M.G. SIEGLER: Apple Wins Consumer AI By Default:

Apple seems on the verge of doing what they always do: watching new products and services come about and then jumping in later with a better user experience to win the day.

Again, that doesn’t mean they’ll be at full parity with everything that Anthropic, or OpenAI, or even Google can do with their AI at the moment. But for the masses, for Apple’s purposes, most of that won’t matter.

OOPS: A non-zero number of prior experimental studies suggesting widespread contamination from microplastics may have overestimated those levels… due to particles sloughing off the nitrile gloves used in the experiemnts.

SPEAKING OF LADY RACERS THAT HAVE GRACED THESE PAGES BEFORE: Katherine Legge secures last-minute deal to attempt Indy 500/Coke 600 Double next week. Should she qualify for both races, she’d be the 6th driver to attempt the double, as well as the first woman, first non-American, and oldest.

SCHEDULED FOR NO EARLIER THAN (NET) MAY 19: SpaceX Starship’s Twelfth Flight Test.

IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED: having not qualified for last weekend’s Watkins Glen race, Dystany Spurlock returns to attempt debut at Dover Motor Speedway.

THEY DID ANNOUNCE IT, JUST NOT VERY LOUDLY: Chrome’s 4GB AI model isn’t new, but you’re not wrong for being confused.

You can turn it off and delete the model (and thereby free up 4 GB of disk space) if you want.

STAY? What will happen to Nipper, a dog statue on a New York warehouse?

THE VOICE, FOR GENERATIONS OF NEW YORK BASEBALL FANS: John Sterling, legendary Yankees voice, dead at 87.

FAIR WINDS AND FOLLOWING SEAS: Alex Zanardi, ex-F1 driver and Paralympic champion dies aged 59. The 15-time CART race winner and two-time series champion, having had both legs amputated in a 2001 crash, transitioned to a second career as a handcycle racer, winning four gold medals for Italy in the 2012 London and 2016 Rio Paralympic Games, along with 12 other world championships in the sport. He passed yesterday, six years after a collision with a truck while handcycling in in a 2020 June road race.

ROOTING FOR HER: Dystany Spurlock set for NASCAR Truck Series debut at Watkins Glen. Spurlock would become the first Black female driver to appear in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.

YOUR FEEL-GOOD MOMENT OF THE WEEK: Runners help exhausted man finish Boston Marathon.

THE WORST KEPT SECRET IN SILICON VALLEY NOW HAS AN EFFECTIVE DATE: Tim Cook to become Apple Executive Chairman; John Ternus to become Apple CEO as of September 1.

Tim Cook separately posted a Community Letter on the announcement.

ENDORSED: Daring Fireball: How to Format 10-Digit Phone Numbers

Apple’s Contacts app … will go so far as to reformat numbers entered in 123-555-1234 format as (123) 555-1234. Apple should update the formatting to go the other way, and turn phone numbers with the area code in parentheses into the 123-555-1234 format. Area codes are no longer optional, which is why they used to be put in parentheses.

ENDORSED: xkcd: Countdown Standard

THE “HOW” IS WAY OVER MY HEAD, BUT THE “WHY” AND THE RESULT ARE REALLY COOL: Porting Mac OS X to the Nintendo Wii

LEARNING FROM THE BEST IN THE FIELD: RIT alumni train Artemis II astronauts in photography.

As an alumnus (though not of the photograhy programs), I might be a little biased.

THIS MAKES MORE SENSE THAN ANYTHING I’VE SEEN BEFORE, BUT I STILL WOULDN’T RULE OUT ALIENS: A Scientist May Have Just Solved the Mystery of the Great Pyramid.

ROCHESTER’S OWN MAJOR LEAGUER: “Dear Jays Fans” by Ernie Clement in The Players’ Tribune

Can’t wait to get things rolling again this Friday.

MAT DUGGAN: Markdown Ate The World.

It’s one of the greatest, quickest ways to get words on paper into a text file, because that’s exactly what it’s designed for. Get the text down, and figure out how to format it later and/or elsewhere.

JUST MORE EVIDENCE THAT ISAACMAN WAS THE RIGHT MAN FOR THIS JOB: NASA shakes up its Artemis program to speed up lunar return.