Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Apple Sues OpenAI Alleging Theft Of Trade Secrets

No honor among partners or thieves.

In the middle of the Artificial Intelligence wars, which has included quite a bit of employee shuffling between AI hungry tech companies seeking to gain an edge, it seems someone might not have been all that intelligent when it comes to sharing things they knew at the company they’re leaving with the company they’re interviewing for.

Apple logo2.jpg.

Apple today dropped a lawsuit against OpenAI alleging that ChatGPT maker and some of Apple’s ex-employees stole trade secrets. 9to5Mac has the fullest report I’ve seen on this so far, including this statement from Apple:

At Apple, our teams are constantly developing breakthrough technologies to create the best products and services in the world, and protecting their work and intellectual property is something we take very seriously. Recently, significant evidence has emerged suggesting individuals employed by OpenAI wrongfully took Apple’s secret and confidential information regarding our unreleased technologies, processes, and products. We will always defend our teams’ hard work and innovations, and we are taking all appropriate steps to do so.

The full filing can be read here. The details are quite interesting if you’re into this kind of corporate skullduggery and legal maneuvering.

Here’s a quote from the filing:

In the months before he left Apple, Mr. Tan met with OpenAI or its collaborators and discussed meetings with a key Apple supplier. He began emailing himself information about Apple’s suppliers and internal summaries of the consumer electronics industry. And today, when interviewing Apple employees for jobs at OpenAI, Mr. Tan uses Apple’s confidential information to gain access to even more insider knowledge. He has used an Apple internal project codename to ask, “What’s theplan[?]” for an unannounced Apple product.

He has directed job candidates still working for Apple to bring “Actual parts” from Apple to their interviews for “show and tell” sessions in which he and his team at OpenAI can elicit still more Apple confidential information. These directions to bring Apple’s parts to OpenAI job interviews surprised at least one of the candidates, who commented that he “didn’t even know we could take those from the office.”

This will certainly further strain on Apple’s partnership with OpenAI. Word had circulated earlier this past Spring that OpenAI was going to be the first company to release legal beagles at Apple over dissatisfaction with the partnership.

I’ll say this, even though everything is alleged at this point, Apple has to be pretty pissed off to drop this lawsuit. Of course if the accusations are true who could blame them. It’s certainly a shot across the bow if not directly at the water line.

But then again, when it comes to companies like OpenAI (also Apple and others) that had no compunction about scrapping the entire Internet to train their AI robots on the intellectual property of others, nobody should be trusting anybody with anything in these corporate circles.

The one thing this era has reminded us is that there’s no honor among thieves and not much that any company or government says that can be trusted.

I wonder if anyone has run the legal filing through OpenAI’s just announced products for a legal analysis yet?

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Connecting The Meta Privacy Dots

A poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

As dangerous as it is, I find it somewhat humorous to watch the reactions to some of the actions Meta is taking to gather up and reprocess what we see and hear. Especially from the always hungry for some new cool tech crowd. On the one hand you can’t blame someone from wanting the next new thing to play with. On the other you also can’t blame tech companies for taking advantage of hobbyists’ hunger.

Every where you turn on the Internet, everyone is posting about Meta changing its Instagram policy so that unless Instagram users opted out, any of their content on that platform was now free for the grabbing by anyone using Meta’s AI tools to create and distribute. You can imagine the possible nasty outcomes of what that would be like. Certainly if you’ve been paying even a smidgen of attention to the goings on with Grok.

It’s also been interesting to watch the small avalanche of users on other social media announcing that they are taking their Instagram accounts private, opting out by flipping the designated switches, or just bailing on Instagram altogether.

Almost parallel to this policy change happening word spread from Joanna Stern, among others, about a trend (and apparent underground business opportunity) of users of Meta’s smart glasses who were disabling the mechanism that displayed the warning light when the camera was recording. Talk about a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Meta quickly moved to put the kibosh on that with a software update that disabled the cameras if the warning light was tampered with. (I wonder if it works if you just taped over the camera?)

Privacy focused tech geeks were all over that, praising Meta for moving so swiftly to counter the hack.

But hold on a minute. These stories don’t end there. According to a report from The Financial Times, Meta is testing ‘super sensing’ AI glasses that can record video and audio continuously.

Here’s a quote:

The $1.5tn social media platform has been advancing a new hardware line of smart glasses that would continuously record audio while taking photos every few seconds, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. A user could then use AI to help query what they saw or heard, or recall their day.

And the worm continues to turn:

With Meta’s current AI smart glasses, an LED in the corner of the frame lights up to signal to others when a wearer is taking photographs or filming.

However, executives are currently planning not to activate the LED when the super-sensing features are being used, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. That would make it harder for bystanders to know when they were being recorded, potentially intensifying the privacy concerns surrounding the technology. Those plans could still change, however, several people said.

It’s pretty easy to connect the dots between these two stories. Mark Zuckerberg wants anything and everything he can on you, and he doesn’t care how it’s used once he has his paws on it and his data centers crunching it. The privacy implications are certainly real, even if you don’t use a Meta product but fall within camera or microphone range of someone who does.

We’ve heard all of this before in different contexts. Microsoft caught all kinds of hell for Windows Recall, a feature that continually monitored and recorded what was on your screen. I’m old enough to remember the hue and cry about Google Glasses back in the day.

It’s a bit eerie how those at the time very visceral reactions seem to have softened in this new era of folks rushing to turn over their data to the AI crunchers in order to better plan a party. Should be quite interesting to watch party videos if this prototype Meta is testing ever comes to reality and becomes accepted.

I predict we’re going to keep hearing about this kind of thing again and again as the tech companies keep thirsting after any morsel of data about you, what you do, and where you do it. For their purposes that thirst will never be quenched.

It used to be “their purposes” was simply defined as selling or brokering your data for advertising purposes, because despite all of the grand promises of how this can help users, it’s always been about making a buck hustling your data for advertisting. Add AI into the mix, and it’s also about continuing to feed and train that beast to help them with that same ultimate goal.

Apple is rumored to be working on a version of AirPods Pro that contains cameras, apparently for AI purposes. All the talk you hear about Apple and others creating pendants, pins, other wearables, and counter top robots all follow the track to the same end point regardless of how the user benefits are packaged and hyped. Even if some follow Apple’s announced approach of keeping your data on whatever device is recording your every moment, those that don’t, like Meta, will spoil any potential benefit. Heck, in the long run, that’s type of spoilage is probably going to be a good thing in this era of overreaching.

It’s a damn shame really. Because there are certainly legitimate accessibilty uses for this kind of technology. But I have to say, it sure feels like that’s going to be just another hyped up smokescreen to try and mask the real purposes behind all of this.

UPDATE: On Friday 7/10 Meta announced it was removing the feature mentioned above. I guess public pressure sometimes works.

The End of Reading?

Let’s not make it so. At least until you read this piece.

File this one in the “Depressing If True” category. Rose Horowitch has written an excellent piece for The Atlantic entitled The End Of Reading Is Here. Yes, you read the title correctly. Unless you’ve already given up on reading you should give the piece more than just a look. If you have given up, try to remember how.

I’m not sure I’d agree completely that we’ve reached or are nearing the end point of reading, but I have to admit that we sure seem to be rushing headlong to cliff noting, bullet pointing, and summarizing everything to a point that it’s far too easy for some to break the habit and shy away from reading as a way to discover knowledge, new ideas, and well…advance ourselves and civilization while understanding from whence we came.

An excerpt:

Reading has never been natural. Humans have no innate cognitive machinery designed to string letters into words and connect them to their real-world analogues. To read, people had to repurpose regions of their brain used for speech and object recognition. The practice first emerged 6,000 years ago in Mesopotamia.

Horowitch traipses through the history of the written word hitting the high and low water marks, many easily recognizable, some not nearly as discernible, pointing to an age when Marshall McLuhan predicted we would become “post-literate.” He predicted that in 1962. She marches on from there.

The usual, and occasionally unusual, list of the enemies of writing and reading make their appearance on her march through the ages, but Horowitch lays them out, dare I say, in only the way a writer could. And yes, AI makes its appearance on that list. For it is not just reading, it’s also the writing of the words we read that is under threat.

Another excerpt:

The written word is fundamentally different from oral language. Writing detaches the message from the messenger, allowing for a more dispassionate spread of information than was possible in oral societies. Because writing a phrase takes longer than speaking it, writing forces the author to slow down and reflect. Written language tends to employ more complex sentence structures and vocabulary than spoken language. And unlike speech, it doesn’t disappear into the ether.

In her conclusion Horowitch reminds us that in our digital age we have the capability to read much more than at any point in human history.

When the Library of Alexandria disappeared, the knowledge inscribed on its scrolls was lost forever. We can only guess what else Eratosthenes and Euclid might have written. The text turned to dust. That won’t happen today; all of the words in the great library could be stored on a single computer chip. Nowadays, even the most obscure academic monographs are scanned and digitized. Google Books and the Internet Archive represent libraries of unfathomable proportions. We can navigate to them with a few keystrokes, not a perilous journey across the Mediterranean. There’s little risk of their texts succumbing to humidity or mice.

But the threat of apathy remains. What we’re losing is the ability and inclination to read those texts. An astonishing wealth of information and wisdom has been bequeathed to us. What we’ll do with this inheritance is up to us.

That makes it all a choice, does it not?

I won’t question the assumptions, nor the excellent way she has written them. I will add that if we are indeed reaching the end of reading, the logical next step is the end of thinking.

The piece is more than worth your time, should you have in the inclination to read it. I hope you do. It might actually make you think.

First Monarch Of The Season

Butterfly sightings of all types have been few and far between in the various necks of the woods I’ve been spending time in so far this summer. Here’s a photo of the the first Monarch Butterfly that crossed my path. A close-up shot of a Monarch butterfly perched on a cluster of pink, unopened milkweed flower buds, illuminated by soft sunlight against a blurred green background.

Hope we see more. They always give me a bit of joy.

This Is A Bummer. Open Source Dropbox Client Maestral Will Shut Down

Ch…ch…changes

I would say Monday always seems to bring bad news, but bad news seems to show up on any day that ends in “y” lately. But this is a Monday and this is bad news.

Maestral, an open source client for Dropbox has ceased to be maintained as of the end of June 2026 according to the develper on the app’s website. Hat tip to John Gruber who posted the news this morning, and for posting this quote from the developer.

As of 2026-07-28, this project is archived. It’s been a fun challenge to develop a syncing client, but unfortunately, I find too little time to invest in Maestral these days. I’ve also moved away from using Dropbox myself.

Maestral will still remain usable in the medium term, but will no longer be actively maintained or receive updates.

I’ve been using Maestral for quite some time to manage file syncing on Dropbox, primarily because I despise Dropbox’s own apps. Maestral is a far cleaner and less resource intensive experience, and has more than served my needs syncing files back and forth. So, I’ll either have to bite the bullet and swallow some pretty foul tasting software again, or find a different solution.

The different solution will be a difficult one as I work with a variety of theaters and clients, all of which using different file syncing and sharing solutions, (Google’s solution being the runner up to Dropbox) so I have to keep up with most of the file syncing services out there.

All shows must close at some point, but it’s a shame to see this one posted it’s closing notice. I wouldn’t count on any new ones appearing on the horizon.

Sunday Morning Reading

Words, words, words…

Meaning. It means so much. So do the words that deliver it to us. But remember, there was meaning before we constructed words into language. This week’s Sunday Morning Reading comes on the final day of a weird and wacky 4th of July weekend in the U.S when an often mean Mother Nature reminded us who is really in control no matter which words we choose or manipulate to pretend we are. It was kinda fun to watch. There’s also a few interesting pieces about America’s founding, and the myths and the meaning behind it all.

Kicking it off is a short piece from JA Westenberg asking Remember When Words Had Meaning? What comes first the distortion of language or the devaluing of the culture that employs them?

Speaking of meaning, Jack Loftus gives us The U.S. Constitution Is For Simple Folk Still Burdened By The Belief That Words Have Meaning. You can argue it was always thus, but we sure do spend an awful amount of time, energy and money arguing the opposite.

In this age of WTF, it has become an accelerating trend to see pieces disemboweling many of the myths we assign to the founding of America around the 4th of July. We used to share common myths more than we did a common history, but now even the myths get mangled. So it’s no surprise when the powers that currently be toil to rewrite both. Noah Berlatsky‘s The Constitution Sucks is a good example of how we can forever flip the coin looking for the right result, ignoring the edge.

T.H. Breen takes a look at some of the too often un-heralded folks and local movements during America’s revolutionary war period in It Wasn’t Just The Founders.

John Warner offers up For The Fourth, 9 Books For Your Sense Of Patriotism, saying “I’ve come to (personally) understand patriotism as a not a fan-like allegiance to a team, but a responsibility to understand the country’s history, warts and all as we pursue the illusive promise of life, liberty and happiness for all from the Declaration.” The key is knowing we all “come” to understanding.

Will Frivolous Charges Be Brought Against Future Ex-POTUSes? That’s Okay Too by Josh Marshall offers up an excellent piece on how we can twist and morph words in a legal context that shift the ground under most mythical mountains like “no man is above the law. “

Speaking of words and meaning, the bad guys seeking to survive a legal onslaught ahead of what they fear is a political tsunami coming for them are trying to rekindle old fears about communism and socialism as their latest talking points. Not sure those old saws will cut the same way they used to, but it demonstrates just how limited the dictionary is. David Todd McCarty takes a look behind the hooting and hollering in Democratic Socialism: Keeping The Great American Experiment Alive.

And in a quasi-hysterical look at shifting meanings and changing words, Rogé Karma is wondering Why Everyone Is Suddenly Talking About ‘Universal Basic Capital’. The quasi-hysterical part is that it’s coming from the AI market masters and a few politicians substituting the word “capital” for “income” following the words “universal basic.” Language is hard. When you can say anything to get what you want.

And in another word substitution, Doc Searls suggests we shift from an “attention economy” to an “intention economy.” Check out The First Source Of Personal Intent. I’m not sure the meaning changes with the substitution.

(Image from Alexandra on Unsplash)

Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free. If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affiliate links.

There Are Days and There Are Days

Some days are insanely hectic, bordering on maddening. Some bring something resembling a calmer pace. Some days you just need to park the car, have a sit, and check out the scenery.

Thoughts Swirling On This 4th of July

Celebrate who we want to be, not who dark hearts keep reminding us we are.

The 4th of July hasn’t felt the same to me in quite some time. The country I was born in doesn’t feel the same as it once did. Yet it does. In ways I wish I could ignore. Those are obvious observations many share, I’m sure. To me they are painful ones. Very painful.

I’m not one who ever believed that this country (or any country), given the way governments and people work, was divinely founded or inspired to do what is right. Humankind is too arrogant, too selfish, and too human to think that doesn’t spill over into governing and social intercourse any more or less so than it does into any other field of endeavor. The American musicalized version of our founding is indeed powerful and seductive, but it mostly hides the sour notes, even if at times it reveals truths it often obscures.

In this last decade plus it’s become excruciating to watch centuries-old hatreds arise from wounds once thought closed and healed, unleashed by a madman able to turn others just as mad. Insidious infections have popped through the surface and festered anew, revealing that far too many have no understanding of or desire to understand the bonds we share as humans on a rock orbiting a star, divided by arbitrary borders and divisions, assuming we can somehow control the chaos we continue to create.

Yes, the Declaration of Independence broke new ground in humankind’s advance, but in our current moment, it’s challenging, bordering on disingenuous, to say it altered the course of its continuing evolution.

For those who say that this 4th of July is for celebrating our 250th anniversary as a country, I’d offer this. Kinda yes, mostly no.

The years before and immediately following the Declaration proved just how close we came to not seeing those grievances become more than bold and dangerous statements on a piece of parchment. Yes, we won the American Revolution that sprung from the Declaration. But there were as many on this continent who were quite content to remain under the rule of a king, as those who revolted against it.

The men who wrote and signed that document were willing to hang for their actions. I don’t see too many (or enough) willing to do the same today.

In the 250 years since, we’ve had other close runs at seeing it all rent asunder. The Declaration in and of itself opened a door, it didn’t build as firm a foundation as many thought and hoped, or a country. That came later.

We’re living through another close run at tearing it all down, somehow finding too many of our fellow citizens content, as many of their forbearers were, to putting their lives in the hands of a king-like ruler once again. It will take decades to overcome this era, not because rulings and laws can’t be changed. They can. Surprisingly we’re finding they are also easy enough to ignore. We’ve given new life to dark and sickened hearts that will poison not only themselves and that which they touch, but the generation or two that comes after them.

The Declaration of Independence and the country that came after were never perfect. Proving that neither are we, neither are those who preceded us, and neither will be those who will succeed us. It was actually an acknowledgment of humankind’s imperfections. It was a promise, and it was a start, following a shot heard round the world. We’re still running the race that shot started, against the same headwinds of our own making, the promise still unfulfilled.

The act of reaching the Declaration of Independence is indeed worth celebrating, even if we keep extending the play by adding repetitive acts that keep rehashing the same plot points that made it necessary.

The 4th of July is also worth celebrating for all of the Americans, past and present, who think it is still worth pushing back against those who don’t care for what it has meant, flawed in its creation or no, and only see in its imperfections and the constitution that followed years later, other tools for self aggrandizement and enrichment.

Celebrate who we want to be, not who dark hearts keep reminding us we are. Castigation is all they deserve.

The Not Always Serendipitous Bug When Text Messaging With Spouses

But honey, I didn’t get the text!

I enjoy driving long distances alone. One of the benefits is that it gives me time to catch up on podcasts and audio books, so there’s the bonus. Even though that doesn’t come close to making up for the current high prices of gas or driving through summer road construction.

My wife is in the final weekend of a production of Always Patsy Cline at Hope Summer Repertory about three hours away. This morning I left Chicago before the crack of dawn to avoid the current heat wave baking our glass bubble of a car and pass through the construction zones a little easier. The trip is to catch her last two performances, then pack her up and bring us back home after what will be two months of her being away and me traveling back and forth. We’re theatre folk so we’re used to that home again, away again lifestyle.

Here’s where the serendipity begins. While listening to the post-show portion of The Accidental Tech Podcast episode #698 (I subscribe to the podcast) host Casey Liss brought up an iPhone messaging bug that I’ve encountered for quite some time. One that would pop up again on this trip.

In essence the bug is this.

When his wife texts him on a solitary thread between the two of them, he will not receive a haptic tap on his Apple Watch. He does however receive the “tap-tap” as he calls it, if she is a part of a group thread. Liss’s thinking is that this has something to do with Focus modes. In those of which he runs, he has configured his wife to be able to break through with a haptic notification on his Apple Watch when she texts.

One of his other co-hosts Marco Arment also has the same issue. The third co-host John Siracusa has the problem but in reverse. He doesn’t wear an Apple Watch, but his wife does, and she claims she never gets an Apple Watch notification when he texts either.

I have the exact same problem. Like Liss I also have a specific self-designed haptic touch configured for my wife. I have seen this bug for so long that I’ve just relegated it to another that Apple will never fix. But there is a slight difference, which I’ll get to in a moment.

This morning’s serendipity wasn’t just hearing this issue discussed and getting the satisfying momentary knowledge that if these much more sophisticated tech guys than I can’t figure it out, I’m not crazy and I’m not alone. We’ve all been there in those moments of relief with our own tech frustrations. But the story continues with a bit of zemblanity. (Today’s word search was looking up the opposite of serendipity. Everyday is a good day when you learn something new, and also discover you’re not alone in your tech woes.)

While on this early morning drive, listening to this very section of the podcast, my wife texted me, asking me to stop off at the store when I hit town before heading to her company housing to pick up a few things. I never got the notification of her text on my Apple Watch, and didn’t see the one on my iPhone until after I had reached her residence, stopped the car, and began to unload.

Yup. I had to turn around and go back to the store.

During the ATP discussion of all of this much good natured back and forth was had about one spouse or the other not receiving these text message notifications and the “fun” it can cause in spousal relations when your only and honest answer is “Honey, I didn’t get your text!” Of course the logical next response that never works is “Blame Apple.”

As I mentioned earlier, Liss seems to think this has something to do with Focus modes. He may indeed be correct, but this happens to me whether I am running a Focus mode or not.

I long ago gave up on using Focus modes to any great degree. I just found them too complex to set up, and often not working as I expected. As an example, I no longer allow even the two I do use to flow through my chain of Apple Devices and none are turned on for my Macs. And yet, a Do Not Disturb mode will still launch on my iMac at odd hours on random days. Focus modes in my experience are just too fiddly and in my experience too buggy to be reliable.

The only Focus modes I currently use are the default Do Not Disturb and Sleep modes on the iPhone. I do have my wife, and several family members, set to break through those. Whether I’m running those modes or not, I do not get a “tap-tap” notification on my Apple Watch when my wife texts, unless, like Liss, my wife is part of a family group message thread, and then those come through as designed.

During her two month gig, my wife and I have resorted to “don’t text, call” as our way of reaching each other when some level of urgency or import arises. We’ve been through a few dicey family situations during her gig where I have resorted to turning off the Sleep focus at night. Breaking my wife’s habit of always texting first is a challenge in and of itself. But that’s another story.

Note that I always receive “tap-tap” notifications from all others I’ve set to break through Do Not Disturb or Sleep, or when I’m not running either Focus mode, which the majority of the time. This only happens with my wife.

I don’t know if this is the locus of the problem or not, but I would bet it floats somewhere in Apple’s iCloud. Focus modes, like Messages, flow through iCloud (assuming you have Messaging in iCloud turned on). Liss is convinced he’s configured something wrong. How notifications flow from one device or the other for those, like I, using multiple Apple devices, is also an inconsistent issue in my experience.

My guess, is anyone experiencing this at some point may have flipped a switch in an earlier generation of the software that has since changed, but there’s a flag set somewhere in that user’s iCloud account that’s hanging around causing the problem.

I’ve experienced several issues with my specific iCloud account that required things to be reset on Apple’s end in the past to suspect this is the case. As a little birdie told me during all my iCloud adventures, keep in mind every time Apple updates the operating system for your device, updates are happening on the backend as well.

Perhaps this is one of the many bugs Apple may be cleaning up on the backend preparing for the release of iOS 27. If not, it should be. It certainly would make for happier households that use Apple’s products.

(Image from Andrej Lišakoy on Unsplash)

Everything Is Changing Under The Fingers On Our Keyboards and Screens

Operating release cycles headed for a change

This week Apple released updates for iPhones, iPads and Macs with the version numbers all ending in 26.5.2. Mostly targeted at security fixes. That’s nothing new. Apple periodically does that. What’s new is how the timing of “periodically” looks like it’s going to change.

The security updates in 26.5.2 were scheduled to roll out with 26.6.6, which is still in beta (Beta 3 if I”m not mistaken.) But these fixes were deemed crucial enough that Apple jumped ahead of the official release of that version and cut in line with the just released version.

This post on Six Colors targets what’s happening. Here’s a quote:

In other words, the security fixes in 26.5.2 are based on the security fixes that were rolled into the 26.6 betas, the first of which was released publicly on May 26. That means that everyone in the security world, including bad actors, has had more than a month to analyze all of Apple’s forthcoming fixes…

Thanks to AI that changes how we, and software makers need to be aware that the traditional release cycle of betas is going to affect security concerns going forward. If a beta release contains code to patch a security hole, then the bad guys, as well as the good guys, have access to that code from the betas.

It’s a good news, be aware kind of story. With AI able to identify and catch and fix bugs and problems faster than humans, it’s only a matter of time before the software testing and release cycle changes. Because if there’s a bug to be fixed or a hole to be patched, there’s a bad guy eager to exploit it.

(Image from Florian Olivo on Unsplash)