Cory Dransfeldt (via Paweł Grzybek, Hacker News): They range from mediocre to outright unusable and none of them are reliable. I’ve written about Apple Music. That one launched and cost me a phone battery. Duplicate tracks, halting playback and heat.[…]I used iCloud Mail for a bit, configured rules, deleted the rules and — well — […]

Tim Hardwick: In Apple’s iOS 18.4 software update, there’s a new Ambient Music feature available in the Control Center options on iPhone. It’s free to use, and does not require an Apple Music subscription. It’s also more customizable than most users probably realize. This is accessed via Control Center and seems to be iOS-only, unlike […]

Joe Rossignol: Apple today updated its iWork apps Keynote, Numbers, and Pages with new features that require iOS 18.4, iPadOS 18.4, or macOS 15.4.For example, in the latest version of each app, you can now make text edits using Writing Tools directly in a presentation, spreadsheet, or document.[…]Each app also received a few other enhancements […]

Bruce Schneier (March 31, Hacker News): “I didn’t see this loser in the group,” Waltz told Fox News about Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, whom Waltz invited to the chat. “Whether he did it deliberately or it happened in some other technical mean, is something we’re trying to figure out.”Waltz’s implication that Goldberg may […]

My sincere thanks to The Ole Independence Hall Hooligans for sponsoring this past week at DF to promote democracy. That’s it. A real sponsorship, real money, raised by a group of readers who simply wanted the ad space on DF to promote, as they described it, “the enduring and aspirational project that is democracy.”

In their sponsored RSS entry to start the week, they quoted the preamble to the US Constitution. I’ll go a decade earlier, and quote from the Declaration of Independence:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. [...]

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. [...]

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

Sounds like someone in the news today (and yesterday, and alas, surely again tomorrow). There is no greater threat to democracy itself than a delusional mad king, whether he wears a crown or a ridiculous ugly red cap. Take action and make your voice heard now — democracy in action is democracy’s only defense.