Daily reads: Jun 28, 2026

Prosecutors allege Jonathan Rinderknecht set a New Year’s Day 2025 fire that became one of LA’s deadliest wildfires. Alongside iPhone location data, security footage, and witness testimony, they used his ChatGPT logs, including fire-related image prompts and messages about anger and resentment toward the wealthy.

Instagram is testing more ways for users to access and adjust Your Algorithm, its feature for choosing topics they want to see more or less often. Examples include pulling down in the feed, swiping from a Reel, or using buttons under Reels to guide recommendations.

The article argues that tools like Claude Code have compressed the engineering workflow, making teams ship as if they had far more developers. As coding becomes faster and more automated, the key constraint is shifting from implementation to deciding what to build and why.

Paul Kafasis says Apple’s macOS 26 Tahoe icon redesign made app icons blurrier and forced third-party developers into a uniform squircle shape. He argues early macOS 27 Golden Gate betas improve Apple’s own Liquid Glass icons, but Apple should also restore freedom for third-party icon shapes.

Teenage Engineering has released OS 2.5 for the EP-133 KO II, adding major features such as USB audio, sample reverse, selectable lower sample rates, an arpeggiator, and improved autochopping. The update also doubles maximum sample length to 40 seconds by recording mono instead of stereo audio.

Masayoshi Son said orbital data centers are unlikely to cut costs soon enough to matter in the near-term AI race. TechCrunch’s Equity podcast discussed his skepticism alongside OpenAI’s custom chip plans, Groq’s $650 million funding, and the broader scramble for compute capacity.

Margaret Atwood said at a literary festival in Portugal that she tried Anthropic's Claude once and found it unreliable after it gave her a wrong answer about the British detective series Father Brown. She argued the core problem with AI is garbage in, garbage out, reflecting concerns about models producing confident but inaccurate responses.

Paul Meade, an Apple vice president overseeing the Vision Pro headset, is reportedly leaving the company for OpenAI’s hardware group. The move adds another senior Apple hardware veteran to OpenAI as it explores AI devices beyond software.

Apple is reportedly asking the Trump administration for permission to buy RAM chips from China’s CXMT, which is on a Pentagon blacklist over alleged military ties. The move comes as rising memory and storage costs pressure Apple’s supply chain and contribute to higher prices across many products.

The Verge profiles Kai Wright, co-host of Stateside with Kai and Carter, highlighting his journalism career and personal habits. The piece touches on his work exploring race, politics, identity, and the AIDS epidemic, while offering a lighter look at his routines, gardening, music tastes, and refusal to buy a new phone.