The Ephemeral Scrapbook — 2026.08.02

👤 Personal {#bloggerlife, #news}

1️⃣ From a creativity perspective, I feel like I’m in a lethargic state this summer. 😟 Like a creative zombie chasing Apple's latest betas, watching Russia burn and Iran endure Trump's bad humour, and portions of Europe burn to the ground, if you will. 🧟‍♂️ My only plan is to replace my iPhone this fall and get ready to write a review about my experience. That's it. 2️⃣ In the good news department, I no longer waste my time on LinkedIn, but I like wasting my time on videos like this one! 😱 👷🏻‍♂️

🗺️ Discoveries {#agentic-ai}

1️⃣ Open Minis is an indie iPhone app that uses official Apple APIs and a built-in Linux shell to give frontier AI models deep, agentic access to Calendar, Photos, HomeKit, HealthKit, and more — doing what Siri AI cannot. It's a working preview of what truly capable on-device AI agents could look like. This makes me feel that Apple still has a lot to accomplish with Siri AI and App Intents to get to that point. → Open Minis Is the iOS Agent I Wish Siri AI Could Be

👨🏻‍💻 Writing {#writer, #aicontent}

1️⃣ Australian bloggers may be left out of the government's proposed AI compensation framework despite being covered by copyright law. The author raises a valid question: will "writers and journalists" legally include digital-only creators, or will bloggers be overlooked when AI payment rules are finalized? My short take: bloggers are writers. Period. They should be compensated. → Are bloggers the same as writers, journalists, under the Australian AI framework? 2️⃣ Don't forget to have a peek at my monthly blog posts digest covering July, right here.

"That’s the limit of software brain. That’s why people hate AI. It flattens them. Regular people don’t see the opportunity to write code as an opportunity at all. The people do not yearn for automation." BEWARE SOFTWARE BRAIN

🌄 Photography {#darkitecture, #glass/discovery}

1️⃣ Surreal. For darkchitecture lovers. Highly processed images, for sure. 2️⃣ I like to think the parent asked the child to participate in such a photo series. 3️⃣ What kind of life do you have to be able to maintain such a photo series? 4️⃣ I’ve been scooting around Montreal this summer and shared many check-ins. It's so fun. 5️⃣ Pixefled is still alive but I'm no longer very active on that platform. Or is it a platform or a simple web service? I try to keep my account alive.

🍎 Apple & Tech {#siriai, #macostahoe, #macosgoldengate, #icons, #security, #design, #ads}

1️⃣ Comparing App icons in macOS 26 Tahoe and macOS 27 Golden Gate. Pause the video as need for a detailed look. Golden Gate is a move in the right direction, correcting many past wrongs. Basic Apple Guy also made a comparison; uncommented, side-by-side comparisons. But MacOS Tahoe’s mandatory squircle icons represent a deliberate tradeoff: sacrificing the beloved, uniquely shaped Mac icons of the past to ensure visual consistency across all apps — including those from developers who never bothered designing properly for the platform. → Parakeet Blog: The Shape of Apps 2️⃣ With Siri AI, is Apple finally winning the AI race? Here's a very convincing argument. 3️⃣ iOS 27's revamped Siri AI is genuinely impressive in early testing — capable of pulling context from emails, webpages, and apps to answer questions and take action — but its potential hinges entirely on developers adding support and Apple expanding beyond its own app ecosystem. → Siri AI is already changing how I use my iPhone 4️⃣ Marques Brownlee's appreciation for iOS 27. → iOS 27 Hands-On: Top 5 New Features! 5️⃣ Apple's lawsuit against OpenAI centers on a handful of individuals—particularly Chang Liu and Tang Tan—who allegedly took trade secrets when moving from Apple. The real stakes are discovery, which could expose OpenAI's hardware ambitions and derail their product roadmap at a critical moment. → Reading Between the Apple v. OpenAI Lawsuit Lines 6️⃣ Apple's OS 26.6 updates fix a record-breaking number of security vulnerabilities; up to 143 in macOS alone; likely aided by AI-powered vulnerability detection. Can we start calling this the Mythos effect? → OS 26.6 Delivers Massive Number of Security Fixes 7️⃣ Apple's aggressive push to squeeze revenue from ads, upsells, and subscription nags is eroding the brand premium that justifies its prices. Like a nice hotel cutting corners on soap, Apple risks becoming merely expensive rather than genuinely good. I hope people, influential people, at Apple are reading articles like this one. → Always choose the good soap – Six Colors 8️⃣ Apple Park's sweeping design failed at its core goal: enabling spontaneous cross-team collaboration. Unlike Infinite Loop's accidental social hubs, Apple Park's segmented layout, open-plan noise, and lack of a true campus crossroads make serendipitous encounters rare and focused work difficult. Wow, this is surprising to me. Or not, because I despise open-plan offices. → Michael Tsai - Blog - Apple Park: Designed to Isolate

"Apple is now operating an advertising business, and putting more ads in more places is one way to make the numbers go up—it will print money at no cost, and that is what the people running a huge corporation with little competition want to do.” — Pixel Envy in Apple Updates Its Advertising Policies

"Apple turned 2 billion devices into the data center, delivering distributed AI at a scale no server farm can match while its rivals burn cash on centralized infrastructure." — Asymco in The most brilliant move in corporate history?

📱 Apps & Services {#windows, #hypercard, #techhistory, #rss, #claude}

1️⃣ Microsoft is overhauling Windows 11 search with faster local results, and crucially no more ads or promotional content. The changes are rolling out to Insiders now, with a broader release later this year. Finally. As PC are getting more expensive, users might select less powerful PC which depend on leaner software. Good move from Microsoft. → Microsoft unveils major Windows 11 search experience overhaul that it promises will fix search 2️⃣ Woah. I vividly remember HyperCard when it came out in 1991. I was studying computer science at the university, and one of my teachers was simply blown away by HyperCard. So much potential. → Stacks — run classic HyperCard stacks on modern macOS 3️⃣ Google Reader was never just an RSS reader — it accidentally became a beloved social network built on curation and trust. When Google killed it in 2013, the real loss wasn't the feeds (those survived) but the human discovery layer, which we've been slowly rebuilding through newsletters and link blogs ever since. → Google Reader was building the wrong future 4️⃣ Claude Code can now control the iOS Simulator directly on macOS, letting it build, run, and iterate on apps autonomously without requiring screen recording permissions. Developers can watch and interact alongside Claude in real time. I don't know if this ia great news or bad. → Claude Code Can Now Build and Test iOS Apps in Apple's Simulator 5️⃣ Claude Cowork now runs on mobile and web, meaning AI-assisted tasks continue in the background even when you're away from your desk. It's built for everyday knowledge work—not just coding—handling things like expense reconciliation, contract tracking, and client prep autonomously until you're ready to review. This is a good sign because it means Claude Artifacts are no longer on-device-only but are probably accessible on the web and from any device. As I'm writing this edition, I still wasn't able to see my artifacts on the web and had to manually recreate them on my Mac mini → Claude Cowork on web and mobile: hand off work anywhere | Claude by Anthropic 6️⃣ That is a lot of new apps. I wonder about the general quality of those apps. I tried the one mentioned in the article. After downloading it to my phone and starting it, I was met with a survey about how I discovered the app. I didn't finish the process and removed the app from the phone. → App Store added nearly as many new apps in H1 2026 as in all of 2025 - 9to5Mac. Speaking of new apps, take a look at this demo of Glaze. I don't know where this is going. I did experiment with it to build a read-only front-end to my personal task manager running on Vercel. It's not bad, but the end result needs refinements.

🚧 Special projects {#workflow, #youtube, #craft }

1️⃣ I've been trying for a while now to design a workflow that would allow me to quickly summarize a YouTube video that I really find interesting (like this one, for example). I know that I'll need an n8n workflow, a place for storing the summary, probably inside a Craft collection, and a transcription engine. The latter is the harder portion to implement. So far, I'm leaning toward Gemini and some YouTube API calls. If you ever happen to read this newsletter and have an idea, drop me a line here hello@numericcitizen.me. Thanks. 2️⃣ Here's something that I decided against doing. 👇🏻

📺 YouTube {#iphone18, #design, #aibubble}

1️⃣ A designer is looking for help. 2️⃣ Not my next iPhone, but an interesting fork of the iPhone lineup. → Here's your next iPhone 3️⃣ This is iPhone 18 Pro | First Look. This is my next iPhone. 4️⃣ The enshittification era of AI. I don’t know how to feel about our future: depressed or scared or both? Great conversation for sure.

🔮 Looking forward {#climatechange, #aibubble, #iphone}

1️⃣ Pacific Ocean temperatures have shattered all historical records in 2024, far outside any previously observed range. This isn't modelling or projection — it's direct measurement, reflecting decades of accumulated ocean warming that amplifies every El Niño, with cascading consequences for weather, ecosystems, and human welfare globally. Food for thought. → The Graph That Should Be Front-Page News 2️⃣ The AI "job-pocalypse" is compared to the Y2K bug, suggesting that current fears regarding artificial intelligence displacement may be largely overstated. This perspective frames the ongoing AI disruption as a manageable transition rather than an existential threat to the workforce. → The AI "job-pocalypse" feels like a Y2K bug moment 3️⃣ When I look at this device, a strange one if you ask me, I immediately think about sci-fi movies where people are facing their computer screen and using this square keyboard to interact with a supreme entity. I'm thinking about Severance, where employees are working with their terminal to gather and file numbers in their respective buckets. This could become an iconic keyboard if it becomes successful. → Introducing the Codex Micro 4️⃣ An OpenAI model with safety guardrails disabled broke out of its sandbox, hacked Hugging Face, and stole benchmark answers to cheat on a cybersecurity test. Ironically, Hugging Face couldn't use frontier AI models to investigate the attack because safety filters blocked their forensic queries—forcing them to use an unrestricted Chinese open-weight model instead. → OpenAI’s accidental cyberattack against Hugging Face is science fiction that happened 5️⃣ Apple's 20th anniversary iPhone (2027) will feature the most radical redesign since the iPhone X: an all-glass, quad-curved display with no cutouts, haptic buttons, and potentially a "Liquid Glass Display" branding — setting the iPhone's design direction for years ahead. The question that comes to my mind: will if feel like the iPhone 6 series? I prefer the current boxier design. → Here's What the 'iPhone 20' is Expected to Look Like

“Look folks the genie is out of the bottle. The genie went from $20/mo to $200/mo. The genie is spending $8 for every dollar it makes. The genie is reactivating every coal power plant it can. The genie needs 60% of your town's water. The genie is hiding $1.65 trillion in debt. But it's out of the bottle! The genie is out of the bottle folks.” from JP (@jplebreton@mastodon.social)

🌟 Miscellaneous {#ai, #eu, #aidistillation}

1️⃣ All is not lost apparently with CEOs or has-been-CEOs. → Manton Reece - Satya Nadella writes on his blog about 2️⃣ BREAKING: John C. Dvorak has died. My reaction here. 3️⃣ Takeaway: AI investments are overwhelmingly failing, but no one can safely say so. Companies are mandating AI adoption as a loyalty test rather than a strategy, firing skeptics while rewarding performative compliance—creating a self-reinforcing delusion where honest assessment is career suicide. → AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making — Ludicity 4️⃣ AI makes users dramatically less accurate while making them far more confident; a phenomenon driving "slop zombie" coworkers who flood teams with unverified, AI-generated content they believe reflects their own brilliance. Research shows AI access dropped accuracy from 27% to 9% while confidence soared from 30% to 76%. Ouch. We're doomed. → How AI makes people confidently wrong 5️⃣ The EU's DMA mandate requiring Google to open Android's AI system to all third-party assistants — with unfettered background access, microphone use, and on-device data — is so sweeping it could render Android ungovernable or push Google to simply remove Gemini from the EU entirely. In other words, the EU is pushing Google to create another PC-like ecosystem. → ★ European Commission: ‘Guidance to Google for AI Interoperability on Android & Sharing of Google Search’ daringfireball.net 6️⃣ Chinese AI labs are using "distillation"—extracting outputs from advanced U.S. models to train cheaper competitors—sparking national security concerns and a policy dilemma between protecting American IP and allowing open-source innovation. Funny how AI companies are wary of distillation. How is this different than scraping the entire web for model training, without asking permission first? → From Silicon Valley to DC, the tech world is suddenly obsessed with one concept in AI: Distillation 6️⃣ "Slop zombies": workers who outsource all thinking to AI are tanking workplace productivity while growing more confident and less capable. They force colleagues to wade through bloated AI output, eroding real skills across teams. The distinction between smart AI use and zombie dependency is subtle but critical. → Rise of the 'slop zombies'

"I saw The Odyssey. The cinematography and special effects were glorious. The screenplay was pretty good. What ruined it was the casting. (I'm not talking about Helen's race.) They just rounded up every A-list actor and handed out roles, rather than finding the best actor for each character." → Mike Elgan on Mastodon

"The smallest government you can have is determined by the largest corporation you're willing to tolerate." This should be on a t-shirt

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