Geoff Mann, London Review of Books:
\n\n\n\n\nThe dubious achievement of prediction markets is to have found a new way to exacerbate and exploit the simultaneously frantic and passive experience of the world that is a defining aspect of our age. Like any kind of gambling, they are enervating. We put our money down and then (unless we are using a hairdryer on an airport thermometer) fidget anxiously till it\u2019s over. The world happens to us. This passivity is characteristic of the politics of those who think we are stuck with the world we have. The best we can do is make money while events wash over us: \u2018Don\u2019t blame me. I didn\u2019t start the war, I just bet on it.\u2019 Such people may think they are \u2018courageous\u2019 or \u2018gutsy\u2019 because they take \u2018risks\u2019 (this is the way people in the financial sector have always talked), but the whole charade is a profitable supplication to, even a cowering before, the power of \u2018the markets\u2019. To put the case more gently, the appeal of \u2018risk-taking\u2019 just now, especially but not only to young men, may be an indicator of how little control many people feel they have over their own slice of the world, and of the feeling that they can\u2019t shape their lives in a meaningful way. Marking time through a series of \u2018settlements\u2019 and \u2018closes\u2019, hoping for a windfall, may look like the best way to buffer oneself against an uncertain future.
\n
The “hairdryer on an airport thermometer” phrase is a reference to a story I had not heard before about a temperature sensor at Charles de Gaulle Airport. It is dumb as hell in the best and worst ways you can imagine.
\n\nThe only way users of Kalshi and Polymarket are predicting anything is if they have either knowledge of \u2014 or control over \u2014 an outcome. We recently had a by-election in Alberta. Kalshi members bet with 99% odds that one candidate would win \u2014 right up until the votes began to be tabulated. Betting on nigh everything is treacherous, and claiming it is not gambling but “prediction” markets is laughable.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-19T22:36:14-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-19T22:36:14-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/fuller-camera-shutter/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/fuller-camera-shutter/", "external_url": "https://www.jarrettfuller.blog/2026/09/camera-shutter-skeuomorph/", "title": "The Last Skeuomorph in iOS?", "content_html": "Jarrett Fuller [sic]:
\n\n\n\n\nIt\u2019s 2026 and when I click the button on my glass phone, it makes a shutter sound! There are still skeuomorphs in iOS after all! The skeuomorphic designs of the early camera simulated a shutter closing and opening when you a took a photo but that\u2019s long been replaced with just a subtle blink of the screen. And yet! The shutter sounds remains.
\n
As Fuller writes, it might be the very last one. I would also make a case for the lock sound. It is not quite the padlock noise it used to be, but it definitely retains a mechanical quality that resembles what it is supposed to be.
\n\nOne nitpick:
\n\n\n\n\n[\u2026] (The irony is not lost on me that this new phone actually does have a physical shutter. That shutter, though, is silent. Apple is essentually simulating the shutter sound while a real shutter is actually firing.)
\n
The new iPhone has physical aperture blades on its main camera, but I am pretty certain it, like all iPhone cameras before, continues to use an electronic rolling shutter.
\n\nUpdate: Via Marcin Wichary, there is lots of good discussion on Kottke, including skeuomorphic icons for apps I do not keep on my Home Screen and, thus, forgot about.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-19T20:20:20-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-19T21:50:12-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/meta-new-business-terms-again/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/meta-new-business-terms-again/", "external_url": "https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/legal-experts-warn-metas-new-terms-still-grant-broad-scraping-permissions-despite-language-changes/", "title": "Meta Revises Its Commercial Terms of Service Again", "content_html": "Andrew Deck and Hanaa’ Tameez, Nieman Lab:
\n\n\n\n\nIn its revision, published Friday afternoon, Meta removed the word \u201ctrain\u201d from a list of allowed use cases and limited those uses to \u201cadvertising and business products,\u201d rather than all Meta products. But the revised terms will still allow for broad scraping of websites, potentially superseding robots.txt files, according to legal experts.
\n
Meta is adamant it will not misuse these capabilities in the way these legal experts say it can. If promises are being made by a company with the kind of public respect and trust Meta has, you can take its tweeted word over its new legal permissions for all the weight that it carries.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-19T18:14:03-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-19T18:14:03-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/cannibalizing-the-future/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/cannibalizing-the-future/", "external_url": "https://www.techpolicy.press/tech-hype-is-cannibalizing-the-future/", "title": "Tech Hype Is Cannibalizing the Future", "content_html": "Sun-ha Hong, Tech Policy Press:
\n\n\n\n\nSometimes, failures do lead to wider stigma and skepticism around the technology in question. But this does not happen anywhere near as often as the massive levels of investment and inflated promises might warrant. The distinct characteristic of tech hype of the 21st century is the overwhelming centralization of wealth, cultural prestige and, increasingly, political autonomy that is used to instill a sense of inevitability around Silicon Valley visions of the future, and a sense of learned helplessness, or even \u201cfuturelessness,\u201d for those who would prefer another path. Mark Zuckerberg and Meta thus live to dream another day, relatively unscathed from the over $80 billion burned at the altar of the Metaverse.
\n
This pretty well encapsulates the myth-making qualities of Elon Musk, too, particularly after yesterday’s nonsense-filled Tesla \u201cRoadster\u201d announcement. (About which, by the way, Jameson Dow at Electrek has a theory.)
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-16T23:09:11-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-16T23:09:11-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/citizen-lab-adfection/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/citizen-lab-adfection/", "external_url": "https://citizenlab.ca/research/how-discover-tech-turned-targeted-ads-into-a-pipeline-for-spyware/", "title": "How Targeted Ads Become a Pipeline for Zero-Click Mercenary Spyware", "content_html": "Bill Marczak, et al., of the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab:
\n\n\n\n\nThis is the first-ever public confirmation of zero-click mercenary spyware delivered via targeted ads. We call the technique AdFection, and show how it was used to infect devices at Al Jazeera with Candiru\u2019s spyware. We also uncover Discover-Tech, and show how the company helps mercenary surveillance vendors track and hack devices around the world.
\n
Jillian Kestler-D’Amours, CBC News:
\n\n\n\n\nCitizen Lab said it was able to confirm a targeted spyware attack on Al Jazeera: At least 45 of the Qatar-based news outlet’s devices were infected with spyware via Discover-Tech’s ads in 2024 and 2025, the report said.
\n \n[\u2026]
\n \nAn Al Jazeera Media Network spokesperson told CBC News in an email that it “strongly condemns the targeting of our staff with mercenary spyware.”
\n
This investigation is worth your time; it is disturbing. It solidified two things for me: the display advertising technology stack is a global threat, and behaviourally targeted advertising needs to be banned. Obviously, installing an ad blocker is mandatory now, and any website that relies on anti-ad blockers like Admiral does not respect you.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-16T21:40:45-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-16T21:40:45-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/meta-new-business-terms/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/meta-new-business-terms/", "external_url": "https://www.niemanlab.org/2026/10/metas-new-commercial-terms-will-allow-the-scraping-of-news-sites-legal-experts-say/", "title": "Meta’s New Business Terms Appear to Supersede Opt-Outs for A.I. Training on Commercial Websites", "content_html": "Andrew Deck and Hanaa’ Tameez, Nieman Lab:
\n\n\n\n\nMeta can use web scrapers to crawl and collect content from websites \u201cassociated with\u201d business accounts on its platforms, according to its new commercial terms of use.
\n \n[\u2026]
\n \nThe new terms broadly cover business accounts that manage pages and groups, run advertisements, push marketing messages, and use the platform\u2019s business account dashboard. As written, the new terms could be used to argue that Meta can scrape content from news sites and use that content to train the company\u2019s AI products, according to three legal experts who reviewed the terms at Nieman Lab\u2019s request.
\n
Short of businesses deleting their Meta accounts, there does not appear to be a way to opt out of the new terms. This seems to me to be one way to better insulate the company from the potential consequences of fair use arguments that have mixed results in U.S. courts.
\n\nUpdate: Meta’s Andy Stone disputes this analysis, and says “content owners can use robots.txt flags to indicate their preferences”.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-15T19:16:57-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-16T10:18:37-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/diresta-yandex-strikes/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/diresta-yandex-strikes/", "external_url": "https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-russian-bots-went-silent.-or-did-they", "title": "Evidence Does Not Show Decreased Russian Propaganda After Ukrainian Strikes on Yandex Data Centres", "content_html": "Ren\u00e9e DiResta, writing for Lawfare:
\n\n\n\n\nThere is a real event underpinning the story, and an authentic chart showing a dramatic decline in automated internet traffic. But the leap from a viral chart to the disappearance of Russian propaganda bots is a large one. Much of the apparent corroboration comes from anecdotes about how social media feels, rather than measurements of what actually changed. And this speaks to a broader problem: as platforms have reduced access to data, and as \u201cdisinformation\u201d has become a politically contentious term, the ability to investigate claims about online manipulation has decreased.
\n
My concern remains that offloading responsibility for the toxicity of online spaces to foreign propaganda campaigns makes it more difficult to confront the actual problems. There is plenty of blame to go around. Russia has, as DiResta put it in a 2018 New York Times opinion column, developed an “enthusiasm for and commitment to modern information warfare”. Other countries are also using social media for propaganda and misinformation, too.
\n\nBut some blame should also be apportioned to the platforms that incentivize bad actors, and those that accept no responsibility for what they promote. Of course, there are also the individual users who are hostile and abusive toward others. This is made possible in part by platforms that moderate poorly and tacitly \u2014 and, in some cases, explicitly \u2014 encourage an outrageous environment. But it is also the fault of individual users who spread lies, hate, and harm. Many of them are not foreign actors, but our neighbours right here at home.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-15T19:05:54-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-15T19:05:54-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/joz-lunatic-fringe/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/joz-lunatic-fringe/", "external_url": "https://time.com/collection/best-inventions/2026/apple-iphone-duo/", "title": "Here\u2019s to the Normal Ones", "content_html": "Time announced its roundup of what it thinks are the best inventions of 2026. Among them are John Ternus \u2014 or so it would seem \u2014 and the iPhone Duo.
\n\nAndrew R. Chow profiled Apple’s new CEO, and this excerpt has caught some eyes:
\n\n\n\n\nBut Ternus and other Apple executives say they aren\u2019t concerned. In the midst of a populist AI backlash, they contend that they are building a modest but personalized and privacy-preserving form of AI that will actually help ordinary people as opposed to merely dazzling Silicon Valley\u2019s \u201clunatic fringe,\u201d as Greg Joswiak, senior vice president of worldwide marketing, puts it. And besides, Ternus argues, even if other companies succeed in their mission of building super-intelligence, users will still want to talk to it on Apple devices.
\n
I hope the “lunatic fringe” is very upset about this. Perhaps they can be so upset that refurbished Mac Studios can be restocked. Oh, please.
\n\nJoining the iPhone Duo among the “best inventions” are the Brick and Dumbphone 2, two devices that attempt to get you to put away your smartphone, and the Plaud NotePin S, another entry in the apparently booming category of A.I. note-taking products.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-15T17:33:29-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-15T17:34:14-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/w-social-open-data/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/w-social-open-data/", "external_url": "https://blog.elenarossini.com/public-by-design-how-w-social-makes-their-verified-users-personal-details-visible-on-the-open-web/", "title": "W Social Makes Verified Users\u2019 Personal Details Visible on the Open Web", "content_html": "\n\n\n\n\nW Social is a European social media company that launched in Davos earlier this year, during the World Economic Forum. I have written a series of articles about them; [\u2026]
\n \n[\u2026]
\n \nI wonder: are W Social verified users aware that their personal details (first name, last name, nationality and approx. birthday) are being shared OUTSIDE of W Social and published as a permanent record on the web, in plain text?
\n
This has to be in violation of European privacy laws, right? No way would anyone expect their full legal name to be publicly accessible. W Social disputes this framing and has taken an aggressive posture in response.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-14T22:28:53-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-14T22:28:53-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/psb-turing/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/psb-turing/", "external_url": "https://www.petshopboys.co.uk/news/2026-10-09/a-man-from-the-future-4", "title": "\u2018A Man From the Future\u2019", "content_html": "The Pet Shop Boys have a new album out:
\n\n\n\n\nCreated in collaboration with Alan Turing biographer, Andrew Hodges, and performed by Pet Shop Boys and the Manchester Camerata Octet with narration by Juliet Stevenson, string arrangements by Sven Helbig and additional production, programming and synthesisers by Maarten Vos, the work explores eight significant chapters in the life and death of Alan Turing, the pioneering British mathematician and cryptanalyst who laid the foundations of modern computing.
\n
There are some wonderful poetic choices across the whole record.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-13T22:10:52-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-13T22:10:52-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/silencing-airtags-followup/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/silencing-airtags-followup/", "external_url": "https://www.elevationlab.com/blogs/news/an-apology", "title": "Elevation Lab Pulls Its AirTag Silencing Product", "content_html": "Not too long ago, Apple accessory company Elevation Lab released a product designed to silence the noises made by AirTags when they are out of range. That is a reasonable idea for an AirTag installed in something someone might steal. It is also a dangerous product in the hands of someone who might want to stalk or harass another person, a distressingly well-documented use of AirTags.
\n\nElevation Lab, today:
\n\n\n\n\nWe have removed the product and will use our patent on it to prevent anyone else from making one in the future.
\n
This is excellent news \u2014 a necessary correction for, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Eva Galperin put it, “the mindset that things are more important than people”. Kudos to Elevation Lab for doing the right thing.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-13T14:53:23-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-13T16:06:56-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/marcotte-recommendation-engines/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/marcotte-recommendation-engines/", "external_url": "https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/all-watched-over-by-algorithms-of-loving-grace/", "title": "Tired of Recommendation Engines", "content_html": "Ethan Marcotte is tired of all the recommendations and suggestions in internet services. For the most part, I am, too. At the very least, I dislike how much they feel imposed or as a default, as though my use of most services should flow through the suggestions they provide.
\n\nEven calling them “suggestions” or “recommendations” feels a little bit generous for sites like YouTube \u2014 where continuous playback to an automatically selected video is on by default \u2014 or Instagram, where algorithmically selected posts can only be “snoozed” from the timeline for thirty days at a time before they are automatically re-enabled.
\n\nIt should not be so difficult for me to simply look at things I want to see and, just as importantly, not see things I do not want to look at.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-12T22:58:33-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-12T22:59:35-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/russian-troll-decline/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/russian-troll-decline/", "external_url": "https://www.br.de/nachrichten/netzwelt/faktenfuchs-irrefuehrende-grafik-zu-angeblicher-bot-aktivitaet,VXq30qk", "title": "The Probably Fake Russian Troll Exodus", "content_html": "After Ukrainian forces struck several data centres belonging to Russian internet services giant Yandex, a couple of charts began circulating social media purportedly showing a decline in traffic from Russian bots. The narrative suggested \u2014 by people like political scientist Ian Bremmer, journalist Jamie Dupree, TPM\u2019s Josh Marshall, and historian Timothy Snyder \u2014 is that these attacks silenced a noticeable number of automated troll accounts on X, particularly those promoting far-right talking points.
\n\nThis does not appear to be true.
\n\nThere are two charts in question. The first, as posted by Dupree and others, is sourced from Cloudflare data indicating a precipitous drop in Yandex bot traffic. But, as Jowi Morales writes at Tom’s Hardware, this does not show a reprieve from nefarious users:
\n\n\n\n\nYandex is Russia\u2019s equivalent to Google, and its Yandex Cloud service status reports that at least 84 services are currently offline. Global internet monitoring firm NetBlocks said that Yandex\u2019s network traffic has dropped to just 30% for Yandex Cloud and 63% for Yandex LLC, most likely resulting in slower internet services or complete disruption for the average Russian. [\u2026]
\n
Yandex operates search engine crawlers, just like Google, which are referred to as “bots”. This is, in part, what these data centre strikes took out, and the reason Cloudflare is seeing a big drop in traffic from Yandex.
\n\nThe other chart is a doozy. It was popularized in an X post by Tom\u00e1\u0161 Zdechovsk\u00fd, a Member of the European Parliament for the Czech Republic, though its original source is unknown. It purportedly shows a massive recent decline in social media posts promoting the far-right Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland party, with Zdechovsk\u00fd suggesting “[s]o much talk about German patriotism\u2026 then the connection from Russia goes down. \ud83e\udd14\ud83c\uddf7\ud83c\uddfa” But the chart itself does not indicate this is AfD-related traffic at all. The title translates to “daily activity over 3 months” \u2014 but “daily activity” of what, exactly, is not defined.
\n\nMax Gilbert, of German public broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk, looked into the chart and found it was full of problems (this is how Safari translated the article for me):
\n\n\n\n\nIt is striking that the graph on the 15th October ends, so a date in the future. According to #Faktenfuchs-Recherche, the graphic was first published on the 11th. Posted in October. That data is available for an already future date is obviously not possible.
\n \n[\u2026]
\n \nWhich platforms were examined here, how the variable “activity” comes about: All this remains unclear. The unknown or possibly non-existent data base as well as the inaccurate scaling and values “from the future” show that this is not a meaningful, fact-based graphic created according to statistical methods.
\n
Tom Wannenmacher, of Austrian fact-checking site Mimikama, also published a good explanation of the two charts. And overall Russian bot traffic has not really declined recently.
\n\nUnfortunately, these charts and their narrative have been circulating widely for days and, I bet, will live on as a kind of orphaned factoid among the terminally online. It is disappointing how uncritically these charts were accepted. There are, of course, disinformation networks and state propaganda all over social media. But when we focus too much on the involvement of foreign actors and unhinged trillionaires in our dire political state, we may forget how much of it is grown right here and self-inflicted.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-12T10:24:49-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-12T10:33:01-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/nadella-benioff-toadies/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/nadella-benioff-toadies/", "external_url": "https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/10/microsoft-satya-nadella-ai-emergency-brake-safety.html", "title": "Satya Nadella and Marc Benioff, Toadies", "content_html": "Greg Iacurci, CNBC
\n\n\n\n\nMicrosoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella on Saturday called for advanced artificial intelligence systems to be built with containment, independent controls and an \u201cemergency brake\u201d that lets authorized people pause or shut a model down mid-task.
\n \n\u201cWe need to surround non-deterministic models with strong, deterministic system design, human controls, and reliable operating procedures, and establish industry standards where existing ones are insufficient,\u201d Nadella wrote in a post on social media platform X.
\n
What Nadella actually wrote is an essay which does not contain the word “artificial”, but instead uses the phrase “super intelligence” four times and otherwise \u2014 because it is obvious and embarrassing what he is doing \u2014 simply refers to the technology as “intelligence”.
\n\nMarc Benioff, also on X:
\n\n\n\n\nThe era of Super Intelligence is here. AIForce is officially SIForce.
\n
There is no legal or moral requirement to replace the vocabulary of “artificial intelligence” unless one is trying to appease a dumb and unpopular administration. Truly spineless stuff from Nadella and Benioff alike.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-11T10:58:13-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-11T10:58:13-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/people-holding-up-the-internet/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/people-holding-up-the-internet/", "external_url": "https://sheets.works/data-viz/holding-up-the-internet", "title": "The People Holding Up the Internet", "content_html": "Sheets.works put together an excellent but \u2014 perhaps ironically \u2014 unbylined visualization with this simple premise:
\n\n\n\n\nBillions of phones run on code looked after by a handful of people. We counted them from the code itself.
\n
I had no idea SQLite or sudo were maintained by such a small number of individuals and \u2014 like many other examples in this story \u2014 seemingly without the financial support of the companies relying on their work. Some of those are among the most valuable companies on the planet.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-08T22:55:13-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-08T22:55:13-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/youtube-ab-testing/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/youtube-ab-testing/", "external_url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1q-TuHdc4Y", "title": "Next Year, YouTube Will Allow Testing Different Versions of the Same Video", "content_html": "Aparna Pappu of YouTube:
\n\n\n\n\nThis builds on the incredible success we’ve seen with other Studio tools like A/B testing, where creators have run more than 40 million experiments to find the perfect titles and thumbnails for their videos since the feature officially launched in 2024. Coming soon, you\u2019ll also be able to test up to three video cuts to see which hook performs best with the new video A/B testing feature.
\n
This is a very short introduction to a potentially very transformative feature: different people will now be watching different versions of what is ostensibly the same video.
\n\nMarques Brownlee has a thoughtful video about the potential consequences and I think it is worth your time. Brownlee got to speak with some YouTube engineers about his concerns \u2014 including really basic questions like whether someone will know they are watching a video that has other versions \u2014 and they apparently had few answers. One thing they did address, though, is that this feature is apparently intended to allow slightly different variations and not wholly different videos. Some mysterious-to-everyone A.I. analysis will determine whether the variations are similar enough to permit A/B testing.
\n\nYouTube announced this feature about two weeks ago, and according to Brownlee, it will be launching next year. I am not exactly plugged into the YouTube world but this is the first I am hearing of it and, while I would like to believe YouTube will adequately communicate this closer to launch, I think most video viewers are going to find this unpleasant and surprising. If it rolls out as described now, I bet you will see a lot of confused comments under videos with people referencing something that only happened in one version.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-07T17:29:17-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-07T17:29:17-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/meta-link-paywall/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/meta-link-paywall/", "external_url": "https://pressgazette.co.uk/platforms/facebook-cash-for-links-scheme-excludes-publishers-for-now/#goog_rewarded", "title": "Meta Is Restricting Some Pages to Two External Links Per Month Unless They Pay Up", "content_html": "Meta:
\n\n\n\n\nDrive people directly to your website, shop or latest offer by adding a clickable link to your Instagram posts and reels. People can visit the website from your post or reel.
\n \nIf you subscribe to a Meta One plan, you can add links to a set number of posts and reels each month based on your plan: […]
\n
It seems utterly bananas to me that Meta is pitching links as a feature people need to pay for, but here we are.
\n\nInstagram has never supported links of any kind in individual posts, so that is a new feature with two links per month permitted for free, and more enabled by this pricey subscription — starting at $50 USD per month for four posts per month containing external links. But links in Reels have been commonplace for years. Meta is now gating that, too; and there is more.
\n\nAndrew Hutchinson, Social Media Today:
\n\n\n\n\nAs outlined in the explainer, some accounts are now being limited to two link posts on Facebook per month, unless they pay for a Meta One subscription.
\n
Charlotte Tobitt, Press Gazette:
\n\n\n\n\nUntil now it has been unclear whether news publishers will come up against the link limit. But Press Gazette understands that news publishers are excluded \u2013 as they were from similar tests for the Meta Verified subscription (now folded into Meta One) that began at the end of last year.
\n \nHowever it has not been confirmed how Meta defines who falls into this category \u2013 and Press Gazette is aware of small publishers that have been told they hit the free link limit.
\n
Meta seems to have two objectives here: to take a cut from businesses that use Meta’s services as a referral source more generally, and — more specifically — to capture some of the money made by influencers. There are people who post essentially one ad after another, without compensating Meta, as they have a personality that can carry a sales pitch. Those users are extremely dependent on their Instagram following for their own careers. I think Meta believes it can extract hundreds of dollars per month, at the highest end of Meta One’s tiers, from people who want to keep their referral code links.
\n\nBetween this news and the expansion of Google A.I. features, it is extraordinary to see what were, in 2023, the two top referral sources make moves to become more insular.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-07T13:19:01-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-07T13:19:01-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/wonder-valley-nonupdate/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/wonder-valley-nonupdate/", "external_url": "https://www.theverge.com/cs/features/993343/stratos-utah-kevin-oleary-data-center-backlash", "title": "Alberta\u2019s \u2018Wonder Valley\u2019 Is Still Just a Thought", "content_html": "Josh Dzieza, in a Verge feature about Kevin O’Leary’s data centre in Utah and the citizens protesting its development, has a small update on how things are going for O’Leary’s proposal in Alberta:
\n\n\n\n\nFor developers, this presents what [Paul] Palandjian, the CEO of O\u2019Leary Digital, calls a \u201cchicken-and-egg problem.\u201d In order to finance construction of a data center, you need an anchor tenant, but all tenants care about is speed, so the best way to attract one is to get everything aside from the actual data center \u2014 land, power, permitting \u2014 ready to go. \u201cIf you\u2019re talking to a hyperscaler today, they\u2019ll say, \u2018Don\u2019t even talk to me unless you can show me a pathway to potentially lighting up my first data centers by mid 2028,\u2019\u201d Palandjian says.
\n \nThis dynamic is part of the reason there are so many \u201cworld\u2019s largest data centers,\u201d more even than O\u2019Leary\u2019s two. Mixed in with real construction projects are paper data centers, speculative ventures specced out to their maximum theoretical capacity and announced as if they were shovel-ready with the aim of catching the attention of a hyperscale tenant. Many amount to nothing or very little. It\u2019s been nearly two years since O\u2019Leary announced his first Wonder Valley, in Alberta. There is still no publicly announced tenant, and according to the Greenview planning department, no permit applications have been filed.
\n
If you recognize the byline on the Verge’s story, it may be because Dzieza was also behind great reporting on the massive Foxconn debacle in Wisconsin. I admire finding a beat as particular as long-form stories about incoherent but elaborate building proposals. For what it is worth, the most recent progress on Alberta’s “Wonder Valley” is redesignating the site.
\n\nI still cannot get over the proclaimed seventy billion dollar cost for Wonder Valley. You could build five of Meta’s similarly massive Albertan data centres for that price and still have billions left over. It is about the same as Meta is sinking into its Hyperion effort in Louisiana. It is madness.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-06T14:29:18-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-06T14:29:18-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/conspiracy-theories-betting/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/linklog/conspiracy-theories-betting/", "external_url": "https://www.wired.com/story/a-prediction-market-about-the-past-sure-why-not/", "title": "A Betting Market for Conspiracy Theories", "content_html": "Kate Knibbs, Wired:
\n\n\n\n\nVerifact Markets, a new startup that bills itself as a \u201cprediction market for disputed facts,\u201d is betting that people will be eager to weigh in on questions like these. The company\u2019s premise is so quirky it sounds like something a couple of philosophy and economics majors dreamed after too many bong rips in their dorm room: Instead of wagering on the future, why not trade on stuff that already happened?
\n
If you bet the Moon landing was faked, you could get a 10:1 payout if your bet comes true. Except there is already plenty of evidence the Moon landing was not filmed in a studio that to call it a “disputed fact” is braindead, and the only people betting it was faked will not accept the outcome. Also, Knibbs reports any of these individual betting pools can expire if the company determines there is not enough evidence either way, so this is not going to resolve any supposedly “disputed facts”.
\n\nThis is so idiotic \u2014 so utterly devoid of meaningful thought \u2014 that it will either collapse in less than a year, or it is going to further wreck the minds of some of the most powerful people in the world.
\n\nUpdate: A friend of mine sent me a decade-old SMBC that should not be nearly as prescient as it is.
\n\n", "date_published": "2026-10-05T21:16:25-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-06T21:34:10-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } }, { "id": "https://pxlnv.com/blog/macos-full-disk-access-restrictions/", "url": "https://pxlnv.com/blog/macos-full-disk-access-restrictions/", "title": "Apple Says It Will Further Lock Down MacOS in Response to Third-Party A.I. Agents", "content_html": "Apple, in a Developer News post I am reproducing in its entirety, segment-by-segment:
\n\n\n\n\nWe give developers powerful APIs to build incredible capabilities into their apps for Apple products, backed by a set of controls designed to protect users\u2019 private data. Full Disk Access largely sidesteps these controls in order to allow backup apps to function properly on the Mac.
\n
As John Voorhees writes, the uses of Full Disk Access go well beyond the category of backup apps, and it is worrisome to see Apple give it such a limited frame. I have given that permission to disk management utilities, Sketch, Terminal, and other apps I do not want to be throwing permissions requests as I move around my drives. Is Apple suggesting this capability could be limited in the future to backup applications alone? I do not like that.
\n\n\n\n\nSome developers are using Full Disk Access in ways that could put users at risk, exposing everything on their systems \u2014 including files, mail, messages, and even browsing history \u2014 without users\u2019 full knowledge and understanding.
\n
This seems very clearly a response to Jason Aten’s claim, in Inc, that Meta’s Muse agent software accessed and uploaded his Messages database without permission. This story is, as of writing, still confusing to me because Aten does not clearly describe the circumstances.
\n\nFull Disk Access is required because the Messages database is protected by MacOS. Giving Muse this permission is one of two prerequisites. The other, according to Meta’s Andy Stone, is something called the Messages Connector. Aten says he “had explicitly declined to connect Messages” but when he “looked at Muse\u2019s settings afterward, Messages was enabled” anyway. In a follow-up article, Aten suggests he turned on Full Disk Access, then turned it off \u2014 though he does not say this explicitly \u2014 after which Muse was still able to read Messages data. If so, it indicates a possible MacOS security problem. But I must stress that I am confused by Aten’s description of the chain of events. As I was (slowly) putting this article together, Jeff Johnson attempted to reproduce the circumstances of Aten’s articles as he, like me, found the description confusing. As Johnson writes, “if Muse uploaded Aten\u2019s Messages database, as he claims, then Aten granted Full Disk Access to Muse at some point. There\u2019s no other plausible explanation”.
\n\nRegardless, we now have a wave of poorly regulated and frequently misconfigured software that scoop up user data with barely any notice, so Apple says \u2014 as you will read later \u2014 that it is stepping in to curb a likely vector for unintended consequences in Full Disk Access. However, it provides no details on what these additional restrictions will look like for users. It could be something as minor as a sterner dialog box, but I do not see a reason why Apple would issue a warning about a change like that.
\n\nBecause of the lack of information available at present, I do not want to get too far ahead of myself, but I am concerned that it could be a significant curtailing of application permissions. It has the potential for further self-preferencing, as Apple will surely exempt Siri from the kinds of permissions requests it requires of third-party apps, even as it is updated with additional capabilities. In MacOS Golden Gate, for example, apps must be excluded if you do not want Apple Intelligence or Siri to have access. This makes sense inasmuch as Apple trusts itself, and users have agreed to its software license agreement and privacy policy. But an aggressive policy against broad access also means third-party software will be further disadvantaged on MacOS. Meta is, thanks to feeble government regulations and a seemingly skeezy management culture, the last company whose agent I would trust to run rampant across my system. But suppose there was an agent I felt comfortable using and felt like there was a reason to do so. No matter its potential capabilities, it would struggle to compete with Siri because of how privileged and integrated the latter already is \u2014 and now consider how much more difficult it would be if Full Disk Access were kneecapped.
\n\nOne might argue that it is hardly a surprise since Apple has been promoting its unique “personal context” advantage since it began marketing Apple Intelligence in 2024. And Siri has always been privileged: since Apple integrated it with the iPhone 4S, it has been able to send and read text messages, emails, and more. Apple Intelligence and Siri are just another part of the system \u2014 part of the whole widget. And that “whole widget” stance cuts both ways. Not only does it affect users on Apple’s hardware, it also means Apple does not treat Apple Intelligence or Siri as software it will bring to other platforms. Apple is only competing in this market on its own products, which means its virtual assistant has a platform-level market share of basically 100%, and not because it has outcompeted any rivals.
\n\nCall me a na\u00efve little baby if you want, but I do not think preserving Siri’s dominance on Apple’s devices is the company’s reason for locking down Full Disk Access. But Apple’s existing restrictions are part of the reason Siri was awful for a decade. If it had the opportunity to compete with third-party replacements, I doubt it would have languished in a miserable state for as long as it did. I cannot imagine people have been choosing Apple’s products to get Siri. Perhaps virtual assistants and agents will become important enough to people that they will become a factor in hardware purchasing decisions. Maybe that could even mean the development of newer platforms to compete at a higher level. But I worry about the likelihood of incumbent platform owners \u2014 the kind the European Commission has called \u201cgatekeepers\u201d \u2014 using privacy and security arguments to curtail possible competition.
\n\nBack to Apple:
\n\n\n\n\nFor communication apps, this can also compromise the privacy of the people users are communicating with.
\n
You know what else could compromise communications privacy? iCloud. By default, device backups include a user’s Messages conversation history in a format Apple can decrypt. Users must turn on Advanced Data Protection, enabling true end-to-end encrypted backups, but their conversation partners may not, undermining its effectiveness.
\n\n\n\n\nGoing forward, we will introduce additional controls to ensure that users who genuinely wish to grant an app this extraordinary level of access can only do so with very explicit user action. Addressing this is critical. As AI agents become increasingly capable and autonomous, the risks associated with this level of access will grow substantially. We are committed to ensuring users clearly understand these risks before granting such access, so they can make informed decisions about their own data and privacy.
\n
This is an issue of platform owners playing a regulatory role that should be occupied by actual lawmaking. People should not need to worry that granting Full Disk Access to software made by a well-known company will produce a result indistinguishable from malware. We have been through this before. In 2012, the iOS app Path was caught uploading users’ contacts without explicit permission for its friend finding feature. There was theoretically nothing to prevent other iOS apps from abusing their access to the Photos library, either. All of these things are now gated behind App Store moderation on iOS, Full Disk Access on MacOS, and permission request sheets on both platforms.
\n\nIt worries me that this nascent and seemingly niche world of agents is going to be another thing for users to understand and platforms to control. But, then again, I also have to wonder if the reasons I use Full Disk Access are perhaps a smaller niche. I just hope Apple’s response to this does not spoil my personal use, nor should it be a further gate to keep.
\n", "date_published": "2026-10-04T14:40:49-06:00", "date_modified": "2026-10-05T21:49:09-06:00", "author": { "name": "Nick Heer" } } ] }