Latest posts
- Meta Is Launching Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp Subscriptions for ‘Fun Features’May 30, 2026John Gruber
Sarah Perez, reporting for TechCrunch: Meta is doubling down on its subscription offerings. On Wednesday, the social networking giant announced it’s now rolling out its consumer subscription plans globally for its flagship apps, Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, and beginning tests of new subscriptions for businesses, creators, and Meta AI users. For a few dollars per month, consumers subscribing
- Daniel Jalkut on AIMay 30, 2026John Gruber
Daniel Jalkut, on Mastodon (cross-posted to Bluesky and Threads): My take on AI is, essentially, everybody who’s against it is too against it and everybody who’s for it is too for it. I concur with this take completely. (Sidenote: The different reply threads on the three networks speak loudly to the cultural and algorithmic differences between them. Good lord has Meta steered Threads into “make pe
- One Group, Clearly, Is DerangedMay 29, 2026John Gruber
Paul Krugman, describing a few striking data visualizations: YouGov’s surveys subdivide Republicans into those who do and those who don’t support MAGA — and the economic views of these two groups are very different. A remarkable 65 percent of non-MAGA Republicans say that the economy is getting worse, while only 11 percent say that it is getting better. [...] Aside from MAGA Republicans, Americans
- Footage From the LA-Houston MLS Match That Apple Shot Using iPhone 17 Pro CamerasMay 28, 2026John Gruber
I’m not sure if this link works outside the US, but Apple TV’s MLS Wrap-Up show has highlight from the LA Galaxy vs. Houston Dynamo FC match they shot exclusively using iPhone 17 Pros. Follow the link, choose “English”, and then choose “Full Replay” — then skip to 40m:15s or so. They show one of the professional camera rigs they used, with a long lens attached. I’d say the match footage looks good
- Researchers Publish Method to Surveil Web Page Visitors by Analyzing Their SSD ActivityMay 28, 2026John Gruber
Dan Goodin, reporting for Ars Technica: The technique, laid out in a research paper, exploits a side channel, a form of leak resulting from physical manifestations such as electromagnetic emanations, data caches, or the time required to complete a task. By measuring the manifestations, attackers can decrypt encrypted traffic and infer other confidential data. [...] “Web browsers have evolved from
- [Sponsor] exe.devMay 25, 2026Daring Fireball Department of Commerce
A cloud for the agent era. Use exe.dev to get a pool of VMs with SSH, root, and web auth by default. Secrets injected at the network edge stay out of the LLM’s hands. Persistent servers, internal tools, vibe coding, disposable devboxes, whatever. It’s just a computer. ★
- Awarding Jay Haynes His Being Right Points for Predicting Apple Hitting $3 Trillion in Market CapMay 25, 2026John Gruber
Here’s a fun one. Back in 2014 I linked to a post by Jay Haynes in which he projected that with a very reasonable level of annual growth, Apple ought to reach a $3 trillion market cap within 10 years. At the time of his writing, Apple’s market cap was “just” $450 billion, and no company had hit the $1 trillion market. So projecting a $3 trillion valuation in 10 years was a bold prediction. Apple h
- Thieves Are Texting Threats to Victims of iPhone Theft in LondonMay 25, 2026John Gruber
Lizzie Dearden and Amelia Nierenberg, reporting for The New York Times (gift link): The crime Alex Pikula reported to the police was one they had heard before: An e-bike rider had zoomed past as Mr. Pikula left a theater in London’s West End, ripping his phone from his hands. It was frustrating, Mr. Pikula thought, but that was that. He was wrong. His mother soon started receiving strange texts, c
- Trump Mobile Website Exposed the Number of Pre-Orders — Both Completed and Abandoned — and the Associated Customer InformationMay 25, 2026John Gruber
Catie McLeod, The Guardian: Trump Mobile said in a statement that it was investigating the issue — “with the assistance of independent cybersecurity professionals” — in which the full names, addresses and phone numbers of people who filled out preorder forms appeared to be exposed. [...] Jonathan Soma, a programmer and professor at New York’s Columbia University, reviewed the code that the Austral
- The History of ‘OK’May 25, 2026John Gruber
Merriam-Webster: The 1820s and 1830s shared another linguistic fad with today: an appreciation for deliberate misspellings. (Kewl, rite?) This trend, which had humorists adopting now-cringey bumpkin personas with ignorance manifested in uneducated spellings, turned no go into know go and no use into know yuse (lol). Abbreviations were not immune, and no go became K.G.. So too all right became O.W.
- WorkOS: ‘Agents Need Context. Ship the Integrations That Give It to Them.’May 25, 2026John Gruber
My thanks to WorkOS for once again sponsoring DF last week. The context that actually matters isn’t in your database. It’s in the tools your users live in every day. Multi-stage agents stall the moment they hit a step they can’t see. And every missing integration is a different OAuth flow, a different token lifecycle, weeks of plumbing before the agent reads a single record. WorkOS Pipes connects
- Why Steve Kerr Stayed With the WarriorsMay 24, 2026John Gruber
Terrific, poignant profile of Warriors head coach Steve Kerr by Wright Thompson for ESPN: Kerr doesn’t want the Warriors to end up like the New England Patriots, marred by grudges and grievances. He watched Michael Jordan retire, then unretire, then retire, then unretire. His friends used to grill him about MJ. “Why doesn’t he go out on top?” “Because he can’t,” Kerr told them. For the past few ye
- ★ The Fonts of the U.S. Federal CourtsMay 22, 2026John Gruber
The 13 circuits of the U.S. federal courts of appeals operate with a fair amount of independence, including their typographic choices. I was reminded of this today while reading the aforelinked decision from the Ninth Circuit in Epic v. Apple, because the Ninth Circuit sets their decisions in Times New Roman — a font that came up back in December in the context of the Trump State Department. Long
- The Ninth Circuit Appeal Ruling in ‘Epic v. Apple’ That Apple Is Seeking to Overturn at the Supreme Court (PDF)May 22, 2026John Gruber
Following up on yesterday’s item re: Apple’s petition to the Supreme Court, here’s the Ninth Circuit ruling. It starts with a “Summary” that is specifically intended for the convenience of the reader. Page 50 is where it covers Apple’s argument regarding Trump v. CASA as precedent that an injunction on commissions should apply only to Epic Games, not to all developers in the U.S. App Store. ★
- Zero Sum Problems and Apple SportsMay 22, 2026John Gruber
Kieran Healy kindly accepted my implicit homework assignment yesterday, and wrote a piece on Apple Sports’s bizarre “zero sum” team stats visualization: It also doesn’t do away with the core problem. That problem is principally one of information design rather than data visualization. What I mean is that what we’re trying to organize is, in effect, fifteen pairs of related but fundamentally distin
- Stephen Colbert’s ‘The Late Show’ FinaleMay 22, 2026John Gruber
James Poniewozik, writing for The New York Times (gift link): He didn’t land the pope, but he got a Beatle. He didn’t have a new project to announce, but he left us with a song (in fact two). He didn’t choose to end his show, but he ended it his own weird, wonderful way. Stephen Colbert hosted his final “Late Show” on Thursday night, completing the story of the TV year’s most notorious and rancoro
- Apple Seeks Supreme Court Review of Contempt Finding and Injunction Scope in Epic Games CaseMay 22, 2026John Gruber
Marcus Mendes, reporting for 9to5Mac: Apple today filed a request with the Supreme Court in an attempt to reverse key lower court rulings over the App Store injunction in its long-running legal battle with Epic Games. [...] In its petition, Apple is asking the Supreme Court to review two questions. The first is whether Apple should have been held in contempt for charging a commission on purchases
- Apple TV to Broadcast Entire MLS Match Shot Using iPhonesMay 21, 2026John Gruber
Speaking of Apple and sports, here’s another one from Apple Newsroom: This Saturday, May 23, Apple TV will present a special live Major League Soccer match captured exclusively on iPhone 17 Pro — marking the first time iPhone will be used to capture the entirety of a major professional live sporting event broadcast. Developed in partnership with MLS, the milestone broadcast will feature the LA Gal
- Apple Sports Expands to More Than 90 New Countries on Cusp of World CupMay 21, 2026John Gruber
Apple Newsroom: Apple Sports — the free app for iPhone that gives fans access to real-time scores, stats, and more — is now available to download on the App Store in more than 170 countries and regions around the world, including more than 90 newly added markets. Designed for speed and simplicity, the app delivers a personalized experience, putting fans’ favorite teams and leagues front and center
- Google I/O Keynote in 54 SecondsMay 21, 2026John Gruber
Tight edit but covers the whole thing. (XCancel link; Threads link.) ★
- ‘Geography Is Four-Dimensional’May 21, 2026John Gruber
Derek Sivers: When someone speaks of a place, you have to ask, “When?” Geography is four-dimensional. You can’t know a place — only a place as it was at a time. Where is bound to when. Unless you are in a place right now, you can only speak of it in past-tense. ★
- The Verge: ‘The 13 Biggest Announcements at Google I/O 2026’May 21, 2026John Gruber
Andrew Liszewski and Stevie Bonifield, writing for The Verge (gift link): Google’s I/O 2026 keynote today was once again full of AI-related announcements including a new family of Gemini 3.5 AI models, new features for Search and Gmail, and updates about its Project Aura smart glasses. If you weren’t able to tune into the event’s livestream today or follow along with our live blog, you can catch u
- WSJ: ‘Google Unveils New Gemini AI Agent for Personal Tasks’May 21, 2026John Gruber
Katherine Blunt and Rolfe Winkler, reporting for The Wall Street Journal from Google I/O (gift link): Google is supercharging its Gemini artificial-intelligence model to become more competitive in the era of agentic AI. The company has started rolling out what it calls Gemini Spark, a personal agent it says is capable of navigating a user’s digital life and acting on his or her behalf. The agent w
- NYT: ‘Powered by A.I., Google Changes Its Search Box for the First Time in 25 Years’May 20, 2026John Gruber
Tripp Mickle, Kate Conger, and Brian X. Chen, opening The New York Times’s report on yesterday’s Google I/O keynote (gift link): For 25 years, Google’s iconic search box was a long, slender bar where people typed in keywords like “World Cup.” But over the past three years, artificial intelligence allowed people to type in longer, more complex questions like “Who are the top 24 teams in the World C
- ‘You Do Not Need Fancy Equipment, You Do Not Need a Degree, to Make Money and to Do This as Your Job’May 20, 2026John Gruber
22-year-old pop singer-songwriter Brye, on TikTok: “Lemons”, my biggest song ever, that went like super viral during quarantine back in 2020, was actually produced, if you can believe it, in GarageBand on my school iPad. My high school gave us all iPads and I produced “Lemons” on there. I used to just like make beats on GarageBand in high school. I wrote musicals for my school with GarageBand on m
- Andrej Karpathy Joined AnthropicMay 19, 2026John Gruber
Andrej Karpathy, on Twitter/X (XCancel link): Personal update: I’ve joined Anthropic. I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. I am very excited to join the team here and get back to R&D. I remain deeply passionate about education and plan to resume my work on it in time. Karpathy is, to say the least, a star in the AI research field. He co-founded OpenAI in
- [Sponsor] WorkOS: Agents Need Context. Ship the Integrations That Give It to Them.May 19, 2026Daring Fireball Department of Commerce
The context that actually matters isn’t in your database. It’s in the tools your users live in every day. Multi-stage agents stall the moment they hit a step they can’t see. And every missing integration is a different OAuth flow, a different token lifecycle, weeks of plumbing before the agent reads a single record. WorkOS Pipes connects your agent to the tools your users live in. Pre-built connec
- Jury Rejects Elon Musk’s Claim Against Sam Altman in Unanimous VerdictMay 18, 2026John Gruber
Cade Metz and Mike Isaac, reporting for The New York Times (gift link): A nine-person jury found that Elon Musk did not bring his lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman until after the expiration of the three-year statute of limitations. Mr. Musk filed his suit against the $730 billion artificial intelligence start-up in the summer of 2024, but the jury found that he was aware of the behavior discu
- ‘John Appleseed’May 18, 2026John Gruber
Here’s a great take from last month re: the Cook/Ternus transition, from Om Malik: When he took over from Steve Jobs in August 2011, Apple’s market capitalization was around $350 billion. As of this morning, it sits near $4 trillion. That is more than a 1,000 percent increase. Revenue went from $108 billion in fiscal 2011 to over $416 billion in fiscal 2025, almost four times bigger. Apple under C
- Define ‘Boom’ PleaseMay 18, 2026John Gruber
While I’m linking to pieces on Apple’s CEO transition, here’s an annoying tidbit from Tripp Mickle and Karl Russell’s piece for The New York Times, under the headline “Tim Cook Was Very, Very Good at Making Money” (gift link): Even though it has largely missed out on the artificial intelligence boom now lifting the sales of its technology peers, the company’s profits and stock value continue to gr
- Ted Turner’s Small Apartment Above the Former CNN CenterMay 18, 2026John Gruber
Simultaneously audacious and humble, a combination that epitomizes Ted Turner’s entire life. (Shades, too, of Walt Disney’s apartment above the fire department at Disneyland.) ★
- Existing Stakeholders Have a Say in the FutureMay 18, 2026John Gruber
A follow-up point on my “AI Is Technology, Not a Product” column over the weekend. Here’s a repeat of Steven Levy’s argument that John Ternus must direct Apple towards building “a killer AI product”: By the end of this decade, it’s unlikely that people will swipe on their phones to tap on Uber or Lyft. They will just tell their always-on AI agent to get them home. Or that agent will have already f
- ‘AI, “Humanity”, and Dr. Manhattan Syndrome’May 18, 2026John Gruber
Jim Prosser, back in February: Let me be clear about causation, because the AI parallel only works if we’re honest about it. The communications failures didn’t kill nuclear power. The disasters did. But two decades of talking over the public meant the industry had built precisely zero reservoir of human-scale trust to draw on when the real crises hit. Nuclear pioneer Alvin Weinberg admitted in 197
- The Alaska Permanent Fund as Loose Precedent for AI Data Center ‘UBI’ PaymentsMay 18, 2026John Gruber
Wikipedia: The Alaska Permanent Fund (APF) is a constitutionally established permanent fund and sovereign wealth fund managed by a state-owned corporation, the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation (APFC). It was established in Alaska in 1976 by Article 9, Section 15 of the Alaska State Constitution under Governor Jay Hammond and Attorney General Avrum Gross. [...] As of 2019, the fund was worth appro
- AI Data Centers Are Deeply Unpopular, Across the Political SpectrumMay 18, 2026John Gruber
Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup: Seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area, including nearly half, 48%, who are strongly opposed. Barely a quarter favor these projects, with 7% strongly in favor. [...] The data center question parallels the wording Gallup uses to ask about local nuclear power plant construction. In the same March survey, 53% of
- DrataMay 17, 2026John Gruber
My thanks to Drata for sponsoring last week at DF. Their message is short and sweet: Leverage autonomous AI agents to automate compliance, manage internal and third-party risk, and continuously prove your security posture. ★
- Reddit Is Blocking Some Users From Accessing Its Website From Mobile DevicesMay 16, 2026John Gruber
Nate Anderson, writing at Ars Technica: But I was surprised this weekend to suddenly find myself cut off; Reddit simply would not let me visit the site on my mobile phone. Instead, a new overlay popped up, saying, “Get the app to keep using Reddit.” There was no way to skip, bypass, or close the overlay. It did not provide any instructions or alternatives for continuing to use the mobile web versi
- Santa Clara County Sues Meta Over Alleged Scam AdsMay 16, 2026John Gruber
Brandon Pho, reporting for San Jose Spotlight: The lawsuit filed Monday alleges that instead of cracking down on deceptive ads designed to trick users out of their money, Meta has hamstrung its own fraud prevention teams and helped fake companies bypass its filters to enable the tech powerhouse to enjoy an estimated $7 billion in ad revenue from the scams every year. [...] The county lawsuit seeks
- ★ AI Is Technology, Not a ProductMay 16, 2026John Gruber
Steven Levy, writing for Wired last month after Apple’s CEO transition was announced, under the provocative headline “Apple’s Next CEO Needs to Launch a Killer AI Product” (News+ link to get around Wired’s miserly paywall): Much more recently, I quizzed Ternus and global marketing head Greg Joswiak about Apple’s future, specifically its plans to get ahead of the AI transformation. Ternus acknowled
- ArXiv to Ban Researchers for a Year if They Submit AI SlopMay 16, 2026John Gruber
Samantha Cole, writing for 404 Media: Late Thursday evening, Thomas Dietterich, chair of the computer science section of ArXiv, wrote on X: “If generative AI tools generate inappropriate language, plagiarized content, biased content, errors, mistakes, incorrect references, or misleading content, and that output is included in scientific works, it is the responsibility of the author(s). We have rec
- The Talk Show: ‘A Sociopathic Father’May 16, 2026John Gruber
Adam Lisagor returns to the show to talk about Hovercraft, his new virtual presentation camera app for Mac, and how he’s developing it with AI coding tools. Also, delicious Japanese spite sandwich cookies. Sponsored by: Parcel: Track your packages in one place, with native apps for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac. Scribe: Instantly capture and optimize workflows so your teams and AI agents do
- Greg Brockman Officially Takes Control of Products at OpenAI, a Very Stable Well-Run CompanyMay 16, 2026John Gruber
Maxwell Zeff, reporting for Wired (News+ link): OpenAI told staff on Friday that it would reorganize the company as part of an ongoing effort to unify its product offerings, Wired has learned. OpenAI cofounder and president Greg Brockman will now lead the company’s product strategy, in addition to his work on AI infrastructure, OpenAI confirms to Wired. Brockman was previously assigned to oversee
- Wanton Destruction of CBS PropertyMay 15, 2026John Gruber
“Good night and good luck, motherfuckers.” ★
- ★ Nextpad++May 13, 2026John Gruber
Windows Notepad is, more or less, the Windows peer to MacOS’s TextEdit — the built-in system text editor. For years, it was really basic — so much more basic than TextEdit that it engendered no affection. You don’t see paeans to Notepad in The New Yorker. Recently though, Microsoft has started beefing it up, culminating last year when they added fucking Markdown support. Which still blows my mind.
- ★ Software as the Product of Obsession Times VoiceMay 05, 2026John Gruber
Back in 2009, Merlin Mann and I jointly gave a talk at SxSW titled “Obsession Times Voice”. Regarding how it turned out, I wrote: My muse for the session was this quote from Walt Disney: “We don’t make movies to make money; we make money to make more movies.” To me, that’s it. That’s the thing. Merlin and I were talking about independent writers and podcasters, because that’s what we were (and rem
- ★ Y Combinator’s Stake in OpenAIMay 05, 2026John Gruber
Speaking of companies with valuable minority stakes in AI companies, there’s one thing that stuck in my craw about the blockbuster Ronan Farrow / Andrew Marantz investigative piece on Sam Altman and OpenAI last month for The New Yorker. It didn’t come up during Nilay Patel’s excellent interview with Farrow on Decoder, either. Sam Altman was the president of Y Combinator for several years, and left