2025-12-30 08:56:13
Turn articles into podcasts and listen on the go. Email any article, and it comes back as natural narration delivered straight to your private podcast feed. Whether it’s a long read or a quick blog post, enjoy it hands-free in any podcast app.
Sign up for free and start listening today. New users get $2 in credits to try it out, no commitment.
Now with many new voices, improved audio quality, and big bonus credits for frequent listeners.
Built by an indie developer. Try it at listenlater.net.
2025-12-30 08:45:42
Some follow-up on the looks-like-AI-slop “painting” Tim Cook posted on Twitter/X on Christmas Eve to promote the Pluribus season finale. Slashdot contacted the credited artist, Keith Thomson, and quoted this interaction with him:
Slashdot: I just wanted to confirm that that’s your work... If it is your work, can you say anything about what software you used when creating the image?
Thomson: I’m unable to comment on specific client projects. In general, I always draw and paint by hand and sometimes incorporate standard digital tools.
That is a non-denial denial that he used generative AI to create the image.
Dwayne Cubbins at PiunikaWeb also contacted Keith Thomson and got this statement:
The artist, Keith Thomson, responded to my request for a comment, stating that they “always draw by hand and sometimes incorporate standard digital tools.”
That is the same non-denial denial, because “standard digital tools” might include generative AI.
MG Siegler wonders if it’s a deliberate allegory to some of the themes from the show, writing:
Keith Thomson using AI to produce art that’s like Keith Thomson’s art because it’s trained on Keith Thomson’s art. How’s that for a mindfuck?
I’m sure I’m reading wayyyy too much into that tweet (and retweet), but given my previous post about Pluribus as an AI allegory, I think it’s sort of interesting to think about in that context.
MG’s posts have some spoilers re: Pluribus, so follow those links at your own risk. Pluribus is best enjoyed if you start watching it knowing as little about it as possible. But without spoiling anything, I think MG didn’t put enough y’s in the wayyyy in “I’m sure I’m reading wayyyy too much into that tweet”. There is no 3D chess being played here.
I wrote just a few months ago that I firmly believe generative AI tools not only can be, but already are, used to create genuine art. My problem with AI slop isn’t the AI, it’s the slop. Whatever “standard digital tools” Keith Thomson used to create this, the result is a turd.
Pluribus, among numerous other merits, is a beautifully filmed show. Thomson’s published paintings are beautiful. The image Tim Cook posted on Twitter/X (and which the Apple TV account retweeted) is ugly and awkward. It either is AI-generated slop or it looks like AI-generated slop for no artistic or thematic reason whatsoever. Occam’s razor would suggest the conclusion that it simply is AI-generated slop, and Keith Thomson suckered Apple into paying for it.
2025-12-29 03:55:51
My thanks to Copilot Money for sponsoring last week at DF. Copilot is a personal finance app for the iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and they’ve always deeply believed in the value of embracing the design idioms and technical features of truly native apps for Apple platforms. Apple has noticed, awarding Copilot an App Store Editor’s Choice and featuring Copilot earlier this year on Apple Developer for their use of Swift Charts.
Copilot’s big news this week is they’ve launched a new web app, bringing access to Copilot from any device, anywhere. It’s designed with all the attention to detail — and concern for privacy and security — as their native apps.
Copilot Money brings all your spending, budgets, investments, and net worth into one organized dashboard, with intelligent categorization and insights that help you stay on track without spreadsheets or app-hopping. Designed to feel calm and intuitive, Copilot makes it easy to understand your finances across all your devices.
Copilot first sponsored DF back in 2021. My wife and I started using it then to track our finances, and we haven’t looked back. Copilot Money isn’t just better than anything we’d used before, it absolutely blew everything else away. It’s easy to connect to your financial accounts, and once you do, you don’t need to spend any effort at all to enter transactions. Copilot just tracks it all automatically, and most importantly, presents it to you in clear, intuitive ways. It’s so good. I’m not saying that because they sponsored DF last week — I’m saying that as a happy paying customer for over four years now.
Copilot is offering DF readers two months free with code DARING, plus 26% off your first year for a limited time, available through this link.
2025-12-29 03:39:53
Major update to Rogue Amoeba’s essential audio utility for the Mac. I’ve written about versions 5 and 4 previously, and everything I wrote then remains true. SoundSource remains the system-wide audio menu item that ought to be built into MacOS, giving you easy, intuitive control over every audio device (input and output), and easy, intuitive control over every app in which you play or record audio. That one seemingly-simple app does both those things is quite the remarkable design achievement. And aside from that usability, SoundSource remains an exemplar of UI design stylistically — distinctive and branded, while looking and feeling in every way like a standard Mac app.
New tentpole features in version 6 include fine-grained AirPlay support (e.g. route output from one app over AirPlay while leaving the rest of your system’s audio output local to your Mac), groups for output devices, and a new “Quick Configs” feature for saving and switching between, well, quick configurations. $49 for a new license, $25 to upgrade from a previous one.
2025-12-28 06:32:01
The whole illustration is just weird looking, for one thing. As for sloppy details, the tree is in soft focus but somehow has a crisp edge, the carton is labeled both “Whole Milk” and “Lowfat Milk”, and the “Cow Fun Puzzle” maze is just goofily wrong. (I can’t recall ever seeing a puzzle of any kind on a milk carton, because they’re waxy and hard to write on. It’s like a conflation of milk cartons and cereal boxes.)
[Update, 29 December: Turns out, the “lowfat” milk carton props from the actual show have the same mistake with “whole milk” printed above. That doesn’t change that it’s a stupid mistake to copy, or that there are a slew of other telltale signs that the image was generated by AI.]
The Apple TV X account retweeted Cook, and added a credit: “We thought you might like this festive artwork by Keith Thomson, made on MacBook Pro.”
Apple didn’t tag the “Keith Thomson” who supposedly created this artwork for them, but if it’s this Keith Thomson, Apple must have somehow fallen for a scam, because that Keith Thomson’s published paintings are wonderful. It does seem to be that Keith Thomson’s signature on Apple’s sloppy illustration, though. (I like a bunch of the paintings from that Keith Thomson, and love a few of them, but this one in particular feels like it was made just for me. It’s perfect.)
2025-12-26 04:42:57
Terrific interaction design from The New York Times. Not so terrific interior design from the president.
