Today, 52% of Americans say they are more concerned than excited about the increased use of AI in daily life – up from 37% in 2021. Another 9% are more excited than concerned and 37% say they’re equally excited and concerned, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted June 22-28, 2026.

Concern about AI for Americans over the age of 30 has been relatively stable, but not for people in their 20s and teens:

For the first time, a majority of adults under 30 (55%) now say they’re more concerned than excited about AI. About one-in-ten say they’re more excited than concerned, and roughly a third feel both equally. Their concern is now on par with those in their 30s and 40s, and those 65 and up.

Across age groups, about half or more say they’re more concerned than excited about AI. Excitement, in turn, has dropped off since 2021 among all age groups.

It’s incredible how badly AI companies have blown it from a PR perspective.

A bunch of future Apple hardware has leaked in a beta of macOS Tahoe. The guys go through the list and then consider the iPad mini’s place in the world and the UI changes coming with Golden Gate.

The auction page has more details:

Well-preserved and fully functional ‘Byte Shop’–style Apple-1 computer (also commonly known as the Apple I, or Apple Computer 1), complete with all components and accessories required for operation, housed in a unique Smith-Corona typewriter case modified to fit the Apple-1.

This remarkable Apple-1, marked “01-0066” on the reverse side in security marker, is a highly original 8K system from the second batch of 50 Apple-1 computers produced and sold. While the marking alone does not establish that the computer was originally sold directly by The Byte Shop, the system displays several important Byte Shop–style characteristics, including its stock-number marking, its 8K configuration, and its original Datanetics Rev D keyboard with custom wired Apple-1 cable—the same keyboard-and-cable arrangement seen on known Byte Shop Apple-1 systems.

The set includes:

• original Apple-1 board, marked with Byte Shop stock number “01-0066”
• original Apple Cassette Interface (ACI) board
• Smith-Corona Electra 120 Typewriter case (modified for Apple-1)
• Apple-1 Power supply (Stancor P8380, Radio Shack 273-1512)
• Datanetics Rev D keyboard with cable
• Pixe-Verter TV Video Modulator and cables
• Realistic CTR-34 shoebox style cassette player/recorder with cables
• Miscellaneous Apple-1 Cassette tapes
• Original Apple-1 Operation Manual, Early Release
• Original Apple-1 Operation Manual, Later Release
• Original Apple Cassette Interface Manual
• Original Apple-1 Preliminary Apple BASIC User’s Manual, Early Release
• Original Apple-1 Preliminary Apple BASIC User’s Manual, Later Release
• Correspondence from Apple Computer, signed by Applications Software Engineer Dana Reddington, dated October 1977
• Period Xerox copy of excerpt from WozPack related to floating point math functions
• Owner’s notes on Apple-1 operation

I am also in love with this iPod prototype:

NASA’s high-risk, high-reward attempt to save one of its space telescopes before it falls out of orbit has failed.

On Wednesday, NASA announced that a rescue spacecraft that was meant to grab onto the space agency’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory and push it into a higher altitude will not proceed. With the rescue mission called off, Swift, which has observed distant, powerful explosions in the cosmos since 2004, is expected to burn up in the atmosphere later this year.

“This is not the outcome we were working toward, but it does not change why this mission was worth attempting,” Jared Isaacman, the NASA administrator, said in a news release.

That rescue attempt was an uncrewed spacecraft built by Arizona-based Katalyst Space Technologies that would have pushed the telescope 100 miles further into space, giving it another decade of service.

Repeating to-dos just got far more flexible, with two highly requested improvements: You can now complete them early, and easily reschedule them when plans change!

It took a while, but I think they really nailed this.

This action is just one on a growing list of legislation fueled by pushback against AI data centers across the country.

This evening, the Memphis City Council acted on a year-long moratorium on new data centers.

It is not a done deal yet. If this passes, data centers already up and running will be allowed to continue operating under the agreement, but no new sites will be built — within city limits¹ — while leaders spend a year studying issues related to these projects.

You can see the whole document here, but this is the opening of the moratorium:

AN ORDINANCE DECLARING A TEMPORARY MORATORIUM ON THE ACCEPTANCE, PROCESSING, APPROVAL, AND ISSUANCE OF ZONING, LAND USE, BUILDING, AND OTHER ASSOCIATED INFRASTRUCTURE PERMITS FOR DATA CENTER DEVELOPMENTS WITHIN THE CITY OF MEMPHIS

WHEREAS, pursuant to Tennessee Code Annotated § 13-7-201, the Memphis City Council possesses the authority to regulate land use, zoning, and development to protect the public health, safety, and welfare of its citizens; and WHEREAS, there has been substantial growth nationwide and throughout Tennessee in the development of large-scale data centers and high-density computing facilities supporting cloud computing, artificial intelligence, digital storage, cryptocurrency operations, and other advanced computing technologies; and

WHEREAS, modern data centers differ significantly from traditional commercial and industrial developments because they require exceptionally high electrical loads, extensive backup generation systems, electrical substations, battery storage systems, mechanical cooling equipment, water resources, telecommunications infrastructure, and continuous twenty-four-hour operations; and

WHEREAS, these facilities may generate impacts relating to electrical infrastructure capacity, water consumption, wastewater management, stormwater runoff, emergency services, traffic, lighting, vibration, noise, air quality, fuel storage, public utilities, and surrounding neighborhoods; and WHEREAS, the Memphis and Shelby County Unified Development Code’s current zoning regulations do not specifically classify or comprehensively regulate data center developments as a distinct land use and therefore do not adequately address their unique operational characteristics or community impacts; and

WHEREAS, the Memphis City Council finds that additional study is necessary before permitting additional data center developments to ensure that appropriate zoning classifications, siting standards, buffering requirements, operational standards, utility protections, and environmental safeguards are established; and

WHEREAS, the Memphis City Council further finds that a temporary moratorium is necessary to prevent applications from vesting under existing regulations while permanent zoning amendments are developed.

MACROHARD is SpaceXAI’s Colossus 2 data center, which Elon Musk said got its name from “a funny reference to Microsoft.” Nearby sit two more sites: Minihard and Macrohardrr Image via the SELC.

Immediately after hearing comments from citizens — many of whom were holding signs affirming the moratorium — the City Council meeting was adjourned in all of about eight seconds.

The meeting took place after the moratorium passed committee earlier today. That committee vote was the first step toward the document being adopted, as Samuel Hardiman explains:

The moratorium passed a City Council committee Tuesday. It was added to the body’s full meeting agenda and passed first reading later Tuesday afternoon.

A Memphis ordinance requires three readings to pass, meaning it would likely be weeks before any moratorium would take effect. Its legality also could be questioned.

The document’s first reading took place at nearly the same time the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce, the Mid-South’s “primary economic development organization,” published a letter against the move.

Since working to recruit xAI to Memphis in 2024, the Chamber has supported the numerous data centers that have popped up in and around the city, even as public sentiment has shifted.² This letter is nothing short of doubling down.

The Chamber posted its letter on Instagram and other social media sites. It is not on the organization’s press release page or blog, so I’m going to block quote the whole thing here:

A Statement from the Greater Memphis Chamber:

The Greater Memphis Chamber believes Memphis is uniquely positioned to lead the nation in responsibly hosting the data center industry, and we are committed to leveraging that position for lasting community benefit.

Across the country, communities are closing their doors to data centers, often because they lack the power infrastructure, water capacity, or logistical footprint to support them. Memphis has all three. That reality is not a vulnerability. It is leverage, and it is leverage the Chamber intends to use on behalf of this community.

A moratorium surrenders that leverage at precisely the moment when Memphis’s competitive position has never been stronger. The concerns being raised deserve substantive answers, and those answers exist within the reputable regulatory agencies and partners whose expertise, data, and oversight are available to any Council member who requests them. Council members have direct access to those agencies, and the Chamber encourages them to engage those experts directly.

The better path is not to close the door. It is to stay at the table and negotiate harder. The Chamber is committed to working with our regulatory partners and industry to ensure that every data center investment in Memphis delivers sustainable, long-term value to our entire community, not just one-time capital dollars, but lasting infrastructure, workforce, and community benefits that outlast any single project.

The Chamber urges the City Council to vote NO on the proposed moratorium and to keep Memphis open for business at a moment when our competitive advantage has never been greater.

Of note, most of the “sustainable, long-term value to our entire community” and “lasting infrastructure, workforce, and community benefits” promised by SpaceXAI have not materialized, at least in the way they were originally pitched. We will see if the newest promise comes to pass.

After today, I am hopeful that the City Council will press pause on this mess for a year and spend the time working through the 17 items the moratorium lists as areas of study:

1. Appropriate zoning districts and permitted locations;
2. Classification of data centers by size, electrical demand, and operational intensity;
3. Minimum separation distances and buffering from residential neighborhoods, schools, parks, hospitals, greenways, and other sensitive land uses;
4. Noise mitigation standards, including operational sound limits and acoustic studies;
5. Water consumption, cooling technologies, and conservation measures;
6. Wastewater discharge requirements;
7. Stormwater management standards;
8. Lighting and visual screening requirements;
9. Emergency access and fire protection requirements;
10. Backup generator operations and fuel storage;
11. Electrical infrastructure impacts, including substations and transmission improvements;
12. Allocation of infrastructure costs to developers to ensure public utility customers are not responsible for costs attributable to new high-demand facilities;
13. Traffic impacts during construction and operation;
14. Environmental sustainability measures;
15. Public notification and community engagement requirements;
16. Potential capital expenditure fund for the benefit of the City of Memphis;
17. Any additional development standards necessary to ensure compatibility with surrounding land uses.

The right time to study these issues was before ground was broken on the first Memphis data center; the next best time is now, as this quote to Kailynn Johnson writes at The Memphis Flyer points out:

Environmental advocacy group Protect Our Aquifer (POA) welcomed a proposed pause on data center construction in Memphis. Though they said this decision would not “close or reverse” existing facilities, the moratorium would give the city the opportunity to put protections in place for community members.

“A pause is not a verdict on this industry,” POA said. “It is 12 months to write the rules that should have existed for over two years.”

Myke Hurley, marking the 12th anniversary of our company:

The versions of myself and Stephen who started this podcast network in 2014 feel incredibly different to me. We’ve learned a lot, changed a lot, adapted a lot, and sought new opportunities along the way.

I kind of feel like our personal journeys have mirrored Relay’s journey. There have been ebbs and flows in our business, as we have attempted to adapt and shift towards what we think the audience wants from us, what the business needs, and where we want to take things.

I would say the last few years have been intentionally peaceful. We have allowed the business to be in a place of stability. We have not sought out new shows in the numbers we had previously, and have instead been focused more on maintaining what we have.

I like how Myke put this: in many ways, the past few years feel more intentional than ever. It’s not that we were flying by the seat of our pants in the past; we rely on the growing wisdom we’ve gained over the years to have a better idea of what we want out of Relay.

It’s amazing to me that we’ve been doing this for 12 years. We’re lucky to work with the best people in the industry, making the type of content we want to listen to. Throw in the nearly $5 million the Relay community has raised for St. Jude, and we’re talking about our legacies. For being just 40 years old, that feels pretty dang special.

Like before, hovering over the “stoplight” controls with the cursor reveals the close, minimize, and junk drawer that has become the former maximize button.

Tahoe is on the left; Golden Gate Beta 6 is on the right:

(Trying to line up screenshots between a MacBook Neo and a MacBook Pro using a Pro Display XDR was …fun. Click the image to enlarge it.)

Apple has moved away from the solid colors it has used since Yosemite, applying Liquid Glass to one of the most fundamental parts of the macOS interface.

Over the last year, people have joked that Liquid Glass is a bad ripoff of the original Aqua. I haven’t really bought into that, but these window controls certainly echo the past. Here’s a screenshot from Mac OS X 10.1 Puma:

I like the whimsy in these new window controls, and from what I have already seen online, I’m not alone.

But I don’t immediately love everything Apple has done here.

The new controls strike me as too bright, particularly in dark mode:

Why does each traffic light have highlights at the top and bottom when the rest of the items in the toolbar don’t?

These highlights make the icons look slightly oval, and the reflections don’t really make sense if these are supposed to be little pieces of glass.

Previous background windows were far less distracting, as they should be. At the very least, background windows should drop the highlights.

It’s akin to the highlights Apple puts on the edges of Home Screen widgets and folders on iOS 26, but somehow makes even less sense here.¹

I would like to see the color turned up on the controls for the active window. The new ones are the least saturated stoplights macOS has ever had.

In a post on Mastodon, Jeff Nadeau shared an animation in which the selected control slightly animates:

I’m not sure how I feel about this one; a little movement here is unlike anything else in the macOS interface. I’m not sure that’s the right call.

The trick with whismy is using just the right amount of it, and I hope Apple works on this more before Golden Gate ships this fall.

Just for kicks, here’s how the stoplights have changed over time, looking at the Home folder:

Memphis, a city known nationwide for Elon Musk’s SpaceXAI’s data centers, may finally take legislative steps to pause data center development.

At its Aug. 18 committee meeting, the Memphis City Council is poised to discuss an ordinance that would declare, “a temporary moratorium on the acceptance, processing, approval, and issuance of zoning, land use, building, and other associated infrastructure permits for data center developments within the City of Memphis.”

It’s unclear at this point what this ordinance will entail exactly, but it has been filed as “a temporary moratorium on the acceptance, processing, approval, and issuance of zoning, land use, building, and other associated infrastructure permits for data center developments within the City of Memphis.” The current zoning code doesn’t address data centers.

The trio reunites to discuss Google’s new Pixel lineup, how we feel about Siri AI, and clipboard managers.

Apple has again added a collection of classic movies to Apple TV that subscribers can now stream at no extra cost.

The films are located in a new “Great Movies Available Now on ‌Apple TV‌” carousel inside the ‌Apple TV‌ app. So far, free titles are showing up for subscribers in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, with the exact selection differing by country. In the U.S., 19 movies are available.

I saw a bunch of these in theatres; there’s no way they can be classics, as Charlton’s headline claims.

…right?

I am playing the game, so I have no idea what these questions entail, so don’t send me any spoilers.

Stephen and Myke are joined by Jason Snell to talk about CarPlay on boats and the new version of Pastebot, before useful consumer advice is given about weather stations and network-attached storage.

Today, MasterCraft has announced it is adding CarPlay to some of its upcoming pontoon boats.

For those keeping score:

✅ Most new cars, at all sorts of price points
✅ Boats
❌ Rivian

Google Health initially included one-way Apple Health integration. The app could read and import health data recorded by an iPhone, Apple Watch, and other HealthKit-connected apps, but it couldn’t write Fitbit data back to Apple Health.

Today’s Google Health iOS app update adds the missing half of that connection.

Data concerning sleep, steps, workouts, and vitals captured by Google Health can now be sent to Apple Health. For someone who likes the Fitbit Air but really dislikes its app, this is good news.

Back in 2007, I designed what was intended to be SuperDuper v3.0. It was a rewrite that greatly expanded its capabilities while retaining its essence.

But, in those days, it just wasn’t possible for us to implement those grand plans. The new UI was much more complex, the logic more elaborate, and the systems we had then didn’t support the things needed to make it a reality without a lot of complex coding we didn’t have time for.

On top of that, macOS itself was a moving target (and still is!): adding and deprecating features; completely changing the file system; locking down the OS; supporting not just one change in CPU, but three.

With a tool so tied to how the system operated at a low level, it was a lot of work just keeping up with what Apple was doing.

So, I put the notebook with that design in it on a shelf.

For nearly 20 years.

Today, I’m happy to say that I’ve finally been able to carve out enough time to grab that “old” redesign, flesh it out further, modernize it, and make that dream a reality.

The new version of SuperDuper is a ground-up rewrite, a tip-to-tail reinvention of what SuperDuper looks like, how it works, what it can do, and where I can take it in the future.

It’s really great to see SuperDuper getting this sort of love.

• July 23, 2026: Apple and Ford announced MapKit for Automotive to power navigation in future EVs
• July 28, 2026: iPhone Upgrade Program replaced with broader Apple Upgrade Program
• July 30, 2026: Tim Cook hosted his last quarterly earnings call

This revision also includes a handful of Apple TV-related dates that were previously missing, such as the announcement of the “Take 2” software update in 2008.

I also just updated my Now page, where I keep a running log of things I have going on, at work and beyond.

The pushback in Southaven, Mississippi over the Stanton Road site has been growing. Just this weekend, there was a public event addressing the issue, hosted by the NAACP and State Rep. Justin J. Pearson.

Tonight, the company announced (in a statement that was also emailed to members of the press, including yours truly) that it will be removing its temporary turbines over the next year:

SpaceXAI is building the world’s largest integrated supercomputer at the Tennessee-Mississippi state line. We build our facilities rapidly while upholding the highest standards of operational responsibility, environmental stewardship, and community partnership. SpaceXAI is committed to powering its supercomputers in ways that both reduce costs of energy for the American people and minimize the impact on surrounding communities. Today, we take the next step in that journey.

We have entered into an agreed order with the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) establishing a fixed removal timeline for all 69 of the temporary, mobile turbines that currently power our facility in Southaven, Mississippi. We are rapidly removing these mobile turbines as we bring online permanent power from a 1.2 GW power plant we are constructing under our Clean Air Act permit. We will begin removing temporary turbines from the site as early as August 2026. All temporary turbines will be removed by July 2027. Today’s agreed order codifies our commitment to achieve this timeline.

This comes six months after the EPA ruled against xAI, stating that even turbines used in a “temporary” manner were subject to environmental regulation.

More importantly, this news comes one year after MDEQ said xAI could turn the turbines on a temporary basis for 12 months.

The update continues:

The 1.2 GW permanent power plant currently under construction will consist of 41 permanent turbines authorized under a Clean Air Act permit, granted to SpaceXAI in March 2026. The application for this permit, completed more than seven months of detailed regulatory review. SpaceXAI is also investing millions of dollars in sound walls, silencers, and next-generation turbines with advanced quieting technologies through partnerships with the surrounding community. We care deeply about being good neighbors and we regularly reconfigure power operations to reduce noise from the facility and minimize our impact on the local Southaven community.

Samuel Hardiman at The Daily Memphian has some background on the site:

The company started operating its first three turbines (about 39 megawatts of power capacity) on August 1, 2025. It added another 15 later that month, and then seven more between November and December 2025. The company then added a single turbine in January, four more over four days in March, and then the remainder came in April, May and June.

Of the 60 turbines the company released data for, about 15 ran more than 20 hours a day in June, according to data the company supplied to MDEQ. One, a 35-megawatt turbine made by GE Vernova, ran 24 hours a day.

The amount of time the turbines have run raises the question of whether the machines’ emissions are great enough to require an air emissions permit even with the one-year exemption.

I am all for having fewer turbines spinning in and around Memphis, and I hope the company is true to its word when it comes to decreasing the noise and air pollution caused by these machines.

I also hope that MDEQ and SpaceXAI will continue to update the public on this process and the changes that will come from it.

Future Fords are getting Apple Maps, future iPhones are getting leased, and future foldables may be less weird than expected.

Elon Musk’s xAI, now owned by SpaceX, sued Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison to challenge a law that would ban so-called nudify apps in the state.

In their complaint, filed in a federal court in Minnesota on Monday, attorneys for xAI wrote that the statute “imposes an overbroad, content-based ban on free speech and the tools of visual expression in a clumsy attempt to prohibit ‘nudification.’”

The Minnesota law, which goes into effect on Saturday, targets apps and websites that give people the ability to generate non-consensual sexualized imagery, levying $500,000 fines each time a user creates explicit deepfakes.

In its proposal to the district, xAI offered support for four different schools in areas of Whitehaven and Westwood near its data centers:

• John P. Freeman Optional School
• Fairley High School
• Mitchell High School
• Westwood High School

At each school, the company has proposed upgrades to the HVAC units that heat and cool the schools, plus improvements to plumbing, lighting and windows. XAI has also offered to paint at the schools.

This map shows the location of the schools in green, with xAI’s sites in red and its power plant in Southaven, MS in yellow.

(For a sense of scale, it’s about nine miles across.)

xAI said work could start as early as the morning after the school board voted to accept the gift. Of course, that is not how anything works in the real world, and it took the school board and company until September of last year to finalize a plan to account for the fact that these schools couldn’t be torn apart during the school year.

To the company’s credit, some work has been completed; however, it is far from what was originally promised, and now SpaceXAI seems to want to rework the deal. Testino writes:

So far, donations have improved two campuses rather than four, according to MSCS. Those projects — campus beautification efforts at John P. Freeman School and a major locker room renovation at Fairley High — have made a small dent in the large list of SpaceXAI’s offerings.

They also came with a $5 million donation cap that wasn’t part of the initial proposal.

That $5 million cap can not fund the initial list of projects, even if they had been started. Neither Mitchell High nor Westwood High have seen any of the promised improvements.

More importantly, the agreement expired June 30 and has not been renewed. SpaceXAI says it is still “committed to completing critical upgrades to schools in the Memphis region,” but that doesn’t seem to be the case at this point.

I am not surprised that the company would back away from previously made promises,¹ nor am I surprised that my local leaders would be naive enough not to see this coming.

This CNBC video provides a look at what happens when a massive AI data center is built in your neighborhood.

Health in ChatGPT is launching to U.S. users. You can choose to securely connect Apple Health and supported medical records so ChatGPT can help you understand your information in context, keep track of what has changed, and have more informed, personalized conversations. The experience builds on feedback from early testers and gives you control over what you connect and when ChatGPT can use it.

Every week, more than 300 million people turn to ChatGPT with health-related questions—from understanding a lab result and preparing for an appointment to making sense of what a doctor said and building a healthier routine. But the context behind those questions is often scattered across patient portals, medical records, apps, and wearables, making it difficult to see and act on the complete picture.

Teddy Rosenbluth for The New York Times:

A Florida pastor sued OpenAI on Wednesday, claiming that its chatbot, ChatGPT, had offered him “extremely dangerous medical recommendations” that led to delayed care for a life-threatening pulmonary embolism last year.

The lawsuit claims that ChatGPT had assured Scott Winters that the early warning signs of his health crisis were “not something dangerous,” and had dissuaded him from seeking medical advice, instead telling him to trust that “God did not design your body to endlessly fail.”

The suit, filed in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco, accuses OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, of negligence and the “unauthorized practice of medicine,” pointing to moments when the chatbot offered Mr. Winters diagnoses and treatment plans and encouraged him to ignore pleas from friends and family to seek medical care.

She continues:

Drew Pusateri, a spokesman for OpenAI, said that ChatGPT’s terms of service make clear that it is not intended to be used for medical diagnosis or treatment. But he added that the company takes seriously the need to make answers to health questions as safe as possible, given that people use the chatbot for that reason.

“Treating chatbots as the whole story behind people’s medical decisions or outcomes oversimplifies a much bigger challenge, and risks getting in the way of people accessing powerful new tools that can aid them in their health journey,” he said. Mr. Pusateri added that newer models are better than the model Mr. Winters used at asking for missing context, communicating uncertainty and recognizing when professional care may be needed.

Andrew Liszewski at The Verge:

The smart band can track more than 80 different activities such as running or yoga that are selectable through the accompanying Garmin Connect app or using its single side button as a shortcut to your favorite. Through the app, you can monitor your training progress including the effectiveness of a workout and whether your body is ready for your next training session or would benefit more from a rest day.

In addition to workouts, the $199 band can track heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, sleep, and menstrual cycles via skin temperature. Notably, the Garmin Cirqa doesn’t require a subscription. Orders open on July 24.