Linked List: October 30, 2026

Friday, 30 October 2026

Sponsorship Openings for Daring Fireball (Including The Talk Show) 

Sponsorships have continued selling briskly, of late. Knock on wood. As of yesterday, the next opening on the schedule wasn’t until the last week of December, and the Q1 2027 schedule is already filling up. However, due to some schedule rejiggering, next week is now open. Update: OK, next week has been sold, but Christmas week remains open. That’s a good week at DF. I keep posting and readers are often more bored than usual. Also a good week to promote games.

If you’ve got a product or service you think would be of interest to DF’s audience of people obsessed with high quality and good design, just email me — especially if you can act quick for next week’s opening. I’m also booking sponsorships for Q1 and Q2 2027, and over half of those weeks are already sold. The rate for the two remaining weeks in 2026 is $11,000, and the rate for open weeks in 2027 is $12,500.

The sponsorship schedule for The Talk Show also has openings, including for the next few episodes in November and December. The general rule of thumb is that sponsorship spots on The Talk Show cost one-third the rate for the weekly spots on DF. I’m happy to work out deals a little lower than that for first-time sponsors. If you’ve got a product or service you’d like to hear pitched on America’s favorite three-star podcast, get in touch.

The Only Good Easter Eggs Are Whole-Assed Easter Eggs 

Marcin Wichary on the original iPod easter egg on Apple Music’s website 404 page:

I am usually not a fan of easter eggs — most of them are poorly made — but this might be the best iPod recreation I’ve seen, and it’s an interesting thing to study:

  • I think it generally covers all the modes etc.
  • (with small exceptions) the typography looks accurate,
  • it has the little “haptic” beeps,
  • it has proper acceleration and the scrollbar,
  • it has a little music library with various playlists,
  • I have only noticed a few small bugs.

It looks real, sounds real, feels real. Don’t bother with your easter egg idea if you’re going to half-ass it.

Update: The original iPod itself had a great easter egg: a hidden version of the classic game Breakout. Apple’s new easter egg web-page iPod includes the hardware iPod easter egg. Just go to Settings → About and hold down the center button for 5 seconds. An easter egg in the easter egg. That’s how you do it.

GM to Pay $220 Million After Betraying Their Own Drivers’ Privacy 

Jonathan Stempel, reporting for Reuters:

General Motors will pay $220 million to settle ​allegations that it illegally sold drivers’ private behavior and location data to brokers, who then sold the information to insurers that used it to set and sometimes increase rates.

The settlement, announced on Thursday, resolves claims by the attorneys general of 35 US states and the District ​of Columbia over the automaker’s Smart Driver program, which enrolled millions of drivers ​between 2016 and its discontinuation in 2024. Other regulators have also reviewed GM’s handling of driver data.

GM was accused of pitching Smart Driver to help ​people improve their personal driving safety, only to violate drivers’ privacy by reneging on its ​promise not to sell their data without permission. Many people who signed up were also enrolled in GM’s OnStar safety, navigation and diagnostic service.

Reuters’s milquetoast headline was “GM to Pay $220 Million to Settle Allegations It Violated Drivers’ Privacy”. They’re not mere allegations. They did it. They just betrayed their customers’ privacy to make a few quick bucks.

I’ve driven a few GM rentals in recent years, and I’d almost certainly never buy one of their cars just because they’re poorly-designed pieces of crap. But even if they made a decent car I wouldn’t buy it. They’re still seemingly digging in on the CarPlay thing, and they ratted out their own customers to insurance companies.

Patrick Stewart Dies at 86 

Aaron Couch, The Hollywood Reporter:

Patrick Stewart, the sophisticated actor who brought a Shakespearean touch to Star Trek and X-Men as he made an otherworldly transformation from British stage veteran to sci-fi icon, has died. He was 86.

Stewart died Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles following “a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia,” longtime spokesperson Kelly Bush Novak announced.

There’s an old adage that everyone’s favorite SNL cast is the one from their teenage years. It’s probably true for Star Trek too. My favorite is The Next Generation and it’s not even close. Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard was just so fucking cool. Smart, wise, firm, curious, empathetic, and just fucking cool. Those same adjectives seemingly all apply to Stewart himself.

See Kottke for a bunch more links.