Katie Notopoulos, my favorite Sora user, at Business Insider (paywalled, alas, but available via News+):

Eventually, my friends all seemed to get bored with the app. As I do at most parties, I stuck around longer than everyone else, but eventually I, too, found that the novelty had worn off. I rarely opened the app after the second week.

This was, I imagine, a problem: making videos of yourself is fun, but watching videos that strangers make of themselves is not fun. The idea of a social feed of AI-generated videos is simply not something that people are interested in. Around the same time, Meta also tried this with an app of AI videos, and it was even more boring.

It’s hard to see how anyone thought Sora would have staying power, or could ever justify the apparently exorbitant cost of running it. OpenAI burned a ton of money on what was effectively a stunt.

OpenAI doesn’t appear to be a well-oiled machine at the moment.

Tim Hardwick at MacRumors:

macOS Tahoe 26.4 includes a new slow charger indicator that tells MacBook users when their charging setup isn’t delivering full power. As described in an updated Apple support document, a “Slow Charger” label now appears in orange text in the battery status menu and above the Battery Level graph in Battery settings. The indicator is accompanied by an info button for more details.

Apple says that to charge more quickly, users should use a power adapter and cable that deliver at least the minimum wattage recommended for their MacBook model.

This might be especially useful in Europe, where MacBooks no longer come with power adapters. Regular people often have no idea how power adapters work, and presume one charger is as good as another, if it works at all. After I posted this item back in October about the new MacBook Pros not shipping with chargers anywhere in Europe (not just the EU, even though it’s an EU law that requires products to be available without included chargers), a bunch of readers regaled me with tales of a family member complaining about their MacBook losing battery life even while plugged in, only to discover that they were using wimpy 5- or 10-watt USB-C adapters.

Jennifer Daniel, on her “Did Someone Say Emoji?” blog:

First came Melting Face 🫠, our collective surrender to the liquid state.

Then Dotted Line Face 🫥, the visual representation of sublimation: turning from a solid into a gas just to escape a conversation.

Now, we have Distorted Face (U+1FAEA), a moment defined by tension: where you aren’t just feeling an emotion — you are being physically altered by it.

I’ll live, but it feels a tad spiteful that Apple only adds new emoji to the current-year OS updates. So this year’s 8 new emoji are in MacOS 26.4, but not MacOS 15.7.5, despite both being released this week.

One more nugget from last night’s 7-0 Yankees win over the Giants:

During the sixth inning of Wednesday’s Opening Night matchup between two historic franchises, the Giants and Yankees, all-time home run leader Barry Bonds joined the Netflix broadcast booth at Oracle Park and told an incredible story about just how close he came to signing with the Yankees in 1992. [...]

“Well, I would’ve been a Yankees [player],” Bonds said, “but Steinbrenner got on the phone and they called us and they told me, ‘Barry, we’re gonna give you the money — [make you] the highest-paid player … but you have to sign the contract by 2:00 this afternoon.’”

One thing you don’t do is give Bonds an ultimatum.

“And I said, ‘Excuse me?’” Bonds said. “And I just hung the phone up.”

The Yankees went on to play in six World Series from that moment until the end of Bonds’s playing career, winning four championships. Bonds played in one World Series with the Giants, losing a seven-game series to the Angels in 2002.

Nice 7-0 win last night over the San Francisco Giants.

The game was on Netflix, and it was the worst baseball broadcast I can recall watching in the HD era. The picture quality was just awful, with embarrassing dynamic ad injection. Yes, there was haze, but it’s not like crappy weather in San Francisco is a surprise. The game had the first Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) challenge in MLB history, but the broadcast missed it while it happened. And Netflix’s scorebug is without question the worst I’ve ever seen — as one guy on Reddit quipped, it was somehow “too big and too small at the same time”. I’d have to stand within arm’s reach of my TV to read those player names.

If this is the level of attention Netflix is going to pay to sports broadcasts, they should stick to bumfights.