Why Politicians Hate iOS 26 - DTNSB 5073

Message filters are not making political fundraisers happy. And OpenAI removes the ability for search engines to index your published chat logs. 

Starring Tom Merritt, Huyen Tue Dao, and Justin Robert Young.

TOM: This is the Daily Tech News for Friday, August 1st, 2025. We tell you what you need to know, follow up on the context of those stories and help each other understand.

HUYEN: Today, Justin Robert Young tells us why politicians are upset about the next version of iOS, and OpenAI stops letting users let search engines index their public chat logs. [22:13]

I’m Tom Merritt,

I’m Huyen Tue Dao

TOM: Let’s start with what you need to know with the big story.

[[BIG STORY]]
[[SOLO story of the day. Basic details, monitor commentary and sound when possible.]]

“Your public ChatGPT queries are getting indexed by Google and other search engines | TechCrunch”
“OpenAI removes ChatGPT feature after private conversations leak to Google search | VentureBeat”
“ChatGPT chats are showing up in Google Search — how to find and delete yours | Tom's Guide”
“(19) DANΞ on X: "We just removed a feature from @ChatGPTapp that allowed users to make their conversations discoverable by search engines, such as Google. This was a short-lived experiment to help people discover useful conversations. This feature required users to opt-in, first by picking a chat https://t.co/mGI3lF05Ua" / X”
“(33) Post | LinkedIn”

TOM: Thursday, Oliver Molander on LinkedIn was among those that noted that if you filter search results on search engines to only include URLs from chatgpt.com/share, you could find conversations people were having with ChatGPT. Some were just mildly interesting, but some could be revealing, like helping rewrite a resume, which could reveal to your employer that you were looking to change jobs. Then of course, there are other weirder ones.

Those conversations were made searchable because the user clicked a share button on a chat and then clicked a "create Link" button. ChatGPT then says that “your name, custom instructions, and any messages you add after sharing stay private.” You could then click a checkbox to make that link discoverable. The checkbox had small print that said "Allows it to be shown in web searches." It was NOT checked by default.

Thursday afternoon OpenAI CISO Dane Stuckey posted on X "We just removed a feature from @ChatGPTapp that allowed users to make their conversations discoverable by search engines, such as Google. This was a short-lived experiment to help people discover useful conversations. This feature required users to opt-in, first by picking a chat to share, then by clicking a checkbox for it to be shared with search engines (see below).

Ultimately, we think this feature introduced too many opportunities for folks to accidentally share things they didn't intend to, so we're removing the option. We're also working to remove indexed content from the relevant search engines. This change is rolling out to all users through tomorrow morning."

Huyen, a lot of the response to this was that OpenAI did the right thing by swiftly shutting it off, and it's OpenAI's responsibility to manage this sort of thing since users don't read what they click. What do you think?

[[DISCUSS]]

HUYEN: DTNS is made possible by you the listener. Thanks to
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New Patrons: Fenitra and Yukit
[[BREAK]]
[[PAUSE]]

TOM: There’s more we need to know today, let’s get to the briefs.

[[BRIEFS]]
[[3-9 more solo reads with sound to complete the day in tech news. These are informational with minor commentary. They do not need to include stories that could be done another day in follow ups. Just the essentials of the day Should include sound where possible.]]

“Google rolls out Gemini Deep Think AI, a reasoning model that tests multiple ideas in parallel | TechCrunch”
“Google rolls out its most powerful Gemini model yet”

HUYEN: Google DeepMind introduced Gemini 2.5 Deep Think on Friday. Google says it is the most advanced reasoning model it has released. It responds to queries by tasking multiple agents to respond in parallel and then choosing the best one. It's Google's first public multi-agent model. Google says the model scored 34.8% on Humanity's Last Exam. By comparison, Open AI's o3 scored 20.3% and xAI's Grok 4 scored 25.4%. It also outperformed other models on the LiveCodeBench6 test. Multiagent models like this are more expensive to run, so Google is only making it available to folks who pay $250 a month for Google Ultra. If you do, you should have access to Gemini 2.5 Deep Think now.

“Tim Cook says Apple is 'very open' to AI acquisitions”
“Apple (AAPL) Q3 earnings report 2025”
“Apple's tariff-fueled iPhone sales surge raises doubts about sustainability | Reuters”
“Tariffs will cost Apple much more in the rest of 2025”
“Tim Cook: Apple just sold its three-billionth iPhone - 9to5Mac”

TOM: Apple had a good earnings report, with revenue growing the most it has since 2021, and 13% growth in iPhone sales on the year, and sales in China rising 4%. Apple CEO Tim Cook estimated that about 10% of its growth was because people were buying products to get ahead of tariffs. Apple services, the company's supposed future, grew 13%. The only declines were in iPad and wearables. Apple wanted everyone to talk about how it had sold its 3 billionth iPhone. The headline I saw the most was Apple CEO Tim Cook saying that the company would invest significantly more in AI, adding, “We’re very open to M&A that accelerates our roadmap. We are not stuck on a certain size company, although the ones that we have acquired thus far this year are small in nature.” He said the strategy continues to focus "on putting AI features across the platform that are deeply personal, private and seamlessly integrated.”

“Microsoft finally fixes the worst thing about Excel and pivot tables | PCWorld”
“Microsoft kills Windows 11 SE, another in a long line of failed ChromeOS competitors - Ars Technica”

HUYEN: Microsoft giveth and Microsoft taketh away. First, it's taking away Windows 11 SE. You don't remember it? It's basically Microsoft's ChromeOS competitor, meant to run on cheaper hardware and compete in schools. Windows 11 SE won't get any more feature updates, and security updates will stop arriving in October 2026. This is not to be confused with Windows S mode, which ships on low-cost systems as well, but was not marketed to educational organizations.

However, Microsoft has added a feature to Excel that you may not care about, but if you do, you are probably very happy. Pivot tables now automatically refresh in the beta of Microsoft Excel. For the uninitiated, Pivot Tables summarize rows of data into a useful number. But if you change the data in the table, you used to have to manually refresh it. Now you don't.

“Brilliant Labs launches its second-generation smart glasses”

TOM: Brilliant Labs has launched a pair of smart glasses called Halo. It has a camera, microphone and bone-conduction speakers, along with a color OLED display and 14 hour battery life. All that and it weighs 40 grams. The display projects into your peripheral vision. Halo can talk to Brilliant Labs' Noa smart assistant. It also has an agent called Narrative that claims to be able to remember people's names and details of conversations with them. You can preorder Halo now for $299, shipping in November.

“Nintendo is raising prices on just about everything for Switch”
“Nintendo earnings Q1 2025”

HUYEN: Unsurprisingly, Nintendo doubled its revenue last quarter, thanks to the sales of 5.82 million Switch 2s. Nintendo did not change its guidance for the fiscal year. It still expects to sell 15 million Switch 2 units this year. Nintendo also announced that pricing in the US for the original Nintendo Switch will change based on market conditions on August 3rd. Certain Switch accessories may also see an adjustment. Pricing for the Switch 2 will remain unchanged.

“China Says US Exploited Old Microsoft Flaw for Cyberattacks - Bloomberg”

TOM: I want to say up front, I do not have this story backward. China is accusing the US of exploiting a flaw in Microsoft Exchange to steal military data and attack its defense operations. China's Cyber Security Association said Friday that it linked actors located in the US with two major attacks on military companies. The attackers reportedly had access to servers at one company for a year.

“Reddit wants to be its own search engine”

HUYEN: In Reddit's Q2 2025 shareholder letter, CEO Steve Huffman said the company is concentrating its resources on “making Reddit a go-to search engine.” This followed a lot of talk about how important human voices are, and citing survey results that showed some questions can only be answered by humans.

“Google Loses Appeal of Order to Revamp App Store Policies - Bloomberg”

TOM: Google lost its appeal against an order from the Epic Games lawsuit, which requires the company to lift restrictions on developers from being listed in the Play Store if they also operate a third-party app store or include alternate billing systems.

“TikTok launches 'TikTok Pro' in Europe with built-in charity program | TechCrunch”

HUYEN: TikTok launched a new version of its app called TikTok Pro in Germany, Portugal, and Spain. Users of the app can earn "virtual sunshine" by doing things like inviting users to the app or interacting with charity-related content. The sunshine can then be given to a charity, and TikTok will make a donation to it. TikTok Pro has most of the same content as regular TikTok, but no live streams, shopping, features, or ads.

HUYEN: Those are the essentials for today. Let’s dive a little deeper on an unexpected effect of the iOS 26 Public Preview.

[[IN DEPTH]]
[[Pre-made packages, interviews, discussions. Each is 3-10 mins, depending on the topic and what else is in the show that day. Can be dropped on some days.]]

[[SEGMENT A - FROM SCHEDULE]]

“NRSC letter - Punchbowl News”
“Message filtering in iOS 26 upsetting politicians”

TOM: iOS 26 is the next version of the iPhone operating system, expected to arrive for phones sometime in September.

Among many features it’s adding filters to the Messages app that handles your text messages. By default it will filter messages into your main inbox and a few new subsections called Unknown Senders, Transactions, Promotions, Spam and recently deleted.

Unknown senders is for any message from a source that’s either not in your contacts or hasn’t been previously approved. While iOS 26 doesn’t arrive until September, everyone can play around with it now, as it came out for public preview earlier this week. And that’s why politicians are suddenly worried. So I brought on Justion Robert Young from Politics Politics Politics, to explain that side of it. [TRT 9:47]

[[PROMO]]

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[[BREAK]]
[[PAUSE]]

[[HELPING EACH OTHER UNDERSTAND]]
[[This is the mailbag/ special contributions segments. Should be short missives from people with experience. Could be written email or pre-recorded from the person.]]

HUYEN: We end every episode of DTNS with some shared wisdom. Today Andre is helping us understand.

TOM: Andre wrote: Slushropes! The style of exercise is called -rope flow- I bought some heavy ropes from her online. They are great to train with. I highly recommend them!

[[DISCUSS]]

HUYEN: What are you thinking about? Got some insight into a story? Share it with us feedback@dailytechnewsshow.com

TOM: Thanks to Justin Robert Young and Andre for contributing to today’s show. And thank YOU for being along for Daily Tech News Show. You can keep us in business by becoming a patron, atPatreon.com/dtns