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.
\n\nLink: exe.dev/?df
\n" }, { "title" : "Awarding Jay Haynes His Being Right Points for Predicting Apple Hitting $3 Trillion in Market Cap", "date_published" : "2026-05-25T20:32:29Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-25T20:32:38Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/25/awarding-jay-haynes-his-being-right-points", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/25/awarding-jay-haynes-his-being-right-points", "external_url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/01/29/haynes-aapl", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nHere’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.
\n\nApple hit $3 trillion in just 8 years.
\n\nHaynes’s original blog went belly-up, alas, but he republished the piece on Medium, with a bit of additional commentary up front, in 2016. Re-reading Haynes’s piece today, it holds up extremely well, including his case that the iPhone and iPad are almost textbook examples of Clayton Christensen’s disruption theory (yet Christensen himself got it wrong).
\n\n(Thanks to Nathan Peretic, longtime DF reader and owner of a perfect personal homepage, for prompting me to revisit this and award Haynes his well-earned Being Right Points.)
\n\nLink: daringfireball.net/linked/2014/01/29/haynes-aapl
\n" }, { "title" : "Thieves Are Texting Threats to Victims of iPhone Theft in London", "date_published" : "2026-05-25T19:23:32Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-25T20:27:45Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/25/london-iphone-thieves-threats", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/25/london-iphone-thieves-threats", "external_url" : "https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/23/world/europe/phone-theft-threats-london.html?unlocked_article_code=1.lFA.OUt7.VJ_FoDpINr0L", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nLizzie Dearden and Amelia Nierenberg, reporting for The New York Times (gift link):
\n\n\n\n\nThe crime Alex Pikula reported to the police was one they had\nheard before: An e-bike rider had zoomed past as Mr. Pikula left a\ntheater in London’s West End, ripping his phone from his hands. It\nwas frustrating, Mr. Pikula thought, but that was that.
\n\nHe was wrong.
\n\nHis mother soon started receiving strange texts, claiming to have\nher son’s emails and bank information. Then she received a video\nof a man brandishing a gun. Then came threats of sexual assault\nand death.
\n\n“I know who you are and where you live,” read one, full of\nobscenities and typos. “I’ve killed or [sic] far less than a\nphone before,” it went on. “We will see if you value your life\nover this phone.”
\n\nAll of the messages wanted her to do one thing: unlink her son’s\nApple ID from his stolen phone.
\n
The story only mentions the word iPhone twice, but phone appears over 30 times. “Apple ID” appears four times. There’s zero mention of Android or Google. It’s just implicitly assumed that the only phones worth stealing or threatening victims about are iPhones. The story makes no mention of Apple’s Stolen Device Protection, which Apple recently began turning on by default when users install iOS 26.4.
\n\nDearden and Nierenberg filed a previous report in October about organized iPhone crime rings in London. And in November I linked to a story where a thief, after stealing an Android phone, turned around and handed it back, explaining to the victim, “Don’t want no Samsung.”
\n\nLink: nytimes.com/2026/05/23/world/europe/phone-theft-threats…
\n" }, { "title" : "Trump Mobile Website Exposed the Number of Pre-Orders — Both Completed and Abandoned — and the Associated Customer Information", "date_published" : "2026-05-25T18:54:37Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-25T18:54:53Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/25/trump-mobile-preorders", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/25/trump-mobile-preorders", "external_url" : "https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/23/trump-mobile-investigating-potential-exposure-of-would-be-customers-personal-information", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nCatie McLeod, The Guardian:
\n\n\n\n\nTrump Mobile said in a statement that it was investigating the\nissue — “with the assistance of independent cybersecurity\nprofessionals” — in which the full names, addresses and phone\nnumbers of people who filled out preorder forms appeared to be\nexposed. [...]
\n\nJonathan Soma, a programmer and professor at New York’s Columbia\nUniversity, reviewed the code that the Australian had uncovered\nand copied from the Trump Mobile website. Soma said the website\nused a common e-commerce model, in which every potential order\nadded another “1” to a list, the total of which had reached 27,224\npossible pre-orders on the available information.
\n\nBut he said the code reflected the last step before payment,\nmeaning those who didn’t proceed with the purchase were also\nrecorded in the data, even those people who have abandoned their\ncarts without paying the deposit, so the true number of preorders\nwas likely to be even lower.
\n\n“I probably started three phone purchases and didn’t buy any of\nthem,” he said.
\n
Auric Goldfinger is surely rolling over in his grave.
\n\nLink: theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/23/trump-mobile…
\n" }, { "title" : "The History of ‘OK’", "date_published" : "2026-05-25T17:18:56Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-25T21:41:45Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/25/the-history-of-ok", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/25/the-history-of-ok", "external_url" : "https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/the-hilarious-history-of-ok-okay", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMerriam-Webster:
\n\n\n\n\nThe 1820s and 1830s shared another linguistic fad with today: an\nappreciation for deliberate misspellings. (Kewl, rite?) This\ntrend, which had humorists adopting now-cringey bumpkin personas\nwith ignorance manifested in uneducated spellings, turned no go\ninto know go and no use into know yuse (lol). Abbreviations\nwere not immune, and no go became K.G.. So too all right\nbecame O.W., as an abbreviation for oll wright. And all\ncorrect became o.k., as an abbreviation for oll korrect.
\n\nAlthough OK became one of the more commonly used initialisms, it\nmight have passed into oblivion when the linguistic fad had passed\nif not for the presidential election of 1840, when Martin Van\nBuren was given the nickname of “Old Kinderhook” because of his\nhometown of Kinderhook, NY. The Van Buren stans who joined “OK\nClubs” nationwide were themselves, they proclaimed, “OK.” Their\ncampaign was memorable enough to have both popularized the word\nand to have hijacked the story of its origin: there are today\nstill those who believe that “Old Kinderhook” is the original\nmeaning of OK.
\n
I have a strong preference for OK (perhaps infused by the classic Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines’s adamance on the spelling). Okay is OK in prose, but never as a UI button label. Ok and ok are not OK.
\n\nLink: merriam-webster.com/wordplay/the-hilarious-history-of-ok…
\n" }, { "title" : "WorkOS: ‘Agents Need Context. Ship the Integrations That Give It to Them.’", "date_published" : "2026-05-25T15:09:17Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-25T15:09:43Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/25/workos", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/25/workos", "external_url" : "https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q22026", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMy 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.
\n\nWorkOS Pipes connects your agent to the tools your users live in. Pre-built connectors for GitHub, Slack, Salesforce, Google Drive, and more. Pipes handles OAuth, token refresh, and credential storage. You call the real provider API with a fresh token, every time. Your agent pulls context at every step, for as long as the task runs.
\n\n\n\nLink: workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium…
\n" }, { "title" : "Why Steve Kerr Stayed With the Warriors", "date_published" : "2026-05-24T17:27:24Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-24T18:09:47Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/24/kerr", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/24/kerr", "external_url" : "https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/48686303/steve-kerr-decision-return-coach-golden-state-warriors-steph-curry", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nTerrific, poignant profile of Warriors head coach Steve Kerr by Wright Thompson for ESPN:
\n\n\n\n\nKerr 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.
\n\n“Why doesn’t he go out on top?”
\n\n“Because he can’t,” Kerr told them.
\n\nFor the past few years, Kerr has watched his mentor, San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, struggle through this same decision. Pop once called Steve to tell him he’d finally decided to retire. Steve congratulated him on a Hall of Fame career. A week later Pop signed an extension with San Antonio. Popovich finally officially quit six weeks before our lunch, six months after a stroke diminished him physically. People who loved him had to show him the door, as gently as possible. That hurt Steve. He respects Popovich so much. He loved playing for him and coaching with him. He once told Gregg he was the finest man he’d ever known and thanked him for all he’d done for him. Pop smiled and said his feet were made of clay like everyone else’s. Steve didn’t believe it then. Now he does.
\n\n“I realized he couldn’t do it,” Kerr said. “He couldn’t walk away.”
\n\nI asked how he’d avoided the trap. He laughed.
\n\n“I’m sitting here wondering,” he said.
\n
It sounds so easy to go out on top. But it very seldom happens.
\n\nLink: espn.com/nba/story/_/id/48686303/steve-kerr-decision-return…
\n" }, { "title" : "★ The Fonts of the U.S. Federal Courts", "date_published" : "2026-05-22T20:30:18Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-25T18:22:13Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/the_fonts_of_the_us_federal_courts", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/the_fonts_of_the_us_federal_courts", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\n\nThe 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.
\n\nLong argument short, Times New Roman isn’t bad, but it isn’t good. It is the median choice. But most of the circuit courts use it: the Third, Fourth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh. It could be worse: the First circuit not only uses Courier New (the worst version of Courier, so of course it’s the one Microsoft shipped with Windows), but fully justifies their text — contrary to the nature of a monospaced font. (The Fourth circuit only recently switched from Courier New to Times New Roman — an upgrade, to be sure, but a disappointingly mediocre one.) It could be better: the Second and Seventh use Palatino. (Note how much better that Seventh Circuit decision looks than the Second’s, with its wider margins creating a narrower column of text.)
\n\nBut it can be much better. The Fifth Circuit was long typographically superior to its peers, using Century Schoolbook — a highly legible font with great tradition and the right vibe. But in 2020, the Fifth Circuit upgraded, switching to Equity, Matthew Butterick’s excellent type family (which, of course, is used throughout Butterick’s own web book, Typography for Lawyers). Here’s a before and after tweet noting the change. The results are typographically sublime (including improved margins).
\n\nThe gold standard is the U.S. Supreme Court, which uses Century Schoolbook. Yes, I just praised the Fifth Circuit’s change from Century Schoolbook to Equity as an upgrade, but tradition and consistency have their place. The Supreme Court’s typographic style has been stunningly consistent for — no pun intended — well over a century. (If only that were true of their recent decisions. Rimshot.) Here is last month’s Louisiana v. Callais decision — the gerrymandering / redistricting case. Here is 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education. I’d give the nod to the older one, which made better use of proper small caps, but the overall consistency is obvious.
\n\nHere is the 2026 edition of the Rules of the Supreme Court. Not only does the Court use Century Schoolbook for its own decisions, it requires submissions to the Court to use the same (p. 44):
\n\n\n\n\nThe text of every booklet-format document, including any appendix\nthereto, shall be typeset in a Century family (e. g., Century\nExpanded, New Century Schoolbook, or Century Schoolbook) 12-point\ntype with 2-point or more leading between lines. Quotations in\nexcess of 50 words shall be indented. The typeface of footnotes\nshall be 10-point type with 2-point or more leading between lines.\nThe text of the document must appear on both sides of the page.
\n\nEvery booklet-format document shall be produced on paper that is\nopaque, unglazed, and not less than 60 pounds in weight, and\nshall have margins of at least three-fourths of an inch on all\nsides. The text field, including footnotes, may not exceed 4⅛\nby 7⅛ inches.
\n
Why the extra one-eighths of an inch instead of just 4 × 7? I don’t know. But 4⅛ × 7⅛ is exactly the size of the text field in the court’s own decisions.
\n\nNow compare the current 2026 rulebook to this edition printed in 1910 (with rules adopted in 1884). The consistency is striking — but, once again, the older version makes better use of small caps and just has a bit more vim and vigor to it. Just look at page 44, for example. It’s perfect. The current Court’s document formatters should aspire only to more closely ape the confidence and sturdiness of this older one. A century from now, U.S. Supreme Court decisions should look as similar to today’s as today’s do to those from a century ago.
\n\nThe various circuit courts using lesser typefaces, looser margins, and lazier formatting should follow the Fifth’s lead and get their shit together. Tuck your shirt in, comb your hair, straighten your tie, and pop a mint in your mouth. If you’re a United States federal court, your typographic style should reflect that.
\n\nBack in 2020, Butterick took a well-deserved victory lap when the Fifth Circuit adopted Equity.1 He quoted Fifth Circuit Judge Don Willett, a typography fan who spearheaded the restyling project, on its rationale. Willett wrote:
\n\n\n\n\n[Why] did the circuit devote finite judicial energy to swapping\ntypefaces and widening margins? Simple answer: Our job is not\njust to present clear opinions, but to present our opinions\nclearly. Getting the law right is, of course, our tip-top\npriority. Nothing matters more. ... But good enough is never good\nenough. Our work is consequential, impacting the lives and\nlivelihoods of real people walloped by real problems in the real\nworld. The stakes are high, and we must present our best opinion,\nnot merely a passable one. And that presentation begins before\nthe first word is ever read.
\n
In the very same post, Butterick sings the praises of the Apple Extended Keyboard II, and notes that he has several spares in reserve. I do keenly intend to take Butterick up on his standing offer to dine when next I’m in Los Angeles, but I worry that if we meet, we’ll trigger some sort of calamitous singularity of aligned taste. ↩︎
\nFollowing 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.
\n\nLink: cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2025/12/11/25-2935…
\n" }, { "title" : "Zero Sum Problems and Apple Sports", "date_published" : "2026-05-22T17:15:00Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-22T17:22:32Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/22/zero-sum-problems-and-apple-sports", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/22/zero-sum-problems-and-apple-sports", "external_url" : "https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2026/05/21/zero-sum-problems/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nKieran Healy kindly accepted my implicit homework assignment yesterday, and wrote a piece on Apple Sports’s bizarre “zero sum” team stats visualization:
\n\n\n\n\nIt also doesn’t do away with the core problem. That problem is\nprincipally one of information design rather than data\nvisualization. What I mean is that what we’re trying to organize\nis, in effect, fifteen pairs of related but fundamentally distinct\nnumbers. If we had fifteen cases and two variables things\nwould be simple. But with fifteen variables and two cases … well,\nthis is not the kind of thing you can make a single effective and\nnon-confusing graph out of. That’s why I kind of sympathize with\nthe designer. In a constrained space they have to show thirty\nnumbers (thirty two, including the score). Lots of information. A\nstraight table seems like it would be boring. Surely there’s some\nway to thematically integrate the numbers in a visually appealing\nmanner that brings out some of the relationships across the rows.\nThat’s what graphs do; it seems like the right thing to reach for.\nBut at its heart this information is not a graph. It just sort of\nlooks like one, and that ends up confusing people.
\n
Just a crackerjack explanation for why this presentation in Apple Sports is confusing, and for why it is a difficult problem to solve. The problem is further complicated by the fact that Apple Sports shows the same screen for all sports, just with different sport-specific stats. I think the solution is to just present these numbers in a table. Yes, tables are boring. But they’re not confusing. What Apple Sports is doing, in an attempt not to be boring, is confusing.
\n\nSidenote: Healy writes:
\n\n\n\n\nI don’t know much about basketball, but I do know a bit about data\nvisualization and in a pleasing coincidence my former student\nJosh Fink is the A-VP of Basketball Data Science for the Spurs.
\n
I don’t want to get Healy in any trouble, especially after he responded to my prompt with such a remarkably thoughtful, helpfully illustrated little essay, but I was under the impression that it’s illegal for any professor at Duke not to know much about basketball.
\n\nLink: kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2026/05/21/zero-sum-problems/
\n" }, { "title" : "Stephen Colbert’s ‘The Late Show’ Finale", "date_published" : "2026-05-22T17:12:10Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-22T17:15:02Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/22/colbert-late-show-finale", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/22/colbert-late-show-finale", "external_url" : "https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/22/arts/television/colbert-last-late-show.html?unlocked_article_code=1.kVA.GO3I.gVq9KeUrHEyM", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJames Poniewozik, writing for The New York Times (gift link):
\n\n\n\n\nHe didn’t land the pope, but he got a Beatle. He didn’t have a new\nproject to announce, but he left us with a song (in fact two). He\ndidn’t choose to end his show, but he ended it his own weird,\nwonderful way.
\n\nStephen Colbert hosted his final “Late Show” on Thursday night,\ncompleting the story of the TV year’s most notorious and rancorous\ncancellation. But his final hour-plus — an emotional and\ndelightfully bizarre wake for a comedy institution — turned it\ninto a cancellebration. [...]
\n\nIn fact, the episode gradually revealed a story arc, more like the\nclosing episode of a surreal comedy than of a talk show.
\n
Series finales are so difficult to do well. I find them compelling even when they fall a little flat. Colbert’s finale last night was just amazingly good. Good and fun and surprising and perfectly on-brand. And what a song to end on. Perfect.
\n\nLink: nytimes.com/2026/05/22/arts/television/colbert-last-late…
\n" }, { "title" : "Apple Seeks Supreme Court Review of Contempt Finding and Injunction Scope in Epic Games Case", "date_published" : "2026-05-22T01:00:47Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-22T01:02:21Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/21/apple-scotus-epic", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/21/apple-scotus-epic", "external_url" : "https://9to5mac.com/2026/05/21/apple-seeks-supreme-court-review-of-contempt-finding-and-injunction-scope-in-epic-games-case/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMarcus Mendes, reporting for 9to5Mac:
\n\n\n\n\nApple today filed a request with the Supreme Court in an attempt\nto reverse key lower court rulings over the App Store injunction\nin its long-running legal battle with Epic Games. [...] In its\npetition, Apple is asking the Supreme Court to review two\nquestions.
\n\nThe first is whether Apple should have been held in contempt for\ncharging a commission on purchases made outside the App Store. The\nsecond is about the scope of the injunction.
\n\nOn the first point, Apple argues that the original injunction did\nnot specifically address commissions. Instead, it says the order\nonly prevented Apple from blocking developers from including\nbuttons, external links, or other calls to action directing users\nto external purchasing options.
\n\nAccording to Apple, that is not the same as saying the company\ncould not charge a commission on those purchases. The Ninth\nCircuit acknowledged that the text of the injunction did not\naddress commissions, but still upheld the contempt finding by\nrelying on the idea that a party can violate the “spirit” of an\ninjunction, even when the injunction does not specifically\nprohibit the conduct at issue.
\n
Apple’s argument here is that only the letter of the law matters, and the letter of the injunction did not say anything about charging commissions on external payments, and thus they can’t be held in contempt for violating something that was never spelled out explicitly.
\n\n\n\n\nAs for the second point, regarding scope, Apple argues that the\ninjunction extends far beyond Epic itself, as it applies to all\nregistered developers worldwide with apps on the U.S. App Store\nstorefront. That includes developers that were never part of the\nEpic case, and, as Apple has pointed out before, even companies\nthat compete with Epic.
\n\nApple argues that this directly conflicts with the Supreme Court’s\n2025 decision in Trump v. CASA, which limited the ability of\nfederal courts to issue broad injunctions that go beyond the\nparties actually involved in a case.
\n
Apple’s argument here is that even if the Supreme Court upholds the contempt finding, the exemption from commissions should only apply to Epic, not to all developers in the U.S. App Store. I am definitely not a constitutional law scholar, but I think this would have been a long-shot argument pre-CASA. But post-CASA I think Apple might have something here, with this Court.
\n\nApple’s full petition is not yet publicly available, but should be soon from the Supreme Court’s website. I’ve seen a copy, and Mendes’s summary jibes with my reading. In the meantime, here’s SCOTUSblog’s index page for Trump v. CASA, and here’s Mila Sohoni’s analysis of the CASA ruling.
\n\nLink: 9to5mac.com/2026/05/21/apple-seeks-supreme-court-review-of…
\n" }, { "title" : "Apple TV to Broadcast Entire MLS Match Shot Using iPhones", "date_published" : "2026-05-21T23:59:07Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-21T23:59:53Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/21/apple-tv-to-broadcast-entire-mls-match-shot-using-iphones", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/21/apple-tv-to-broadcast-entire-mls-match-shot-using-iphones", "external_url" : "https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/05/apple-tv-to-air-first-major-live-pro-sports-event-shot-on-iphone-17-pro/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nSpeaking of Apple and sports, here’s another one from Apple Newsroom:
\n\n\n\n\nThis Saturday, May 23, Apple TV will present a special live Major\nLeague Soccer match captured exclusively on iPhone 17 Pro — marking the first time iPhone will be used to capture the entirety\nof a major professional live sporting event broadcast. Developed\nin partnership with MLS, the milestone broadcast will feature the\nLA Galaxy vs. Houston Dynamo FC, streaming live on Apple TV from\nDignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California, during the final\nweekend of MLS play before the regular season pauses for the FIFA\nWorld Cup 2026 in North America.
\n
The word “major” is doing a bit of work in the phrase “major professional live sporting event” here, but it’s still quite a moment for iPhone photography. Apple started using iPhone 17 Pro cameras during Friday Night Baseball games last year, but this will be the first event to use them exclusively.
\n\nLink: apple.com/newsroom/2026/05/apple-tv-to-air-first-major-live…
\n" }, { "title" : "Apple Sports Expands to More Than 90 New Countries on Cusp of World Cup", "date_published" : "2026-05-21T19:13:56Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-21T20:12:35Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/21/apple-sports-world-cup", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/21/apple-sports-world-cup", "external_url" : "https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/05/apple-sports-expands-to-more-than-90-new-countries-and-regions/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nApple Newsroom:
\n\n\n\n\nApple Sports — the free app for iPhone that gives fans access to\nreal-time scores, stats, and more — is now available to download\non the App Store in more than 170 countries and regions around the\nworld, including more than 90 newly added markets. Designed for\nspeed and simplicity, the app delivers a personalized experience,\nputting fans’ favorite teams and leagues front and center with a\nsimple, intuitive interface designed by Apple.
\n\nApple Sports is helping fans get ready for the World Cup by\nallowing them to explore tournament groupings and customize their\nscoreboards simply by following the entire tournament or their\nfavorite national teams — making it easier to stay on top of key\nmoments when the tournament kicks off in June. Following a team\nalso enables Live Activities on a user’s iPhone Lock Screen or\nApple Watch, letting them follow every moment of a match with just\na quick glance.
\n
I’ve got some gripes about certain specific aspects of Apple Sports. Like, where does one even start to explain how much is wrong with their zero-sum visualization of team stats? Has anyone ever even seen a presentation like that before? Anyone?
\n\nBut overall it really is a good app. I don’t love the UI layout but I don’t hate it, either, and it is interesting. It’s a very modern layout. Apple Sports is fast to load — the primary reason Eddy Cue wanted the app in the first place — and its Live Activities are very good. It remains my go-to for “checking scores” for every sport except baseball, for which I have a much better dedicated app.
\n\nYes, Apple promotes some of its own sports-related properties in the app occasionally. Just now I had a promotion for the F1 Canadian Grand Prix at the top. But the ads that do appear are always sports-related and never obscure content. That’s a fair deal.
\n\nI was glad when Apple Sports debuted two years ago and it’s lived on my first or second home screen ever since, depending on which sports are in season. I’m really glad Apple has stuck with it, shipping steady improvements on a regular basis. Expanding now to nearly the entire world is a big step. If you’re new to it, it might take some getting used to, but give it a shot. It stuck with me.
\n\nStill kind of curious that Apple Sports remains iPhone-only — not even an iPad version — but in a way I find that charming too. Maybe Apple is tight on money?
\n\nLink: apple.com/newsroom/2026/05/apple-sports-expands-to-more…
\n" }, { "title" : "Google I/O Keynote in 54 Seconds", "date_published" : "2026-05-21T15:31:54Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-21T16:42:01Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/21/google-io-54-secs", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/21/google-io-54-secs", "external_url" : "https://x.com/ArtemR/status/2056961743142957143", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nTight edit but covers the whole thing. (XCancel link; Threads link.)
\n\nLink: x.com/ArtemR/status/2056961743142957143
\n" }, { "title" : "‘Geography Is Four-Dimensional’", "date_published" : "2026-05-21T14:39:19Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-21T14:39:20Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/21/sivers-geography-4d", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/21/sivers-geography-4d", "external_url" : "https://sive.rs/4d", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nDerek Sivers:
\n\n\n\n\nWhen someone speaks of a place, you have to ask, “When?”\nGeography is four-dimensional. You can’t know a place — only a\nplace as it was at a time. Where is bound to when. Unless you are\nin a place right now, you can only speak of it in past-tense.
\n
Link: sive.rs/4d
\n" }, { "title" : "The Verge: ‘The 13 Biggest Announcements at Google I/O 2026’", "date_published" : "2026-05-21T01:47:24Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-21T01:47:24Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/20/the-verge-google-io", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/20/the-verge-google-io", "external_url" : "https://www.theverge.com/tech/933415/google-io-2026-biggest-announcements-ai-gemini?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6Ik5tNTBSc0hxRXQiLCJwIjoiL3RlY2gvOTMzNDE1L2dvb2dsZS1pby0yMDI2LWJpZ2dlc3QtYW5ub3VuY2VtZW50cy1haS1nZW1pbmkiLCJleHAiOjE3Nzk3NTk5MjQsImlhdCI6MTc3OTMyNzkyNH0.g_JiqbJBfi9YcDT1re8aofzmpb3tcZNwY2jQybgwJL0", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nAndrew Liszewski and Stevie Bonifield, writing for The Verge (gift link):
\n\n\n\n\nGoogle’s I/O 2026 keynote today was once again full of AI-related\nannouncements including a new family of Gemini 3.5 AI models, new\nfeatures for Search and Gmail, and updates about its Project Aura\nsmart glasses.
\n\nIf you weren’t able to tune into the event’s livestream today\nor follow along with our live blog, you can catch up on\neverything you missed in our roundup below.
\n
This roundup was the only way I could really make sense out of Google I/O.
\n\nLink: theverge.com/tech/933415/google-io-2026-biggest…
\n" }, { "title" : "WSJ: ‘Google Unveils New Gemini AI Agent for Personal Tasks’", "date_published" : "2026-05-21T01:05:14Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-21T01:05:14Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/20/wsj-google-gemini-spark", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/20/wsj-google-gemini-spark", "external_url" : "https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/google-unveils-new-gemini-ai-agent-for-personal-tasks-b8093197?st=BFmPev", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nKatherine Blunt and Rolfe Winkler, reporting for The Wall Street Journal from Google I/O (gift link):
\n\n\n\n\nGoogle is supercharging its Gemini artificial-intelligence model\nto become more competitive in the era of agentic AI.
\n\nThe company has started rolling out what it calls Gemini Spark, a\npersonal agent it says is capable of navigating a user’s digital\nlife and acting on his or her behalf. The agent will work across\nmany of Google’s products and run on the company’s cloud\ninfrastructure. [...]
\n\nThe company has been testing Spark with a limited number of users\nand plans to make it available next week to those who pay for AI\nUltra, a new subscription tier that costs $100 a month.
\n
A different top-level takeaway than the NYT’s, which in turn was different from Bloomberg’s.
\n\nBen Thompson, in a subscriber-only update at Stratechery, sums it up:
\n\n\n\n\nIndeed, if you wanted a positive spin on Google’s plethora of\nannouncements, it’s that the company is clearly fully committed to\nputting AI into anything and everything; if you want to put a\nnegative spin, well, it’s the exact same thing. One of the\nenduring critiques of Google is that the company is unfocused and\nunmanageable, which, to the extent this keynote was a\nmanifestation of the company it represents, the shoe fits.
\n
I personally find Google I/O days very hard to follow. My brain doesn’t jibe with the sprawling nature of the company. This year this was particularly so.
\n\nLink: wsj.com/tech/ai/google-unveils-new-gemini-ai-agent-for…
\n" }, { "title" : "NYT: ‘Powered by A.I., Google Changes Its Search Box for the First Time in 25 Years’", "date_published" : "2026-05-20T21:20:23Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-20T21:20:24Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/20/nyt-google-io", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/20/nyt-google-io", "external_url" : "https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/google-seach-bar-ai-gemini.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jlA.95yh.ptfBUHf-rBtB&smid=url-share", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nTripp Mickle, Kate Conger, and Brian X. Chen, opening The New York Times’s report on yesterday’s Google I/O keynote (gift link):
\n\n\n\n\nFor 25 years, Google’s iconic search box was a long, slender bar\nwhere people typed in keywords like “World Cup.”
\n\nBut over the past three years, artificial intelligence allowed\npeople to type in longer, more complex questions like “Who are the\ntop 24 teams in the World Cup and what chance does the United\nStates have of advancing?”
\n\nOn Tuesday, Google said the A.I. shift had inspired it to overhaul\nthe dimensions of its search bar for the first time since 2001.\nThe box is getting bigger and more interactive so that people can\nask even longer questions and upload photographs and videos into\nqueries.
\n
Interesting to me that this is the Times’s biggest takeaway. But it speaks to how unchanged the google.com homepage has been since its earliest days.
\n\n\n\n\nIn addition, people can ask follow-up questions with a chatbot on\nGoogle’s main search page. The company will also offer digital\nassistants, known as agents, to automate searches so that someone\nwho may be apartment hunting can be notified of a new listing\nwithout opening a real estate site like Zillow.
\n
Odd, to me, to paint this only in terms of user convenience (ostensible user convenience at that), and not in terms of this being a de facto attack on Zillow and the rest of the web. Later in the Times report:
\n\n\n\n\nRichard Kramer, a financial analyst with Arete Research, said the\nchanges were helping Google make more money from advertising. Last\nyear, Google’s ad clicks rose 6 percent, and it charged 7 percent\nmore for each click. The company’s annual profit has more than\ndoubled since 2022 to $132 billion.
\n\n“The open web is on its way out,” Mr. Kramer said, referring to\nthe way internet traffic now often begins and ends with a visit to\nGoogle rather than visiting other sites. “With A.I., Google is\nreducing everyone to raw data providers.”
\n
What an odd statement to include in the middle of an article without any acknowledgement of what a profound loss that would be, if Kramer is correct. It’s as though Kramer said that light mode is on its way out, everyone is into dark mode these days.
\n\nLink: nytimes.com/2026/05/19/business/google-seach-bar-ai-gemini…
\n" }, { "title" : "‘You Do Not Need Fancy Equipment, You Do Not Need a Degree, to Make Money and to Do This as Your Job’", "date_published" : "2026-05-20T20:53:22Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-21T13:17:52Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/20/brye-garageband", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/20/brye-garageband", "external_url" : "https://www.tiktok.com/@brye.shhh/video/7641047549758934285", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\n22-year-old pop singer-songwriter Brye, on TikTok:
\n\n\n\n\n“Lemons”, my biggest song ever, that went like super viral during\nquarantine back in 2020, was actually produced, if you can believe\nit, in GarageBand on my school iPad.
\n\nMy high school gave us all iPads and I produced “Lemons” on there. I\nused to just like make beats on GarageBand in high school. I wrote\nmusicals for my school with GarageBand on my iPad. And then I made\nthat little demo for “Lemons”, recorded it ... on my iPad ... with\nmy horrible little plug-in mic, posted it to spite a guy who was\nbeing horrible to me, and it blew up.
\n\nAll of this to say, how crazy is it that a song that could be on\nSirius XM radio — streamed a hundred million times, literally\ncharted on the global top like viral 50 or whatever — it was\nliterally made on GarageBand. You do not need fancy equipment, you\ndo not need a degree, to make money and to do this as your job.
\n\nObviously it’s good to learn. It’s fun to upgrade. But if you are\nworking on a budget, GarageBand’s free on any Apple device.
\n
If Brye’s story isn’t exactly what Steve Jobs was talking about when he introduced GarageBand in 2004 and GarageBand for iPad in 2011, well, I don’t know what is. Right down to the fact that she did it on school equipment. Her enthusiasm for the simplicity of the kit she used to record “Lemons” is contagious.
\n\nJohn Ternus (or whatshisname ... Tim Cook) should send this video to every single employee at Apple and tell them that this — this — is exactly Apple’s mission. To empower creative people to create great new things they didn’t believe were possible with the tools already in their hands.
\n\nLink: tiktok.com/@brye.shhh/video/7641047549758934285
\n" }, { "title" : "Andrej Karpathy Joined Anthropic", "date_published" : "2026-05-19T15:42:38Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-19T15:45:17Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/19/karpathy-anthropic", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/19/karpathy-anthropic", "external_url" : "https://x.com/karpathy/status/2056753169888334312", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nAndrej Karpathy, on Twitter/X (XCancel link):
\n\n\n\n\nPersonal update: I’ve joined Anthropic. I think the next few\nyears at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. I am\nvery excited to join the team here and get back to R&D. I remain\ndeeply passionate about education and plan to resume my work on\nit in time.
\n
Karpathy is, to say the least, a star in the AI research field. He co-founded OpenAI in 2015, was director of AI at Tesla (reporting directly to Elon Musk) from 2017–2022, went back to OpenAI in 2023, and then left again in 2024 to start an AI education company named Eureka Labs. He coined the term “vibe coding” in February last year.
\n\nLink: x.com/karpathy/status/2056753169888334312
\n" }, { "title" : "[Sponsor] WorkOS: Agents Need Context. Ship the Integrations That Give It to Them.", "date_published" : "2026-05-19T01:27:00Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-19T01:27:16Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/05/workos_agents_need_context_shi", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2026/05/workos_agents_need_context_shi", "external_url" : "https://workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q22026", "authors" : [ { "name" : "Daring Fireball Department of Commerce" } ], "content_html" : "\nThe 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.
\n\nWorkOS Pipes connects your agent to the tools your users live in. Pre-built connectors for GitHub, Slack, Salesforce, Google Drive, and more. Pipes handles OAuth, token refresh, and credential storage. You call the real provider API with a fresh token, every time. Your agent pulls context at every step, for as long as the task runs.
\n\n\n\nLink: workos.com/docs/pipes?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium…
\n" }, { "title" : "Jury Rejects Elon Musk’s Claim Against Sam Altman in Unanimous Verdict", "date_published" : "2026-05-18T17:53:33Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-18T17:53:34Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/18/jury-rejects-elon-musks-claim-against-sam-altman", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/18/jury-rejects-elon-musks-claim-against-sam-altman", "external_url" : "https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/05/18/technology/openai-trial-verdict-altman-musk?unlocked_article_code=1.jVA.Cc2V.IwYuu2r4SJfQ", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nCade Metz and Mike Isaac, reporting for The New York Times (gift link):
\n\n\n\n\nA nine-person jury found that Elon Musk did not bring his lawsuit\nagainst OpenAI and Sam Altman until after the expiration of the\nthree-year statute of limitations.
\n\nMr. Musk filed his suit against the $730 billion artificial\nintelligence start-up in the summer of 2024, but the jury found\nthat he was aware of the behavior discussed in his complaint\nagainst OpenAI as far back as 2021.
\n
This update quoting Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers’s “poetic” jury instructions is just lovely:
\n\n\n\n\n“A jury reflects the attitudes and mores of the community from\nwhich it is drawn,” she said, paraphrasing another judge. “It\nlives only for the day and does justice according to its limits.\nThe group of jurors who are drawn to hear a case make a decision\nand then melt away. It is not present the next day to be\ncriticized. It is the one governmental agency that has no\nambition. It is as human as the people who make it up.”
\n
Link: nytimes.com/live/2026/05/18/technology/openai-trial-verdict…
\n" }, { "title" : "‘John Appleseed’", "date_published" : "2026-05-18T17:34:46Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-18T17:35:49Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/18/john-appleseed", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/18/john-appleseed", "external_url" : "https://om.co/2026/04/20/john-appleseed/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nHere’s a great take from last month re: the Cook/Ternus transition, from Om Malik:
\n\n\n\n\nWhen he took over from Steve Jobs in August 2011, Apple’s market\ncapitalization was around $350 billion. As of this morning, it\nsits near $4 trillion. That is more than a 1,000 percent increase.\nRevenue went from $108 billion in fiscal 2011 to over $416 billion\nin fiscal 2025, almost four times bigger. Apple under Cook became\nthe most valuable company in human history, multiple times over.\nIt built Services into a $100-billion-a-year business.
\n\nSure, Cook inherited the greatest product portfolio and the\ngreatest brand in modern business. How many times have we seen\npeople screw it up? He ran it with operational ruthlessness. He is\nno product visionary, and neither is Ternus. They are not Steve.\nTim has run Apple for fifteen years, through a pandemic, two trade\nwars, a supply chain reordering, and the slow grinding shift from\nhardware-only to hardware-plus-services-plus-silicon. Most\nimportantly, he didn’t mess it up.
\n
Services, as a whole, is now as big a business for Apple as the entirety of the company was when Cook took the helm. And “not screwing it up” is an enormous accomplishment. Success is always precarious. Keeping a good thing going is inordinately difficult. It only looks easy compared to getting the good thing off the ground in the first place.
\n\nLink: om.co/2026/04/20/john-appleseed/
\n" }, { "title" : "Define ‘Boom’ Please", "date_published" : "2026-05-18T17:17:02Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-18T17:20:43Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/18/define-boom-please", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/18/define-boom-please", "external_url" : "https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/business/how-apple-became-a-4-trillion-company-under-tim-cook.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jVA.MV8m.0JfUOJOME5WH", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nWhile 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):
\n\n\n\n\nEven though it has largely missed out on the artificial\nintelligence boom now lifting the sales of its technology peers,\nthe company’s profits and stock value continue to grow.
\n
Which peers have had their “sales lifted” by AI? There’s Nvidia (now the most valuable company in the world). But Apple doesn’t compete directly with Nvidia. What makes Apple different from its peer companies isn’t that the others are profiting from AI while Apple is not, but rather that Apple, seemingly alone, is not funnelling its free cash flow to Nvidia to build out massive AI datacenters.
\n\nApple might wind up missing out on something huge as a result of its decision to stay out of this race. But it’s nonsense to say they’ve already missed out on a boom. To date it’s a money pit.
\n\nLink: nytimes.com/2026/04/21/business/how-apple-became-a-4…
\n" }, { "title" : "Ted Turner’s Small Apartment Above the Former CNN Center", "date_published" : "2026-05-18T16:52:03Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-18T17:02:56Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/18/ted-turner-cnn-apartment", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/18/ted-turner-cnn-apartment", "external_url" : "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUIVs58oyPI", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nSimultaneously 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.)
\n\nLink: youtube.com/watch?v=OUIVs58oyPI
\n" }, { "title" : "Existing Stakeholders Have a Say in the Future", "date_published" : "2026-05-18T16:47:08Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-18T16:47:09Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/18/existing-stakeholders-have-a-say-in-the-future", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/18/existing-stakeholders-have-a-say-in-the-future", "external_url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/ai_is_technology_not_a_product", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nA 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”:
\n\n\n\n\nBy the end of this decade, it’s unlikely that people will swipe on\ntheir phones to tap on Uber or Lyft. They will just tell their\nalways-on AI agent to get them home. Or that agent will have\nalready figured out where they need to go, and the car will be\nwaiting without the friction of a request. “There’s an app for\nthat,” may be replaced by “Let the agent do that.”
\n
Putting aside whether this is technically feasible or psychologically comfortable, what Levy is arguing here is yadda-yadda-yadda-ing over Uber and Lyft’s say in the matter. Those two companies are now deeply entrenched. They might get disrupted. (Google’s Waymo isn’t operating here in Philly yet, but I see their vehicles around the city all the time now. You can’t miss them.) But I think it’s a good bet that most ride shares at the end of this decade (which is Levy’s own timeline) will largely be Ubers and Lyfts.
\n\nUber and Lyft get to decide the terms of which platforms they’re hail-able from. Here’s a note a friend sent me that prompted this follow-up:
\n\n\n\n\nIt’s a newbie take to think all deeds will soon be on the\nblockchain, all newspapers will migrate to RSS, all broadcast\ncompanies will put shows out on one service.
\n\nSome companies will forge a path into the next medium, some will\nbe replaced, and others will succeed at slowing its adoption.
\n
When people get taken by a wave of technology hype, there’s a strong tendency to assume that not only will other people get taken by the same hype wave, but that entrenched stakeholders will too. That often doesn’t happen. Walmart still doesn’t take Apple Pay, for chrissakes. The idea that Uber and Lyft are going to put their own futures in the hands of OpenAI and Anthropic (or Google, who, through Waymo, is already their direct competitor) seems like folly.
\n\nLink: daringfireball.net/2026/05/ai_is_technology_not_a_product
\n" }, { "title" : "‘AI, “Humanity”, and Dr. Manhattan Syndrome’", "date_published" : "2026-05-18T16:21:35Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-18T16:22:19Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/18/prosser-ai-humanity", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/18/prosser-ai-humanity", "external_url" : "https://www.personfamiliar.com/p/ai-humanity-and-dr-manhattan-syndrome", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJim Prosser, back in February:
\n\n\n\n\nLet me be clear about causation, because the AI parallel only\nworks if we’re honest about it. The communications failures didn’t\nkill nuclear power. The disasters did. But two decades of talking\nover the public meant the industry had built precisely zero\nreservoir of human-scale trust to draw on when the real crises\nhit. Nuclear pioneer Alvin Weinberg admitted in 1976 (three years\nbefore Three Mile Island) that “the public perception and\nacceptance of nuclear energy appears to be the question that we\nmissed rather badly.” After TMI and Chernobyl confirmed the\npublic’s worst suspicions, over a hundred planned U.S. reactors\nwere cancelled.
\n
The entire essay is very good, quite thought provoking. But it really shines in drawing the parallels to nuclear power a generation ago, and the need to communicate the benefits to ordinary people in ways that they actually care about. Regarding OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman:
\n\n\n\n\nBut think about what the people behind those numbers are actually\nworried about. They’re not anxious about AI in the abstract, per\nse, but its implications. They’re anxious about their job, their\nkid’s homework, their creative work getting scraped without\npermission, their privacy. Human-scale concerns that are specific,\npersonal, and grounded in the daily texture of individual lives.
\n\nAnd Brockman’s response to this very specific, very human anxiety\nis to ... float further up into the philosophical stratosphere\nwhile writing a mega-checks to a partisan PAC and explaining it in\nthe language of civilizational mission. It’s like a doctor hearing\na patient who says, “My knee hurts,” who then delivers a lecture\non the elegance of the musculoskeletal system. The patient doesn’t\nneed you to appreciate the beauty of human biology. They need you\nto look at their damn knee.
\n
Link: personfamiliar.com/p/ai-humanity-and-dr-manhattan-syndrome
\n" }, { "title" : "The Alaska Permanent Fund as Loose Precedent for AI Data Center ‘UBI’ Payments", "date_published" : "2026-05-18T15:34:47Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-18T15:35:49Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/18/alaska-permanent-fund", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/18/alaska-permanent-fund", "external_url" : "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nWikipedia:
\n\n\n\n\nThe Alaska Permanent Fund (APF) is a constitutionally established\npermanent fund and sovereign wealth fund managed by a state-owned\ncorporation, the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation (APFC). It was\nestablished in Alaska in 1976 by Article 9, Section 15 of the\nAlaska State Constitution under Governor Jay Hammond and Attorney\nGeneral Avrum Gross. [...] As of 2019, the fund was worth\napproximately $64 billion that has been funded by oil and mining\nrevenues and has paid out an average of approximately $1,600\nannually per resident (adjusted to 2019 dollars). The main use for\nthe fund’s revenue has been to pay out the Permanent Fund Dividend\n(PFD), which many authors portray as the only example of a basic\nincome in practice. [...]
\n\nThe PFD is a Basic Income in the form of a resource dividend. Some\nresearchers argue, “It has helped Alaska attain the highest\neconomic equality of any state in the United States... And,\nseemingly unnoticed, it has provided unconditional cash assistance\nto needy Alaskans at a time when most states have scaled back aid\nand increased conditionality.”
\n
Alaska is not exactly a left-wing state. Again, money talks.
\n\nLink: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
\n" }, { "title" : "AI Data Centers Are Deeply Unpopular, Across the Political Spectrum", "date_published" : "2026-05-18T14:59:59Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-19T00:27:19Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/18/ai-data-centers-are-deeply-unpopular", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/18/ai-data-centers-are-deeply-unpopular", "external_url" : "https://news.gallup.com/poll/709772/americans-oppose-data-centers-area.aspx", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nJeffrey M. Jones, Gallup:
\n\n\n\n\nSeven in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers for\nartificial intelligence in their local area, including nearly\nhalf, 48%, who are strongly opposed. Barely a quarter favor these\nprojects, with 7% strongly in favor. [...]
\n\nThe data center question parallels the wording Gallup uses to ask\nabout local nuclear power plant construction. In the same\nMarch survey, 53% of Americans say they oppose building a nuclear\nenergy plant in their area, far less than the 71% opposed to data\ncenter construction. Since Gallup first asked the nuclear power\nplant question in 2001, the high point in opposition has been 63%.
\n
It’s hard to overstate how unpopular this polling paints AI data centers. It’s just an absolute messaging and marketing disaster for the entire tech industry. Tellingly, the anti-AI-data-center sentiment is bipartisan:
\n\n\n\nThere are partisan differences, but only in slight degree. A savvy politician or party could grab this issue and carve out a broadly bipartisan anti-data-center, anti-AI message. US politics is so polarized in today’s era that the salience of this issue will not go unnoticed. The only thing the hyperscalers have on their side is money, but that fact is a significant factor in the general resentment toward the entire industry.
\n\nTo that point, Ben Thompson suggests (in today’s subscriber-only Stratechery column) that the industry simply pay residents:
\n\n\n\n\nInstead, the most obvious solution is the most crass: simply start\ngiving people money. If data centers are a resource for our AI\nfuture, then start paying people for that resource. If that data\ncenter up the road weren’t sold to my neighbors based on amorphous\ntax benefits that my local government may or may not spend\nappropriately, but rather were to result in a check in the mailbox\nevery year, I suspect you could get a lot more people on board!
\n\nJust to put some numbers on this, the data center up the road was\nexpected to be 1.6 GW, which could generate around $3 billion in\nannual operator revenue. DeForest, the village it was to be built\nin, has around 11,500 people. You could pay every person in\nDeForest $10,000 a year for 3.8% of annual revenue grossed by the\ndata center — I bet that proposal would have been approved, and I\nbet that the operator could very easily pass those costs on to the\nactual data center users (it also highlights how relatively\npathetic QTS’s $50 million commitment was).
\n\nI do get how ridiculous this sounds, but ridiculous is how we do\nthings in America.
\n
After mulling the idea for a bit this morning, I’d say it’s unusual, but not ridiculous. Money talks.
\n\nLink: news.gallup.com/poll/709772/americans-oppose-data-centers…
\n" }, { "title" : "Drata", "date_published" : "2026-05-17T17:59:15Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-17T17:59:15Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/17/drata", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/17/drata", "external_url" : "https://drata.com/daring", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMy 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.
\n\nLink: drata.com/daring
\n" }, { "title" : "Reddit Is Blocking Some Users From Accessing Its Website From Mobile Devices", "date_published" : "2026-05-16T21:22:38Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-16T21:22:38Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/16/reddit-mobile-web", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/16/reddit-mobile-web", "external_url" : "https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/05/why-reddit-blocked-my-daily-visit-to-its-mobile-website/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nNate Anderson, writing at Ars Technica:
\n\n\n\n\nBut I was surprised this weekend to suddenly find myself cut off;\nReddit simply would not let me visit the site on my mobile phone.\nInstead, a new overlay popped up, saying, “Get the app to keep\nusing Reddit.”
\n\nThere was no way to skip, bypass, or close the overlay. It did not\nprovide any instructions or alternatives for continuing to use the\nmobile web version. What it did offer was a large button I could\npress to get the app. If I did so, the overlay told me, I would be\nable to “search better” and “personalize your feed” — two things\nI don’t care to do. [...]
\n\nI reached out to the company to ask what was going on. According\nto a spokesperson, “We recently started running a test for a small\nsubset of frequent logged-out mobile users that prompts them to\ndownload the app after visiting the site. These users are already\nfamiliar with Reddit and we’ve seen that the experience is much\nbetter for them in the app. The app offers a more personalized\nexperience and users can more easily find communities that match\ntheir interests.”
\n
Yes, they’re doing this for the users’ benefit. Sure.
\n\nLink: arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/05/why-reddit…
\n" }, { "title" : "Santa Clara County Sues Meta Over Alleged Scam Ads", "date_published" : "2026-05-16T21:17:15Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-16T23:57:25Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/16/santa-clara-county-sues-meta-over-alleged-scam-ads", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/16/santa-clara-county-sues-meta-over-alleged-scam-ads", "external_url" : "https://sanjosespotlight.com/santa-clara-county-sues-meta-over-alleged-scam-ads/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nBrandon Pho, reporting for San Jose Spotlight:
\n\n\n\n\nThe lawsuit filed Monday alleges that instead of cracking\ndown on deceptive ads designed to trick users out of their money,\nMeta has hamstrung its own fraud prevention teams and helped fake\ncompanies bypass its filters to enable the tech powerhouse to\nenjoy an estimated $7 billion in ad revenue from the scams every\nyear. [...]
\n\nThe county lawsuit seeks attorney fees and a ruling barring Meta\nfrom further alleged violations of false advertising and unfair\ncompetition laws. Much of the lawsuit’s allegations stem from a\n2025 Reuters investigation suggesting Meta was at one\npoint involved in one-third of all successful Internet scams in\nthe U.S.
\n\nThe company has vowed to fight the lawsuit.
\n\n“This claim relies on Reuters reporting that distorts our motives\nand ignores the full range of actions we take to combat scams\nevery day,” a spokesperson for the company told San José\nSpotlight. “We aggressively fight scams on and off our platforms\nbecause they’re not good for us or the people and businesses that\nrely on our services.”
\n
Reuters’s Jeff Horwitz and Engen Tham were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting for their reporting on this story. As the adage goes, if the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If the law’s on your side, pound the law. If neither are on your side, pound the table.
\n\nI have to say, though, it does not seem scalable for individual counties to be suing Meta.
\n\nLink: sanjosespotlight.com/santa-clara-county-sues-meta-over…
\n" }, { "title" : "★ AI Is Technology, Not a Product", "date_published" : "2026-05-16T20:32:51Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-18T16:48:28Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/ai_is_technology_not_a_product", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/ai_is_technology_not_a_product", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\n\nSteven 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):
\n\n\n\n\nMuch more recently, I quizzed Ternus and global marketing\nhead Greg Joswiak about Apple’s future, specifically its plans to\nget ahead of the AI transformation. Ternus acknowledged that AI is\n“an immense kind of inflection point,” but couched it as one of\nmany leaps that Apple has navigated. Each hit product — the Apple\nII, the Mac, iTunes, the iPod, the iPhone, iPad — piggybacked on\na previous product. “We never think about shipping a technology,”\nhe said. “We want to ship amazing products, features, and\nexperiences, and we don’t want our customers to think about what\n[underlying] technology makes it possible. That’s the way we think\nabout AI.”
\n\nThat’s fine, but I look back to the mid-2000s when everybody was\nwaiting for Apple to come out with a phone. When Jobs finally\ndelivered in January 2007, the product defined the mobile era.\nIt’s a big ask for Ternus to do something similar for the AI age — but it’s an opportunity that must be seized. AI threatens to\ndisrupt the entire iPhone ecosystem. By the end of this decade,\nit’s unlikely that people will swipe on their phones to tap on\nUber or Lyft. They will just tell their always-on AI agent to get\nthem home. Or that agent will have already figured out where they\nneed to go, and the car will be waiting without the friction of a\nrequest. “There’s an app for that,” may be replaced by “Let the\nagent do that.”
\n
I’m a huge longtime Steven Levy fan, but this is nonsense. It’s hard to read this and not worry that he too has lost his mind to the AI snake-oil hypesters. What Ternus told him is exactly right. The Apple way is never to ship a technology. The iPod wasn’t about MP3 files. It wasn’t about 1.8-inch hard drives. It was about music. The iPhone did define the mobile era (which we’re still very much in), but Apple doesn’t need to capitalize on every single market the mobile era opened up. Social media is a defining component of the mobile era. It comprises the entirety of Meta’s value and a sizable slice of Google’s (via YouTube). Apple doesn’t have a social network business. It’s fine — because the way people consume and create social media is using their phones.
\n\nDoes AI “threaten to disrupt the entire iPhone ecosystem”? It’s possible, but it doesn’t seem nearly as likely to me as Levy asserts. Changing the iPhone ecosystem? Sure — that’s already true. Obviating the iPhone ecosystem? I don’t see it. Levy’s argument reminds me of the hype around “the cloud” when that first became a term. It’s so meaningless when used broadly (e.g. “Everything will soon be in the cloud”) that it could mean anything. It’s step #2 in the gnomes-stealing-underpants master plan.
\n\nThe idea that AI agents “will have already figured out where [we] need to go, and the car will be waiting without the friction of a request” strikes me as pure fever dream high-on-the-hype fantasy. I’m just going to step outside a restaurant when I’m done eating a meal and a ride-share is going to be there, waiting for me, without my having hailed it? Every time? And I’m going to find this pleasing, not creepy? And ride-share drivers are going to respond to all these requests, because the requests will never be wrong? And this is going to happen, somehow, without my carrying a phone with me? And this is going to happen in the next four years? I don’t think I’d want this even if it were plausible, but it doesn’t sound plausible.
\n\nActual products have to be real. Actual experiences have to rely on actual products. How exactly in Levy’s end-of-this-decade scenario will we tell our “always-on AI agent” to get us home? What microphone is listening to the command? What speaker is telling us the request was understood and acted upon? What screen do we look at to see how far away the hailed car is? I’d bet a pretty large sum of money that in 2030, when someone hails a ride-share vehicle to take them home, the most common product they’ll use to do that will be their phone. Whether they’re doing it via a verbal command issued to an “always-on AI agent” or good old tapping and swiping, it’ll be a phone.
\n\nIf you think that people will buy smaller devices to replace their phones, and use those to talk to “always-on AI agents” instead, you have to answer some questions. What company is the best in the world at making smaller-than-phone personal computing devices? What device will people use as their camera? What device will people use as their screen, for watching videos, playing games, texting, and (one hopes) reading? My answers to those three questions: Apple, phone, phone. Why would smaller devices — you know, like watches, earbuds, and, say, glasses — work independently rather than pair with the phone that you’re almost certainly still going to be carrying with you?
\n\nOnly a fool would argue that Apple can stand on the sidelines and ignore AI. It’s very different from, say, social media that way. Social media doesn’t pervade everything in technology. You can ignore social media as a user. (And you’re probably more productive, and happier, if you do.) A company can eschew social media as a business. AI, on the other hand, is pervasive. It can’t be ignored. But it’s just technology.
\n\nWireless networking is pervasive too. But Apple doesn’t have “a killer wireless networking product”.1 Wireless networking simply pervades everything Apple makes. I’m hard pressed to think of a single product Apple makes that doesn’t use some combination of Wi-Fi, cellular, Bluetooth, and proprietary wireless protocols. There was a time, not too long ago, when Apple didn’t make a single product with wireless connectivity. Now it’s pervasive in all their devices. That’s more what AI is going to be like. There’s not going to be one “killer AI device”. Everything is going to be an AI device, to some extent, just like how everything today is a wireless connectivity device, to some extent.
\n\nPostscript: “Existing Stakeholders Have a Say in the Future”.
\n\nAirPort qualified, arguably. But Apple walked away from it, alas. ↩︎
\nSamantha Cole, writing for 404 Media:
\n\n\n\n\nLate Thursday evening, Thomas Dietterich, chair of the computer\nscience section of ArXiv, wrote on X: “If generative AI\ntools generate inappropriate language, plagiarized content,\nbiased content, errors, mistakes, incorrect references, or\nmisleading content, and that output is included in scientific\nworks, it is the responsibility of the author(s). We have\nrecently clarified our penalties for this. If a submission\ncontains incontrovertible evidence that the authors did not check\nthe results of LLM generation, this means we can’t trust anything\nin the paper.” [...]
\n\n“The penalty is a 1-year ban from arXiv followed by the\nrequirement that subsequent arXiv submissions must first be\naccepted at a reputable peer-reviewed venue,” Dietterich wrote.\nDietterich told me in an email on Friday morning that this is a\none-strike rule — meaning authors caught just once including AI\nslop in submissions will be banned — but that decisions will be\nopen to appeal.
\n
I see no cognitive dissonance in being pro-AI, in general, but vehemently anti-slop.
\n\nLink: 404media.co/new-arxiv-rules-ai-generated-papers-ban/
\n" }, { "title" : "The Talk Show: ‘A Sociopathic Father’", "date_published" : "2026-05-16T01:38:00Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-16T01:39:05Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/15/the-talk-show-447", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/15/the-talk-show-447", "external_url" : "https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2026/05/15/ep-447", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nAdam 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.
\n\nSponsored by:
\n\nLink: daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2026/05/15/ep-447
\n" }, { "title" : "Greg Brockman Officially Takes Control of Products at OpenAI, a Very Stable Well-Run Company", "date_published" : "2026-05-16T01:37:57Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-16T01:39:39Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/15/brockman-openai", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/15/brockman-openai", "external_url" : "https://www.wired.com/story/openai-reorg-greg-brockman-product/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nMaxwell Zeff, reporting for Wired (News+ link):
\n\n\n\n\nOpenAI told staff on Friday that it would reorganize the company\nas part of an ongoing effort to unify its product offerings, Wired\nhas learned. OpenAI cofounder and president Greg Brockman will now\nlead the company’s product strategy, in addition to his work on AI\ninfrastructure, OpenAI confirms to Wired. Brockman was previously\nassigned to oversee OpenAI products on an interim basis while the\nCEO of AGI deployment, Fidji Simo, was on medical leave; the\nchange is now official. [...]
\n\nThe company tells Wired that Simo remains on medical leave, and\nexpects her return, noting that she worked directly with Brockman\non these organizational changes.
\n
Yours truly, last month:
\n\n\n\n\nOpenAI’s work environment seems not merely overwhelming, but\ntorturous. I have no reason to believe Simo’s medical leave is\nanything but a legitimate medical leave, but I wouldn’t be\nsurprised if she never comes back. (What’s the point of being CEO\nof AGI deployment when there is no AGI to deploy?)
\n
Her title might as well be “CEO of Technology That Doesn’t Exist”.
\n\nLink: wired.com/story/openai-reorg-greg-brockman-product/
\n" }, { "title" : "Wanton Destruction of CBS Property", "date_published" : "2026-05-15T20:12:09Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-15T20:12:09Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/15/wanton-destruction-of-cbs-property", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/15/wanton-destruction-of-cbs-property", "external_url" : "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBKWKu2Rqxc", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\n“Good night and good luck, motherfuckers.”
\n\nLink: youtube.com/watch?v=eBKWKu2Rqxc
\n" }, { "title" : "Dropover, a Mac Shelf Utility That Makes Clever Use of Mouse Shaking", "date_published" : "2026-05-15T19:24:10Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-15T19:24:11Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/15/dropover", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/15/dropover", "external_url" : "https://dropoverapp.com/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nYesterday, regarding the “Magic Cursor” feature Google teased for its upcoming Googlebook/Aluminium OS platform, I wrote:
\n\n\n\n\nShaking your cursor over something is an interesting gesture. The\nonly feature I’m aware of that uses that gesture is MacOS’s\nfeature that makes your cursor bigger when you shake it, to help\nspot it on the display.
\n
Then, last evening, I selected a few files on my desktop, started dragging them, and shook my mouse cursor to conjure a drop shelf from Dropover, a Mac utility by developer Damir Tursunović that I’ve been using for about two years. As soon I shook my mouse, I smiled and thought, “Well, I should mention that.” So here I am, mentioning the gesture and Dropover.
\n\nYears ago I recommended Yoink, which is very much a direct competitor to Dropover. The basic idea with both apps is that sometimes you want a temporary “shelf” on which to drop items — a way station between where you’re dragging the items from and where you want to drop them. Yoink has options to appear only when you drag to the left edge of the screen, or to appear as soon as you start dragging anything. I have always used Yoink with it configured to show its shelf at the edge of the screen, because I only want it to appear when I need it. Appearing on every single drag is, to me, distracting. But sometimes the left edge of the display feels far away.
\n\nDropover has two options for appearing only when you want it, right where your cursor currently is. The first is the aforementioned mid-drag shake gesture. The other is an option to appear, while dragging, only when holding down a modifier key. The default key is Shift, which is what I use, but you can choose between Shift, Command, and Control. When I first started using Dropover, I leaned more on pressing Shift to invoke it. As time has gone on, more and more I use the shake gesture without thinking about it. Like yesterday. It feels like you’re saying “Give me a shelf right here” when you shake mid-drag. It’s clever and convenient, and, unlike using a modifier key, doesn’t require you to involve your other hand. (Dropover also lets you optionally use your MacBook’s notch as a drop target, and both apps let you drop items on their menu bar icons.)
\n\nDropover is a free download from the Mac App Store and unlocking all features costs just $7 (one-time purchase). Yoink costs $9, either from the web or the Mac App Store. Both are terrific apps and are worth checking out. And if you’re not already using a utility of this sort, you probably should be.
\n\nLink: dropoverapp.com/
\n" }, { "title" : "Aluminium OS: Google’s ‘Android for PC’ OS for Googlebooks", "date_published" : "2026-05-15T18:37:13Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-16T01:42:39Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/15/aluminiumos", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/15/aluminiumos", "external_url" : "https://aluminium-os.com/", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nUpdate: I originally posted this item thinking the aluminium-os.com website was official. It’s not. And the fact that it’s not is only mentioned in small print in the page footer. My bad, and my apologies for not noticing. No wonder I thought the descriptions were so un-Google-like in language and humility. This also explains the incongruity between Google’s statement that “Aluminium OS” is only a codename, and the existence of this site premised on the idea that the platform is named Aluminium OS.]
\n\n\n\n\nAluminium OS — internally codenamed ALOS — is Google’s entirely\nnew Android-based operating system built specifically for laptops\nand desktop computers.
\n
I like the name and wish they’d stick with it. But The Verge reported this week — re: Google’s Googlebook teaser announcement — that Peter Du of Google’s global communications team told them “We’ll have more to share on the exact OS branding later this year. We can confirm it is not Aluminium — that is the codename, not the official branding.” Maybe they’re going to call it “Google OS” given that they’re calling the devices Googlebooks?
\n\n\n\n\nThis is not ChromeOS with a Play Store tab. It is not an Android\nphone app scaling itself to a 15-inch display. Aluminium OS is\nbuilt from the ground up on Android 17, with a completely custom\nwindow manager, a real taskbar, virtual desktops, and Gemini AI\nbaked into every layer of the operating system.
\n\nFor over a decade, Google ran two separate systems in parallel — ChromeOS for laptops, Android for phones — and it showed. Apps\nbehaved differently across devices, engineering teams were split\nacross two codebases, and Google fell visibly behind Apple’s\nunified iPhone-iPad-Mac ecosystem. Aluminium OS is the decisive\nanswer to all of that.
\n
I find this description so refreshing, and so un-Google-like. It’s human and humble. I love the flat-out acknowledgement that Apple’s iPhone-iPad-Mac Continuity work has kicked Google’s ass. (It would be fascinating to see Apple acknowledge a similar degree of getting-its-ass-kicked, naming exactly which platforms were kicking its ass, with regard to Siri. I will not hold my breath.)
\n\nI’ve been vaguely aware since last year that Google had announced plans to “combine” ChromeOS and Android. There’s two ways to do that: (a) run Android apps in ChromeOS and do away with Android, as an OS, for device classes other than phones; or (b) do away with ChromeOS and build out Android for tablet and PC form factors. Option (a) never made any sense to me. All OSes have built-in browsers and web rendering engines. A web rendering engine does not make for a good foundation for an OS. I never thought ChromeOS sounded like a good idea, and when I’ve tinkered with Chromebooks, the experience was even worse than I expected. Another dose of welcome humility on this Aluminium mini site is the acknowledgement that ChromeOS is a market failure outside K-12:
\n\n\n\n\nChromeOS captured K-12 education but never broke into mainstream\nconsumer or enterprise markets at scale. Aluminium OS is built for\nall segments.
\n
Reading the rest of this site, I am much more intrigued by Aluminium OS than I expected to be:
\n\n\n\n\nOn-Device Code Assistance
\n\n
\nWrite, debug, explain, and refactor code directly in the terminal — no separate paid extension, no cloud subscription for basics.Natural Language Automation
\n
\nDescribe any repetitive task in plain English and Gemini automates\nit permanently as a saved one-command workflow.
They’re saying Aluminium OS is meant to serve as a developer workstation. We shall see how that pans out, but that’s a level of ambition that ChromeOS never even aspired to, let alone reached.
\n\nLink: aluminium-os.com/
\n" }, { "title" : "‘Musk v. Altman’ Closing Arguments", "date_published" : "2026-05-15T00:57:38Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-15T00:57:38Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/14/musk-v-altman-closing-arguments", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/14/musk-v-altman-closing-arguments", "external_url" : "https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/931006/musk-v-altman-closing-arguments-analysis?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6ImhxZzBnTXFpSk8iLCJwIjoiL2FpLWFydGlmaWNpYWwtaW50ZWxsaWdlbmNlLzkzMTAwNi9tdXNrLXYtYWx0bWFuLWNsb3NpbmctYXJndW1lbnRzLWFuYWx5c2lzIiwiZXhwIjoxNzc5MjM2OTUwLCJpYXQiOjE3Nzg4MDQ5NTB9.TXQtcV9vkuuKyqcrMaKtSqqoL9_wGWeSYgUyO6ZzK-Y", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nElizabeth Lopatto, reporting for The Verge (gift link):
\n\n\n\n\nToday was closing arguments in the Musk v. Altman trial, and I\nalmost feel bad writing about the unbelievable demolition derby I\njust witnessed. Steven Molo, Musk’s lawyer, stumbled over his\nwords. He at one point called Greg Brockman — a co-defendant — Greg Altman. He erroneously claimed that Musk wasn’t asking for\nmoney and had to be corrected by the judge. He made it clear we’ve\nheard from many liars over the past few weeks, but offered little\nevidence for Musk’s actual legal claims.
\n\nOpenAI’s lawyer, Sarah Eddy, countered this by simply arranging\nthe mountain of evidence that the company introduced in\nchronological order. She didn’t spend time trying to pretend\nanyone in this trial is especially reliable. She did, however, get\nthe zinger of the day, about Musk: “Even the mother of his\nchildren can’t back his story.” William Savitt, who took the\ndefendant baton after her presentation, demonstrated the number of\ntimes Musk “didn’t recall” some critical detail — and wondered\nhow a sophisticated businessman couldn’t understand or read a\nfour-page term sheet OpenAI had sent to him.
\n\nI found myself wondering, again, why we were all wasting our time\nhere. So let’s discuss the gossip, which is the real point of this\ntrial. How good was it? Here are my favorite nuggets.
\n
Link: theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/931006/musk-v…
\n" }, { "title" : "Let’s Run a Neologism Poll", "date_published" : "2026-05-15T00:53:54Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-15T20:19:08Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/14/neologism-poll", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/14/neologism-poll", "external_url" : "https://mastodon.social/@gruber/116575825801893849", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nAfter posting the previous item referencing dickpanels, a term I’ve been using since 2022, it occurred to me that they could also be called dickovers (like popovers, but dickheaded). The latter sounds more clever, but I worry it’s less clear. I’m seldom so indecisive, so I’m running a Mastodon poll.
\n\nLink: mastodon.social/@gruber/116575825801893849
\n" }, { "title" : "The Youth AI Safety Institute Has Margrethe Vestager’s Backing", "date_published" : "2026-05-15T00:03:13Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-15T00:54:33Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/14/vestager-ai-safety-institute", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/14/vestager-ai-safety-institute", "external_url" : "https://www.euronews.com/next/2026/05/12/margrethe-vestager-backs-new-ai-safety-institute-for-children-after-decade-regulating-big-", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nUna Hajdari, reporting for Euronews:
\n\n\n\n\nA new independent institute dedicated to making artificial\nintelligence safer for children will beformally [sic] presented at the\nDanish Parliament on Tuesday, with former European Commission\nexecutive vice-president Margrethe Vestager among those co-hosting\nthe event.
\n\nThe institute’s approach, as explained in a statement before the\nlaunch, is “modelled on independent crash-test ratings” for cars.\nThe idea, ostensibly, is that just as consumers can check whether\na vehicle is safe before buying it, parents should be able to do\nthe same for the AI their children use.
\n\nQuite what a crash test looks like for a chatbot, the institute\ndoes not yet say.
\n
Hopefully their AI crash testing winds up more effective than the GDPR “cookie” initiative overseen by Vestager, which led to the nonsense that required me to click through this ridiculous full-window dickpanel just to read the story. (I love that the dickpanel is titled “We value your privacy” and then begins with the sentence, “With your agreement, we and our 399 partners use cookies or similar technologies to store, access, and process personal data like your visit on this website, IP addresses and cookie identifiers.” If Euronews did not value your privacy, they might have 400 partners.)
\n\nLink: euronews.com/next/2026/05/12/margrethe-vestager-backs-new…
\n" }, { "title" : "Aided by Mythos Preview, Researchers Announce MacOS Kernel Exploit Circumventing M5 Memory Integrity Enforcement", "date_published" : "2026-05-14T23:44:20Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-14T23:44:20Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/14/m5-mie-exploit", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/05/14/m5-mie-exploit", "external_url" : "https://blog.calif.io/p/first-public-kernel-memory-corruption", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\nCalif, a security research team, on their blog:
\n\n\n\n\nMany security experts consider Apple devices to be the most secure\nconsumer platform. The latest flagship example is MIE (Memory\nIntegrity Enforcement), Apple’s hardware-assisted memory safety\nsystem built around ARM’s MTE (Memory Tagging Extension). It was\nintroduced as the marquee security feature for the Apple M5 and\nA19, specifically designed to stop memory corruption exploits, the\nvulnerability class behind many of the most sophisticated\ncompromises on iOS and macOS. [...]
\n\nOur macOS attack path was actually an accidental discovery. Bruce\nDang found the bugs on April 25th. Dion Blazakis joined Calif on\nApril 27th. Josh Maine built the tooling, and by May 1st we had a\nworking exploit.
\n\nWe didn’t build the chain alone. Mythos Preview helped identify\nthe bugs and assisted throughout exploit development. [...] To the\nbest of our knowledge, this is the first public macOS kernel\nexploit on MIE hardware. Again, we’ll publish our 55-page report\nafter Apple ships a fix.
\n
The Wall Street Journal ran a story on Calif’s announcement today that was heavy on hyperbole and extraordinarily light on technical details. Unsurprisingly, the team’s own blog post was much more informative and interesting. The achievement here is circumventing MIE.
\n\nLink: blog.calif.io/p/first-public-kernel-memory-corruption
\n" }, { "title" : "★ Nextpad++", "date_published" : "2026-05-13T02:22:16Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-13T22:51:46Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/nextpad", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/nextpad", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\n\nWindows 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.
\n\nNotepad++ is a longstanding open source (GPL) Windows text editor by Don Ho, which debuted back in 2003. Just adding “++” to the name might be misleading. The name implies that it’s like Microsoft’s Notepad plus a little more. But Notepad++ is in fact a wholly independent programming text editor, with a rich plugin library. It doesn’t resemble Microsoft’s Notepad much at all anymore. It’s over two decades old but remains quite popular. To some extent Notepad++ is sorta kinda the Windows peer to BBEdit.
\n\nNextpad++ is something new, from Andrey Letov. It’s a Mac port of the Notepad++ GPL code. It launched a few weeks ago under the name “Notepad++ for Mac”, but Letov had no right or permission to the name. That dispute has been settled, and Letov has renamed this project Nextpad++. The website’s About page has entire sections for “How Nextpad++ for Mac Was Built” and “Technology Stack”, and neither of those mentions AI, but this thing has to have been built using AI vibe-coding agents. That same About page also says the project only started on March 10, and the 1.0 version (under the defunct “Notepad++ for Mac” name) shipped just a few weeks after that. Something of the scope of this port couldn’t happen at that pace without AI. Update: On the Author page, not the About page, it states, “multi-agent AI development workflows are what make a one-person project at this scale practical.” Possible, sure, but I wouldn’t call this practical.
\n\nNextpad++ feels like a fever dream. Like what Mac apps would be if the Nazis had won WWII. Look, there are all sorts of foreign apps on the Mac. Electron apps. Apps ported with Wine. Web apps running in browser tabs or saved to the Dock. The curious new generation of lean-and-mean apps that are, in a technical sense, “native”, but are decidedly not Mac-assed apps, like Zed and Tolaria. All those types of apps feel alien on MacOS. Like different species. They are apps for the Mac but aren’t Mac apps. The Mac, however, is welcoming to them all, like the Mos Eisley cantina. We do serve their kind here. Nextpad++ isn’t like that. It doesn’t feel like an alien. It feels like Vincent D’Onofrio’s alien-bug-in-human-skin character from Men in Black.
\n\nLetov’s website describes Nextpad++ as “A real Mac app, not a Wine wrapper: Objective-C++ on top of Scintilla and Cocoa, shipped as a Universal Binary for Apple Silicon (M1–M5) and Intel Macs.” Ostensibly that’s a good thing. The download is only 14 MB. But Nextpad++ looks and feels like something that should not exist. The promotional screenshots on the app’s own website show it with 50 inscrutable toolbar buttons. It closes document tabs on mousedown, not mouseup. Its default font is 10-point Courier New. This is a real dialog box. It offers four settings for font antialiasing — “Default”, “None”, “Antialiased”, and “LCD Optimized” — but the default is not “Default”. No human being would port a complex Windows app like Notepad++ to the Mac like this.
\n\nI’m not anti-AI. I’m very much intrigued by the whole incipient vibe-coding phenomenon. But this app feels unholy.
\n\n\n\n\n " }, { "title" : "★ Software as the Product of Obsession Times Voice", "date_published" : "2026-05-05T21:01:05Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-05T21:01:06Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/software_as_the_product_of_obsession_times_voice", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/software_as_the_product_of_obsession_times_voice", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\n\nBack in 2009, Merlin Mann and I jointly gave a talk at SxSW titled “Obsession Times Voice”. Regarding how it turned out, I wrote:
\n\n\n\n\nMy muse for the session was this quote from Walt Disney: “We\ndon’t make movies to make money; we make money to make more\nmovies.” To me, that’s it. That’s the thing.
\n
Merlin and I were talking about independent writers and podcasters, because that’s what we were (and remain), but the concept applies just as perfectly to independent developers. This came to my mind after reading (and linking to) David Smith’s description of the new Pedometer++ today. Not just what it does, but why he spent six years making it. That’s the sort of productive obsession that fascinates me.
\n\nIce water is always refreshing, but it tastes better when you’re on a road trip to hell. It feels like the world of software is bifurcating quality-wise. This whole thing about Adobe’s new craptacular “modern” UI language (a.k.a. “Spectrum”) exemplifies one side of that bifurcation — the bad-and-getting-worse side. Software that is the product not just of an ignorance of long-established principles of interaction design, but of a willful disdain for those principles. What Adobe is now shipping is just inexplicably bad UI, ignoring literally decades of great work and long-mastered concepts — a lot of which work was pioneered by Adobe itself!
\n\nThe whole thing with MacOS 26 Tahoe is similar. To be clear, the UI crimes in Tahoe are deeply worrisome, but they are nowhere near as severe as those in Adobe’s Spectrum. But the problems with Tahoe are steps down the same fork in the road that Adobe took years ago. Spectrum is where Tahoe suggests that MacOS was headed under Alan Dye’s leadership: cross-platform sameness for the sake of sameness, with a complete disregard for longstanding platform nuances and idioms. In Spectrum’s case those platforms are MacOS and Windows and the web. In Tahoe’s case it’s MacOS and iOS.1
\n\nThe other side of the software fork is not deserted. It’s just populated, more than ever, by the products of small independent developers who obsess, first and foremost, over quality and artistic vision. Remarkable new software gems exhibiting spectacular UI design appear all the time. They’re just not coming from the biggest companies, the ones whose apps, alas, dominate not just our desktops and pockets but our entire culture today.2
\n\nThere’s always been software with poorly designed user interfaces. Much of it has been successful financially, sometimes spectacularly so. I’d argue, in all seriousness, that that’s the story of Microsoft in a nutshell. What’s new today is poorly designed software from developers from whom we expect better. In the old days there were people who would argue that prioritizing good user interface design was a waste of time — like spending hours decorating cupcakes destined for kindergarteners who are simply going to mash them into their mouths. (Again: cf. Microsoft’s undeniable market success.) What’s new today is people holding up objectively bad interaction design and proclaiming it to be good, and the product of teams that purportedly prioritize “design”, when it’s clear they have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s one thing to make something poorly designed and shrug on the grounds that it doesn’t matter. It’s another thing to make something poorly designed and hold it up as good design.
\n\nWe are justified to expect nothing short of insane greatness from Apple, and solidly good design from Adobe. In principle, all software ought to have well-designed user interfaces. That’s never going to be the case. But software for designers — Adobe’s raison d’être — absolutely demands to be well-designed itself, like how a book on writing must itself be well-written.
\n\nPerhaps I was wrong, though, to describe Adobe’s new UI as inexplicable. It’s just indefensible. The explanation for so much software going so rotten from a UI-design perspective is, the more I think about it, related to Nilay Patel’s “Software Brain” theory, which I’ve commented on both directly and indirectly. Here’s Patel’s definition of “software brain”:
\n\n\n\n\nThe simplest definition I’ve come up with is that it’s when you\nsee the whole world as a series of databases that can be\ncontrolled with the structured language of software code. Like I\nsaid, this is a powerful way of seeing things. So much of our\nlives run through databases, and a bunch of important companies\nhave been built around maintaining those databases and providing\naccess to them.
\n\nZillow is a database of houses. Uber is a database of cars and\nriders. YouTube is a database of videos. The Verge’s website is a\ndatabase of stories. You can go on and on and on. Once you start\nseeing the world as a bunch of databases, it’s a small jump to\nfeeling like you can control everything if you can just control\nthe data.
\n\nBut that doesn’t always work.
\n
You might think it counterintuitive that a movement obsessed with software would be spearheading a severe decline in the design quality of software, but in Patel’s definition, there’s no concept of software as art, as a practice, as a craft. Software brain is purely an obsession with software as a medium in and of itself. A means with no consideration for the end.
\n\nFramed in Walt Disney’s adage, software brain makes software only to make more money. The idea of making money in order to make more software — to afford the time and talent to craft it — does not compute. Framed in the metaphor that Steve Jobs used to close his introduction of the original iPad, and returned to again to close his final keynote at WWDC 2011, software brain is nowhere near the intersection of technology and the liberal arts. Software brain is so far down Technology Street that it’s no longer in the same zip code as Liberal Arts Avenue. Another way, perhaps, to define software brain is that it’s the utter rejection of Jobs’s maxim that “technology is not enough”. With software brain, technology is all there is.
\n\nI don’t want to belabor the similarities between Adobe’s Spectrum UI system and Apple’s Liquid Glass, because there are significant differences. Foremost, what’s wrong with Spectrum is wrong everywhere. Photoshop with Adobe’s new “modern” UI is, I suspect, just as bad a Windows app as it is a Mac app. Whereas the usability problems with Liquid Glass are lopsided platform-wise. It’s a litany of disasters on MacOS 26 Tahoe, but actually pretty good on Apple’s other version 26 OSes, especially iOS. There are aspects of Liquid Glass on iOS 26 that some people don’t like, but they’re literally skin-deep. Cosmetic details. Functionally, iOS 26 is pretty strong, and Apple made some very nice changes regarding the placement of things like search fields to improve consistency system-wide. I still have iOS 18 running on my year-old iPhone 16 Pro, and there are very few things I prefer in iOS 18 versus iOS 26. Whereas I’d be sick if I had to work in MacOS 26 Tahoe every day.
\n\nThat’s my point here. iOS 26 doesn’t suffer in any way — not even one teensy little single way — from MacOS UI idioms being inappropriately applied to the iPhone. On the iPad, maybe there’s a little of that, like, say, the weird way iPadOS 26 uses Mac-style red / yellow / green window control buttons but makes them too small to use, so before you use them, you need a gesture to embiggen them temporarily first. But the implementation of “Liquid Glass” on MacOS Tahoe is just riddled with iOS-isms that aren’t appropriate on MacOS. So many decades-old Mac UI nuances and idioms were just ignored. They weren’t changed, they weren’t updated, they were just ignored. You either see that this is true or you don’t, and if you don’t see it, you shouldn’t be designing the Mac user interface. ↩︎︎
\nConsider the age of television. Television is the broadcast of motion pictures with sound. Cinema is an artform. But at the peak of television’s hegemony over western culture and mass media, the artistic quality of almost everything on TV was terrible. It was slop. It wallowed in its own sloppiness. This, despite the fact that cinematic artists had largely mastered the artform in the decades preceding TV. TV became popular in the 1950s and culturally dominant in the 1960s. But Citizen Kane came out in 1941. The network executives with “TV brain” in the second half of the 20th century didn’t even consider TV as a medium for art. They just cared that it was watched. It was judged only by ratings and ad revenue, not artistic merit. That’s what’s happening with software right now. But remember too, that as dreadful television programming rocketed to stratospheric popularity in the 1970s, that same decade saw a remarkable explosion in innovative filmmaking in movie theaters. Keep the faith. ↩︎︎
\nSpeaking 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.
\n\nSam Altman was the president of Y Combinator for several years, and left to become the full-time CEO of OpenAI. The New Yorker quotes Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham multiple times, in the context of Altman’s trustworthiness. (Some of those quotes are firsthand, others secondhand.) Graham’s role in the story — particularly his public remarks after publication — comprised an entire section in my own take on the New Yorker piece, wherein I concluded:
\n\n\n\n\nI would characterize Graham’s tweets re: Altman this week as\nemphasizing only that Altman was not fired or otherwise forced\nfrom YC, and could have stayed as CEO at YC if he’d found another\nCEO for OpenAI. But for all of Graham’s elucidating engagement on\nTwitter/X this week regarding this story, he’s dancing around the\ncore question of the Farrow/Marantz investigation, the one right\nthere in The New Yorker’s headline: Can Sam Altman be trusted?\n“We didn’t ‘remove’ Sam Altman” and “We didn’t want him to\nleave” are not the same things as saying, say, “I think Sam\nAltman is honest and trustworthy” or “Sam Altman is a man of\nintegrity”. If Paul Graham were to say such things, clearly and\nunambiguously, those remarks would carry tremendous weight. But — rather conspicuously to my eyes — he’s not saying such things.
\n
The thing that stuck in my craw is this: Does Y Combinator own a stake in OpenAI? And if they do, given OpenAI’s sky-high valuation, isn’t that stake worth billions of dollars?
\n\nOpenAI was seeded by an offshoot of Y Combinator called YC Research in 2016 — when Altman was running YC. In December 2023, the well-known AI expert (and AI-hype skeptic) Gary Marcus wrote the following, in a piece on Altman’s trustworthiness in the wake of the OpenAI board saga that saw Altman fired, re-hired, and the board purged in the course of a tumultuous week:
\n\n\n\n\nAfter poking around, I found out that “I have no equity in OpenAI”\nwas only half the truth; while Altman to my knowledge holds no\ndirect equity in OpenAI, he does have an indirect stake in\nOpenAI, and that fact should have been disclosed.
\n\nIn particular, he owns a stake of Y Combinator, and Y Combinator\nowns a stake in OpenAI. It may well be worth tens of millions of\ndollars; even for Altman, that’s not trivial. Since he was\nPresident of Y Combinator, and CEO of OpenAI; he surely was\naware of this.
\n
So it’s well known that Y Combinator owns some stake in OpenAI. But how big is that stake? This seems like devilishly difficult information to obtain. I asked around and a little birdie who knows several OpenAI investors came back with an answer: Y Combinator owns about 0.6 percent of OpenAI. At OpenAI’s current $852 billion valuation, that’s worth over $5 billion.
\n\nGraham and his wife Jessica Livingston are two of Y Combinator’s four founding partners. The fact that Paul Graham personally has billions of dollars at stake with OpenAI doesn’t mean that his public opinion on Sam Altman’s trustworthiness and leadership is invalid. But it certainly seems like the sort of thing that ought to be disclosed when quoting Graham as an Altman character reference. A billion dollars here, a billion there — that adds up to the sort of money that might skew a fellow’s opinion.
\n\n\n\n\n " }, { "title" : "★ Crimes Against Decency Need as Much Cover-Up as Crimes Against the Law", "date_published" : "2026-05-03T23:25:41Z", "date_modified" : "2026-05-04T01:51:06Z", "id" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/crimes_against_decency_need_as_much_cover-up_as_crimes_against_the_law", "url" : "https://daringfireball.net/2026/05/crimes_against_decency_need_as_much_cover-up_as_crimes_against_the_law", "authors" : [ { "name" : "John Gruber" } ], "content_html" : "\n\nA follow-up point to Friday’s post about Meta unceremoniously shitcanning its entire contract with Sama, the Kenyan contractor that employed over 1,100 contractors to serve as Mechanical Turks for Meta’s AI efforts, after a few of the contractors told investigative reporters about the incredibly private things they witnessed from footage captured by users of Meta’s AI Glasses.
\n\nThere is no point getting any more outraged or disgusted at Meta for firing these contractors than you already were in the first place. They had to fire them. The moment this investigative report was published in late February, the fate of Sama’s Kenyan operation was sealed. They were toast. The key to understanding this is that Meta runs a criminal enterprise. Most of the organized crimes Meta commits aren’t crimes against the legal code (although some are), but rather crimes against public perception and human decency. Remember what they did with Onavo, their VPN product? Was that illegal? Dunno. Was it outrageous? Hell yes.
\n\nLet’s just concede for the sake of argument that there’s nothing illegal about the way Meta was sending video footage from users’ AI Glasses to contractors in Kenya to review. I presume they’re still doing it today, just with different contractors, in a different computer cubicle sweatshop, perhaps in a different country. Nothing to cover up legally. But just the plain description of what they’re doing fills people with a visceral repulsion. However, people only have that visceral reaction if they know what’s going on. Part of the whole premise is that the whole thing has to be kept on the q.t.
\n\nIf it said right on the box that when you use Meta AI Glasses, the footage might be reviewed by third-party contractors, and when that footage is reviewed, you — the user whose footage is being reviewed — won’t know it’s happening and won’t get prompted first for permission (because you’ve actually OK’d it in advance just by hitting the “Accept” button on the long dense terms of service that literally almost no one reads because such terms are written in impenetrable legalese), almost no one would buy them. And if it were more widely known that this is how these glasses work, there’d be more of a social stigma surrounding those who wear them.1
\n\nThat, I think, is the primary reason why the contractors were in Kenya in the first place, and their replacements (now that Meta has terminated its contract with Sama) are surely still in some third-world country. It’s not about the lower wages (but that doesn’t hurt). It’s about the fact that the entire existence of the operation is easier to keep quiet when it’s literally on the other side of the planet. It’s a goddamn marvel that the investigative reporters from those two Swedish newspapers found them.
\n\nMost illegal acts are scandalous, but many scandalous acts are perfectly legal. But all scandalous acts need to be covered up. The operation has to be kept quiet, has to be covered up, because it’s unacceptable. It’s outrageous. If this were more widely publicized, Meta would suffer on two fronts. First, it would become better known that there’s nothing artificial about some of what they call “AI” — it’s in fact powered by human intelligence, just in another hemisphere. Second, and related to the first, some of the interactions you have with Meta AI — including images and video you send it, and images and video captured by Meta AI Glasses — are reviewed by human contractors. People write things and show things to AI, thinking it’s kept private between them and a computer program, that they would never share if they knew it might be seen by human beings paid by the AI provider to refine the training and correct its mistakes. A lot of people only use these “AI” products because they have no idea what’s actually going on.
\n\n“Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.”
\n—Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack
Anyway, enjoy the Meta AI built into WhatsApp and Instagram. And maybe keep a link to that report on Meta’s contractors in Kenya handy for anyone you meet who wears AI Glasses.
\n\nIt’s a fascinating mystery what becomes a scandal and what doesn’t. One flaw in our news media culture is that stories from other countries, especially countries where English is not the primary language, tend never to gain traction here. You’d think the Internet, and the rise of very good automated language translation, would change this. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. After this story came out in February — a joint investigation co-published by the Swedish publications Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten — it just faded away after a few days. I remember thinking when I linked to it, “Man, this feels potentially explosive — this might blow up into a big scandal.” But it didn’t. I didn’t forget about it, but I hadn’t thought about it in weeks, until I happened to catch this news — via Nick Heer — that Meta had severed ties with Sama, the contracting firm.
\n\nI can’t help but think that if the exact same original report had been published by, say, The New York Times or The New Yorker, or in video form by 60 Minutes, that it might have blown up into a sizable scandal and public relations disaster for Meta. But as it stands, it largely passed without note. In addition to the fact that the original story was published in Sweden, the other missing factor is they didn’t publish leaked images or footage from users of Meta AI Glasses. We read testimony from these Kenyans that as part of their jobs, they watched AI Glasses owners having sex and going to the toilet, but we never see footage of AI Glasses owners having sex or going to the toilet. That shouldn’t make a huge difference, but human nature is such that it does. ↩︎
\n![Just look at page 44](\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/05/scotus-1910-rules-p-44.jpeg\"){kind=link}
![their zero-sum visualization of team stats](\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/05/apple-sports-team-stats-wtf.png\"){kind=link}
![\n](\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/05/gallup-data-center-poll-by-party.png\"){kind=link}
![this](\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/05/euronews-dickpanel.jpeg\"){kind=link}
![with 50 inscrutable toolbar buttons](\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/05/nextpad++.png\"){kind=link}
![This](\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/05/nextpad-editing-contextmenu.png\"){kind=link}
![four settings for font antialiasing](\"https://daringfireball.net/misc/2026/05/nextpad-antialiasing.png\"){kind=link}