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Abstractions
Abstractions episodes
- Jedi Mind Trick Passive Radiator
ZuckOff mobile app notifies you when it detects “smart” glasses nearby, and Apple announces its new HomeView product that fuses together a speaker, a display, and Siri AI.
🔗 Links
- ZuckOff: smart glasses detector app
- Apple HomeView
- Apple TV 4K (4th generation)
- HomePod mini 2
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
40 min - Inappropriate Metaphor Factory
Kagi adds a setting to remove paywalled links from search results, Apple Watch will soon have always-on recording capability, and Apple releases its MacOS 27 “Golden Gate” and iOS 27 operating systems.
🔗 Links
- Destroy Any Website
- Kagi added a setting for removing paywalled links from search results
- Audio Intelligence features on Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4
- Torment Nexus
- Apple OS 27
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
42 min - The Great Color Armageddon
Apple announces new products, including the iPhone 18 Pro and its first folding phone, the iPhone Duo.
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
48 min - Quad-Die Thruples
Apple announces M6 & M5 Ultra processors along with new Mac Mini and Mac Studio computers, Walmart finally caves and will support Apple Pay, and France bans unsolicited marketing phone calls.
🔗 Links
- Apple introduces M6 and M5 Ultra
- Apple M6 and M5 Pro Mac mini
- Apple introduces Mac Studio with M5 Max & Ultra
- Walmart finally caves, will support Apple Pay
- France bans unsolicited telemarketing calls
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
48 min - Next-Level Countermeasures
A promotional video for new AirPods appears to have been leaked, BMW shows ads to drivers on its car dashboard screens, and there is a correct orientation when putting down your case-less phone.
- Mario meets Pareto
- MacOS 26.7 Tahoe Release Candidate Contains a Video Demonstrating Camera-Equipped AirPods in Action
- BMW Has Put a Spider-Man Ad on the Dashboard Display of Owners’ Cars
- iDrive Ads
- You Don’t Need to Worry About Scratching Your iPhone Camera Lenses
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
39 min - That Starship Has Sailed
Safari has one major advantage over Chrome, Hugging Face fends off a cyberattack by a rogue language model, and OpenAI will reportedly ship a ChatGPT device replete with speaker, microphone, and camera.
🔗 Links
- Ray Bradbury’s “There Will Come Soft Rains” is set today (2026-08-04)
- There Will Come Soft Rains (PDF)
- Timeline of Fictional Future Events
- Neonomicon by Alan Moore
- Chrome’s glaring lack of window/tab session isolation
- Safari’s support for web platform features is… not great
- Chrome is bad
- Google settled a class-action lawsuit for $5 billion in which it was accused of collecting user data in Chrome’s incognito mode
- Helium web browser
- Request for session/storage/cookie isolation in Chromium in… 2013
- StopTheScript
- Scorched Earth, video game classic
- Language model breaks out of sandbox and breaks into Hugging Face
- OpenAI’s accidental cyberattack against Hugging Face is science fiction that happened
- Security incident disclosure — July 2026
- Anatomy of a Frontier Lab Agent Intrusion: A Technical Timeline of the July 2026 Incident
- OpenAI and Hugging Face partner to address security incident during model evaluation
- OpenAI’s New Device Will Be Hockey Puck-Sized and Cost Over $300
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
48 min - Long on Schadenfreude
MacOS upgrade shenanigans continue, SpaceX loses billions in first “earnings” report, LLMs are surprisingly good at financial advice, and Dan describes his new high-fidelity audio system.
🔗 Links
- LLM2Human Clinic
- Iris Photos app for MacOS
- MacOS Safari standalone installer downloads from Apple
- SpaceX’s first-ever earnings report comes as stock hits new all-time low
- AI debt orgy can’t last forever, while hidden borrowing has exploded to $1.65 trillion
- AI Economics for Dummies
- AI financial advice is surprisingly good
- LLMs reward expertise
- Arcam A25 integrated amplifier
- Dali Sonik 5 floor-standing speakers
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
50 min - Bubbles Don’t Really Give Way
Apple might be building servers powered by M7 Ultra processors, S&P downgrades Oracle’s debt, and open-weights large language models narrow the gap with frontier models.
🔗 Links
- Why Oracle’s recent credit downgrade could be a warning sign for stocks
- Moonshot and Alibaba unveil models they claim rival OpenAI and Anthropic
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
45 min - Caesar Debt Salad
Mac software developers find a way to get out of “squircle jail”, there is growing opposition to data center over-construction, and bankers warn about risks associated with growing debt and shrinking cash flow related to generative software infrastructure investment.
🔗 Links
- Train melodies on Tokyo’s Yamanote line
- Ride voxel Tokyo Yamanote train while studying Japanese
- Thaw: Mac menu item organizer, Ice fork, and alternative to Bartender
- Escape from Squircle Jail
- Resist the Squircle Jail
- NSDockTilePlugIn
- Iris Photos: A Native MacOS photo library
- Iris launch announcement post
- Data center construction backlash
- Backlash as Utah approves datacenter twice the size of Manhattan
- Data centers are guzzling California’s water — We have no idea how much
- Data Centers Now Consume 6% of U.S. Electricity — and the Backlash Has Begun
- Generative software debt risk
- Banks seek to offload risk to avoid “choking” on data center debt
- Hyperscaler Debt Flood Brings Derivatives Bonanza
- Big Tech’s $2.7 trillion AI bill comes due: Chart of the Day
- AI boom risks global financial crash, warn central bankers
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
44 min - Footgun Cavalcade
Claude Fable & Mythos models are once again available, Sony kills PlayStation physical game discs, Xbox fires thousands of employees, commencement speakers are surprised by “AI” backlash, and Allbirds pivots from shoes to data centers.
🔗 Links
- “Bring Me to Life” cover: Gregorian
- “Bring Me to Life” cover: Otamatone
- Fable 5 & Mythos 5 are now available again
- ChatGPT can’t believe RAM prices
- Sony kills PlayStation video game discs
- Physical disc production ending in January 2028 for new games releasing on PlayStation consoles
- Sony announces end of PlayStation discs
- Xbox fires thousands of employees
- Clueless commencement speeches about “AI”
- Related comic
- Allbirds abandons clothes, pivots to “AI compute infrastructure”
- Money Stuff: AIbirds
You can find Justin Mayer on the web at justinmayer.com and on the Fediverse at justin.ramble.space.
Dan Jacobson’s homestead on the web is at danj.ca.
52 min
About Abstractions
From the publisher's feed
Abstractions is a podcast about technology, software, hardware, and the Internet, and the way the ever-increasing layers of these technologies permeate every aspect of our everyday lives.