Today is the MacBook Pro's turn to get some attention. A full suite of M4 SoCs, Thunderbolt 5, better webcam and a super bright 1000 nit display with the option of nano-texture matte coating. The MacBook Air also got a bump to 16GB of RAM in the base models (Apple Intelligence is good for something!), without an increase in price - but no M4 SoC, it still has the M3. MacRumors noticed that none of the new Macs got Wi-Fi 7 like the iPhone 16. That's odd. That's the end of Apple's "week of announcements", even though it's only Wednesday in the USA. Mac Pro and Mac Studio will wait until WWDC I guess?
Reddit began in 2005, but it wasn't until today's Q3 2024 financials that Reddit achieved its first quarterly profit. They made almost US$30m profit off $384m in revenue and despite last year's mass protests about killing off third party clients and having to pay for API accesss, unique daily users grew up 47% and ad revenue is up 56%. Meanwhile, Dropbox is cutting 20% of its global workforce due to their core business of file sync and sharing "maturing", plus "softening demand and macro headwinds". This is off the back of a similar sized workforce cut last year. I like Dropbox, I hope they don't fuck up their core product chasing growth.
Police had a sook about not being able to use AI tools at the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children's "Safer AI for Children Summit" in Sydney this week. One copper said "I understand the need for privacy, but when is the need for privacy more important than the right of children to be free of sexual abuse?", adding that "we need AI" to investigate a "tsunami" of CSAM material. Another cop said they are keen to "work with various jurisdictions to improve law enforcement's public messaging around AI use, instead of relying on defensive communications following media controversies". A QLD cop said AI was "the best way to decrypt" encrypted communications and files. Whatever that means.
Jonathan Buys writes what I'm feeling about the stupid ads for Apple Intelligence: "In one a schlub writes an email to his boss and uses AI to make it sound ‘more professional’, in another a young woman uses it to lie about remembering an acquaintance's name. In another the same young woman again uses it to lie about reading an email from a college, to her face, while she's sitting with her. In yet another, linked to recently by Scott McNulty, a woman uses AI to lie to her husband about getting him something for his birthday. If this is what Apple thinks their AI is for, I honestly don't know that I want any part of it". Amen brother, I hate these ads.
Slide 57 of 'A Look at Kodak Coburg Australia' showing a worker emptying a large mail bag of films for processing in the Colour Print & Processing Department of the Kodak Australasia Pty Ltd factory, Coburg. This image is part of an album containing photographs (numbered 1 to 80) plus accompanying lecture notes for a slide presentation titled 'A Look At Kodak Coburg Australia', issued by the Photo Information Services Department at Kodak Australasia Pty Ltd, circa 1960s. (Museums Victoria)
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