the Agent idea for giving third-party A.I. systems comparable access. On reflection, I am more confused: is Apple throwing a red herring into the mix by claiming it is not giving competitors access to Siri A.I., something which I do not think the E.U. was asking for?

In that same post, I also reflected on how it was “refreshing to see Apple and the European Commission arguing in public and on the record instead of by leaking information to the Financial Times“.

Anyway, here are Michael Acton and Barbara Moens, reporting for the Financial Times:

A commission official said its contact with Apple on the idea was limited, and that it lacked a concrete proposal or details on how such an agent would work beyond the general concept. They said Apple “focused on obtaining a green light to delay the compliance”.

By contrast, the official said the commission’s process with Google after changes it made to its Android operating system led to a formal consultation on how the company could comply with the DMA and avoid massive fines.

To the extent Apple is not getting sufficient information about the validity of its proposals, the Commission is saying that is entirely Apple’s fault — obviously. I bet Apple thinks it is all the Commission’s fault, too. The DMA has been in effect for nearly four years and there is no reason why either party should be having so much difficulty with this proposal stage. Either the Commission is mischaracterizing Apple’s engagement, or Apple’s representatives need to be far better prepared.

One more thing I wrote last month:

Given Apple’s self-imposed problems with Apple Intelligence since WWDC 2024, I question whether many people in Europe will find this particularly disruptive or upsetting, however.

Well, according to Acton and Moens, I was quite wrong:

The dispute triggered a fierce public backlash against the commission, with European officials reporting hundreds of emails from consumers accusing Brussels of depriving Europeans of a new technology.

One EU official said that a commission spokesperson had received a stream of abusive messages, including several death threats.

A.I. really is breaking brains. Shameful behaviour.

Sony Announces Closure of PlayStation Store for PS3, Says Digital Distribution Is the Future ⇥ blog.playstation.com

Sony’s Sid Shuman:

As consumer preferences and the broader entertainment industry continue to shift away from physical discs to digital, physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued starting January 2028.  Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only. […]

Also Sony’s Sid Shuman:

After nearly two decades of supporting the PS3 console generation, we wanted to let you know we will be closing the PlayStation Store on PS3, as well as on PS Vita. […]

Incredibly, these announcements were made on the very same day, as if to illustrate the fragility and centralized control of the digital-only distribution Sony says is the new standard. At least physical versions of PS3 and Vita games will continue to function. Remember how, in 2023, Sony said it would yank access to media purchased by users because Sony did not renew its license with Discovery? If we cannot actually own something, I find it difficult to believe an unpaid reproduction of that thing is actually tantamount to theft.

Update: Just this week, Sony said it would remove hundreds more titles from users’ accounts in the U.K. due to its licensing with StudioCanal expiring. (Also, Sony and Discovery struck a new agreement in 2023.)

Is There a New Quantum Processor or Is Microsoft Lying? ⇥ mathewingram.com

Mathew Ingram:

So what, I can hear you thinking. I don’t know or care what anyons are, or how gallium arsenide works. Me neither! The interesting part of this story for me is that Microsoft — a company that has a market value of $2.7 trillion and almost single-handedly created the personal computing industry — has repeatedly claimed that its Majorana processor uses these particles, and that its new version is a thousand times more reliable, and yet some other theoretical physicists have called BS on these claims, not once but several times. In other words, Microsoft keeps putting out press releases saying it has done this, and that it will build a working quantum computer using said particles within the next three years, and a number of prominent members of the industry keep saying that the company and its research scientists are full of you-know-what.

It is fascinating to see academics call out one of the world’s most valuable companies for making claims that are “perhaps even ‘fraudulent’”.

Apple Has Known About a Hide My Email Vulnerability for Over a Year ⇥ easyoptouts.com

Tyler Murphy and Ben, co-founders of EasyOptOuts:

We’ve discovered vulnerabilities in Hide My Email that allow attackers to discover the meant-to-be-hidden address behind a Hide My Email address. We reported the issue to Apple over a year ago, and as of June 30, 2026, it still hasn’t been fixed. About a month ago, we realized that the vulnerabilities’ severity and scope are greater than we initially thought. […]

Apple replied — twice — that it had fixed these vulnerabilities, but Joseph Cox of 404 Media was able to reproduce the problem as recently as earlier this week. Very few details are available right now. I have seen speculation that the original email address is revealed when someone replies using their hidden email address, but the impression I get from Cox’s reporting is that no user interaction is necessary:

To test the issue I generated a new Hide My Email address and provided it to Murphy. Around five minutes later, he replied with my real email address linked to my Apple account which was supposed to be hidden.

I am also unclear about how, as of May, the EasyOptOuts guys found the “vulnerability may have greater severity and scope” than initially reported. Ominous, though.

Also, it is pretty shameful Apple has known about this for a year and has not actually fixed it. This seems to be a common occurrence when reporting bugs of any kind. There are plenty of times I have received responses to years-old bug reports claiming a fix was delivered recently, despite the issue still being easily reproducible. And those are little things; this is a bug that, if you believe this EasyOptOuts write-up and Cox’s reporting, fundamentally undermines a privacy feature that costs money.

Reddit Login-Walls ‘Old Reddit’ ⇥ reddit.com

“boat-botany”:

Old Reddit’s logged-out experience is a significant source of abusive scraping and automated traffic on the platform. It’s also an important interface for many long-time mods and redditors. To strike the right balance between preserving your access to Old Reddit while preventing abusive scraping and automated traffic, over the next month we will start requiring everyone to log in. All logged-in users will continue to have access to Old Reddit, and this change will not impact logged-out browsing on reddit.com.

“New” Reddit is a janky, slow, bloated mess of a website that mostly displays text, images, and videos. “Old” Reddit is ugly but functional. The site admins are not promising the superior version will be available forever, and they are specifically calling attention to its lack of a “modern security tech stack”. I do not think “old” Reddit is long for this world — especially since Reddit is aggressively promoting its mobile app.

U.K. Competition Authority Proposes Restrictions on Apple’s Anti-Steering Rules ⇥ gov.uk

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority:

‘Steering’ – the ability for developers to engage with customers about off‑platform options – is currently banned by Apple and restricted by Google in the UK. Lifting these constraints would allow developers to bypass mandatory fees set by platforms.

The CMA’s consultation includes principles to ensure that the fees Apple and Google charge for steering are fair and reasonable. Using an evidence-based framework, the CMA would expect steering fees to be lower than current app store charges, with savings passed onto UK customers or invested back into the developers’ businesses to support future innovation.

You will note the CMA is not saying that a smaller fee actually will result in lower prices for customers, because corporations — including developers — tend to be profit-seeking endeavours. They may increase prices when costs grow but that does not mean they do the opposite. But who cares? Lower costs permit more flexibility on pricing and, even if that money ends up in the pockets of developers instead of Apple, is that supposed to be a bad thing? Is there a reason why someone should be upset that they might pay the same amount but an indie developer gets to keep more of it?

The proposed policies are pretty straightforward from what I can see. Among other obligations, Apple is not allowed to use or require scare tactics when users are routed to an external payment mechanism and, while it is allowed to charge a steering fee, it is not allowed to count services not used by developers offering third-payments nor double-count for services already accounted for by other developer fees. Also, the CMA calls bullshit on Apple’s claim that third-party payments are particularly risky (page 32):

We note that Apple already requires the use of alternative in-app payment methods, including steering of users through a link-out, within apps offering physical goods and services. We understand that Apple has distinguished between the approach it takes to digital and physical goods and services for operational reasons, and not because of a different magnitude of risks to user security and privacy.

If this CMA proposal becomes law, it would be yet another country — I believe the seventh region, counting the E.U. as one — in which Apple’s anticompetitive App Store practices have been made illegal.

Australian Competition Authority Accuses Amazon of Avaricious Contracts ⇥ accc.gov.au

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission:

Between November 2023 and August 2025, Amazon AU’s Prime contracts with more than one million annual subscribers contained what the ACCC alleges were five unfair contract terms that allowed it to unilaterally make negative changes during the contract period without offering subscribers a remedy.

It is also alleged that Amazon AU later relied on one or more of these unfair terms when it introduced ads to Prime Video in Australia in July 2024. Prior to that, Amazon Prime Video was almost entirely ad-free.

Good. Do you know how much people would love it if governments gave adequate time and funding to competition and consumer protection authorities? Going after this bait-and-switch nonsense is something prized by just about everyone more sensible than your average libertarian. More of this, and where I live, please.

Australia Pledges Tougher Enforcement of Social Media Ban for Teens ⇥ reuters.com

Byron Kaye, Reuters:

Australia’s prime minister vowed on Friday to bullet-proof laws supporting a social ​media ban for under-16s as the government prepares legal action against platforms amid a steady stream of evidence that the ban has had little impact on teen use.

[…]

He did not give further details about what steps the government would take and the regulator declined to comment.

The details matter. In general, though, anything that makes age gating more effective must presumably make accessing age-gated websites more difficult for everyone. Proponents will argue that it is worth the collective sacrifice because it will add a layer of protection for children. I sympathize with that argument, but I think it over-simplifies a complex story and presents a solution with serious problems — for instance, the possibility of data leaks.

Sean Hollister, the Verge:

“We have to do something about it as fast as possible, because people will find this and resell it. It will do damage,” Sammy Azdoufal told me in May.

Azdoufal is the security researcher who used Claude Code to help discover that every DJI Romo robot vacuum cleaner and a million baby monitors and security cameras were embarrassingly easy to hack. This time, he says he discovered over 985,000 photo IDs sitting on the public internet for any half-decent hacker to steal.

These I.D.s included passport scans and driver’s licenses because they have the kind of information you need to buy weed. And this is in-person purchasing at clubs in Spain. I am hopeful that age gating technology vendors are more competent, perhaps destroying their copy of a document and storing only a confirmation token. But without better oversight, we simply have no idea and should have no confidence.

(Via Bruce Schneier who, for whatever reason, links not to Hollister’s report but instead a presumably A.I.-assisted rewrite hosted at the domain previously associated with — no joke — Cambridge Analytica.)

The Claude Aesthetic ⇥ newyorker.com

Kyle Chayka, the New Yorker:

As Claude Design catches on among Anthropic users, a generic-design aesthetic is emerging that’s as noticeable as text-based A.I. tics such as overenthusiastic em-dash usage or “not X … but Y” constructions. In slide decks and on website interfaces, there’s a predominance of beige- and cream-colored backgrounds, rusty orange-hued accents, and large serif typefaces that are italicized and highlighted in zealous attempts to emphasize. Subheadings are often “tracked out,” in design parlance, with spaces between the letters, and there’s an inexplicable prevalence of ticker-like text bars, as if the website were a cable-news show. […]

An off-white background? Rusty orange accent colours? Well, darn.

Naz Hamid:

I paused to think about what I found inspiring at this time, and what feels fundamentally me. The answer lay in a mix of blueprints, indigo dyes, and selvedge denim. Add in some mid-century Americana via compartmentalized typography, and here we are. In hindsight, I’ve used shades of blue a number of times with Weightshift, but had left it behind. The blues are back.

Nick Simson:

I am choosing to see myself as someone who is not competing with A.I. I can’t anyway, on either price or so-called “efficiency.” I probably didn’t want that kind of work anyway. I find myself being more deliberate in design decisions, and writing too, so my work resembles something made, not generated.

Now that a method of mass production has reached the knowledge work sector, it is interesting to see a whole class of people try to find and eradicate any whiff of A.I. from their work, regardless of whether it was put there by human or machine.

The Real Problem the Metaverse Set Out to Solve ⇥ josh.earth

Josh Marinacci, building on top of my metaverse rundown:

Let’s get to one of the big points of the article I started this rant with, that if VR couldn’t be popular during a global lockdown when everyone had lots of free time and was trapped inside, then it would never be popular. While that might be true for Horizon, it is not true about VR in general. Truthfully VR was dying before COVID. I know because I was there.

I worked in Mozilla’s Mixed Reality group from 2017 to 2020. I saw all of this first hand. Most investments were turning sour before COVID.

Marinacci’s closer-to-the-inside voice is worth your time if you are at all interested in this bizarre chapter in tech company history. If anything, I think it lends credence to my theory that the pandemic was the fuel powering these dreams, since it became the justification for maintaining investors’ waning interest — until it was not.

The Marketplace of Ideas Is Rigged When It Comes to Artificial Intelligence ⇥ theverge.com

Terrence O’Brien, the Verge:

But this isn’t some fluke, or temporary supply chain problem. Companies are choosing data center clients over ordinary buyers because “the same chip earns far more inside an AI server than inside a consumer device,” according to Srikanth Jagabathula, professor of technology, operations, and statistics at the NYU Stern School of Business. Regardless of whether people are clamoring for more AI, and more AI data centers, or not.

O’Brien frames this question around the recent Apple price increases, but this observation can be generalized in a way that does not require tackling the question of whether the company’s extraordinary margins should cushion its customers against increasing costs. If someone wants to go out and buy a computer right now, they are going to be paying through the nose for any spec above the entry-level. Even if they want to buy a relatively “thin” client, it still needs plenty of RAM — in part because local models need it, itself a part of this issue.

There is, therefore, no way to opt out of this technological push when buying something new. That makes sense if you think of the family of artificial intelligence technologies as a feature, not a product. But it does mean we all end up paying for this explosive market regardless of whether we think any of this is a prudent, sensible, or ethical technology.

Kif Leswing, CNBC:

But while tech giants like Apple and Microsoft, which both announced price hikes this week, have a hefty cash cushion, supply chain leverage and customers numbering in the millions or billions, a much wider swath of businesses face potentially dire straits. Most consumer electronics companies have little margin to spare and can’t confidently raise prices in an economy already grappling with inflationary pressures.

Luke James, Tom’s Hardware:

Samsung, SK hynix, and Micron were sued on June 25th in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, where 17 plaintiffs accuse the three memory makers of illegally coordinating to restrict DRAM supply and inflate prices that the complaint says have risen roughly 700% over four years. The class action, filed as Garciaguirre v. Samsung Electronics and assigned to Judge Noel Wise, invokes Section 1 of the Sherman Act and targets companies that together hold around 90% of the global DRAM market. Samsung and SK hynix have pleaded guilty to criminal DRAM price fixing once before, with the latter paying a $185 million fine in April 2005.

The complaint (PDF) and docket are available on CourtListener which, notably, contains a reminder that these same companies did this before.

Mark Zuckerberg Makes Another Sartorial Pivot ⇥ patreon.com

Max Read:

But times change, and so too does a man’s fashion. Zuck still shows up in photos in his boxy heavyweight tees, but he’s begun to rotate in—and even favor—soft, textured, lifelessly tasteful polos like the heather gray number above, or the long-sleeve taupe Prada joint he wore buttoned to the top at the Prada show at Milan Fashion Week back in February:

[…]

Perhaps even more notably, when he does wear t-shirts these days, he’s demurely tucking the chain inside: […]

Mark Zuckerberg’s regular reinvention is fascinating to me. There is nothing wrong with his changing how he dresses, just as there is nothing wrong if you or I do the same, but he clearly has a communications goal for these personal makeovers. His discovery three years ago of six-figure wristwatches and ostentatious streetwear was, in part, about signalling allegiance to vulgarity and masculinity when that was seemingly trending. Now, the cultural tides are shifting again and Zuckerberg needs to play the role of a studious and careful CEO who will manage his company’s contributions to artificial intelligence responsibly, so he is wearing soft polos.

Then there are the CEOs who wear the same thing every day, and that is pretty weird, too.

Jason Snell Ends His Macworld Column ⇥ macworld.com

Jason Snell, Macworld:

A new pivot point for Apple? Seems like a good time for a new pivot for me, too. This year has been full of milestones for me, from appearing on “Jeopardy!” to reviewing David Pogue’s book about Apple for The Wall Street Journal, to crowdfunding a new podcast about Apple history. Along the way, I’ve had to say goodbye to some longstanding projects.

That’s my long way of saying that this is my last More Color column at Macworld. […]

Snell would likely not appreciate it if I mentioned how old I was when I first read his byline, so I will not, but I will point out that I continue to love what he is doing independently at Six Colors. My congratulations for an amazing run.