Continuing problems with iOS & Android's attempts to make it easy to call emergency services

You know that feature on iOS where if they detect a car crash it'll call for help? It resulted in "about five times the amount of false 911 calls than average" to the local county in Tennessee where the massive Bonnaroo music festival takes place as people danced violently enough to trigger the feature on their iPhones! Android isn't immune either, as the UK's National Police Chiefs Council told the BBC this week that "all emergency services are currently experiencing record high 999 call volumes. There's a few reasons for this, but one we think is having a significant impact is an update to Android smartphones" and one department "received 169 silent 999 calls between 00:00 and 19:00 BST on Sunday alone". That feature is pressing the power button 5 times quickly, which was added to Android 12 over a year ago but is only starting to hit the bulk of Android phones now.

Apple joins loud chorus of entities telling the UK that its Online Safety Bill is hot garbage

Apple has joined WhatsApp and Signal in saying that the UK's Online Safety Bill, which would require all messaging apps to do real-time detection and reporting of naughty content, breaking end-to-end encryption in the process, is a piece of shit. In Apple's words (told to the BBC), end-to-end encryption "helps everyday citizens defend themselves from surveillance, identity theft, fraud, and data breaches. The Online Safety Bill poses a serious threat to this protection, and could put UK citizens at greater risk". Apple wants the bill amended "to protect strong end-to-end encryption for the benefit of all". I doubt this makes any different to the gormless politicians making these dumb decisions, but thank you Apple for going on the record.

Reddit communities going private has impacted Google search results and Google has noticed

Google has noticed that its users have noticed how shitty search results have become now that a big chunk of Reddit is gone. CNBC got its hands on audio of a meeting where Prabhakar Raghavan, Google's senior vice president in charge of search "admitted users are unhappy when employees asked about the Reddit blackouts and their impact on results". Further detailing that they're gonna try and remedy this by pushing the new Perspectives feature harder, which is designed to surface "long and short form videos, images and written posts that people have shared on discussion boards, Q&A sites and social media platforms". Google is a wasteland now. Its search results are largely useless these days. I've been using and paying for Kagi for the last few months and rarely use Google now. Get on it.

Silicon Valley startup bros are doing LSD & ketamine to appear more interesting for investors

The Wall Street Journal has a piece about Silicon Valley's love of drugs and use of psychedelics in startup circles that's turned into something people feel like they have to do in order to succeed. This quote from Spencer Shulem, CEO of the startup BuildBetter.ai regarding VC firms and investors stuck with me - "they don't want a normal person, a normal company", "they want something extraordinary. You're not born extraordinary", so people take LSD and ketamine not really because they want to, but because investors want a certain personality and taking drugs boosts that personality trait investors want. Explains some of the behaviour from these people to be honest.