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nfl_rpf_ao3_feedWords: 1525, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English
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My wife and I have been fighting each other for playtime on the Switch for Pokopia, which is not a game I ever thought I’d get addicted to. I haven’t played a Pokémon game since Gen 1, I never touched Minecraft and I bounced off Animal Crossing, so a weird hybrid of the two with a Pokémon paint job wasn’t on my radar until I saw my wife make friends with a happy Diglett so I gave it a shot and my life is ruined.
Anyway my friend suggested this to me when I told them I was getting into it so now it’s your problem. Been a while since I did a logo set, it was nice to fall back into old habits how fun it is to make parody versions of some logos (Jags, Vikings) and how much I hate other logos (Saints, Cowboys)
I used some of the older/alternative logos for a few of them because the older logos are more interesting and offer more fun opportunities to parody. Since a lot of the logos are animal profiles, I also originally had most of them only have one eye, until I realized that pulling a Peppa Pig and putting both eyes on the same side looked way funnier.
Anyway here’s a bunch of Dittos go play Pokopia and excuse me while I try to figure out how to build a stadium district in Pallette Town
The post Ditto Used Transform on the NFL appeared first on The Draw Play.
baseball_rpf_ao3_feedGunnar Henderson and Aaron Judge eat crabcakes.
This was a requested work for me to write.
Words: 478, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English
daringfireballfeed_feedElizabeth Lopatto, reporting for The Verge (gift link):
Today was closing arguments in the Musk v. Altman trial, and I almost feel bad writing about the unbelievable demolition derby I just witnessed. Steven Molo, Musk’s lawyer, stumbled over his words. He at one point called Greg Brockman — a co-defendant — Greg Altman. He erroneously claimed that Musk wasn’t asking for money and had to be corrected by the judge. He made it clear we’ve heard from many liars over the past few weeks, but offered little evidence for Musk’s actual legal claims.
OpenAI’s lawyer, Sarah Eddy, countered this by simply arranging the mountain of evidence that the company introduced in chronological order. She didn’t spend time trying to pretend anyone in this trial is especially reliable. She did, however, get the zinger of the day, about Musk: “Even the mother of his children can’t back his story.” William Savitt, who took the defendant baton after her presentation, demonstrated the number of times Musk “didn’t recall” some critical detail — and wondered how a sophisticated businessman couldn’t understand or read a four-page term sheet OpenAI had sent to him.
I found myself wondering, again, why we were all wasting our time here. So let’s discuss the gossip, which is the real point of this trial. How good was it? Here are my favorite nuggets.
daringfireballfeed_feedAfter posting the previous item referencing dickpanels, a term I’ve been using since 2022, it occurred me that they could also be called dickovers (like popovers, but dickheaded). The latter sounds more clever, but I worry it’s less clear. I’m seldom so indecisive, so I’m running a Mastodon poll.
daringfireballfeed_feedUna Hajdari, reporting for Euronews:
A new independent institute dedicated to making artificial intelligence safer for children will beformally [sic] presented at the Danish Parliament on Tuesday, with former European Commission executive vice-president Margrethe Vestager among those co-hosting the event.
The institute’s approach, as explained in a statement before the launch, is “modelled on independent crash-test ratings” for cars. The idea, ostensibly, is that just as consumers can check whether a vehicle is safe before buying it, parents should be able to do the same for the AI their children use.
Quite what a crash test looks like for a chatbot, the institute does not yet say.
Hopefully their AI crash testing winds up more effective than the GDPR “cookie” initiative overseen by Vestager, which led to the nonsense that required me to click through this ridiculous full-window dickpanel just to read the story. (I love that the dickpanel is titled “We value your privacy” and then begins with the sentence, “With your agreement, we and our 399 partners use cookies or similar technologies to store, access, and process personal data like your visit on this website, IP addresses and cookie identifiers.” If Euronews did not value your privacy, they might have 400 partners.)
daringfireballfeed_feedCalif, a security research team, on their blog:
Many security experts consider Apple devices to be the most secure consumer platform. The latest flagship example is MIE (Memory Integrity Enforcement), Apple’s hardware-assisted memory safety system built around ARM’s MTE (Memory Tagging Extension). It was introduced as the marquee security feature for the Apple M5 and A19, specifically designed to stop memory corruption exploits, the vulnerability class behind many of the most sophisticated compromises on iOS and macOS. [...]
Our macOS attack path was actually an accidental discovery. Bruce Dang found the bugs on April 25th. Dion Blazakis joined Calif on April 27th. Josh Maine built the tooling, and by May 1st we had a working exploit.
We didn’t build the chain alone. Mythos Preview helped identify the bugs and assisted throughout exploit development. [...] To the best of our knowledge, this is the first public macOS kernel exploit on MIE hardware. Again, we’ll publish our 55-page report after Apple ships a fix.
The Wall Street Journal ran a story on Calif’s announcement today that was heavy on hyperbole and extraordinarily light on technical details. Unsurprisingly, the team’s own blog post was much more informative and interesting. The achievement here is circumventing MIE.
daringfireballfeed_feedParesh Dave, Lauren Goode, Steven Levy, and Zoë Schiffer, reporting for Wired (News+ link):
As Meta employees brace for layoffs next Wednesday, May 20, many say the vibes are horrifically, historically low. “Everyone is unhappy; the only people who are not unhappy are, literally, executives,” says an employee who works on Instagram.
I’ve never heard of a company bracing for layoffs where the morale was good. But this Wired report — with some all-star bylines — paints a particularly dark picture of the mood in Menlo Park:
“I don’t know anyone having a good time,” says a policy staffer. “The vibe is a bit ‘over it’ — lack of connection to the mission, upcoming layoffs, American employees being used to train the AI models that will replace them.”
Anyone who can afford to leave is hoping to be laid off and receive the 16 weeks minimum of severance and 18 months of paid health care that come with it, several people say. As the Instagram employee put it, “Everyone is just like, do it now, jesus fucking christ.” Only the individuals with the best pay packages and involved in the core development of AI seem to be thriving, a longtime senior leader at Meta says.
Regarding the new employee surveillance tracking software:
Opting out is not possible, according to three employees. “Nobody is happy about it,” says a current employee. “And we have no choice.” Some employees claim they have found workarounds to dodge tracking or have managed to delay installation.
The software, known as Model Capability Initiative, or MCI, suddenly turned people across the company into privacy zealots, a legal staffer says. When employees protested the rollout in internal messages, including by referencing Meta’s history of user data breaches, chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth “belittled and berated” the dissenters, one veteran employee says and another confirms. “These billionaires can’t even feign empathy,” the first person says. “The social contract is completely shattered at this point.”
Unanswered remains my question from earlier this week: is MCI installed on Bosworth’s computer too? (And Zuck’s?)
slacktivist_feeddaringfireballfeed_feedGeoffrey Fowler, on his blog, which, alas, he calls “a Substack”:
I’m joining the Youth AI Safety Institute as its first new employee. It’s a research and testing organization launching today under the umbrella of children’s nonprofit Common Sense Media. Backed by a $20 million annual budget, the Institute aims to do something that doesn’t really exist yet: systematically test the AI products kids use, set safety standards, and publicly hold tech companies accountable for meeting them. Think crash test dummies for AI.
On the surface this sounds like a great idea, and Fowler does have a strong background in consumer-oriented product reviews.
My title is Head of Public Engagement — a kind of editor-at-large. I’ll work alongside researchers, computer scientists, pediatricians, clinical psychologists and educators to investigate what happens when kids use AI products, including chatbots, games, educational apps, furry AI toys and whatever comes next. My job is to help turn those findings into something families, educators, policymakers and tech leaders can use.
“We safety-test kids’ PJs. Why not their AI?” says my new colleague at Common Sense, Bruce Reed, who helped craft the Biden White House’s groundbreaking 2023 AI Executive Order.
What exactly did Biden’s AI Executive Order accomplish? As far as I know, absolutely nothing.
Some tech power players, including Anthropic and the OpenAI Foundation, have joined a consortium of foundations and private donors funding the Institute’s work. They get no say over what we publish. (And in my time at The Washington Post, I didn’t let Jeff Bezos’ ownership of the newspaper affect my criticism of Amazon.)
I’m not sure I’ve ever in my life used the phrase “Good luck with that” non-sarcastically, but in this case I mean it: good luck with that. I hope it works out, and someone has to pay the bills (and salaries). But color me skeptical about the foxes funding the henhouse inspectors.
daringfireballfeed_feedOwen Scott, reporting for The Independent:
The list of tech and financial industry titans joining the commander-in-chief during his summit with China’s president Xi Jinping includes Elon Musk, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, and Apple CEO Tim Cook. [...]
Trump earlier confirmed a number of high-profile attendees in a lengthy post on Truth Social, albeit referring to Cook as “Tim Apple” in the process.
While he’s in such a jocular nickname-y mood, he should drop a reference to Winnie the Pooh into some of these posts on his blog.
daringfireballfeed_feedAntonio G. Di Benedetto, reporting for The Verge (gift link):
Google is announcing a new line of laptops coming in the fall called Googlebooks. Details are sparse for now, as the tease is just a small part of various Android announcements during Google’s Android Show. But we do know this is a major new initiative in the laptop space for Google, seemingly designed to succeed Chromebooks with something more capable: a platform running a long-rumored new operating system based on a fusion of Android and ChromeOS.
While there are many outstanding questions to be answered about Googlebooks, the biggest and most obvious ones are what will these laptops look like, what chips will be in them, and what will they cost? We’ve got none of that so far. Google only has some initial renders of a mysterious Googlebook and the promise that it’s working with Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo to make the first models. There are no model names. No specs. Nada. Google isn’t even saying if the laptop in its renders is made by a partner or a tease of some first-party Pixel-like Googlebook to come or is just a cool mockup.
This is so light on details that I was hesitant to even link to it yet. (Di Benedetto is skeptical as well.) But this caught my attention:
Googlebooks will have a Magic Pointer feature that offers contextual suggestions whenever you shake your cursor and point it at something on the screen. Google’s examples include setting up a meeting by pointing at a date in an email or selecting images of furniture and a living space to visualize them together.
Shaking your cursor over something is an interesting gesture. The only feature I’m aware of that uses that gesture is MacOS’s feature that makes your cursor bigger when you shake it, to help spot on the display. It seems a bit silly to me — why not just add the “Magic” features to a contextual menu? But, then again, here we are in 2026 and the standard gesture to invoke the Undo command on iOS is to shake your whole iPhone like a maraca.
standardebooks_new_feeddaringfireballfeed_feedMark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg under the headline, “Apple-OpenAI Alliance Frays, Setting Up Possible Legal Fight”:
OpenAI lawyers are actively working with an outside legal firm on a range of options that could be formally executed in the near future, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. That could include sending the iPhone maker a notice alleging breach of contract without necessarily filing a full lawsuit at the outset, according to the people. OpenAI enlisted the outside firm in recent days to help with the situation.
OpenAI believed that the companies’ partnership, which wove ChatGPT into Apple software, would coax more users into subscribing to the chatbot. It also expected deeper integration across more Apple apps and prime placement within the Siri assistant.
To be fair, Apple expected deeper integration across more Apple apps by now, too.
But what’s curious about this story is that it doesn’t even hint at what grounds OpenAI would have for legal action. Expecting deeper integration is one thing. Being contractually obligated to provide deeper integration is another. I don’t see how you run this story, with sources entirely from OpenAI, without describing what terms of the contract OpenAI considers breached.
Some quotes from Gurman’s unnamed source:
“We have done everything from a product perspective,” said an OpenAI executive who asked not to be identified. “They have not, and worse, they haven’t even made an honest effort.” [...]
“When we heard about this opportunity, it sounded amazing: being able to acquire a giant number of customers and have distribution in such a big mobile ecosystem,” said the OpenAI executive. At the time, though, Apple was unwilling to share exactly what the product would be, the person said. “They basically said, ‘OpenAI needs to take a leap of faith and trust us,’” the executive said, adding that the deal ended up being a failure for the startup.
ChatGPT has been the #1 app in the App Store for most of the last two years. (It’s #2 today, behind Instagram’s new Instants app.) It’s impossible to say how much ChatGPT’s exclusive integration with Siri has helped with that, but it couldn’t have hurt.
Lastly, regarding the deal Apple and Google announced in January to power Apple’s Foundation Models with Google’s Gemini technology (but not Gemini the product), this brave anonymous OpenAI executive says Apple couldn’t break up with them because they wanted to break up with Apple first:
OpenAI wasn’t interested in working with Apple on the new models because it felt burned by the initial relationship, according to the people. “Apple has so much market power that they can dictate terms,” the executive said. “We already took this leap of faith with you, and it didn’t work out well.”
This would be easier to take at face value if they’d said it before the Apple-Google partnership was announced, not months later.
daringfireballfeed_feedDominic Preston, at The Verge:
Trump Mobile CEO Pat O’Brien first confirmed the release plans to USA Today, telling the outlet that all preorders will be fulfilled within the next few weeks. The company later confirmed the news on its social media accounts, using a very normal number of exclamation marks in the process.
The T1 Phone has arrived!! Those who pre-ordered the T1 Phone will be receiving an update email. Phones start shipping this week!!!
In a press release the company added that demand for the phone had been “incredibly high,” and that “orders are being fulfilled as quickly as possible.” That means that for early buyers, the long wait may nearly be over: it’s now been 11 months since the T1 Phone was announced.
The “Trump Mobile” indicia in the camera plateau is, of course, set in Arial.
The president, I’m sure, will soon switch to one of these from his iPhone.
daringfireballfeed_feedWell, this is ridiculous. Klack is a $5 Mac utility by Henrik Ruscon that simulates mechanical keyboard clacking while you type. Absurd. My keyboard makes its own beautiful sounds as I type.
So of course I went to buy a copy immediately, because I love an absurd utility, that serves no purpose other than fun, crafted with exquisite attention to detail. But when I did, the Mac App Store informed me that a member of my family sharing group had already purchased it. (I presume that was my son, not my wife.)
Update: From a DF reader who shall remain nameless:
I bought Klack out of spite. One of my colleagues brought a mechanical keyboard to use in an open office space and I figured it’d be funny to troll him by setting my Mac system volume to 10 and letting it rip.
daringfireballfeed_feedJames Lockman:
This small driver enables the Griffin PowerMate, a nifty little device from days gone by. What does the PowerMate do? It is a knob that you can twist or that you can press. That’s it. It also has a blue LED in the base that can change intensity based on what you’re doing.
When it was released, it was intended to assist video and audio production by adding a scrollable knob to your desktop. Of course, modern controllers exist that offer many more literal bells and whistles, but there is something... quaint... about this early device.
I never bought a PowerMate but I was always on the cusp. I didn’t have a need for it all but it just seemed cool. What a fun idea to create a modern driver. (Lockman credits Cursor Agent as a co-contributor, so this probably wouldn’t have happened if not for AI coding.)
little_women_ao3_feedLaurie accidentally walks in on Jo changing her costume. She's kicked into womanhood.
Words: 7318, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English
nfl_rpf_ao3_feed - Gamedayslacktivist_feed - LBCF: The Longest Daythedrawplay_feed - Ditto Used Transform on the NFLbaseball_rpf_ao3_feed - Old Baydaringfireballfeed_feed - ‘Musk v. Altman’ Closing Argumentsdaringfireballfeed_feed - Let’s Run a Neologism Polldaringfireballfeed_feed - The Youth AI Safety Institute Has Margrethe Vestager’s Backingdaringfireballfeed_feed - Aided by Mythos Preview, Researchers Announce MacOS Kernel Exploit Circumventing M5 Memory Integritydaringfireballfeed_feed - Wired on the Dark Mood Inside Metamayhap_newbooks_feed - HIERRO. (Holly Black)slacktivist_feed - WWND? (What would Nebuchadnezzar do?)daringfireballfeed_feed - Geoffrey Fowler and the Launch of the Youth AI Safety Institutedaringfireballfeed_feed - Tim Cook Is in Trump’s Executive Entourage for China Summitdaringfireballfeed_feed - Google Announces Its Chromebook Successor: The Googlebookstandardebooks_new_feed - Saïd the Fisherman, by Marmaduke Pickthalldaringfireballfeed_feed - Gurman Reports that OpenAI Is Unhappy With Apple Dealdaringfireballfeed_feed - The Trump T1 Phone Starts Shipping This Week, Supposedlydaringfireballfeed_feed - Klackdaringfireballfeed_feed - New Driver for the Old Griffin PowerMatelittle_women_ao3_feed - the becoming of a woman![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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