The less you know about this talk, the more you’ll enjoy watching it unfold. Just remarkably good. Trust me, watch it now, before anything about it is spoiled for you.

Jamie Zawinski:

For those of you who are unaware of these finer details, 0.9 was the first release of the Netscape browser (which begat Firefox) available to the general public. This beta release was an unannounced surprise. Prior to this, everyone assumed that what we were doing was going to be a standard for-sale product where you sent off your $35 and then some time later got a disc in the mail with a license key. That we just said, “Here’s our FTP site, come get it, go crazy” was, at the time, shocking to people.

The thing that confuses people sometimes about new platforms is that while the platform and its clients are different things, you usually need both to be great for the whole thing to succeed. The World Wide Web, as conceived by Tim Berners-Lee, was and remains a remarkable, world-changing platform. But it really didn’t take off until Netscape hit. It was just such a great app, including on the Mac. It was the browser the web needed.

Chance Miller, writing for 9to5Mac:

According to multiple 9to5Mac readers and reports across social media, Home Depot has also recently started rolling out Apple Pay support. Home Depot has been a major Apple Pay holdout, resisting pressure from its customers to add support for Apple’s tap-to-pay platform. Notably, Lowe’s — Home Depot’s biggest competitor — began rolling out Apple Pay support last December. It certainly seems possible that this move by Lowe’s put pressure on Home Depot to change its strategy.

Home Depot hasn’t commented on this change in policy, and the details of the rollout aren’t explicitly clear. It appears to be a very gradual rollout that started at a small number of locations over the summer and has recently picked up momentum. Your mileage may vary for the time being, though.

I could be completely wrong, but I don’t think Home Depot was ever opposed to Apple Pay. I just think they bought into a weird point-of-sale system that didn’t support it. They’re weird terminals. And I suspect what’s happening now isn’t a come-to-Jesus moment regarding Apple Pay in particular, but a replacement of those crummy POS terminals with new ones that do support Apple Pay.

Walmart is still the biggest Apple Pay holdout by a wide margin, and the company has shown no signs of changing its tune.

With Walmart, I do think it’s strategic that they don’t support Apple Pay. I think it’s wrongheaded though, and they’ll change their minds sooner (probably) or later. Walmart, just a few years ago, was spearheading the dumbass CurrentC “pay via QR code” system. Apple Pay, from a user’s perspective, is just a private way to pay via credit or debit card — no more, no less. Whatever strategic reasons Walmart has to oppose it — which I think boil down to wanting customers to instead use a Walmart-proprietary digital payment system — aren’t worth it.

Deepa Seetharaman, Berber Jin, and Tom Dotan, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (News+):

OpenAI is planning to convert from a nonprofit organization to a for-profit company at the same time it is undergoing major personnel shifts including the abrupt resignation Wednesday of its chief technology officer, Mira Murati. Becoming a for-profit would be a seismic shift for OpenAI, which was founded in 2015 to develop AI technology “to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return,” according to a statement it published when it launched.

I guess I wasn’t paying close enough attention, but I wrongly thought this whole debate over turning OpenAI into a for-profit corporation had been decided a year ago, during the brief saga when the then-board of directors fired Sam Altman for being profit-driven, and then the board itself dissolved and Altman was brought back.

Things started to change in late 2022 when it released ChatGPT, which became an instant hit and sparked global interest in the potential of generative artificial intelligence to reshape business and society. Guided by Chief Executive Sam Altman, OpenAI started releasing new products for consumers and corporate clients and hired a slew of sales, strategy and finance staffers. Employees, including some who had been there from the early days, started to complain that the company was prioritizing shipping products over its original mission to build safe AI systems.

Some left for other companies or launched their own, including rival AI startup Anthropic. The exodus has been particularly pronounced this year. Before Murati, OpenAI’s co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, co-founder and former top researcher John Schulman, and former top researcher Jan Leike all resigned since May. Co-founder and former president Greg Brockman recently took a leave of absence through the end of the year.

In addition to Murati, chief research officer Bob McGrew and head of post-training Barret Zoph also are leaving OpenAI, according to a post on X from Altman.

OpenAI has high-profile partnerships with both Microsoft and Apple, two companies with decades of extraordinarily stable executive leadership. But OpenAI itself seems to be in a state of constant executive disarray and turmoil. That’s a bit of a head-scratcher to me.

Allison Johnson, The Verge:

Apple Intelligence’s list of forthcoming supported languages just got a little longer. After an October launch in US English, Apple says its AI feature set will be available in German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese, Vietnamese, “and others” in the coming year. The company drops this news just days before the iPhone 16’s arrival — the phone built for AI that won’t have any AI features at launch.

Apple’s AI feature set will expand to include localized English in the UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand in December, with India and Singapore joining the mix next year. The company already announced plans to support Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish next year as well.

Apple shared this news with me last night too, and my first thought was, “German and Italian? Does that mean they’ve gotten the OK that Apple Intelligence is, in fact, compliant with the DMA?” But that’s not what they’re announcing. This is just for Apple Intelligence on the Mac — which already offers Apple Intelligence in the EU in MacOS 15.1 Sequoia betas, because the Mac is not a designated “gatekeeping” platform. The standoff over Apple Intelligence on iOS and iPadOS remains.

BBC News:

Apple has been ordered to pay Ireland €13bn (£11bn; $14bn) in unpaid taxes by Europe’s top court, putting an end to an eight-year row.

The European Commission accused Ireland of giving Apple illegal tax advantages in 2016, but Ireland has consistently argued against the need for the tax to be paid.

The Irish government said it would respect the ruling.

Apple said it was disappointed with the decision and accused the European Commission of “trying to retroactively change the rules”.

Ireland doesn’t want the money:

The Irish government has argued that Apple should not have to repay the back taxes, deeming that its loss was worth it to make the country an attractive home for large companies.

What a great win for Margrethe Vestager, making clear to the world that the EU is hostile to successful companies. Good job.