OpenAI: You can now ask ChatGPT to handle requests like “look at my calendar and brief me on upcoming client meetings based on recent news,” “plan and buy ingredients to make Japanese breakfast for four,” and “analyze three competitors and create a slide deck.” ChatGPT will intelligently navigate websites, filter results, prompt you to log in securely when needed, run code, conduct analysis, and even deliver editable slideshows and spreadsheets that summarize its findings. At the core of this ne [more]

Real athletes get 30 For 30 documentaries; fake athletes get fake ones. Not sure which are more enjoyable.  ★

Why CBS’s Cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” Stinks to High Hell Even back in the now-comparatively-sane Trump 1.0 administration, it seemed palpably true to me that the best check against Trump’s authoritarian instincts wasn’t legal or Constitutional, but rather cultural. The culture of free speech, of being able to criticize — in no uncertain terms, with no held punches — anyone in authority is fundamental to the American mindset. It’s like the opening of David Foster Wallace [more]

Eric Slivka, reporting last night for MacRumors: While the Camera app redesign didn’t exactly match what Apple unveiled for iOS 26, the general idea was correct and much of what else Prosser showed was pretty close to spot on, and Apple clearly took notice as the company filed a lawsuit today (Scribd link) against Prosser and Michael Ramacciotti for misappropriation of trade secrets. Apple’s complaint outlines what it claims is the series of events that led to the leaks, which centered around a [more]

CBS cancelled the Late Show with Stephen Colbert just days after he criticized the $16 million bribe the network paid to Trump. Here’s why “Colbert’s cancellation is a dark warning”.

Fascism For First Time Founders. “Let’s have a little chat about why embracing fascism is probably the worst possible business strategy for anyone actually trying to build something innovative.” 💯

Read to the end for a well-rendered pigeon

“The extreme sports pioneer Felix Baumgartner, famed for a record-breaking 2012 skydive from the edge of space, has died in a paragliding accident.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Next year, “the average person who buys Affordable Care Act insurance will be paying 75% more for their premium” because of “the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits in the ACA markets”.

The above links to an Instagram reel with Colbert breaking the news at the start of his show airing tonight. Here’s the same clip on X, if you prefer. He, apparently, was as surprised as anyone. Here’s Jed Rosenzweig’s story at (the excellent) LateNighter: “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert will end its historic run in May 2026 at the end of the broadcast season,” the network said in a statement. “We consider Stephen Colbert irreplaceable and will retire The Late Show franchise at that time. We [more]

The company's new unicorn status has already led its founders to reverse their position on advertising. What other compromises are they prepared to make?

Noah Kalina is uploading videos of the “long photograph” variety of peaceful & contemplative nature scenes to YouTube. 4K. No AI. “Press play and walk away.” Tags: Noah Kalina · video 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Matter vs. Force: Why There Are Exactly Two Types of Particles. “Collectivist bosons account for the forces that move us while individualist fermions keep our atoms from collapsing.” (Honestly, same.) 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

From Beautiful Public Data, a look into the Internet Archive’s collection of 5000 images from the NASA Ames Research Center. “Browsing through this amazing archive gives you a unique view of decades’ worth of breakthrough research.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

How AI Wreaked Havoc on the Lo-Fi Beat Scene. “The music’s association with aimless, unfocused listening — vibe music before vibe became a buzzword — means people aren’t paying as much attention to what’s real and what’s not…”

For years now, photographer Fujio Kito has been documenting cement playground equipment in Japan, often capturing them at night, lit up in captivating ways. (via laura olin and present & correct) Tags: Fujio Kito · Japan · photography 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Elderly Woman Keeps Mind Active Justifying Trump’s Actions. “I’m developing new neural pathways each time I shrug off Trump’s clear violations of the Constitution and his total contempt for our system of checks and balances.”

Iceland’s 36-hour workweek has been a huge success. “On his free days, he loves to sleep in, then to make long phone calls to his fellow pigeon fanciers while cleaning the kitchen…” Sounds like a dream! 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

A comprehensive illustrated article on how screens work. This is the first part of a new work-in-progress called Making Software that aims to explain how software systems & tools work from the ground up. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

I don’t think anything could be more up my alley, in my wheelhouse, in my lane, my cup of tea, my speed than this upcoming retrospective of Wes Anderson’s work at London’s Design Museum. The Design Museum has been granted unprecedented access to Wes Anderson’s personal archives, which the filmmaker has built up over three decades. This is the first time most of these objects will be displayed in Britain. This landmark exhibition will chart the evolution of Wes Anderson’s films from early experim [more]

The winners of Core77 Design Awards. Categories include apps, packaging, transportation, branding, consumer tech, and more. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Finding of a recent survey of 90,000+ trans Americans: “trans people who go back to living as their sex assigned at birth do so because of transphobia, not because of doubts about gender or transition”.

I haven’t watched the NBA in years and I only know about Joel Embiid by media osmosis, but for some reason I spent 45 minutes this morning reading this profile of him. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

From Smithsonian Magazine, the story of how Reading Rainbow came about, in part as an effort to combat schoolchildren’s summer reading slumps. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

A collection of photos from the 70s & 80s of kids jumping their bikes, sometimes over other kids. In that first pic, there is no way the two kids at the end of the row didn’t get stomped by that landing. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

I had no idea Subaru actively courted lesbian car buyers with targeted ad campaigns in the early 90s; here’s a 2016 Planet Money episode about it: When Subaru Came Out. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

The Pedestrians Who Abetted a Hawk’s Deadly Attack. “The hawk appears to have learned to interpret a traffic signal and take advantage of it, in its quest to hunt. Which is…more impressive than how most humans use a pedestrian crosswalk.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Spencer Kimball, reporting for CNBC one week ago: The Defense Department will become the largest shareholder in rare earth miner MP Materials after agreeing to buy $400 million of its preferred stock, the company said Thursday. MP Materials owns the only operational rare earth mine in the U.S. at Mountain Pass, California, about 60 miles outside Las Vegas. Proceeds from the Pentagon investment will be used to expand MP’s rare earths processing capacity and magnet production, the company said. Sh [more]

Over at the Atlantic, Alan Taylor has collected a bunch of photos showing just how hard China is pushing on solar energy. As the Trump administration’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” eliminates many clean-energy incentives in the U.S., China continues huge investments in wind and solar power, reportedly accounting for 74 percent of all projects now under construction worldwide. 74% of all construction projects worldwide! This pairs well with Bill McKibben’s recent article for the New Yorker, 4.6 Billio [more]

Read to the end for a recipe for smack barm pey wet

Let Your Kid Climb That Tree. “Your fear that your kid will get hurt is depriving them of something they’ll never get back.” (The bit about “kinematic movers” is really interesting.) 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Bruce Springsteen on Surviving Depression and His Strategy for Living Through the Visitations of the Darkness. “My depression is spewing like an oil spill all over the beautiful turquoise-green gulf of my carefully planned and controlled existence.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Jason Snell: If you find yourself walking down the street in the 1980s and you see someone coming who prefers the VIC-20 to the Apple II, cross to the other side of the street. (That said, the VIC-20 really was revolutionary. It was by far the most affordable home computer anyone had ever seen at that point. It was laughably underpowered … but: it was only $300! They sold a million of ’em.) Snell takes issue (correctly!) with Drew Saur’s framing of the Apple II as “corporate”. As Snell points ou [more]

Writing Advice and Literary Wisdom from the Great E.B. White. “A blank sheet of paper holds the greatest excitement there is for me — more promising than a silver cloud, prettier than a little red wagon. It holds all the hope there is, all fears.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

A Read Max re-run: Exploring the Applecore style

A great look at how Baltimore’s investment in an “ecosystem of community–oriented interventions” has drastically reduced violent crime in the city by treating crime as a public health crisis. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Twenty years! It’s been twenty years since Bloc Party’s debut album Silent Alarm was released. To celebrate, the band stopped by the NPR office’s for a Tiny Desk Concert. To celebrate, this Tiny Desk set begins with the super catchy and energetic pop anthem “Banquet” from Silent Alarm. The band continues with a couple songs from 2008’s Intimacy: the shimmery, glockenspiel-forward “Signs,” then “Mercury,” where we give a sneak peek of Okereke’s vocal effects rig under the Desk. Bloc Party closes [more]

A map of the best places to see the Northern Lights. “Kuril’s analysis culminated in a map highlighting the locations with the best potential to see the northern lights.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

AI companions are arriving faster than platforms can build guardrails around them. Parents need to pay attention

Drew Saur, pushing back on my post slagging on the Commodore 64: I cannot argue with your nostalgia. It is uniquely yours. That said: The Commodore 64 as cheap-feeling and inelegant! Oh my. I was fourteen when the Commodore 64 came out, and I want to convey — in as brief a form as I can — why it captured so many hearts during the 8-bit era. What a great post. Fond memories all the way down the stack with that whole era of computing. As I told Saur in email, my fondest memory of the Commodore 64 [more]

CEO Tony Stubblebine shares how Medium went from the brink of shutting down to being profitable for almost a year now. “In 2022, Medium was losing $2.6M each month. We were also losing subscribers…” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

After dealing with years of “Xfinity’s bullcrap” as customers, a pair of brothers built an all-fiber ISP that’s cheaper & faster to compete with them. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

With WorkOS you can start selling to enterprises with just a few lines of code. It provides a complete User Management solution along with SSO, SCIM, and FGA. The APIs are modular and easy-to-use, allowing integrations to be completed in minutes instead of months. Today, some of the fastest growing startups are already powered by WorkOS, including Perplexity, Vercel, and Webflow. For SaaS apps that care deeply about design and user experience, WorkOS is the perfect fit. From high-quality documen [more]

In his film Best of Luck With the Wall, director Josh Begley takes us on a journey across the entire US/Mexico border. It’s a simple premise — a continuous display of 200,000 satellite images of the border from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico — but one that delivers a powerful feeling of how large the world is and how meaningless borders are from a certain perspective. The project started from a really simple place. It was about looking. It was about the pure desire to understand the vis [more]

“BuildMyTransit is a web app to design, visualize, and simulate New York City subway systems. Perfect for exploring ‘what-if’ scenarios.” You can design new routes, add/remove trains, and run simulations. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

David A. Graham, writing at The Atlantic: Not that long ago, believe it or not, Donald Trump ran for president as the candidate who would defend the First Amendment. He warned that a “sinister group of Deep State bureaucrats, Silicon Valley tyrants, left-wing activists, and depraved corporate news media” was “conspiring to manipulate and silence the American people,” and promised that “by restoring free speech, we will begin to reclaim our democracy, and save our nation.” On his first day back i [more]

Historical Tech Tree. “The tech tree is an interactive visualization of technological history from 3 million years ago to today. A work in progress, it currently contains 1890 technologies and 2192 connections between them.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Wanting to get away from manufactured perfection, artist Wang Mansheng makes his own paint brushes. Manufactured things are, you know, have a certain form. Like a manufactured brush; they’re all really fine. The factory trying to make as fine as they could, but when you use it, all the lines come out smooth and beautiful. But sometimes, I think it’s too perfect, because I really love the rough surface of a rock or the big tree trunk. Wang’s work is currently on display at The Huntington near L [more]

Marc Andreessen Is a Traitor. “He has betrayed the very system that made his success possible; the system in which he and a handful of others like him have profited disproportionately relative to their contribution.”

Please Shout Fire. This Theater Is Burning. “The United States is being destroyed from within, and mainstream journalism isn’t making that clear.”

Nick Heer, Pixel Envy on the news that SpaceX “invested” $2 billion in the xAI money pit: This comes just a few months after xAI acquired X, one year after Musk shifted a bunch of Tesla-bound Nvidia GPUs to xAI, and just a few years after he used staff from Tesla to work on Twitter. So, to recap: he has moved people and resources from two publicly traded companies to two privately owned ones, has used funds from one of his privately owned companies to buy another one of his privately owned compa [more]

The conservative pressure campaign against social networks was hugely successful — and now it's coming for AI

Good lord, the World Cup is going to be a total shitshow next year. And the 2028 LA Olympics. A jingoistic facade papering over a faded superpower careening towards ruin.

This is great: a proposed “poli-sci course that equips one for modern political analysis better than most classic theory and has a syllabus sourced entirely from random internet posts”. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Steve Berman, The Athletic: Lee Elia, who managed the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs for two seasons apiece but is perhaps best known for a profane postgame rant critical of Chicago fans, died on Wednesday. He was 87. The Phillies announced his death in a statement on Thursday, though they did not say where he died or cite a cause. [...] The team noted that Elia was a Philadelphia native who signed with the Phillies in 1958. He was in the organization on and off throughout the decades, i [more]

How Was the Wheel Invented? “How did an obscure, scientifically naive mining society discover the wheel, when highly advanced civilizations, such as the ancient Egyptians, did not?”

“Fed up with big legacy news? Here are 13 independent, worker-owned outlets to support.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Anthony Lane, in a crackerjack piece for The New Yorker on the writing and work of Elmore Leonard: So, when does Leonard become himself? Is it possible to specify the moment, or the season, when he crosses the border? I would nominate “The Big Bounce,” from 1969 — which, by no coincidence, is the first novel of his to be set in the modern age. As the prose calms down, something quickens in the air, and the plainest words and deeds make easy music: “They discussed whether beer was better in bottl [more]

Jason Kottke: Large media companies, and the NY Times in particular these days, like to use the phrase “experts said” instead of simply stating facts. The thing is, many other statements of plain truth in that brief Times post lack the confirmation of expertise. To aid the paper in steering their readers away from notions of objective truth, here’s a suggested rewrite of that Bluesky post.  ★

The Media’s Pivot to AI Is Not Real and Not Going to Work. “The only AI-related business strategy that makes any sense whatsoever is one where media companies and journalists go to great pains to show their audiences that they are human beings…”

I am only a couple of chapters into James McBride’s Deacon King Kong (loving it!) and in the first chapter, there’s a relatively short passage about some cheese, Jesus’s Cheese, that comes into the lives of the members of the book’s community that is a first ballot Hall of Famer for the best depiction or description of a foodstuff in literature. Here it is: The cheese was free. It came like clockwork for years, every first Saturday of the month, arriving like magic in the wee hours in Hot Sausag [more]

Last year, retro computing YouTuber Christian “Peri Fractic” Simpson bought the branding rights and some of the IP belonging to Commodore (which rights have been transferred five times since the original company went bankrupt in 1994). Last week they launched their first product: This is the first real Commodore computer in over 30 years, and it’s picked up a few new tricks. Not an emulator. Not a PC. Retrogaming heaven in three dimensions: silicon, nostalgia, and light. Powered by a FPGA recrea [more]

A lovely, beautiful, and uplifting obituary of poet and activist Andrea Gibson. “One of the last things Andrea said on this plane was, ‘I fucking loved my life.’” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

DOJ Removes All Mentions Of Justice From Website. This Onion article got me for a sec; totally plausible. Wouldn’t be surprised if they actually changed it to the Department of Jesus or something.

Read to the end for some lettuce cookie bars

Here are some of the winners, finalists, and nominees from the 2025 BigPicture Natural World Photography Competition and their People’s Choice Awards. Photos by (from top to bottom): Simon Biddie, Kat Zhou, Zhou Donglin, Jonas Beyer, and Hitomi Tsuchiya. A Ghost goby (Pleurosicya mossambica) conspicuously camouflages against coral. While small and unassuming, these cryptic fish are abundant and protein-rich, making them a critical part of reef food chains. But naturally, they’ve evolved to evad [more]

America is Losing Its Soul in Brown-Skinned Screams and White-Skinned Silence. “The greatest, most grievous failure of America in this moment isn’t legislative but moral. The soul of this place is dying in screams and silences.”

Skater Demarcus James is skateboarding across the entire United States, from Oakland to NYC, to spread awareness about mental health. Check out his GoFundMe to support his journey. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Classic Web is a fun account to follow on Mastodon. Curator Richard MacManus posts half a dozen or so screenshots per day of, well, classic websites from the late 1990s and 2000s. Makes me feel old and young at the same time.  ★

My thanks to Drata for sponsoring this last week at DF. Their message is short and sweet: Automate compliance. Streamline security. Manage risk. Drata delivers the world’s most advanced Trust Management platform.  ★

Yesterday, the NY Times published an article about Donald Trump’s threat to take away citizenship from a US-born citizen: Trump threatens to strip Rosie O’Donnell of U.S. citizenship. The Times Bluesky account posted a link to the article accompanied by this text: President Trump said on Saturday he was considering revoking Rosie O’Donnell’s U.S. citizenship. Trump has feuded with the comedian and actress since before he became president. Experts said the president does not have the power to tak [more]

Roundup 07/13/2025

Simon Willison: Grok 4 Heavy is the “think much harder” version of Grok 4 that’s currently only available on their $300/month plan. Jeremy Howard relays a report from a Grok 4 Heavy user who wishes to remain anonymous: it turns out that Heavy, unlike regular Grok 4, has measures in place to prevent it from sharing its system prompt. Most big LLMs do not share their system prompts, but xAI has made a show out of being transparent in that regard. In related prompt transparency news, Grok’s retrosp [more]

Not a joke: there is a new Commodore 64 coming out. “The glowing, translucent Commodore 64 isn’t a software emulator — it’s the first official C64 in over 30 years, with a few new tricks.” You can preorder now & cancel before shipping for a full refund. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Blake Brittain, reporting for Reuters: Apple asked a U.S. appeals court on Monday to overturn a trade tribunal’s decision which forced it to remove blood-oxygen reading technology from its Apple Watches, in order to avoid a ban on its U.S. smartwatch imports. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit heard arguments from the tech giant, medical monitoring technology company Masimo, and the U.S. International Trade Commission over the ITC’s 2023 ruling that Apple Wa [more]

Here’s a product recommendation long in the making. Four years ago this month, Matthew Panzarino was my guest on The Talk Show and at one point he recommended Moft’s Snap-On iPhone Stand/Wallet. It uses a very clever origami-style folding design. Folded flat it kind of just looks like a leather MagSafe wallet. But folded open it works as a stand — and as a stand, it works both horizontally and vertically. Borrowing images from Moft’s website: You can also use it with the stand oriented vertica [more]

Why did Elon Musk's Grok go nuts?

Maya Ruler’s Tomb Is Unearthed in Belize, With Clues to His Ancient World. “This is the first of its kind in that it’s a ruler, a founder, somebody so old, and in so good a condition.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Read to the end for the Labubu fleshlight

Scrappy is a prototype tool for building “little apps for you and your friends”. Shades of Robin Sloan’s An app can be a home-cooked meal. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Mend is a project based in Syracuse, NY that publishes the “creative work of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people as well as individuals who have been impacted by the criminal justice system”. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

The Best Stunts of All Time, Over Nearly 100 Years of the Oscars. Buster Keaton, King Kong, Errol Flynn, Ben-Hur, Bullitt, Smokey and the Bandit, Top Gun, Speed, The Matrix, Kill Bill, Unstoppable, Mission Impossible, etc. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

When the Klan Got Kicked Out of Town. “More than 500 Lumbee men and women showed up, many of whom were war veterans. Some came with shotguns. Some came with baseball bats.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Linda Yaccarino, in a post on X yesterday: After two incredible years, I’ve decided to step down as CEO of X. When @elonmusk and I first spoke of his vision for X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company. I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App. I thought it couldn’t be done, but here we are today, using [more]

The Art of Roland-Garros. Each year since 1980, the French Open has selected an artist to make an official poster for the tournament; this site displays all of the posters from 1980 to 2025. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

In looking over the shortlist for the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2025 competition, I thought about how I’ve seen thousands or even tens of thousands of incredible astronomical images and yet there are always new, mind-blowing things to see. Like this 500,000-km Solar Prominence Eruption by PengFei Chou: Or Close-up of a Comet by Gerald Rhemann and Michael Jäger: Or Electric Threads of the Lightning Spaghetti Nebula by Shaoyu Zhang (Lightning Spaghetti Nebula!!!): Or Dragon Tree Trails [more]

New Sphere-Packing Record Stems From an Unexpected Source. “Sometimes all a sticky problem needs is a few fresh ideas, and venturing outside one’s immediate field can be rewarding.” I love reading about science/math breakthroughs… 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Jonathan Wold and Luke Carbis cohost a podcast called Crossword, focusing mainly on WordPress and the open web. They occasionally invite guests to join them, and it was my pleasure to join them on their latest episode: John Gruber’s Dithering podcast with Ben Thompson was the original inspiration for Crossword’s 15-minute format. Five years later, John joins Luke and Jonathan for a wide-ranging conversation covering open versus closed platforms, the history and impact of Markdown, and a missed o [more]

No One Else Has a Bike Like Mine. “The most elaborately decorated e-bikes often include colorful adhesive ribbons wrapped around the posts, seat tube and headset, spoke covers and LED lights…” How NYC delivery folks trick out their bikes. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

The Bayeux Tapestry is returning to the UK for the first time in more than 900 years. “The huge embroidery - which is widely believed to have been created in Kent - will go on display at the British Museum in London next year.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Carl Zimmer writes about the results of a new genetic study of humans and the diseases that afflicted us over the past 37,000 years. It’s a really fascinating read — in part because of how scientific results can defy our expectations. For instance, the researchers expected to find the plague when people first started domesticating animals 11,000 years ago. But they didn’t: But the ancient DNA defied that expectation. The scientists found that plague and a number of other diseases jumped to peopl [more]

Craig Mod: Overtourism in Japan, and How it Hurts Small Businesses. When your bar gets TikToked: “The only reason he opened the bar, he said, was so locals and friends like her would come. Now, all he had were customers he couldn’t talk to.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →

Mark Gurman got some interesting quotes from interesting former Apple employees for his report at Bloomberg on Jeff Williams’s retirement: “Jeff’s importance and contributions to Apple have been enormous, although perhaps not always obvious to the general public,” said Tony Blevins, a former Apple operations vice president who reported to Williams until the end of 2022. “As a shareholder, I am saddened. Time takes its toll, and it’s almost as if the band is dissolving. Jeff will be sorely missed [more]

It’s Amazon’s annual Prime Day sale, and if you click through this link, or any of the ones below, you can show your support for Daring Fireball by throwing the referral revenue from any purchases you make my way. You don’t pay a penny more but I get a few percentage points of your purchases. Prime Day discounts are no joke either — we need an outdoor TV for our sun-drenched deck, and I’d been putting off purchasing one out of indecision, but I pulled the trigger and saved $500 with a Prime Day [more]

Read to the end for Goose and his watermelon

Apple TV+: Today, Apple TV+ announced a new, six-episode seventh season for the widely hailed, darkly comedic spy drama Slow Horses. The Emmy and BAFTA Award-winning series stars Academy Award winner Sir Gary Oldman, who has been honored with Golden Globe, Emmy and BAFTA Award nominations for his outstanding performance as the beloved, irascible Jackson Lamb. The complete first four seasons of Slow Horses are now streaming on Apple TV+, with the premiere of season five slated for September 24, 2 [more]

OpenAI’s page for io, minus the “Sam and Jony” short film that introduced the partnership, is back up, with a brief announcement that the deal has officially closed: We’re thrilled to share that the io Products, Inc. team has officially merged with OpenAI. Jony Ive and LoveFrom remain independent and have assumed deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI. Referring to the company as “io Products Inc.” rather than just “io” is seemingly their stopgap workaround for the trademark inj [more]

Wired, two weeks ago: Elon Musk’s lawyers claimed that he “does not use a computer” in a Sunday court filing related to his lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI. However, Musk has posted pictures or referred to his laptop on X several times in recent months, and public evidence suggests that he owns and appears to use at least one computer. [...] The Sunday court filing was submitted in opposition to a Friday filing from OpenAI, which accused Musk and xAI of failing to fully comply with the dis [more]

Matt Novak, writing for Gizmodo: Social media users first started to observe that Grok was using the phrase “every damn time,” on Tuesday, something that seems innocuous enough. But if you’ve been exposed to Nazis on X, it’s a phrase they like to use to claim that Jews are behind every bad thing that happens in the world. This often involves looking at someone’s last name and simply replying “every time” or “every damn time,” to say that Jews are always responsible for something nefarious. And t [more]

Apple Newsroom, this afternoon: Apple today announced Jeff Williams will transition his role as chief operating officer later this month to Sabih Khan, Apple’s senior vice president of Operations as part of a long-planned succession. Williams will continue reporting to Apple CEO Tim Cook and overseeing Apple’s world class design team and Apple Watch alongside the company’s Heath initiatives. Apple’s design team will then transition to reporting directly to Cook after Williams retires late in the [more]

Here’s the full statement, given by Apple to the media, including Daring Fireball: “Today we filed our appeal because we believe the European Commission’s decision — and their unprecedented fine — go far beyond what the law requires. As our appeal will show, the EC is mandating how we run our store and forcing business terms which are confusing for developers and bad for users. We implemented this to avoid punitive daily fines and will share the facts with the Court.” Everyone — including, I bel [more]

Automate compliance. Streamline security. Manage risk. Drata delivers the world’s most advanced Trust Management platform.  ★

Rebecca Rubin, reporting for Variety: When it comes to Apple’s biggest films, F1: The Movie has officially moved to pole position. I will allow this pun. F1 has generated $293 million at the global box office after 10 days of release, overtaking the entire theatrical runs of Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon ($158 million worldwide) and Ridley Scott’s Napoleon ($221 million) to stand as Apple’s highest-grossing movie to date. That’s not a particularly difficult benchmark to break, sin [more]

MG Siegler, on Threads last week: We’re already beyond ridiculous with the full-on ad assault from Apple as everyone is well aware by now. But the wild thing here — in this full screen pop-up in the Apple TV app — is that it’s not in-app but links out to the web to pay?! At least here in the US, if you just opened the TV app on iOS 18 last week, you were presented with this full-screen ad (replete with all those dumb ®’s, despite Apple’s ads for the same thing in the App Store omitting them). Th [more]

Read to the end for a really good TikTok

My thanks to Fly.io for sponsoring last week at DF to promote Phoenix.new, their new AI app-builder. Just describe your idea, and Phoenix.new quickly generates a working real-time Phoenix app: clustering, pubsub, and presence included. Ideal for multiplayer games, collaborative tools, or quick weekend experiments. Built by Fly.io, deploy wherever you want. Give it a try today.  ★

Roundup 07/05/2025

Here's your Garbage Intelligence for June 2025

CBS News: Paramount will settle President Trump’s lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris for $16 million, the company announced late Tuesday. CBS News’ parent company worked with a mediator to resolve the lawsuit. Under the agreement, $16 million will be allocated to Mr. Trump’s future presidential library and the plaintiffs’ fees and costs. Neither Mr. Trump nor his co-plantiff, Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson, will be directly paid as part of the settlement. The settlement did not i [more]

Read to the end for a good post

Jason Snell, writing at Six Colors: Well, would you look at that? The A18 Pro is 46% faster than the M1 in single-core tasks, and almost identical to the M1 on multi-core and graphics tasks. If you wanted to get rid of the M1 MacBook Air but have decided that even today, its performance characteristics make it perfectly suitable as a low-cost Mac laptop, building a new model on the A18 Pro would not be a bad move. It wouldn’t have Thunderbolt, only USB-C, but that’s not a dealbreaker on a cheap [more]

Podcast on Podcast: John Ganz and I talk about Peter Thiel on Ross Douthat

Special guest David Smith returns to the show for a developer’s perspective look at WWDC 2025. Sponsored by: TRMNL: A hackable e-ink display. Save $15 with code GRUBER. Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code talkshow.  ★

Read to the end for a good Tumblr post

Roundup 06/30/2025

Weekly sponsorships have been the top source of revenue for Daring Fireball ever since I started selling them back in 2007. They’ve succeeded, I think, because they make everyone happy. They generate good money. There’s only one sponsor per week and the sponsors are always relevant to at least some sizable portion of the DF audience, so you, the reader, are never annoyed and hopefully often intrigued by them. And, from the sponsors’ perspective, they work. My favorite thing about them is how man [more]

My thanks to WorkOS for once again sponsoring Daring Fireball. Modern authentication should be seamless and secure. WorkOS makes it easy to integrate features like MFA, SSO, and RBAC. Whether you’re replacing passwords, stopping fraud, or adding enterprise auth, WorkOS can help you build frictionless auth that scales. Future-proof your authentication stack with the identity layer trusted by OpenAI, Cursor, Perplexity, and Vercel. Upgrade your auth today.  ★

Apple Developer: By default, apps on the App Store are provided Store Services Tier 2, the complete suite of all capabilities designed to maximize visibility, engagement, growth, and operational efficiency. Developers with apps on the App Store in the EU that communicate and promote offers for digital goods and services can choose to move their apps to only use Store Services Tier 1 and pay a reduced store services fee. What follows is a long chart, making clear which features are excluded from [more]

Let’s start with Apple’s own announcement at Apple Developer News: The European Commission has required Apple to make a series of additional changes under the Digital Markets Act: Communication and Promotion of Offers Today, we’re introducing updated terms that let developers with apps in the European Union storefronts of the App Store communicate and promote offers for purchase of digital goods or services available at a destination of their choice. The destination can be a website, alternative [more]

Joe Rossignol: The company has promoted its Brad Pitt racing film with advertisements across at least six iPhone apps leading up to today’s wide release, including the App Store, Apple Wallet, Apple Sports, Apple Podcasts, iTunes Store, and of course the Apple TV app. Most of those apps have ads in them all the time. It’s certainly fine for Apple to use those ad spots to promote their own movie. Even with Apple Sports, which most of the time has no ads at all, I think it’s fine for Apple to occa [more]

Beth Mole, reporting for Ars Technica: The vaccine panel hand-selected by health secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to drop federal recommendations for seasonal flu shots that contain the ethyl-mercury containing preservative thimerosal. The panel did so after hearing a misleading and cherry-picked presentation from an anti-vaccine activist. There is extensive data from the last quarter century proving that the antiseptic preservative is sa [more]

Banger of a post by “tarltontarlton” on Reddit: That same process is happening now with stupid people. They’re transcending their individual limitations, finding each other and becoming out-and-proud Stupid-Americans. [...] How individual stupid Americans are becoming the collective, self-aware group of Stupid-Americans is a great idea for a lot of very fancy journalism I’m sure. It’s probably got something to do with the internet, where stupid people can find and repeat stupid things to each ot [more]

OR, How to make a best-movies list

This is a funny gag from Claude Zeins, but if you think about it, it shows just how destructive Apple’s decision was to send a push notification from the Wallet app promoting F1 The Movie. It’s a fact that no company can inject an ad into your physical wallet. It just can’t happen. So if Apple’s message to users is that they should trust Apple Wallet, and move more of their “shit that goes in your wallet” life from their traditional analog wallet into their digital Apple Wallet, that’s the bar. [more]

Read to the end for a blessed loaf

Chance Miller returns to the show to discuss the news and announcements from WWDC 2025. Sponsored by: Factor: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box with code talkshow50off. Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code talkshow. BetterHelp: Give online therapy a try at BetterHelp and get on your way to being your best self.  ★

And six other takeaways from Hard Fork Live

Sarah Perez, writing at TechCrunch Tuesday: Apple customers aren’t thrilled they’re getting an ad from the Apple Wallet app promoting the tech giant’s original film “F1 the Movie.” Across social media, iPhone owners are complaining that their Wallet app sent out a push notification offering a $10 discount at Fandango for anyone buying two or more tickets to the film. Joe Rossignol, MacRumors: Apple today sent out an ad to some iPhone users in the form of a Wallet app push notification, and not e [more]

Good pick. I feel great about this.  ★

Read to the end for a good Tumblr post

The company clearly needs an infusion of fresh talent — but blank checks aren't going as far as they used to

Read to the end for meatball sub at 70

Roundup 06/23/2025

PLUS: Is Iran War discourse as stupid as Iraq War discourse?

Read to the end for Mr. Strobbery

Read to the end for an imposter

Decentralized media is off to an agonizingly slow start — but there are glimmers of progress

The Trump Mobile T1 probably won't be a big hit. It's still dangerous

Read to the end for an extremely cursed coffee mug

Roundup 06/16/2025

Plus: Why everyone cares about the "optics" of Los Angeles protests

Read to the end for Hot Girl bike in Toyko

In a new partnership with Mattel, the company hopes to reimagine play — but making internet-connected toys safe will be anything but child's play

Long ago, I was in the studio audience of a local PDX TV kids show called Ramblin’ Rod. “Local kids show” is a format that is completely lost to time, which is pretty wild, because it was such a thing. Think Krusty the Clown — kids sitting in a studio, a goofball host, time filled with […]

Read to the end for an incredible scene from Bushwick

Mark Zuckerberg knows the company needs a new AI strategy. Is Scale's Alexandr Wang the partner he needs?

At WWDC, the company insists that its AI transformation is well underway — but the evidence feels a little thin

Read to the end for a good Instagram comment

Roundup 06/06/25

PLUS: What are ChatGPT-generated book reviews for?

Here's your Garbage Intelligence for May 2025

Musk has gone to war with Donald Trump. What happens next?

Talking OpenAI, Palantir, and Anduril with Sam Biddle

Read to the end for Blake

With a looming 10-year ban on any AI regulation at all, even the right is starting to get nervous about what might go wrong

Expectations for the company's AI device are already sky-high — and Jony Ive keeps raising them

Roundup 06/02/2025

A new microgenre

Artificial intelligence is already writing an obituary for the internet as we know it. So why is everyone building new web browsers?

The company looks poised to put its antitrust woes behind it. But its other trials may only be just beginning

Roundup 05/25/2025

PLUS: Is Elon Musk really wrong about Iain M. Banks and the Culture?

Roundup 05/19/2025

If you liked Brooklyn Bridge Claude, you'll love White Genocide Grok

Welcome to 2025. The vibes are a little heavy, so, I’m trying very hard to focus on the things I can control — and yes, that includes remembering to share things that delight me like the latest #new snacks and cereals I find at the grocery store!! Yeah. It’s an age-old, very-odd Cabel tradition. This time, […]

This summer, a new video game came out that changed the way we think about comedy in games, becoming an instant smash hit in the process. That’s right, I’m talking about Thank Goodness You’re Here! from Coal Supper. Ok, yeah, sure, I work for Panic and we published the game, so I was contractually required […]

In January, I was invited to GDC, the Game Developers Conference, to give a talk about Playdate. That talk — “The Playdate Story: What Was it Like to Make Handheld Video Game System Hardware?” — has been made available free for all to view. Now, it’s been 10 years since my last talk at XOXO here […]

Here’s a quick and cautionary tale. This eBay auction, spotted by Eric Vitiello, immediately caught my eye: Wow. Someone was selling Apple Employee #10’s employee badge?! What an incredible piece of Apple history! Sure, it’s not Steve Jobs’ badge (despite the auction title), but there are only so many of these in the world — especially […]