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Jay Blahnik, the creator behind the three-ring fitness tracking feature on Apple Watches, is stepping down after a 13-year tenure at the company, following allegations that he sexually harassed an employee and fostered a “toxic work environment.” A lawsuit claiming Blahnik bullied an employee is set to go to trial next year.
[The New York Times]
Viral posts about insider trading don’t have to be true to be valuable.
I mean, it’s not technically April Fools’ since you can actually buy the artificial turf-covered skins, just like you could last year. But this year, they come with a free matching “Blue Sky” skin and the amusing video below.
Check out what Owen thought of them in last year’s hands-on.
That’s according to Reuters sources, but I wonder what it might reveal about Elon Musk’s combination of companies now that papers for a public offering have apparently been filed.
The Financial Times reports that Amazon is in talks with Globalstar about an acquisition to help boost its low Earth orbit satellite business, but Apple’s 20 percent stake in Globalstar is forcing negotiations between the three companies.
The best part about this review is that he plays it (mostly) straight. One of my favorite April Fools’ Day gags I’ve seen this year.
Dyson posted this silly video, showing off its imaginary pet hair care products and sleek new ’dos for a dog, cat… and horse.
Josh.ai, a company that creates custom smart home automation systems, announced a new accessory called Josh MindControl for April Fools’. The monolithic box (with a dash of RGB underlighting) is capable of “intuiting your intentions” so it can “immediately understand what you would like to do, even if you didn’t fully know yet yourself.”
The update adds protections against DarkSword, a security vulnerability that can steal information from your phone if you visit an infected link. Apple previously released iOS 18.7.7 to the iPhone XS and XR, but if you have a newer phone and don’t want to download iOS 26, now you can install the patch without worrying about getting Liquid Glass.
One way to reduce screen time? The Scrōll Stoppr by Yahoo. Who knows if it actually ships, but these are listed in the TikTok Shop at a price of $4.99 with free shipping for anyone who’s tried every other way to put their phone down.
If the states are laboratories of democracy, Maryland has been the laboratory of speed camera installations. In my own MD hometown of Montgomery County, these things seemed to pop up overnight and saturate our roadways.
Good news! Now they’re more menacing and allegedly impervious to bullets and vandalism. We can’t get rid of the guns but at least we can make sure they don’t hurt our surveillance infrastructure.
A disclosure spotted by TechCrunch says the incident prompted the toymaker to activate “its security response protocols.” Hasbro says it’s currently working to determine the impact of the breach, but it will continue to “take orders, ship product and conduct other key operations.”
0It’s just a simple Bluetooth speaker, but for 10 bucks it’s a cheap, colorful addition to a desk, shelf, or kid’s room.
Satechi’s April Fools’ prank this year solves a problem humanity has faced ever since we started wrapping our feet in fabric tubes: missing socks. The FindAll Socks incorporate small Apple Find My-compatible trackers so you can quickly find one or both when they inevitably go missing.
MSI’s April Fools’ prank aims to solve the problem of your cat plopping itself directly atop your keyboard. It showed off an “MEG Cat Holder” that gives your furry friend their very own RGB bed attached to your monitor. As MSI puts it: “Your cat already acts like they own your setup, now they can complete it!”
For Apple’s 50th anniversary, Cook did an interview with Esquire’s Ryan D’Agostino, who heroically attempts to get Cook to say anything of consequence and gets basically nowhere. Except for this, about Cook’s interaction with the Trump administration:
“So you can talk with them about your point of view on things. They may not agree, but you can engage. You can be heard. You may not, in the end, be able to convince… I’ve never believed that just yelling from the sideline about plus or minus was a good strategy. Your voice just goes into the wind.”
Cook’s point is that engaging is worthwhile, even though he knows he’s not accomplishing anything or convincing anyone. Sort of sounds like his voice is just going… into the wind.
This four-minute Verizon short (there’s also a thirty second version if you can’t wait that long) starring Storrie and directed by Nia DaCosta (Candyman, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple) pays off their appearance at the Vanity Fair Oscar party by raising awareness about the Heated Rivalry star’s mobile phone struggles.
0A portable turntable is probably the way to go if you’re starting out, but I might choose something cheaper.
WaterField Designs is celebrating Apple’s 50th anniversary and April Fools’ Day with a couple of new carrying cases for vintage Apple gear.
There’s a backpack for the Macintosh SE/30 made from waxed canvas and leather, and a belt-worn holster for the Apple Newton. They’re both priced at $2,026, and neither is available for purchase.
iOS 26 devices are already protected against the hacking tool that targets iPhones when visiting malicious links, and today Apple is pushing out a new security update for older, vulnerable versions of iOS. That means iOS 18 users can protect their phones and avoid the Liquid Glass design update.
If you’ve visited the official Project Hail Mary website on mobile rather than desktop, you may have missed the free STL file that you can download to replicate this popular prop from the movie. You’ll have to acquire the Xenonite yourself though, obviously.
Not because they’re so ugly, it’s because Garmin wearables that track skin temperature during sleep — like the Fenix 8 and Forerunner 970 — can now feed that data to the FDA-cleared Natural Cycles birth control app to show the wearer’s daily fertility status.
If you’re the type that pays Google $249.99/mo for its AI Ultra plan in the US then you’ve earned yourself early access to Gmail’s new semi-useful-perhaps-someday-in-the-future AI Inbox. It’s still in beta, so take care.
Providing all goes to plan, NASA’s Artemis II mission will launch later today and carry astronauts around the moon for the first time since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. The launch window is targeted for 6:24PM ET, with the onsite countdown officially underway.
Twenty-four days after lying his face off to Joe Rogan and whining about government censorship, Zuckerberg “proactively reached out to a senior government official to let him know Meta was already taking action to remove content on behalf of that official’s government operation — including truthful information like the names of public servants working for the federal government.“ Siri, play my leitmotif.
Shortly upon returning to office, Trump terminated CBP One, an app the Biden administration used to streamline border processing, and revoked the status of 900,000 migrants who had used it to apply for temporary parole, sending them a mass email reading, “It is time for you to leave the United States.”
In terminating parole “without observing the process mandated by statute and by their own regulations,” US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs ruled, the administration “took action that was ‘not in accordance with law.’”
