The city that fought Flock
It was about to be a long night in Huntington, West Virginia.
Mayor Patrick Farrell stood before 10 members of city council in a white dress shirt and dark blazer studded with an American flag pin. Behind him sat his constituents and residents from neighboring towns. Some had their arms crossed, while others held a steady glare in his direction. Less than a week before the July 13th meeting, a 33-year-old named Jackie Harper had been shot and killed in Huntington. It was the kind of crime Farrell had promised to get under control. But a breakthrough in the case just days after the killing suggested something promising to Farrell. Harper's s …
iFixit’s look inside the iPhone Duo may explain those broken screens and hinges
As is tradition, iFixit has torn open the latest iPhone and laid its parts bare on a table. It found some interesting details about how Apple might be hiding the crease on the Duo's folding screen and gave it a 5/10 repairability score. That might not seem particularly high, but it's the best score the site has given to a foldable yet.
The internal screen's matte nano-texture cover doesn't just make it more readable in bright sunlight; it also helps mask the crease by scattering reflections. When looking at the display under a microscope, iFixit also found oval-shaped subpixels arranged at various angles, which the site believes are design …
Scott Walker’s The Drift will get under your skin
In my mind, Spooky Season music comes in two distinct flavors. There are the fun, occasionally goofy songs like "The Monster Mash" and John Carpenter's "Halloween Theme." Then there is the genuinely terrifying: Throbbing Gristle, The Body, or Scott Walker's The Drift.
This 2006 album from the singer-songwriter is truly upsetting. On it, Walker explores death, disease, and tragedy. But not just from some abstract perspective. There are visceral descriptions of the hanging of Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci. He sings about 9/11, his stillborn twin brother, and the Srebrenica genocide. Lyrically, it's about as dark as an album …
A YouTuber dissected an iPhone Duo and thinks he found the cause of crackgate
Social media and the iPhone Duo subreddit are filled with reports of Apple's foldable failing quickly and in spectacular fashion. Some users report having the phone for only a few hours before the hinge seems to catch on something, then audibly crack and break the screen. Tellingly, the cracks all seem to happen in the same place.
YouTuber CuriousHagi was able to reproduce the cracked screen during some durability testing of the iPhone Duo. Then he pulled it apart to try and find the culprit. What he found is that the Duo's hinge is quite complex, consisting of a gear-like central hinge and two different types of linking hinges.
The piec …
Zen Browser is the Arc replacement I was looking for
I know many of you are mourning the loss of the Arc browser, and I get it. It felt like the first app in a long time to really offer a new approach to browser design. Atlassian bought the company last year and shifted its focus to developing Dia, its even more AI-focused browser. And soon enough, Arc will officially be no more, leaving dedicated users in a lurch. But I abandoned Arc quite some time ago for the Zen Browser and haven't really missed it. If you're willing to deal with some minor inconveniences, I think you'll find Zen is the Arc replacement you're looking for.
Zen unabashedly rips off all the best bits of Arc. Visually, they'r …
This Switch 2 sequel accessory was a few millimeters away from being good
The Crkd Nitro Deck was a saving grace for the original Nintendo Switch. The slide-on $59.99 accessory brought Hall effect sticks to drift-plagued consoles - no need to open up your Joy-Con for a complicated repair. The Nitro Deck 2, made for both the original Switch and the larger Switch 2, continues the tradition of having better sticks than what Nintendo puts in even the newest Joy-Con (though these aren't Hall effect or TMR). But it doesn't feel as essential, and there's one thing I really can't stand about it.
It's too difficult to use the Nitro Deck 2's ABXY face buttons without the right stick getting in the way. The stick-to-button …
Now you can watch Instagram Reels on your Apple TV
Instagram is continuing its expansion into living rooms with Instagram for TV, for Apple TV. The company first started testing a version of the platform focused on Reels, live streams, and other video content, blown up for a bigger screen in December of last year. Then, in June, it launched a slew of new features for the app, which is available for Amazon's Fire TV, Samsung Smart TVs, and Google TV.
Now Meta is bringing the app to Apple TV, though there's been little fanfare. MacRumors spotted an updated Instagram app in the App Store that added Apple TV to its list of compatible platforms on October 23rd. Archived versions of the app page …
r/opensource just banned AI, non-English speakers, and more
The mods at r/opensource posted new submission rules that, among other things, banned projects that use AI. The post made Saturday evening opens by saying, "If your project uses AI, is made by AI, or is intended for AI, it's not welcome on r/opensource. AI, as it exists today, is incongruent to this Open Source community."
The new rules have set off a firestorm in the comments, and even spurred the creation of a rival sub r/trueopensource. Moderator Wolvereness has waded into the comments to explain that there's nuance and room for selective enforcement, such as "software that incidentally has accessibility features that use AI," including …
Google’s AI search changes upended online publishing
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more about AI's impact on the web, follow Emma Roth. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.
How it started
The digital publishing industry has relied on Google for a very long time. Many outlets spent time and money optimizing their webpages to show up at the top of the search engine, with the goal of getting readers to click on their articles or discover their websites for the first time. For years, the relationship between Google and publishers was largely reciprocal; online pub …
Blue Planet III is keeping the rough edges in the age of AI
BBC's Blue Planet III is looking to prove its authenticity by leaving in the less-than-perfect shots. Previous incarnations of the nature series were defined by their gorgeous, crystal-clear footage that seemed almost too good to be real. But one dead giveaway of AI is when things look too polished and seamless. To counter that, Blue Planet III goes warts and all.
Executive Producer Elizabeth White told The Guardian in the past, "the amount of plankton and things" floating in the water would have caused them to cut a shot. Or "we might have framed out a boat or a buoy or gone: 'Oh, actually … the water conditions are not really good enough …