Reason #42 for open platforms: to shut down every politician’s incessant demands to all gatekeepers to censor all of their political opponents," Sweeney wrote in a first tweet responding to MacRumors’ report of US politicians requesting that Apple and Google remove X and Grok from their app stores.

Politicians want the offending apps removed from the app stores, and Sweeney thinks app store business is his business. He really ought to worry more about improving his own store.

Users: File search should not be this bad
Microsoft: How about this bad?

This renaming happened for the Office app a while back, but now they’ve applied it to Office itself? It is April 1st already?

Valve can’t even count to 3 and it makes plenty of money.

The hack affects all Condé Nast entities as well

It doesn’t affect Ars Technica:

The hacker also says that they will release an additional 40 million records for other Condé Nast properties, including our other sister publications Vogue, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and more. Of critical note to our readers, Ars Technica was not affected as we run on our own bespoke tech stack.

Pretty sure Apple’s newer phones are USB-C worldwide. I doubt they’re leaving countries that don’t require it stuck with old models.

From the article:

The latest kerfuffle will only be seen by Enterprise users running Windows 11 24H2 or 25H2 who have a July 2025 cumulative update installed as well.

Are you running Windows 11 Enterprise?

They’re already getting sued over ChatGPT helping people commit suicide. Imagine the uproar once the advice comes with ads for rope, knives, etc…

“Our deepest sympathies are with the Raine family for their unimaginable loss,” OpenAI said in its blog, while its filing acknowledged, “Adam Raine’s death is a tragedy.” But “at the same time,” it’s essential to consider all the available context, OpenAI’s filing said, including that OpenAI has a mission to build AI that “benefits all of humanity” and is supposedly a pioneer in chatbot safety.

How the fuck is OpenAI’s mission relevant to the case? Are suggesting that their mission is worth a few deaths?

They have a pro version that adds AI features, no idea the pricing yet though.

The aricle says the AI stuff is tied to Canva’s Premium subscription, which is 120 USD/year:

Canva Premium subscribers will also be able to use AI-powered Canva editing tools like image generation, photo cleanup, and instant copy directly within the Affinity app.

Gizmodo’s article has more detail.

Maybe if the robots get damaged at the same rate their workers get injured they’ll get more interested in safety.

They left it until the very end of the article:

Early research on personalized pricing isn’t favorable for the consumer. Consumer Watchdog found that the best deals were offered to the wealthiest customers—with the worst deals given to the poorest people, who are least likely to have other options.

The US has a law to limit the liability of gun manufacturers.

The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) is a U.S law, passed in 2005, that protects firearms manufacturers and dealers from being held liable when crimes have been committed with their products. Both arms manufacturers and dealers can still be held liable for damages resulting from defective products, breach of contract, criminal misconduct, and other actions for which they are directly responsible. However, they may be held liable for negligent entrustment if it is found that they had reason to believe a firearm was intended for use in a crime.

I’m pretty sure this supreme court would rule that people don’t have a right to electricity, or even water. They’ll probably be totally ok with people losing internet access as punishment for crossing media owners.

“Finally cancelling my Spotify subscription – why am I paying for a fuckass app that works worse than it did 10 years ago, while their CEO spends all my money on technofascist military fantasies?” said one user on X.

You shouldn’t be “paying for a fuckass app that works worse than it did 10 years ago” regardless of anything an executive has done. Be less lazy and cancel subscriptions to shitty services.

Also, if a CEO doing a bad thing is a dealbreaker for them, why the fuck are they on twitter?.

Current regulations allow digital music providers to pay a lower music royalty rate if their paid music subscription offering is bundled with other legitimate product offerings. Seeing an opportunity, Spotify has exploited this regulation by converting all Premium Plan music subscribers into a new, bundled subscription offering without consumers’ consent or any notice. Spotify’s intent seems clear—to slash the statutory royalties it pays to songwriters and music publishers.

Spotify has priced its Audiobook Access plan with 15 hours of listening time per month from a limited catalog of 200,000 audiobooks at $9.99/month. In contrast, Spotify’s music-only Basic Plan—which includes unlimited hours of listening from a catalog of over 100 million songs—is priced only a dollar more. Under the regulations, the higher the Audiobooks Access plan is priced, the lower the music royalty Spotify must pay.

The music labels have responded by trying to make artists wait much longer before they can try something similar:

It’s significant, Greenstein said, that the first Taylor’s Version wasn’t released until she’d been off Big Machine for three years. Until then, she was legally bound not to re-record any of the material, and this time frame was typical of record deals in the past. But this is the part of the equation that Swift likely changed for good.

“For decades, major labels were somewhat rational when it came to the prohibition of re-recordings,” Greenstein said. “But now they’re going to be asking, ‘What’s the risk of a Taylor’s Version?’”

In response, record companies are now trying to prohibit re-recordings for 20 or 30 years, not just two or three. And this has become a key part of contract negotiations. “Will they get 30 years? Probably not, if the lawyer is competent. But they want to make sure that the artist’s vocal cords are not in good shape by the time they get around to re-recording.”

Users on reddit and lemmy always seem to think ad-based stuff is going to fail, and then it turns out people in the real world are depressingly accepting of ads. I would bet that this program is more likely to be expanded than canceled.

Australia has never contemplated imposing a similar tax. New Zealand tried but backed down last week after the United States threatened to impose higher tariffs on New Zealand goods.

What happened in New Zealand is almost certainly what will happen in Australia. This will go nowhere.