Here’s the full statement, given by Apple to the media, including Daring Fireball:

“Today we filed our appeal because we believe the European Commission’s decision — and their unprecedented fine — go far beyond what the law requires. As our appeal will show, the EC is mandating how we run our store and forcing business terms which are confusing for developers and bad for users. We implemented this to avoid punitive daily fines and will share the facts with the Court.”

Everyone — including, I believe, at Apple — agrees that the policy changes Apple announced at the end of June are confusing and seemingly incomplete in terms of fee structures. What Apple is saying here in this statement is they needed to launch these policy changes now, before the full fee implications are worked out, to avoid the daily fines they were set to be penalized with for the steering rules.

Chance Miller, reporting for 9to5Mac:

Apple also reiterates that the EU has continuously redefined what exactly it needs to do under the DMA. In particular, Apple says the European Commission has expanded the definition of steering. Apple adjusted its guidelines to allow EU developers to link out to external payment methods and use alternative in-app payment methods last year. Now, however, Apple says the EU has redefined steering to include promotions of in-app alternative payment options and in-app webviews, as well as linking to other alternative app marketplaces and the third-party apps distributed through those marketplaces.

Furthermore, Apple says that the EU mandated that the Store Services Fee include multiple tiers. [...] You can view the full breakdown of the two tiers on Apple’s developer website. Apple says that it was the EU who dictated which features should be included in which tier. For example, the EU mandated that Apple move app discovery features to the second tier.

Like I wrote last week, “byzantine compliance with a byzantine law”.

"Most people won’t pay for AI voluntarily—just 8% according to a recent survey. ...

"Before proceeding let me ask a simple question: Has there ever been a major innovation that helped society, but only 8% of the public would pay for it?

"That’s never happened before in human history. Everybody wanted electricity in their homes. Everybody wanted a radio. Everybody wanted a phone. Everybody wanted a refrigerator. Everybody wanted a TV set. Everybody wanted the Internet.

"They wanted it. They paid for it. They enjoyed it.

"AI isn’t like that. People distrust it or even hate it—and more so with each passing month. ...

"When AI is added to a product, people want it LESS. Survey of 4,000 consumers show that only 18% prefer AI. Everyone else opposes it, or is indifferent.

"Experts are now warning companies that their mad rush to adopt AI may erode customer trust and hurt sales. ...

"The 'Wall Street Journal' concludes that companies should “beware of promoting AI in products.”

"And it’s more than just products and services. People don’t even want AI in texts or documents of any sort. ...

"Judging by the current situation, tech companies will move quickly. They don’t ask for permission. It just happens.

"What’s most shocking is that they have done all this before making AI reliable. Every day I hear accounts of stupid and ridiculous things coming from bots. You would think they would fix this mess before forcing AI on us.

"But here’s the harsh reality. They won’t fix it, because they don’t know how."

~ Ted Gioia from his post 'The Force-Feeding of AI on an Unwilling Public'

"'Boomers' have encouraged a legacy of violent protest. That gets the ’60s all wrong. ... I blame the 'Boomer' generation that sold a deeply misleading history of civil rights in a case of generational stolen valour. ...

"Civil rights didn’t happen because of rowdy and violent protests—nor did Social Security, the expansion of free speech, or even the Great Society. That’s a myth told by a Boomer generation that employed such tactics to steal the achievements of a prior generation that didn’t. Until we dispel this widely believed untruth among younger generations raised on the falsehood, we’ll continually botch any potential at making [things] better.

"America’s Civil Rights Movement is usually lumped into the cultural turmoil [that popular histories simply] call 'the ’60s.' In reality, what we remember as the ’60s was two entirely different periods of history. Most of [the turmoil] we remember as the 1960s in reality happened in the 1970s. A lot of the Civil Rights Movement that we also remember as the 1960s in reality happened in the 1950s. The dividing line between these eras is 1964. On one side is the Civil Rights Act and Great Society of 1964, which we can think of as the culmination of reform efforts of the ’50s. On the other side are the explosive protests and public upheaval of 1968, which ushered in a new era of radicalism that American society is still, in many ways, attempting to recover from.

"What began America’s Civil Rights Era was [not the 'protest era' of the '60s, but] the Second World War, a war waged in the name of democracy in which over a million black Americans bravely fought for freedom. Then they came home to a country that treated them like dirt. ... After the war, America started moving slowly to finally do something about racism and segregation. ... Out of that sensibility emerged a Civil Rights Movement eager to end this hypocrisy and which was led by the World War II generation of the 'Greatest Generation' and 'Silents.' The 'Boomers,' the children born after the war’s end, were just kids during this era. ...

"This movement was built around an ethic of non-violence. ... Civil Rights Era protests were ones in which well-dressed people arrived to respectfully make their presence known. They wouldn’t comply with unjust laws or systems, but behaved with dignity and restraint.

"Dignity in resistance wasn’t meant to scare America into doing the right thing. It wasn’t about making unreasonable demands to spark a political revolution. It was meant to shame America into doing what it already knew was right. It worked because Americans deeply understood their hypocrisy was a national embarrassment. ...

"The protesters who brought about this achievement hadn’t shouted, waved their fists, or cursed—much less burned things, threatened people, or rioted. Why then do so many young protesters think otherwise? Why do they think Civil Rights was the result of wild and violent protesting? Because of the myths of the [later] Baby Boomers who wrote the story, stealing the valour of the previous generation to cover their own failure.

"The Spirit of 1968 [however—the spirit of 'Boomer' protest—] was the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago in which protesters fought a street battle with police on national television. ... [T]he Spirit of 1968 ... was the epitome of the Baby Boomer protest movement. ... New Left activists ... maintained the same militant tone claiming the impossibility of reform and the need for revolution against the system. Their protests were rowdy, with stunts and shouting and theatrics. New Left activists rejected the nonviolent principles of their predecessors. ...

"What exactly did the New Left movement achieve? It failed to nominate its anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy in Chicago. ...

"What policies can the New Left claim? It didn’t even manage to stop the Vietnam War or end the draft. ...

"Politically, the New Left so discredited itself with America that, on a national level, it destroyed the Democratic Party for a generation. ...

" Tackling [change takes] hard work. In place of serious reform, we get threats and histrionics. We get more Che Guevara, and less Edmund Burke. The young people who should become the ground troops for serious reform have sidelined themselves as irrelevant.

"I don’t entirely blame them. They’ve been lied to. In a bid to steal valour they didn’t earn, their teachers and leaders told them this is how change happens. It’s long past time for this dangerous myth to die."

~ Frank DiStefano from his post 'The Left Is Misremembering Civil Rights'

Mike Huemer is the greatest philosopher. It is no hyperbole to say that he “taught me how to think.” He is also a confirmed ethical vegetarian who practices what he preaches.

Nine years ago, I wrote this piece arguing that insects provide a strong reductio ad absurdum to Huemer’s view. If animal suffering is morally important, then insect suffering is morally important, which implies that even the most seemingly innocuous activities — driving a car, building a house — are morally monstrous. Since this conclusion is absurd, we should reject one of the premises. Namely: We should reject the view that animal suffering is morally important. Instead, contrary to ethical vegetarianism, the badness of suffering heavily depends on the intelligence of the sufferer. In the subsequent multi-round debate (see all of the links here, plus all of part 5), Huemer produced this graph, which nicely summarizes my broader view:

In terms of persuasion, I have probably never failed so badly in all my life. At least two smart friends subsequently told me that my arguments were bad enough to convert them to the opposite of my position. Predictably, though, I still say I’m right and Huemer is wrong. Which leaves myself and the best philosopher at an impasse, alas.

Why don’t I just defer to the best philosopher? Because, I insist, Huemer’s not following the rules of good thinking that he taught me:

The fundamental fallacy of rationalism is the idea that human knowledge proceeds from the abstract to the concrete, from the general to the specific; that one arrives at particular judgments by applying pre-given abstract rules to particular circumstances. The evidence of human experience stands almost uniformly against these assumptions, in virtually every area of human intellectual endeavor. In the sciences, one does not begin with an abstract theory and then use it to interpret experiences. If one wants to develop a theory, one begins with a large collection of concrete facts; patterns may emerge and explanations may suggest themselves, once one has collected a sufficient body of background facts. One’s theories must conform to and be driven by the concrete facts, not the other way around…

The same is true in philosophy. [I]f we wish to arrive ultimately at some general theory of ethics, we must start from a variety of relatively concrete, particular ethical truths. It is those who proceed in the opposite direction—declaring some general, abstract theory and then demanding that the particular facts conform to it—who are responsible for the mountains of failed (and often absurd) theories that dominate the landscape of the history of philosophy.

Imagine how I felt, then, when I discovered that Matthew Adelstein had interviewed Mike Huemer on insect suffering. In our debate, Huemer maintained that insects probably don’t feel pain anyway, so my reductio ad absurdum never even gets off the ground. I knew that Adelstein, in contrast, agrees me with that bugs feel pain, and Huemer on ethical vegetarianism. So what would the two of them say?

See for yourself in the video below, starting around 38:50. I’ll be replying in the near future.

TEHRAN — Sources close to the regime reported that Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian expressed worry during his highly publicized X interview that this Tucker Carlson guy might be a little extreme.