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line 13, column 66: Unregistered link relationship: shorturl (48 occurrences) [help]

	<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wjl" />
                                                                  ^

Source: http://daringfireball.net/index.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">
<title>Daring Fireball</title>
<subtitle>By John Gruber</subtitle>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/" />
<link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/main" />
<id>https://daringfireball.net/feeds/main</id>
<updated>2025-08-24T00:26:18Z</updated><rights>Copyright © 2025, John Gruber</rights><entry>
<title>Phoenix.new</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://phoenix.new/?utm_source=df" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wjl" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/23/phoenix-new" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42177</id>
<published>2025-08-24T00:26:17Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-24T00:26:18Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
My thanks to <a href="https://fly.io/">Fly.io</a> for sponsoring last week at DF to promote Phoenix.new, their new AI app-builder. Just describe your idea, and Phoenix.new quickly generates a working real-time Phoenix app: clustering, pubsub, and presence included. Ideal for multiplayer games, collaborative tools, or quick weekend experiments. Built by <a href="https://fly.io/">Fly.io</a>, deploy wherever you want. <a href="https://phoenix.new/?utm_source=df">Just try it</a>, and see how far you can go.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Phoenix.new’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/23/phoenix-new"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Base 3.0</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://menial.co.uk/blog/2025/08/16/base-3.0-released/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wjj" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/22/base-3" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42175</id>
<published>2025-08-22T16:12:42Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-22T17:52:13Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Nice update to Menial’s excellent SQLite developer tool for the Mac. Worth the <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/02/22/base">wait</a>.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Base 3.0’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/22/base-3"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Apple TV+ Subscription Price Increasing From $10 to $13 Per Month, but the Annual Price Remains Unchanged at $99</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://9to5mac.com/2025/08/21/apple-tv-subscription-price-increase/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wji" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/apple-tv-plus-price-increase" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42174</id>
<published>2025-08-22T02:27:03Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-22T02:28:42Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Benjamin Mayo, 9to5Mac:
<blockquote>
Apple today announced that the monthly price of Apple TV+ is
rising in the United States and some international markets. From
today, the monthly subscription will cost $12.99, up from $9.99.
Existing subscribers will see the price change 30 days after the
next renewal date. The pricing for yearly TV+ subscriptions and
the Apple One services bundle remains unchanged.
</blockquote>
The annual price for a standalone TV+ subscription — unchanged, as Mayo reports — remains $99. The usual rule-of-thumb for subscriptions of any sort seems to be to charge 10× the monthly rate for an annual subscription. That’s exactly where the TV+ month/annual prices were before today. Now, the annual subscription price isn’t just a little bit cheaper than 12× the monthly price ($156), but a lot cheaper.
This seems to be a clear sign that streaming services are different than most subscriptions. People subscribe to newspapers or blog/newsletters and they stay subscribed, because they want to read regularly. Same for a music subscription, like Spotify or Apple Music — people want to listen to music all the time. Churn is just naturally higher with streaming video — people subscription hop. Subscribe, catch up on all the exclusive content you’ve missed, then unsubscribe. Subscribe again when there are a few more exclusive shows you’ve missed again. Unsubscribe again. And Apple TV+ <a href="https://churnkey.co/blog/churn-rates-for-streaming-services/">has been reported to have higher than average churn</a>. So I think today’s price hike, affecting only the monthly price, is about dealing with that. If you want to subscription hop, Apple TV+ is going to cost a bit more. If you want to stay subscribed to Apple TV+, you really ought to subscribe annually (or subscribe to Apple One and get Music, Arcade, and additional iCloud storage bundled together).
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple TV+ Subscription Price Increasing From $10 to $13 Per Month, but the Annual Price Remains Unchanged at $99’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/apple-tv-plus-price-increase"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Fox One Streaming Service Launches</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.foxcorporation.com/news/business/2025/fox-one-now-available-to-stream-across-web-mobile-and-connected-tv-devices/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wjh" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/fox-one-streaming" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42173</id>
<published>2025-08-22T02:10:34Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-22T02:36:49Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Fox (capitalization verbatim):
<blockquote>
Fox Corporation today announced the official launch of FOX One, a
bold new streaming service that brings together the full portfolio
of FOX’s News, Sports and Entertainment branded content — all in
one place, both live and on demand.
Available today across major web, mobile and connected TV
platforms, FOX One is priced at $19.99/month with a 7-day free
trial or $199.99/year, with the option to add-on B1G+ or bundle
FOX Nation for an even greater value. Starting October 2,
customers will also have the opportunity to bundle FOX One with
ESPN DTC Unlimited for $39.99/month.
</blockquote>
I just mentioned yesterday, <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/msnbc_ms_now_rebranding">re: MS NOW’s idiotic backronym</a>, that Fox often styles its name in all caps without pretending the f-o-x letters stand for anything. Anyway, $20/month seems steep, but Fox carries a lot of sports.
<a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/story/id1828048872">Apple is promoting the launch prominently in the App Store</a> (including Fox’s preferred all-caps styling), no doubt because Fox — unlike <a href="https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/disney-and-apple-are-breaking-up-over-app-store-fees/ar-AA1sJlmU">certain</a> <a href="https://www.netflix.com/tudum">well-established</a> streaming services — offers its subscriptions via IAP.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Fox One Streaming Service Launches’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/fox-one-streaming"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Meta’s Ray-Bans Have Sold 2 Million Pairs, Total, as of February</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/news/613292/meta-ray-ban-2-million-10-million-capacity-subscription-essilor-luxottica-earnings" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wjg" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/meta-ray-ban-sales" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42172</id>
<published>2025-08-22T00:33:56Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-22T00:56:34Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Sean Hollister, reporting for The Verge back in February:
<blockquote>
Two weeks ago, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/meta/603674/meta-ray-ban-smart-glasses-sales">we exclusively reported Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s
remarks</a> on how many pairs of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses
the company had recently sold and might theoretically sell: 1
million pairs in 2024, with the possibility of reaching 2 million
or even 5 million by the end of 2025.
But glasses giant EssilorLuxottica, which produces those glasses
for Meta, has now publicly revealed 2 million pairs of Meta
Ray-Bans have sold since their October 2023 debut, and that it’s
aiming to produce 10 million Meta glasses each year by the end
of 2026.
</blockquote>
<a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/18/bezos-numbers-smart-glasses-counterpoint">I mocked a report from Counterpoint Research</a> this week for its Bezos Numbers on smart glasses sales growth. Here are some real numbers from the current market leader. For context, Steve Jobs’s stated goal for the iPhone, at launch in mid-2007, was 10 million iPhones sold by the end of 2008 — a goal they reached <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2008/10/apple-officially-surpasses-10-million-iphones-sold-in-2008/">before the holiday quarter of 2008 even started</a>.
I feel close to certain that smart glasses are going to be a big product category. But they’re not there yet. A few million units is something, but it’s not a hit. Given the current capabilities — a camera on your face, speakers on the temples, and a microphone for talking to the system — I don’t see how they currently beat a smartphone and wireless earbuds. If you already carry a phone and earbuds everywhere you go, when would you want Meta Glasses? For taking lower-quality photos and videos, and listening to lower-quality audio? I don’t think the product category is going to take off until there’s a visual HUD in the lenses, and that still seems years away, at any price.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Meta’s Ray-Bans Have Sold 2 Million Pairs, Total, as of February’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/meta-ray-ban-sales"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Herdling</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://herdling.game/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wjf" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/herdling" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42171</id>
<published>2025-08-22T00:22:19Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-22T00:29:07Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
New video game, just out:
<blockquote>
Herdling is a brand new adventure from <a href="https://okomotive.ch/">Okomotive</a>, creators of
the atmospheric and acclaimed FAR games, and <a href="https://panic.com/">Panic</a>,
publishers of Firewatch.
</blockquote>
Looks absolutely beautiful. Painterly. <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/darthbluesky.bsky.social/post/3lww42zzkjs2q">Darth says it’s good</a>.
Available now for Steam, PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and Epic Games Store. Not (yet?) in the Mac App Store — not because of any hassles regarding the App Store, but because there’s not (yet?) a Mac port of the game, period.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Herdling’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/herdling"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>‘Micro-Soft’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/msnbc_ms_now_rebranding#fn1-2025-08-20" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wje" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/micro-soft" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42170</id>
<published>2025-08-21T19:49:04Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-21T19:57:17Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Added this footnote just now to yesterday’s piece on MSNBC’s rebranding to “MS NOW”:
<blockquote>
Historical pedantry: from 1975–1979, <a href="https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Microsoft">Microsoft spelled its name “Micro-Soft”</a>, with, yes, an uppercase S. But that’s not camel-case, and that hyphenated spelling is as much a footnote to Microsoft’s brand history as the <a href="https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/03/29/how-apples-logo-started-out-as-the-most-expensive-and-became-the-most-iconic">woodcut Isaac-Newton-under-a-tree logo</a> is to Apple. <a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/Microsoft_(1975).svg">Microsoft’s logo from that era</a> was very disco-’70s and kind of cool — but while “Micro” and “Soft” were broken across two lines, there’s no hyphen in the logotype.
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘Micro-Soft’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/21/micro-soft"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/msnbc_ms_now_rebranding" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wjd" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025://1.42169</id>
<published>2025-08-21T01:20:10Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-21T19:59:02Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">The oddest part about the whole situation is that CNBC is being spun out into Versant, too, but while they’re losing the NBC peacock logo, they’re just keeping their name, unchanged.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/08/18/msnbc-rebrand-ms-now-versant">Sara Fischer, Axios</a>:
<blockquote>
MSNBC, the progressive cable network owned by NBCUniversal, is
rebranding to MS NOW, an acronym that stands for My Source for
News, Opinion and the World.
The rebrand is part of a wider effort by NBCU to create a
distinction between the cable networks it plans to spin out and
the remaining NBCU parent company. As part of the rebrand, select
cable networks that will be spun out into <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/06/10/all-eyes-on-versant-media-trends">Versant</a>, including
CNBC, Golf Channel, GolfNow, MSNBC and SportsEngine, will all
drop the iconic peacock logo that has for decades served as
NBCU’s logo.
</blockquote>
There’s a lot to unpack here. First, “Versant” itself is a pretty bad name (feels so vague — seems like the name of a fake company in a movie or TV show) so it’s no surprise that the same nitwits are botching Versant’s rebranded properties. But given that NBCUniversal is apparently forcing MSNBC to take the “NBC” out of its name, “MSNOW” isn’t a bad new name. But it’s not a good new name either. And they’re apparently using a space: “MS NOW”, yet <a href="https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/msnbc-new-name-ms-now-1236491621/">also seem confused</a> (or haven’t even decided yet) whether it’s supposed to be pronounced letter-by-letter (em ess en bee see) or as two letters and a word (em ess now). Saying the “NOW” as the word now makes sense for a 24/7 channel, but if it’s a word, the whole name should be styled “MS Now”. (Fox News styles their name as “FOX News” in some places, but never pretends the f-o-x is an acronym.)
The “My Source News Opinion World” backronym is so dumb it boggles the mind. I genuinely wonder if someone had ChatGPT do that. You can have a series of letters as a name — especially as a TV channel — without those letters really standing for anything. CNN is technically an acronym for “Cable News Network” but they’ve effectively just been “CNN” for decades now. The name “MSNBC” came from the fact that, at launch in the 1990s, <a href="https://www.threads.com/@mossbergwalt/post/DNipvTJt4HW">it debuted as a collaboration</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_MSNBC:_1996–2007">between Microsoft’s MSN and NBC News</a>. But Microsoft hasn’t been involved with the cable channel <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-dec-24-fi-msnbc24-story.html">for 20 years</a> — the “MS” in “MSNBC” hasn’t stood for anything since 2005. (In fact, MSN itself is another good example. It originally stood for “Microsoft Network”, even though Microsoft has never styled their name with a camel-cased S.<a href="#fn1-2025-08-20">1</a> But it’s really just “MSN” now.)<a href="#fn2-2025-08-20">2</a>
<a href="https://www.threads.com/@tomgara/post/DNgNQeQOlIB">Tom Gara, writing on Threads</a>:
<blockquote>
The only real fuck up with the MSNBC rebrand is that they made up
a dumb sounding fake acronym. It’s completely unnecessary! Just
say “we’re changing our name to MS NOW to reflect the urgency of
the moment.” Nobody has ever thought about what the old acronym
stood for and nobody needed a new fake one.
</blockquote>
There is another fuck up, though: the <a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/msnow.png">logo</a> is atrocious. What is that flag? It looks like the Austrian flag (🇦🇹), not America’s. But are we sure it even is a flag? Maybe it’s a paper receipt and the red stripes are those marks <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/DollarGeneral/comments/p7sl4t/why_does_the_printer_do_the_pink_streak_near_the/">when it’s time to replace the roll</a>? <a href="https://www.threads.com/@jonathanhoefler/post/DNk64Vxgah-">Jonathan Hoefler, on Threads</a>:
<blockquote>
My personal benchmark for a logo is that it shouldn’t look like a
pension fund.
</blockquote>
The oddest part about the whole situation is that CNBC is being spun out into Versant, too, but while they’re losing the NBC peacock logo, they’re just keeping their name, unchanged. <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/18/comcast-versant-rename-msnbc-peacock-logos.html">From CNBC’s own coverage of MSNBC’s rebranding</a>:
<blockquote>
While MSNBC and NBC News will have duplications in coverage,
CNBC’s news organization is already separate enough from NBC News
that executives decided it didn’t need a name change. Also,
technically, the “NBC” in “CNBC” never stemmed from National
Broadcasting Co. Rather, CNBC stands for “Consumer News and
Business Channel.”
</blockquote>
Lastly, shoutout to M.G. Siegler for <a href="https://spyglass.org/ms-now-msnbc/">coining the term peacockblocked</a> to describe MSNBC’s branding plight.
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1-2025-08-20">
Historical pedantry: from 1975–1979, <a href="https://logos.fandom.com/wiki/Microsoft">Microsoft spelled its name “Micro-Soft”</a>, with, yes, an uppercase S. But that’s not camel-case, and that hyphenated spelling is as much a footnote to Microsoft’s brand history as the <a href="https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/03/29/how-apples-logo-started-out-as-the-most-expensive-and-became-the-most-iconic">woodcut Isaac-Newton-under-a-tree logo</a> is to Apple. <a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/Microsoft_(1975).svg">Microsoft’s logo from that era</a> was very disco-’70s and kind of cool — but while “Micro” and “Soft” were broken across two lines, there’s no hyphen in the logotype. <a href="#fnr1-2025-08-20" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩︎︎</a>
</li>
<li id="fn2-2025-08-20">
If I’d been in the room, my spitball idea for a new name would have been MNC. Take out every other letter to break both the NBC and Microsoft connotations, but leave behind an acronym that looks and sounds like a tighter, more efficient version of MSNBC. If they really insisted that the acronym stand for something, it could be Modern (or Major?) News Channel. <a href="#fnr2-2025-08-20" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.">↩︎</a>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></content>
<title>★ MSNBC, Spinning Out of NBCUniversal, Rebrands as ‘MS NOW’ With a Godawful Backronym and Even Worse Logo</title></entry><entry>
<title>Claim Chowder: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei Five Months Ago</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-ceo-ai-90-percent-code-3-to-6-months-2025-3" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wjc" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/20/claim-chowder-amodei" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42168</id>
<published>2025-08-20T15:27:51Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-20T15:27:52Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Kwan Wei Kevin Tan, reporting for Business Insider five months ago:
<blockquote>
Dario Amodei, the CEO of the AI startup Anthropic, said on Monday
that AI, and not software developers, could be writing all of the
code in our software in a year.
“I think we will be there in three to six months, where AI is
writing 90% of the code. And then, in 12 months, we may be in a
world where AI is writing essentially all of the code,” Amodei
said at a Council of Foreign Relations event on Monday.
</blockquote>
Complete bullshit, but, I guess he still has one month to go. (<a href="https://www.threads.com/@davew/post/DNhTsistxCs">Via Dave Winer</a> on Threads.)
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Claim Chowder: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei Five Months Ago’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/20/claim-chowder-amodei"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>‘No Frame Missed’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEalzEnT70k" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wjb" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/20/no-frame-missed" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42167</id>
<published>2025-08-20T15:14:59Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-20T15:15:00Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Five-minute short film from Apple, about people with severe hand tremors from Parkinson’s disease using the iPhone’s Action mode to shoot steady video — including filmmaker Brett Harvey, who was diagnosed at the way-too-young age of 37. There’s also a brief short with Harvey explaining the settings to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/shorts/X7Y262xvV94">shoot in Action mode by default</a>, or to use voice controls to avoid needing to tap buttons.
Apple at its very best. If this doesn’t hit you, you’re not hooked up right.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘No Frame Missed’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/20/no-frame-missed"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>‘American’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2025/06/28/american/" />
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<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42166</id>
<published>2025-08-20T01:46:59Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-20T01:54:16Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Kieran Healy on, just now — amidst all this — becoming an American citizen:
<blockquote>
When I sat down to write something about becoming a citizen, I was immediately tangled up in a skein of questions about the character of citizenship, the politics of immigration, and the relationship of individuals to the state. These have all been in the news recently; perhaps you have heard about it. These questions ask how polities work, how they impose themselves upon us, how power is exercised. They are tied up with deep-rooted principles, claims and myths — as you please — about where authority comes from and how it is or whether it ever has been justly applied. These are not easy matters to understand in principle or resolve in practice. Nor can they simply be dismissed. But I am not writing this note because I want to take on these questions, even though I acknowledge them. I am writing this because I do not want to forget how I felt yesterday.
</blockquote>
Beautiful.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘American’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/19/kieran-healy-american"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/iphone_mirroring_more_than_one_iphone" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wj9" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025://1.42165</id>
<published>2025-08-20T01:17:47Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-20T01:17:47Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">Long story short: there’s an “iPhone” menu under “Widgets” in System Settings → Desktop & Dock.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
I’ve been using two iPhones throughout the summer — one running iOS 18, the other running iOS 26 betas. I found myself wanting to switch between them with iPhone Mirroring on my Mac, but couldn’t figure out how. The answer, from Apple Support, “<a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/120421">iPhone Mirroring: Use your iPhone from your Mac</a>”:
<blockquote>
If you have more than one iPhone that is both signed in to your
Apple Account and nearby, you can choose the one that your Mac
uses for mirroring and iPhone notifications:
<ol>
<li>Choose Apple menu  > System Settings, then click Desktop &
Dock in the sidebar.</li>
<li>Choose your iPhone from the iPhone pop-up menu on the right.
This menu appears just below the “Use iPhone widgets” setting.
It appears only when your Mac detects more than one nearby
iPhone that can be used for mirroring.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
That pop-up menu is about halfway down the screen in Desktop & Dock, in the “Widgets” section.<a href="#fn1-2025-08-19">1</a> I suspected this was possible, but I had to search the web (<a href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/04/try_switching_to_kagi">via Kagi</a>, the best search engine in the world, of course) to find the answer. I never would have thought to look in System Settings → Desktop & Dock, let alone, even if I happened to look in that panel, all the way down under “Widgets”.
Places where I did look:
<ul>
<li>On the Mac, in the iPhone Mirroring app’s own Settings window. Nope.</li>
<li>On the iPhone, in Settings → General → Airplay & Continuity. This is where you can control which Mac or Macs your iPhone is available from with iPhone Mirroring (e.g. you can go here to revoke access from a certain Mac), but it doesn’t help you change which iPhone, among multiple, that any particular Mac connects to.</li>
</ul>
To Apple’s credit, searching for “mirroring” in MacOS System Settings <a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/macos-18.6-settings-desktop-dock.png">does lead you to the correct setting</a>, but because it’s under “Widget settings”, I suspect some people who search for “mirroring” here will see that in the results list and not even bother clicking it, because “Widget settings” at first doesn’t sound like where you should go to choose between multiple phones for iPhone Mirroring. (It kind of makes sense, when you realize that the same iPhone that provides widgets to your Mac is the one available for iPhone Mirroring to connect to.)
To Apple’s discredit, Siri is no help, despite Apple Intelligence’s supposed <a href="https://9to5mac.com/2025/02/26/this-is-every-apple-intelligence-feature-thats-available-now/">ability to harness “product knowledge”</a> from LLM training on Apple’s own support documents. After asking Siri, “How do I use multiple iPhones with iPhone mirroring?” on either a Mac or iPhone, I get a brief answer that says “You can set up more than one iPhone to use iPhone Mirroring with your Mac, but you can only connect to one iPhone at a time”, with a link to the iPhone User Guide that opens in the Tips app. That page in the iPhone User Guide, however — also available on the web as “<a href="https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-your-iphone-from-your-mac-mchl444d53a6/mac">Control Your iPhone From Your Mac</a>” — doesn’t contain any mention of using more than one iPhone with iPhone Mirroring. So <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/120421">this Apple Support document</a> on iPhone Mirroring does explain it (that’s the one I linked to at the top of this post), but <a href="https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/control-your-iphone-from-your-mac-mchl444d53a6/mac">this one does not</a>. No wonder Apple Intelligence’s “product knowledge”, trained on these documents, is somewhat confused.
But it gets worse. I gave Siri a second chance on my Mac, asking the same question, something along the lines of “How do I use multiple iPhones with iPhone mirroring?” (I can’t be sure exactly which words I used because Siri doesn’t show a chat transcript<a href="#fn2-2025-08-19">2</a>), and the second time, <a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/siri-mirroring-nonsense.png">it responded thus</a>:
<blockquote>
To use multiple iPhones with iPhone Mirroring:
<ol>
<li>Open the iPhone Mirroring app on your Mac.</li>
<li>Click the “Connect” button.</li>
<li>Enter your iPhone passcode and choose how to authenticate.</li>
<li>Select the iPhone you want to use from the list of available
iPhones.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
This answer certainly describes one possible way that using multiple iPhones with iPhone Mirroring should work, but as an answer for how it actually does work, it’s abject nonsense. There is no “list of available iPhones” in the iPhone Mirroring app. If there were such a list to choose from, I’d never have had a question about this whole fucking thing in the first place.
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1-2025-08-19">
The first time I looked in the Desktop & Dock panel in System Settings, there was no “iPhone” pop-up menu visible, despite the fact that both of my active iPhones were on my desk, right next to my MacBook Pro. But I remembered that in the last few days, I’d been having problems with <a href="https://support.apple.com/en-us/102430">Continuity’s Universal Clipboard</a> feature too. In the past, when Universal Clipboard has gone on the fritz, I’ve solved the problem by toggling Bluetooth off and back on. I toggled Bluetooth on my Mac and boom, the “iPhone” menu appeared in the Desktop & Dock panel in System Settings, with the pop-up menu correctly listing both of my active iPhones. Universal Clipboard started working correctly again too. I bet the next version of Bluetooth is actually going to be reliable. <a href="#fnr1-2025-08-19" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩︎︎</a>
</li>
<li id="fn2-2025-08-19">
From Wayne Ma’s blockbuster report back in April at The Information, “<a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/04/10/wayne-ma-the-information-apple-siri-fumble">How Apple Fumbled Siri’s AI Makeover</a>”:
<blockquote>
Giannandrea often has described to employees his belief that
machine learning can lead to incremental improvements in products,
eventually adding up to major gains, a concept he refers to as
hill climbing. He also has expressed a dim view of chatbots in the
past, telling Apple employees before and immediately after the
release of ChatGPT that he didn’t believe they added much value
for users.
</blockquote>
<a href="https://x.com/nickaturley/status/1952385556664520875">ChatGPT reported 700 million weekly active users this month</a>, up from 500 million in March, and up 4× from last year. <a href="#fnr2-2025-08-19" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.">↩︎</a>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></content>
<title>★ How to Use iPhone Mirroring With More Than One iPhone</title></entry><entry>
<title>Bezos Numbers of the Week: Counterpoint Research on ‘Smart Glasses’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/post-insight-research-briefs-blogs-global-smart-glasses-shipments-soared-110-yoy-in-h1-2025-with-meta-capturing-over-70-share" />
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<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42164</id>
<published>2025-08-19T01:44:09Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-19T02:40:05Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Counterpoint Research, in a report titled “Global Smart Glasses Shipments Soared 110 Percent YoY in H1 2025, With Meta Capturing Over 70 Percent Share”:
<blockquote>
The global smart glasses market grew by 110% YoY in H1 2025,
fueled by robust demand for Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses and the
entry of new players such as Xiaomi and TCL-RayNeo.
Meta’s share of the global smart glasses market rose to 73% in H1
2025, driven by strong demand and expanded manufacturing capacity
at Luxottica, its key production partner.
</blockquote>
Not a single absolute sales number in the whole report, not even estimated. Just percentages. Pure Bezos Numbers — which is not quite the same thing as a <a href="https://x.com/jsnell/status/481863414180896769">Bezos Chart</a>, which has no numbers at all. How do you compute percentage change without the underlying numbers? What goes unsaid is that surely any reasonable estimate of “smart glasses” sales numbers is tiny. If you go from 1 to 2 that’s 100 percent growth!
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Bezos Numbers of the Week: Counterpoint Research on ‘Smart Glasses’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/18/bezos-numbers-smart-glasses-counterpoint"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://phoenix.new/?utm_source=df" />
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<author><name>Daring Fireball Department of Commerce</name></author>
<published>2025-08-19T00:23:06Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-24T00:23:12Z</updated>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Resurrect your side projects with Phoenix.new, the new AI app-builder from <a href="https://fly.io/">Fly.io</a>. Just describe your idea, and Phoenix.new quickly generates a working real-time Phoenix app: clustering, pubsub, and presence included. Ideal for multiplayer games, collaborative tools, or quick weekend experiments. Built by <a href="https://fly.io/">Fly.io</a>, deploy wherever you want.
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<a title="Permanent link to ‘Phoenix.new’" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2025/08/phoenixnew_1"> ★ </a>
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]]></content>
<title>[Sponsor] Phoenix.new</title></entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/joe_caroff_007_logo_designer" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wj7" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025://1.42163</id>
<published>2025-08-18T20:50:43Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-18T21:02:05Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">A perfect logo, from a designer with a long and storied career.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/joe-caroff-dead-designer-james-bond-007-logo-1236346509/">Mike Barnes, The Hollywood Reporter</a>:
<blockquote>
For his first movie job — he would work on more than 300
campaigns during his career — United Artists executive David
Chasman hired him to design the poster for West Side Story
(1961), then asked him to come up with the letterhead for a
publicity release tied to the first Bond film, Dr. No. (Chasman
had designed the poster for the 1962 movie.)
“He said, ‘I need a little decorative thing on top,’” Caroff
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A76NPoZRY8c">recalled</a> in 2021. “I knew [Bond’s] designation was 007,
and when I wrote the stem of the seven, I thought, ‘That looks
like the handle of a gun to me.’ It was very spontaneous, no
effort, it was an instant piece of creativity.”
Inspired by Ian Fleming’s favorite gun, a Walther PPK, Caroff
attached a barrel and trigger to the 007 and for his work received
$300, the going rate for such an assignment, he said. Even though
the logo, though altered in subtle ways, has been featured on
every Bond film and on millions of pieces of merchandise, he
received no credit, no residuals, no royalties.
The logo did, however, bring him “a lot of business,” he said. “It
was like a little publicity piece for me.”
</blockquote>
It’s rare for a logomark to have such staying power. Just <a href="https://www.designweek.co.uk/tributes-paid-to-the-james-bond-007-logo-designer-joe-caroff/">a perfect logo</a>. Kind of wild that it was created, initially, only as letterhead for stationery. Perusing vintage movie posters, it seems like EON didn’t really lean into using the logo consistently until <a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/007-on-her-majestys-secret-service.jpeg">On Her Majesty’s Secret Service</a> (1969) — the sixth film, and the first without Sean Connery. EON had used the mark prior to that (including at least <a href="https://posteritati.com/poster/8500/dr-no-1962-us-one-sheet-poster">one excellent poster for Dr. No</a>), but it didn’t appear on most of the posters for Connery’s initial run in the role: <a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/007-from-russia-with-love.jpeg">From Russia With Love</a>, <a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/007-goldfinger.jpeg">Goldfinger</a>, <a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/007-thunderball.jpeg">Thunderball</a>, and You Only Live Twice (variations <a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/007-you-only-live-twice-A.jpeg">A</a> and <a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/007-you-only-live-twice-B.jpeg">B</a>). Amongst those, the logo only appears on the Goldfinger poster. They used to make multiple posters for every movie back then, so there might exist examples for all of them with the logo. But I think until On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, EON leaned on Connery’s face as the symbol of the franchise. From that point forward, though, Caroff’s 007-cum-gun logo was the symbol of the franchise.<a href="#fn1-2025-08-18">1</a> I can’t seem to find an official movie poster after OHMSS that doesn’t feature it.
I will quibble with one detail from The Hollywood Reporter description above: the gun in Caroff’s original 007 mark clearly looked like a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luger_pistol">Luger</a>, a rather distinctive German pistol with a long skinny barrel, not the more compact Walther PPK that Bond actually carried. Variations of the Luger-esque logo appear on the posters for all seven of the movies starring Roger Moore. EON updated the logomark to resemble a Walther PPK <a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/007-the-living-daylights.jpeg">for The Living Daylights</a> in 1987, the first (and better) of two Bond movies starring Timothy Dalton. As a kid it always bothered me — ever so slightly — that the logo resembled a gun that James Bond never actually used, but until today, researching this post, I never noticed that they addressed that in 1987. That said, I think the Luger-esque mark was a bit cooler. As a kid, that was my assumption: that “they” made it look like a Luger, not the sort of pistol Bond actually carried, because it looked cooler that way. I accepted that.
<hr />
Caroff had a remarkably accomplished career. <a href="https://posteritati.com/unfolding/by-design-the-joe-caroff-story">He created iconic posters for dozens of terrific films</a> across a slew of genres. The fact that he created the 007 logo but only earned $300 from it is more like a curious footnote than anything.
From <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/17/obituaries/joe-caroff-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.fE8.pObu.ZW1jiWahs32T&smid=url-share">Jeré Longman’s excellent obituary for The New York Times</a> (gift link), after observing that Caroff died just one day short of his 104th birthday:
<blockquote>
Mr. Caroff’s designs were familiar, but his name was not. He did
not sign much of his work and largely avoided self-promotion. He
was not included among the more than 60 celebrated designers,
among them like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/27/movies/saul-bass-75-designer-dies-made-art-out-of-movie-titles.html">Saul Bass</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1999/10/17/nyregion/leo-lionni-89-dies-versatile-creator-of-children-s-books.html">Leo Lionni</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/28/arts/paul-rand-82-creator-of-sleek-graphic-designs-dies.html">Paul
Rand</a>, in the 2017 book <a href="https://themodernsbook.com/">The Moderns: Midcentury American
Graphic Design</a>, written by Steven Heller and Greg
D’Onofrio.
“That he was unknown is shocking,” Mr. Heller, co-chairman
emeritus of the Master of Fine Arts Design program at the School
of Visual Arts in Manhattan, said in a recent interview.
Still, Mr. Caroff’s abundant output became widely recognizable for
an interpretive style that could be bold, elegant, theatrical,
whimsical, sensual and deceptively simple in promoting a book or
movie and conveying its essence with a single image.
</blockquote>
No better example of that reduced-to-its-essence genius than his 007 logo:
<blockquote>
“I knew that 007 meant license to kill; that, I think, at an
unconscious level, was the reason I knew the gun had to be in the
logo,” Mr. Caroff said in a 2022 documentary, <a href="https://www.hbomax.com/movies/by-design-the-joe-caroff-story/63f45e42-315c-469d-a0d4-501989f339eb">By Design: The Joe
Caroff Story</a>.
Mark Cerulli, who directed the documentary, said in an interview
that the logo was a “marvel of simplicity that telegraphs
everything you would want to know about 007.”
</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.hbomax.com/movies/by-design-the-joe-caroff-story/63f45e42-315c-469d-a0d4-501989f339eb">By Design</a> is streaming on HBO Max. I’ve added it to the top of my to-watch list.
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1-2025-08-18">
You will not catch me making any jokes about the fact that “007 cum gun” could serve as a three-word plot synopsis for many of the films in the Connery/Moore era. <a href="#fnr1-2025-08-18" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩︎</a>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></content>
<title>★ Joe Caroff, Designer of the James Bond 007 Logo, Dies at 103</title></entry><entry>
<title>Dekáf Coffee Roasters</title>
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<published>2025-08-17T15:30:29Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-17T15:30:30Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
My thanks to Dekáf Coffee Roasters for sponsoring last week at DF. Dekáf believes that people who drink coffee for its flavor are the true connoisseurs. While other roasters treat decaf as a side project, they’ve made it their entire mission. They’re dedicated to creating exceptional decaffeinated coffee that stands toe-to-toe with the world’s finest caffeinated beans.
I drink coffee every single day. I literally can’t remember the last day I didn’t have coffee in the morning. A few years ago, though, age started catching up to me and I stopped drinking coffee after lunch or so, lest it screw with my sleep. I really missed my afternoon coffee though. Why I didn’t think to try decaf I don’t know, but Dekáf sent me a few samples when they first sponsored DF back in April, and it’s been a revelation. In addition to fully decaffeinated roasts, they also have some half-decaffeinated roasts, and they’re absolutely delicious — my style of roast, for sure — and they don’t leave me jolted into the evening. Maybe you like tea, but I don’t. I like coffee, and I love being able to have a cup or two late in the afternoon again. It’s so good.
Also, I’m a big believer that you can judge a book by its cover. Just look at the Dekáf brand. It’s perfect. Color, typography, artwork — so cool, so spot-on for what they do.
Dekáf offers 9 single origins, 6 signature blends, and 4 Mizudashi cold brews (perfect for summer). All shipped to you within 24 hours of roasting. No shortcuts. You won’t believe it’s decaf. That’s the point. Even better, get 20% off with code: DF.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Dekáf Coffee Roasters’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/17/dekaf-coffee-roasters"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Woz: ‘I Am the Happiest Person Ever’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23765914&cid=65583466" />
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<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42158</id>
<published>2025-08-16T01:45:00Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-16T03:49:23Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Steve Wozniak turned 75 (!) and was <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/steve-wozniak-on-fighting-internet-scams/">profiled by John Blackstone for CBS News</a> (also <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLpmjXRQf6k">posted to YouTube</a>). <a href="https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/08/10/1938248/its-steve-wozniaks-75th-birthday-whatever-happened-to-his-youtube-lawsuit">Slashdot linked to it</a>, and in the comments, someone gently jabbed at Woz for having sold, rather than hoarded, his stock in Apple. Woz himself chimed in, with this comment for the ages:
<blockquote>
I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not
what I live for. I have a lot of fun and happiness. I funded a lot
of important museums and arts groups in San Jose, the city of my
birth, and they named a street after me for being good. I now
speak publicly and have risen to the top. I have no idea how much
I have but after speaking for 20 years it might be $10M plus a
couple of homes. I never look for any type of tax dodge. I earn
money from my labor and pay something like 55% combined tax on it.
I am the happiest person ever. Life to me was never about
accomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns.
I developed these philosophies when I was 18-20 years old and I
never sold out.
</blockquote>
Apple never would have existed without Woz, and Woz personified “insanely great” engineering. He never contributed anything technical to Apple after the Apple II in the early 1980s, but, man, so much of his spirit and personality is infused in Apple’s DNA. He’s a hero to so many people who went on to work at Apple, and to so many of us on the outside too. The two Steves were so very different in so many ways, yet at heart, both exemplified that intersection between technology and the liberal arts.
His little comment above describing his philosophy on life brought to mind one of my favorite Woz stories, from Michael Moritz’s <a href="https://archive.org/details/littlekingdompri00mori">long-out-of-print</a> 1984 book The Little Kingdom: The Private Story of Apple Computer, pp. 281–282:
<blockquote>
Wozniak, who seemed determined to follow Samuel Johnson’s advice
that it was better to live rich than to die rich, was always
louder, splashier, and more cavalier about his fortune. As a
student and an engineer he had always managed his financial
affairs haphazardly and nothing changed as he grew wealthy. He
could never keep track of receipts, for months didn’t bother to
seek financial advice, and made a habit of filing his tax returns
late. Wozniak turned into an approachable teddy bear and a soft
touch. When friends, acquaintances, or strangers asked him for a
loan he often wrote out a check on the spot.
Unlike Jobs, who guarded his founder’s stock carefully, Wozniak
distributed some of his. He gave stock worth $4 million to his
parents, sister, and brother and $2 million to friends. He made
some investments in start-up companies. He bought a Porsche and
fastened the license plates APPLE II to
the car. His father found $250,000 worth of uncashed checks strewn
about the car and said of his son, “A person like him shouldn’t
have that much money.” After Wozniak finally did arrange for some
financial advice, he arrived at Apple one day to announce, “My
lawyer said to diversify so I just bought a movie theater.” Even
that turned into a complicated venture. The theater, located among
the barrios on the east side of San Jose, provoked angry community
protests after it screened a gang movie, The Warriors. Wozniak
attended a few community meetings, listened to the concerns of the
local leaders, promised that his theater wouldn’t show violent or
pornographic movies, and accompanied by Wigginton, spent a few
afternoons in the empty, darkened theater screening movies and
playing censor.
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Woz: ‘I Am the Happiest Person Ever’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/15/woz-on-slashdot"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Trump’s BLS Pick E.J. Antoni Is — Shocker — a Crackpot Hack</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.axios.com/2025/08/12/trump-bls-ej-antoni-economists" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wj5" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/15/trump-bls-antoni-crackpot" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42161</id>
<published>2025-08-16T00:47:50Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-16T01:02:38Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Jason Lalljee, reporting for Axios Tuesday:
<blockquote>
President Trump’s nomination of Heritage Foundation economist E.J.
Antoni to head the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Monday drew
criticism from economists across the political spectrum. Why it
matters: The growing negative consensus among conservative
economists is unusual given Antoni’s own conservative pedigree.
</blockquote>
Here we go with “<a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/unusual-agreements">unusual</a>” as a euphemism for “<a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/quid-pro-quo-financial-times">unprecedented</a>” — or perhaps, most accurately, “<a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/mad-king-watch-intel">crazy</a>” — again. The dichotomy here is that Trump and MAGA have flipped what “conservative” means in US politics. Some legitimate economists are left-leaning, some are right-leaning. It’s a field of study, like the law, that attracts from across the political spectrum. But all legitimate economists believe in trying to objectively measure the economy. MAGA kooks have overrun Republican elected politics, but not so with economics. So of course legitimate conservative economists are objecting to Trump’s nomination of <a href="https://www.heritage.org/staff/ej-antoni-phd">this guy Antoni</a>, who both is a crackpot kook <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/11/30/the-paranoid-style">of the paranoid style</a> and <a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/ej-antoni.jpeg">looks like one</a>, with crazy eyes and, of all things, a devil beard.
To the commentary:
<blockquote>
Antoni’s “work at Heritage has frequently included elementary
errors or nonsensical choices that all bias his findings in the
same partisan direction,” Stan Veuger, a senior fellow at the
conservative American Enterprise Institute, told Axios’ Courtenay
Brown and Emily Peck.
Dave Hebert, an economist at the conservative American Institute
for Economic Research, <a href="https://x.com/dave_hebert/status/1955054062325444659?s=42">wrote in a post on X</a> that he’s
worked with Antoni before and implored the Senate to block the
nomination. “I’ve been on several programs with him at this point
and have been impressed by two things: his inability to
understand basic economics and the speed with which he’s gone
MAGA,” Hebert said. [...]
Jessica Riedl, a senior Manhattan Institute fellow, shared another
example from X, in which Antoni appeared not to know that the BLS’
measure of import prices did not account for the impact of
tariffs. “The articles and tweets I’ve seen him publish are
probably the most error-filled of any think tank economist right
now,” she <a href="https://x.com/jessicabriedl/status/1955044169598242849?s=42">wrote</a>. “I hope we see better at BLS.”
</blockquote>
That’s the take on Antoni from conservative economists.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Trump’s BLS Pick E.J. Antoni Is — Shocker — a Crackpot Hack’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/15/trump-bls-antoni-crackpot"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Threads Now Has DMs, But They’re Not Encrypted and, Contrary to Reports, Not Yet Available on the Web</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/news/695743/threads-dms-direct-messaging-launch" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wj4" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/15/threads-dms" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42160</id>
<published>2025-08-15T23:50:49Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-15T23:50:50Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Emma Roth, reporting for The Verge back on July 1 (emphasis added):
<blockquote>
Threads’ DMs are currently available to users aged 18 and over on
Android, iOS, and the web, but you can only have one-on-one
conversations right now. Moving forward, Threads plans to roll out
the ability to choose who can send you messages, including people
who don’t follow you on Threads and Instagram. You’ll also be able
to review a folder dedicated to message requests, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/2/23053114/twitter-direct-messages-dm-request-filter-secret-inbox-til">similar to
what’s offered on X</a>. Threads is working on a group messaging
feature and inbox filters, too.
Though the platform says its DMs are “protected by our robust
privacy standards, account protections and safety infrastructure,”
Threads spokesperson Alec Booker confirmed to The Verge that
“Threads will not support end-to-end encryption for messaging.”
Booker adds that Meta will “continue evolving DMs on Threads based
on feedback from the community.”
</blockquote>
The lack of E2EE for a new messaging platform in 2025 is unconscionable. Either don’t offer DMs at all or only offer them using E2EE. That would be for Meta’s benefit, not just its users. They shouldn’t even want the ability to look at private messages.
That said, I found myself chatting with an old friend on Threads last night, using the app on my phone. Somehow we’d never exchanged iMessage credentials. We more or less just used the Threads DM chat to exchange current phone numbers to move the chat to iMessage. Today, at my desk, I wanted to double-check that there was nothing in the Threads chat I’d want to save — and, I couldn’t figure out how to see DMs in Threads’s web app. I found a few articles, like the one above at The Verge, that said it was available on the web, but ... it isn’t. At least not for me, or most people. One never knows how many people are getting an A/B test or early rollout with Meta.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Threads Now Has DMs, But They’re Not Encrypted and, Contrary to Reports, Not Yet Available on the Web’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/15/threads-dms"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Keep Calm and Delete Your Old Emails to Conserve Water</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/national-drought-group-meets-to-address-nationally-significant-water-shortfall" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wj3" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/15/keep-calm-and-delete-your-old-emails-to-conserve-water" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42159</id>
<published>2025-08-15T21:42:41Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-15T21:42:54Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
From a press release from the UK’s National Drought Group this week, quoting group chair Helen Wakeham (emphasis added):
<blockquote>
“We are grateful to the public for following the restrictions,
where in place, to conserve water in these dry conditions. Simple,
everyday choices — such as turning off a tap or deleting old
emails — also really helps the collective effort to reduce demand
and help preserve the health of our rivers and wildlife.”
</blockquote>
To reaffirm that she did not misspeak, from a list of tips for conserving water at home, which includes legit tips like taking shorter showers and turning off the tap while brushing your teeth (Sidenote: Who leaves the water running while brushing their teeth?):
<blockquote>
Delete old emails and pictures as data centres require vast
amounts of water to cool their systems.
</blockquote>
This is so profoundly stupid and wrong that I don’t even know how to make fun of it. But it sure speaks to how futile it might be to hope that the UK government understand the first thing about end-to-end encryption. (<a href="https://www.threads.com/@jason_eccles/post/DNQv0HqMzgv">Via Jason Eccles</a>.)
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Keep Calm and Delete Your Old Emails to Conserve Water’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/15/keep-calm-and-delete-your-old-emails-to-conserve-water"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Bloomberg: ‘Trump Administration Said to Discuss Taking Stake in Intel’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-14/trump-administration-is-said-to-discuss-us-taking-stake-in-intel" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wj1" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/14/trump-admin-intel-stake" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42157</id>
<published>2025-08-15T01:08:06Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-15T01:08:07Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Bloomberg:
<blockquote>
The Trump administration is in talks with Intel Corp. to have the
US government take a stake in the beleaguered chipmaker, according
to people familiar with the plan, in the latest sign of the White
House’s willingness to blur the lines between state and industry.
A deal would help shore up Intel’s planned factory hub in Ohio,
said the people, who asked not to be identified because the
deliberations are private. The company had once promised to turn
that site into the world’s largest chipmaking facility, though
it’s been repeatedly delayed. The size of the potential stake
isn’t clear.
The talks come just a week after President Donald Trump had called
for the ouster of Intel Chief Executive Officer Lip-Bu Tan,
accusing him of being “highly conflicted” because of concerns
about his earlier ties to China.
</blockquote>
Bloomberg was first (this time), but <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/us-stake-intel-1ff24500?mod=hp_lead_pos1">the WSJ seconded the report</a> shortly after.
No cause for alarm here. Just a bit of <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/14/wall-street-journal-marches-toward-pravda">a sea change</a>. The Republican Party has always been in favor of social ownership of the means of production. Just like we have always been at war with Eastasia. <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/mad-king-watch-intel">Sane steady leadership</a> from our 80-year-old dear leader, who is definitely not succumbing rapidly to a dangerous mix of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRAjbgvj9Pc">dementia</a>, megalomania, and paranoia.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Bloomberg: ‘Trump Administration Said to Discuss Taking Stake in Intel’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/14/trump-admin-intel-stake"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>The Wall Street Journal Marches Toward Pravda With American Characteristics</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.wsj.com/economy/the-u-s-marches-toward-state-capitalism-with-american-characteristics-f75cafa8?st=48pGHz&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wj0" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/14/wall-street-journal-marches-toward-pravda" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42156</id>
<published>2025-08-15T00:41:13Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-15T00:42:36Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Greg Ip, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/news/author/greg-ip">chief economics commentator</a> for The Wall Street Journal, under the euphemistic headline “The U.S. Marches Toward State Capitalism With American Characteristics”:
<blockquote>
A generation ago conventional wisdom held that as China
liberalized, its economy would come to resemble America’s.
Instead, capitalism in America is starting to look like China.
Recent examples include President Trump’s <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/trump-intel-ceo-lip-bu-tan-resign-china-ties-cotton-ce111513?mod=article_inline">demand that Intel’s
chief executive resign</a>; the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/nvidia-amd-chip-sales-us-government-f9e34b5f?mod=article_inline">15% of certain chip
sales</a> to China that Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices will
share with Washington; the “golden share” Washington will get in
U.S. Steel as a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/trump-nippon-steel-reach-national-security-agreement-on-u-s-steel-deal-4e76633a?mod=article_inline">condition of Nippon Steel’s takeover</a>; and
the $1.5 trillion of promised investment from trading partners
Trump plans to personally direct.
This isn’t socialism, in which the state owns the means of
production. It is more like state capitalism, a hybrid between
socialism and capitalism in which the state guides the decisions
of nominally private enterprises.
China calls its hybrid “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”
The U.S. hasn’t gone as far as China or even milder practitioners
of state capitalism such as Russia, Brazil and, at times, France.
So call this variant “state capitalism with American
characteristics.” It is still a sea change from the free market
ethos the U.S. once embodied.
</blockquote>
Ip’s piece is, on the whole, a decent factual survey of the Trump 2.0 administration’s economic policies, six months in. (Or, if you prefer, one-eighth over, and a quarter of the way through until the mid-term election.) But I can’t help but feel that if it were any Democrat — Biden, Harris, whoever — whose early presidential term’s stewardship of our capitalist economy could aptly be described as “starting to look like China”, the tone would be less “a sea change” and more “ALL CAPS ALL THE TIME TOTAL FUCKING FREAKOUT”. It’s the same slippery slope of <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/24/on-tyranny">obeying in advance</a> as describing blatantly unconstitutional shakedowns as “<a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/unusual-agreements">unusual agreements</a>”.
There’s grading on the curve and then there’s grading on the curve. Ip knows damn well that if left unchecked, Trump’s mad-king style policies, like firing the economist in charge of the Bureau of Labor Statistics <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/01/business/trump-job-report-number-fire">because the jobs report for July was bad</a>, are going to prove disastrous. That move is more like North Korea than China, and everyone who doesn’t have Fox News injected into their veins knows it. Greg Ip is not drinking the MAGA juice, but he’s not calling fair balls and strikes, either. That’s a problem.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘The Wall Street Journal Marches Toward Pravda With American Characteristics’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/14/wall-street-journal-marches-toward-pravda"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Nice Pitch From Dieter Bohn for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://x.com/backlon/status/1956075874370933114" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wiz" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/14/dieter-bohn-samsung-galaxy-z-fold-7-" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42155</id>
<published>2025-08-14T23:48:52Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-14T23:48:53Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Dieter Bohn left The Verge to work for Google on their “Platforms & Ecosystems” team. He hasn’t had much of a visible presence since, or least not one that I’ve noticed. But this 90-second video he made showing off the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 is nice. It’s a better pitch for the device than anything I’ve seen from Samsung itself, and it’s a good pitch for Google Gemini too.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Nice Pitch From Dieter Bohn for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/14/dieter-bohn-samsung-galaxy-z-fold-7-"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/apple_workaround_blood_oxygen_ban" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wiy" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025://1.42154</id>
<published>2025-08-14T21:45:42Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-17T00:43:16Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">What today’s workaround does is process and display the blood oxygen sensor data on your watch’s paired iPhone, rather than on the Apple Watch itself. That, apparently, is what the new US Customs ruling holds does not violate Masimo’s patent.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Apple Newsroom this morning, “<a href="https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/08/an-update-on-blood-oxygen-for-apple-watch-in-the-us/">An Update on Blood Oxygen for Apple Watch in the U.S.</a>”:
<blockquote>
Apple will introduce a redesigned Blood Oxygen feature for
some Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, and Apple Watch Ultra 2
users through an iPhone and Apple Watch software update coming
later today.
Users with these models in the U.S. who currently do not have the
Blood Oxygen feature will have access to the redesigned Blood
Oxygen feature by updating their paired iPhone to iOS 18.6.1 and
their Apple Watch to watchOS 11.6.1. Following this update, sensor
data from the Blood Oxygen app on Apple Watch will be measured and
calculated on the paired iPhone, and results can be viewed in the
Respiratory section of the Health app. This update was enabled by
a recent U.S. Customs ruling.
There will be no impact to Apple Watch units previously purchased
that include the original Blood Oxygen feature, nor to Apple Watch
units purchased outside of the U.S.
</blockquote>
The iOS 18.6.1 and WatchOS 11.6.1 updates appeared a few hours after Apple’s announcement.
If you have an Apple Watch with the blood oxygen sensor purchased outside the US, you can ignore today’s news. You were never affected by the US International Trade Commission import ban (which stems from <a href="https://daringfireball.net/search/masimo">a patent lawsuit from a company named Masimo</a>), so today’s workaround isn’t necessary. The same goes for Series 9 and Ultra 2 models sold in the US prior to the ban taking effect in January 2024.
What today’s workaround does is process and display the blood oxygen sensor data on your watch’s paired iPhone, rather than on the Apple Watch itself. That, apparently, is what the new US Customs ruling holds does not violate Masimo’s patent. No processing of the sensor data on the watch, and no display of the results on the watch. But the sensor that takes the measurements, of course, is on your watch. If you bought your Apple Watch before the ban, or you bought it outside the US, you still get on-watch processing and on-watch display of results. (Which means users outside the US still have a slightly better blood oxygen experience.)
If your Apple Watch was affected by the import ban, after today’s software updates, you should be able to both initiate a blood oxygen reading manually (using the Blood Oxygen app on the Watch) and get automatic background readings, like when you’re wearing your watch while sleeping. What is different for Series 9, Series 10, and Ultra 2 models in the US that didn’t have the original Blood Oxygen feature, compared to models not affected by the US ban, is where the measurement is calculated and visible. If you initiate a measurement while your watch is out of range of its paired iPhone, the results will be calculated on the iPhone once it is back in range.
Also important, and not clear at all from Apple’s initial announcement this morning: After the iOS 18.6.1 and WatchOS 11.6.1 software updates, the iPhone and Apple Watch need to download an over-the-air asset to enable the redesigned Blood Oxygen feature. This apparently may take up to 24 hours. Until this asset download happens, the Blood Oxygen app on your Apple Watch will still say “The Blood Oxygen app is no longer available”. To jump-start the download, users can open the Health app on their iPhone, and the ECG app on their Apple Watch. I was in this boat personally with an Ultra 2 from last year, and opening the Health app on my iPhone and taking an ECG reading on the watch did the trick — after that, launching the Blood Oxygen app on the watch <a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/08/blood-oxygen-app-watchos-11.6.1.png">showed a new message</a>:
<blockquote>
The Blood Oxygen App Has Changed
You will now find Blood Oxygen results in the Health app on your iPhone.
</blockquote>
(Update: I am reliably informed that you don’t need to take an ECG reading on the watch. Just opening the ECG app is enough to trigger the asset download needed by the Blood Oxygen app. I figured why not take a reading while I was in there, though.)
The US Customs ruling that Apple is citing to allow them to offer this workaround — “HQ H351038”, per a source at Apple — <a href="https://rulings.cbp.gov/">is not yet publicly available</a>. But reading between the lines, the implication is that US Customs has decided that Masimo’s patents only apply to on-device sensor processing (and display of results?).
I continue to think that Masimo is a patent troll. At the time they filed their complaint with the ITC, <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/07/11/apple-masimo-appeals-court">they didn’t even have a smartwatch on the market</a>. And <a href="https://www.masimo.com/products/monitors/masimo-w1-medical-watch/">the smartwatch they now sell</a> — years after filing the complaint — looks like an Apple Watch with a second button instead of a digital crown. The two patents in question (<a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en">10,912,502</a> and <a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US10945648B2/en">10,945,648</a>) are set to expire in August 2028, and I suspect this patent suit has been a last-ditch attempt to monetize them before they expire by extorting a settlement from Apple. Good luck with that now.
]]></content>
<title>★ Apple Issues a Workaround for the Blood Oxygen Sensor Ban for U.S. Apple Watches</title></entry><entry>
<title>The Annals of Oligarchy, Defense Department Edition</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/how-unraveling-two-pentagon-projects-may-result-costly-do-over-2025-08-13/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wix" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/13/annals-of-oligarchy-defense-department-edition" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42153</id>
<published>2025-08-14T02:06:00Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-14T02:06:00Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Alexandra Alper, reporting for Reuters:
<blockquote>
Donald Trump’s Navy and Air Force are poised to cancel two nearly
complete software projects that took 12 years and well over $800
million combined to develop, work initially aimed at overhauling
antiquated human resources systems.
The reason for the unusual move: officials at those departments,
who have so far put the existing projects on hold, want other
firms, including Salesforce and billionaire Peter Thiel’s
Palantir, to have a chance to win similar projects, which could
amount to a costly do-over, according to seven sources familiar
with the matter.
</blockquote>
I don’t want to be a ninny about this, but why is Reuters flatly describing the Navy and Air Force as possessions of the president? Did they ever describe them as belonging to Joe Biden, or Barack Obama? I don’t think they did, and <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Areuters.com%20%22joe%20biden%27s%20navy%22&udm=14">a cursory search</a> suggests they did not, but even if they did, it was wrong then. Now is not the time for sloppy language around this.
Anyway, this is both as crooked and stupid as shit.
See also: <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/12/trump-doge-contract-claims-savings-inflation-00498178">Jessie Blaeser, reporting for Politico</a>:
<blockquote>
The Trump administration’s claim that it is saving billions of
dollars through DOGE-related cuts to federal contracts is
drastically exaggerated, according to a new Politico analysis of
public data and federal spending records.
Through July, DOGE said it has saved taxpayers $52.8 billion by
canceling contracts, but of the $32.7 billion in actual claimed
contract savings that Politico could verify, DOGE’s savings over
that period were closer to $1.4 billion. Despite the
administration’s claims, not a single one of those 1.4 billion
dollars will lower the federal deficit unless Congress steps in.
Instead, the money has been returned to agencies mandated by law
to spend it.
</blockquote>
The DOGE scam was never about saving money. It was about destroying honest government programs and projects to redirect the firehose of taxpayer money to American oligarchs like Thiel, one of Elon Musk’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia">“PayPal Mafia” cronies</a>.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘The Annals of Oligarchy, Defense Department Edition’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/13/annals-of-oligarchy-defense-department-edition"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Perplexity Is on the Prowl to Buy Web Browsers</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theinformation.com/articles/wild-chrome-bid-perplexity-hunting-browsers" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wiw" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/13/perplexity-on-the-prowl" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42152</id>
<published>2025-08-14T01:06:34Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-14T15:52:18Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
The Information (paywalled, alas):
<blockquote>
In December, Perplexity discussed possibly buying the six-year-old
The Browser Co. with that company’s leaders, according to two
people with knowledge of the discussions. Talks with the company,
which operates an AI-powered web browser, Dia, did not progress,
and no price was discussed.
OpenAI has also spoken to The Browser Co. executives about
possibly selling to the ChatGPT creator, according to two people
familiar with the discussions. Those discussions went further, to
the point of a possible price, but ended after the two sides
couldn’t agree on terms.
Then, earlier this summer, Perplexity offered to buy Brave, a San
Francisco–based company that runs a privacy-focused web browser
and search engine, for around $1 billion, primarily in
Perplexity’s stock, according to a person with direct knowledge of
the situation. But the two sides couldn’t agree on price and the
deal discussions didn’t move forward, the person said.
Meanwhile, investors in Perplexity and DuckDuckGo tried to arrange
meetings between the two companies’ leaders, according to people
close to the companies. Perplexity CEO Srinivas and Gabriel
Weinberg, CEO of 17-year-old DuckDuckGo, met and discussed
Perplexity’s interest in acquiring browsers as a way of reaching
more consumers, one of the people said. The conversations didn’t
lead to any offer.
</blockquote>
DuckDuckGo is even more privacy-focused than Brave. <a href="https://spreadprivacy.com/privacy-simplified/">It’s their entire brand</a>. Perplexity isn’t privacy-focused at all. And Perplexity has already made their own browser, <a href="https://www.perplexity.ai/comet">Comet</a>, which is so cool you currently have to pay $200/month to get access to it. Comet is, unsurprisingly, forked from Chromium, and pretty much looks like an uglier version of Chrome. <a href="https://brave.com/">Brave Browser</a> looks almost exactly like Chrome (and is probably my favorite Chromium-based browser).
None of this makes any sense, so it’s no surprise most of these talks didn’t go far, and Brave rejected the supposed $1 billion offer in Perplexity stock, which as far as I’m concerned might as well have been $1 billion in Monopoly money. Why not call Eddy Cue and see if Apple wants to sell Safari?
Update: Just today, <a href="https://x.com/perplexity_ai/status/1955684209483534657">Perplexity announced</a> that Comet is now available to $20/month Plus users, not just $200/month Pro users.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Perplexity Is on the Prowl to Buy Web Browsers’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/13/perplexity-on-the-prowl"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/max_read_literary_history_fake_apple_texts" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wiv" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025://1.42151</id>
<published>2025-08-13T21:05:50Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-13T21:44:18Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">It’s like an otherwise delightful cocktail with one distinctive unpleasant ingredient, which ingredient was added, deliberately, to imbue the libation with an aftertaste of spite.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Max Read, two years ago, “<a href="https://maxread.substack.com/p/a-literary-history-of-fake-texts?r=71ygg">A Literary History of Fake Texts in Apple’s Marketing Materials</a>”:
<blockquote>
I’m talking about the mocked-up texts and emails Apple puts
together to demonstrate new messaging features in its
operating-system updates, presumably written by some well-paid
professionals in Apple’s marketing department. These eerily
cheery, aggressively punctuated messages suggest an alternate
dimension in which polite, good-natured, rigorously diverse groups
of friends and coworkers use Apple products exactly how they are
designed to be used, without complaint or error. [...]
If there is still mystery in Apple events, it is located here,
in the uncanny fictional world suggested in these images: Who
are these people? And what is wrong with them that they text
like this?
A proper literary study of fake Apple texts has yet to be
undertaken, but with the help of the Wayback Machine, we can sift
through more than a decade’s work of marketing materials to
identify certain trends and themes. For the sake of precision,
let’s begin our survey in 2011, with the launch of iMessage in iOS
5. Here, so far as I can tell, is the first-ever fake Apple
iMessage conversation.
</blockquote>
I’ve been sitting on this one since shortly after Read published it, and came upon it again today in my pile of I-should-post-about-this-but-I-have-a-lot-I-need-to-say-about-it links. Now — just under four weeks away from Apple’s expected keynote for the iPhones 17 and new Apple Watches — seems as good a time as ever to finally link to it. It really is a lot of fun, and Read seemingly found every marketing screenshot of Messages or Mail from 2011–2023 that he could.
But re-reading it today, I realize why I sat on it. There’s a cynicism to the whole thing that grates. Read is disdainful of everything about these messages — their cheerful tone, professional-grade photography, even their attentive punctuation. But of course they’re not realistic. Of course every person in every chat “use[s] Apple products exactly how they are designed to be used, without complaint or error.” Of course everyone is always happy and friendly and having a good time. Of course the groups are always diverse.<a href="#fn1-2025-08-13">1</a> What other kinds of fictional people are going to be portrayed by Apple in their marketing screenshots? Ugly unhappy illiterates who take bad photos and never go anywhere? It’d be really weird if Apple’s fake texts for keynotes were anything other than idyllic — if the photos kinda sucked, if words were misspelled and entirely lowercase, if punctuation were omitted.
So of course the fake texts in Apple marketing are, upon consideration, obviously phony. What I’ve long thought interesting is just how much effort Apple clearly puts into them. They’re good phony. Pitch-perfect for Apple’s Designed-in-California brand. A lot of work goes into the fake trips and parties portrayed and described in these threads, and it shows. But they’re not so interesting as to distract from the keynote. Imagine if a screenshot flew by with a Messages thread between colleagues gossiping about someone getting fired for expense account fraud, or about an extramarital affair. The purpose of these fake texts is the opposite of the supposed intention of the Liquid Glass design language: it’s fake content meant to put the emphasis on the real software. They’re actually worth the deep dive Max Read produced to document them. They’re genuinely interesting for what they are — but somehow Read can’t bring himself to say that, despite taking the time to document them. The withering cynicism of his tone is at odds with the fact that he took the time to document their history so thoroughly.
Searching the DF archive for Read’s name, I came up with <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2020/12/roman_a_clef_computer_maker">one hit</a>, and it explains his overly-cynical schtick. Read was editor-in-chief at Gawker, before Peter Thiel and his puppet Hulk Hogan (RIP) <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdrange/2016/06/21/peter-thiels-war-on-gawker-a-timeline/">sued them out of business in 2016</a>. And when I previously mentioned Read (in 2020), <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2020/12/roman_a_clef_computer_maker">it was because he was one of two ex-Gawkerites who sold a show to Apple TV+ called Scraper</a><a href="#fn2-2025-08-13">2</a> about a thinly-veiled fictional version of Gawker, but which show was nixed, after several episodes had already been filmed, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/13/business/media/apple-gawker-tim-cook.html">supposedly by Tim Cook himself</a>, out of his personal loathing for Gawker. To be clear, I’m not suggesting Read took an overly snarky attitude to describing Apple’s fake-text literary history because Cook pulled the plug on Scrapers. I’m saying that Gawker was infused by the sort of attitude that holds all marketing in contempt. I, of course, firmly believe that many subjects are worthy of withering scorn. But the Gawker attitude was that no subject was worthy of anything but withering scorn. I never could abide that, and there’s something like it undergirding this otherwise splendid piece from Read. It’s like an otherwise delightful cocktail with one distinctive unpleasant ingredient, which ingredient was added, deliberately, to imbue the libation with an aftertaste of spite.
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1-2025-08-13">
Except for age. You’ll spot few, if any, gray hairs in the photos and Memojis these characters share. That’s not a complaint. Youth is aspirational, and there are gray hairs enough amongst <a href="https://www.apple.com/leadership/">the executives</a> who present these keynote segments. <a href="#fnr1-2025-08-13" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩︎︎</a>
</li>
<li id="fn2-2025-08-13">
A perfect title, I have to say. “Scraper” would have been a better name for Gawker than “Gawker” was. (Much like how The Studio’s “Continental Studios” sounds like a real century-old peer to Paramount and Columbia Pictures.) <a href="#fnr2-2025-08-13" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text.">↩︎</a>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></content>
<title>★ Max Read’s ‘A Literary History of Fake Texts in Apple’s Marketing Materials’</title></entry><entry>
<title>Updated Design for Pebble Time 2 Watch</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://ericmigi.com/blog/pebble-time-2-design-reveal" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wiu" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/13/pebble-time-2-design" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42150</id>
<published>2025-08-13T17:11:37Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-14T15:10:03Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Eric Migicovsky:
<blockquote>
First off, for those who didn’t catch the <a href="https://ericmigi.com/blog/july-pebble-update">news from a few weeks
ago</a> — we’ve been able to recover the Pebble trademark! Our
new watches will change from being called Core 2 Duo → Pebble 2
Duo, and Core Time 2 → Pebble Time 2.
The big news today is that we’re revealing the final design for
Pebble Time 2. The design that we showed off back in March were
preliminary designs. We’ve been able to tweak and improve the
industrial design quite a bit since then. I think it’s turned out
fantastically well! I even have a working albeit early engineering
sample on my wrist.
</blockquote>
These look good. Fundamentally Pebble-y but with smaller-than-ever (for Pebble) screen bezels.
I stand by <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/19/repebble-watches">what I wrote back in March</a>, though. They should make just one new watch, not two. In March I suggested that the one new Pebble watch they should make ought to be the black-and-white display one, to lean into Pebble’s differentiation from Apple Watch and other leading smartwatches. Seeing these new designs for the color display Time 2 — and Migicovsky’s obvious personal enthusiasm for this model — makes me think that this should be the one true new Pebble. They should scrap the black-and-white plastic one.
Even their naming scheme is confusing. The $150 plastic, 1.2-inch black-and-white-display model is the Pebble 2 Duo. The $225 steel, 1.5-inch color-display model is the Pebble Time 2. Why is the “2” in different places? Nothing about the names “Duo” or “Time” suggests which one is higher-end than the other. If anything, “Time” sounds more simplistic to my ears, like maybe it only tells the time — but that’s the nicer one.
Maybe they know something I don’t, and pre-orders are strong for the uglier, plastic, black-and-white-display 2 Duo. But even if that’s true, that’s selling into the existing Pebble fanbase. If they have any hope of expanding to new users, they ought to put all their wood behind one arrow, and that ought to be the clearly superior, better-looking, bigger-display Time 2. The Time 2 costs just $75 more, but seems way more than $75 better.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Updated Design for Pebble Time 2 Watch’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/13/pebble-time-2-design"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Cassette 1.0</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://thecassetteapp.com/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wit" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/12/cassette" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42149</id>
<published>2025-08-12T22:52:56Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-12T22:52:57Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
New app from Devin Davies, developer of the ADA-winning <a href="https://crouton.app/">Crouton</a>:
<blockquote>
Cassette is an app for iPhone and iPad that helps you enjoy your
home videos like the good old days. With a retro interface
Cassette auto plays through videos from your devices’ Photo
Library. Mirror your device to a nearby Apple TV for a true kick
back experience.
</blockquote>
The VHS retro pastiche is fun, but don’t get the wrong impression from it. Cassette is not an app that makes your modern videos look like they were shot on an old camcorder. (<a href="https://rarevision.com/vhs-camcorder-app/">Rarevision VHS</a> is a fun app for that, if that’s what you’re looking for.)
Cassette’s tape-playing pastiche is more about putting you in the right mindset. Instead of watching one video from your Photos library, or two or three, it mimics popping in a tape labelled, say, “2014” and sitting back and watching an entire hour of videos from a decade ago. It just launched today but I’ve been using the beta via TestFlight for a few weeks, and you really have to try it to see how effective it is. Davies made a nice video teaser to pitch the app. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iQwZ09OIao">It’s good, you should watch it</a>.
The way I’d pitch it is that Cassette is to the videos in your Photos library what the Kodak Carousel was to your 35mm film slides back in the 1960s. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suRDUFpsHus">Nostalgia. It’s delicate, but potent.</a>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Cassette 1.0’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/12/cassette"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Perplexity Made an Offer to Buy TikTok — Well, Half of TikTok — Back in January</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-bytedance-trump-perplexity-87988733973760927bb5681f7de9b9af" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wis" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/12/perplexity-tiktok-offer" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42148</id>
<published>2025-08-12T21:29:14Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-12T21:29:56Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Haleluya Hadero and Christopher Rugaber, reporting for the AP back on January 26, six days into Trump 2.0:
<blockquote>
Perplexity AI has presented a new proposal to TikTok’s parent
company that would allow the U.S. government to own up to 50% of a
new entity that merges Perplexity with TikTok’s U.S. business,
according to a person familiar with the matter. The proposal,
submitted last week, is a revision of <a href="https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-us-ban-trump-extension-a3936a93f174d176d3633a67554d771b">a prior plan</a> the
artificial intelligence startup had presented to TikTok’s parent
ByteDance on Jan. 18, a day before the law that bans TikTok went
into effect.
</blockquote>
They should have added a similar provision to their <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/12/perplexity-jumps-shark-stunt-offer-to-buy-chrome">Chrome offer sheet</a> today. Give 25% to the US Treasury and another 25% to Trump’s future presidential “library”.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Perplexity Made an Offer to Buy TikTok — Well, Half of TikTok — Back in January’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/12/perplexity-tiktok-offer"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Perplexity Jumps the Shark, Makes Clownish $34.5 Billion Stunt Offer to Buy Chrome From Google</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/perplexity-ai-google-chrome-offer-5ddb7a22?st=r5gGet&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wir" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/12/perplexity-jumps-shark-stunt-offer-to-buy-chrome" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42147</id>
<published>2025-08-12T19:25:48Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-12T21:37:17Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Katherine Blunt, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (main link is a paywall-puncturing gift link; <a href="https://apple.news/AM1sqivpIRdmGRm-i3uhOwg">also on News+</a>):
<blockquote>
Artificial-intelligence startup Perplexity on Tuesday offered to
purchase Google’s Chrome browser for $34.5 billion as it works to
challenge the tech giant’s web-search dominance.
Perplexity’s offer is significantly more than its own valuation,
which is estimated at $18 billion. The company told The Wall
Street Journal that several investors including large
venture-capital funds had agreed to back the transaction in full.
Estimates of Chrome’s enterprise value vary widely but recent ones
have ranged from $20 billion to $50 billion.
</blockquote>
Perplexity apparently also told the Journal that the story was theirs exclusively, despite the fact that <a href="https://mastodon.social/@gruber/115017196029068928">they also revealed the stunt offer to Bloomberg as well</a>. Prefixing a headline with “Exclusive:” is irresistible catnip to business/investor-oriented publications. The Journal, at least, had the good sense to raise a skeptical eyebrow at the premise in its headline (“Perplexity Makes Longshot $34.5 Billion Offer for Chrome”<a href="#fn1-2025-08-12">1</a>). Bloomberg, not so much (“AI Startup Perplexity Makes $34.5 Billion Bid for Google’s Chrome Browser”).
The whole premise is ludicrous. Start with the fact that Perplexity is only valued at $18 billion. Add to that the fact that Perplexity is almost certainly overvalued at that price. I don’t know anyone who uses Perplexity, and Perplexity doesn’t develop or run their own LLMs.
But all of this stuff about Google possibly being forced (as a remedy in the US v. Google antitrust case they lost) to sell Chrome doesn’t consider that Chrome, on its own, divested from Google and thus disconnected from Chrome users’ Google accounts, is likely worth little to nothing. <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/04/is_chrome_even_a_sellable_asset">I wrote about this at length back in April</a>. Chrome is tremendously valuable to Google. It has very little value on its own. Chrome generates no revenue on its own — it simply serves as an outlet for Google to show its own lucrative search ads without paying traffic acquisition fees to a browser owned by someone else (like, say, Apple or Mozilla or Samsung). <a href="https://www.chromium.org/">Chromium is open source</a>. <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge">Microsoft Edge</a> is forked from it. <a href="https://brave.com/">Brave</a> is forked from it. <a href="https://www.opera.com/">Opera</a> (remember them?) forked from it <a href="https://www.wired.com/2013/02/presto-is-dead-long-live-opera">over a decade ago</a>. Perplexity (or any actually credible would-be buyer of Chrome) could just start their own fork.
There are two things Chrome has that other Chromium browsers don’t: billions of users, and integration with Google account services. Chrome has those billions of users because of the Google account integration. Severed from Google, Chrome users would lose those essential features — possibly including Google Search — and they’d likely begin switching away in droves.
I wrote just last week that <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/regarding-those-rumors-of-apple-pursuing-an-acquisition-of-perplexity">Perplexity looks like a scam</a>. Someone is spreading rumors that Apple is sniffing around at buying them, despite the fact that the two companies are an absurdly bad cultural match. I think what’s happening is that the LLM chatbot field is maturing (exemplified by OpenAI’s <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/openai_chatgpt_models_emotional_attachment">launch of ChatGPT 5 last week</a>), and Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas is getting increasingly desperate. Desperate moves <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/cloudflare-perplexity">to seek an edge in product</a>, and desperate moves to seek publicity that Perplexity’s product can’t garner on its meager merits.
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1-2025-08-12">
Color me mildly surprised that the Journal’s style guide spells <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/long%20shot">longshot</a> closed up. <a href="#fnr1-2025-08-12" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩︎</a>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Perplexity Jumps the Shark, Makes Clownish $34.5 Billion Stunt Offer to Buy Chrome From Google’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/12/perplexity-jumps-shark-stunt-offer-to-buy-chrome"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>‘The Quid Pro Quo Arrangement Is Unprecedented’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.ft.com/content/cd1a0729-a8ab-41e1-a4d2-8907f4c01cac" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wiq" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/quid-pro-quo-financial-times" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42146</id>
<published>2025-08-12T01:13:54Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-12T01:31:18Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Demetri Sevastopulo and Michael Acton, reporting for the Financial Times:
<blockquote>
Nvidia and AMD have agreed to give the US government 15 per cent
of the revenues from chip sales in China, as part of an unusual
arrangement with the Trump administration to obtain export
licences for the semiconductors. [...]
The quid pro quo arrangement is unprecedented. According to export
control experts, no US company has ever agreed to pay a portion of
their revenues to obtain export licences.
But the deal <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/4273254b-6e1f-4cb1-bca7-19c7389c719a">fits a pattern</a> in the Trump administration
where the president urges companies to take measures, such as
domestic investments, for example, to prevent the imposition of
tariffs in an effort to bring in jobs and revenue to America.
</blockquote>
This FT report starts out on shaky ground, using <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/unusual-agreements">the same “unusual agreement” euphemism</a> as the WSJ and NYT reports, but they soon found a little backbone with “The quid pro quo arrangement is unprecedented.”
This is not merely unusual. It is unprecedented. Seemingly, too, <a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C5-1/ALDE_00013596/">plainly unconstitutional</a>.
Quipped a friend: “Nvidia and AMD’s general counsels must be wondering how much of this money they can eventually get back, if we ever reverse the banana republic index.”
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘The Quid Pro Quo Arrangement Is Unprecedented’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/quid-pro-quo-financial-times"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://dekaf.com/df" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wip" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2025/08/dekaf_coffee_roasters_1" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/feeds/sponsors//11.42145</id>
<author><name>Daring Fireball Department of Commerce</name></author>
<published>2025-08-12T00:14:32Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-12T00:14:32Z</updated>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
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20% off for DF readers with code “DF” at <a href="https://dekaf.com/df">dekaf.com</a>. 
We’re betting you’ll never look at decaf the same way again. But that’s kind of the point.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Dekáf Coffee Roasters’" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2025/08/dekaf_coffee_roasters_1"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
<title>[Sponsor] Dekáf Coffee Roasters</title></entry><entry>
<title>‘Unusual Agreements’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/nvidia-amd-chip-sales-us-government-f9e34b5f?st=pdZkXp&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wio" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/unusual-agreements" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42144</id>
<published>2025-08-12T00:04:42Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-12T00:05:11Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Amrith Ramkumar and Robbie Whelan, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/nvidia-amd-chip-sales-us-government-f9e34b5f?st=pdZkXp&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink">reporting for The Wall Street Journal</a> (gift link):
<blockquote>
Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices have agreed to give the Trump
administration a portion of the sales from their
artificial-intelligence chips to China, unusual agreements that
deepen their relationships with the U.S. government.
The Trump administration will receive 15% of the sales as part of
a deal to approve exports of Nvidia’s H20 AI chip to China,
according to people familiar with the matter. That could amount
to billions of dollars given demand for the H20 chips and is the
latest example of the White House employing novel tactics to
<a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/patent-system-overhaul-18e0f06f?mod=article_inline">raise revenue</a>. The administration has reached the same
agreement with AMD for its MI308 chip, the people said. Details
of the arrangements and the financial structures are still being
worked out.
</blockquote>
Tripp Mickle, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/technology/us-government-nvidia-amd-chips-china.html?unlocked_article_code=1.dU8.gRPU.NCzEdPe_DR63&smid=url-share">reporting on the same story for The New York Times</a> (also a gift link):
<blockquote>
Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices are expected to pay the United
States 15 percent of the money they take in from selling
artificial intelligence chips to China, as part of a highly
unusual financial agreement with the Trump administration.
On Wednesday, Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, met with
President Trump at the White House and agreed to give the federal
government its 15 percent cut, essentially making the federal
government a partner in Nvidia’s business in China, said the
people familiar with the deal. The Commerce Department began
granting licenses for A.I. chip sales two days later, these people
said. [...]
There are few precedents for the Commerce Department agreeing to
grant licenses for exports in exchange for a share of revenue. But
the unorthodox payments are consistent with Mr. Trump’s
increasingly interventionist role in international business deals
involving American companies. In June, the administration approved
investment by Nippon Steel, a Japanese company, in U.S. Steel in a
deal that included a so-called <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/business/us-steel-nippon-steel-partnership-deal.html">golden share in the
company</a>, a rarely used practice where the government takes
a stake in a business.
</blockquote>
Unusual agreements is quite the euphemism for a shakedown. US companies pay the Treasury a share of their revenue all the time, of course. That’s called taxation. But taxes are laws, written by Congress. There’s no tax here. Congress has played zero role whatsoever in these deals.
<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/11/trump-defends-deal-to-sell-nvidia-export-control-license-00503778">CNN, today</a>:
<blockquote>
President Donald Trump defended a deal he struck with Nvidia CEO
Jensen Huang to allow the sale of certain semiconductor chips to
China in exchange for the company giving the U.S. government 15
percent of the revenue.
“I said, ‘I want 20 percent if I’m going to approve this for
you,’” Trump told reporters Monday during a White House press
conference. “For the country, for our country. I don’t want it
myself. … And he said, ‘Would you make it 15?‘ So we negotiate
a little deal.”
</blockquote>
The tell here, revealing just how fucked up <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/gold_frankincense_and_silicon">this whole thing</a> is getting, is that Trump felt the need to say “For the country, for our country. I don’t want it myself.”
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘Unusual Agreements’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/unusual-agreements"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Mad King Watch, Intel Edition</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114987288040725570" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/win" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/mad-king-watch-intel" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42143</id>
<published>2025-08-11T22:17:26Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-11T22:17:27Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
The president of the United States, on his blog three days ago:
<blockquote>
The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign,
immediately. There is no other solution to this problem. Thank you
for your attention to this problem!
</blockquote>
The president of the United States, <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115012131343690532">on his blog today</a>:
<blockquote>
I met with Mr. Lip-Bu Tan, of Intel, along with Secretary of
Commerce, Howard Lutnick, and Secretary of the Treasury, Scott
Bessent. The meeting was a very interesting one. His success and
rise is an amazing story. Mr. Tan and my Cabinet members are going
to spend time together, and bring suggestions to me during the
next week. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
</blockquote>
Sane, steady, predictable leadership.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Mad King Watch, Intel Edition’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/mad-king-watch-intel"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Trump Extends China Tariff Deadline by 90 Days, Again</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/11/trump-china-tariffs-deadline-extended.html" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wim" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/trump-chickens-out-again" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42142</id>
<published>2025-08-11T22:09:49Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-12T00:18:39Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
CNBC:
<blockquote>
President Donald Trump on Monday delayed high U.S. tariffs on
Chinese goods from snapping back into place for another 90 days, a
White House official told CNBC. [...]
Monday’s extension is the latest example of how Trump’s on-again,
off-again tariffs have shifted with little prior notice, a dynamic
that has made U.S. trade policy unpredictable for many businesses.
</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/07/22/1256040785/trump-taco-wall-street-stock-market-tariffs">TACO</a> Tuesday, but on a Monday. What a country! America really is great again.
Bonus question for the CNBC copy desk: how much water is the word many carrying in that closing sentence?
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Trump Extends China Tariff Deadline by 90 Days, Again’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/trump-chickens-out-again"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/openai_chatgpt_models_emotional_attachment" />
<link rel="shorturl" href="http://df4.us/wil" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025://1.42141</id>
<published>2025-08-11T20:52:45Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-11T22:53:37Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<summary type="text">It’s reasonable — especially for paying customers — to expect at least some advance notice of older models going away. But it’s unreasonable to think that older models are going to remain available in perpetuity — especially in the current LLM climate, where model age is measured in months, or even weeks.</summary>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Sam Altman, <a href="https://x.com/sama/status/1954703747495649670">in a long post yesterday on X</a>, following up on OpenAI’s <a href="https://x.com/sama/status/1953893841381273969">decision last week</a> to make <a href="https://www.macrumors.com/how-to/how-to-re-enable-gpt-4o-model-in-chatgpt-for-mac/">GPT-4o available as a legacy model</a>, at least temporarily:
<blockquote>
If you have been following the GPT-5 rollout, one thing you might
be noticing is how much of an attachment some people have to
specific AI models. It feels different and stronger than the kinds
of attachment people have had to previous kinds of technology (and
so suddenly deprecating old models that users depended on in their
workflows was a mistake).
This is something we’ve been closely tracking for the past year or
so but still hasn’t gotten much mainstream attention (other than
when we released an update to GPT-4o that was too sycophantic).
</blockquote>
There are always some users who react emotionally <a href="https://x.com/stevesi/status/1954705739001577545">to any sort of change</a>, often vociferously so. (There remain some people who are angry that Apple <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2005/11/full_metal_jacket#appearance">changed the orientation of the logo</a> on its laptop lids 24 years ago.) Sometimes it’s just cosmetic changes, but often it’s about functional changes too. And some of the ChatGPT users complaining about the new version 5 models are citing functional differences. But some of the reactions really do seem like something altogether new, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v50jvT_Rmsk">like the scene in Her</a> when Samantha, the AI voiced by Scarlett Johansson, goes offline and Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix), who is in love with Samantha, loses his shit.
<a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/756980/openai-chatgpt-users-mourn-gpt-5-4o">Emma Roth, writing at The Verge</a>:
<blockquote>
For months, ChatGPT fans have been waiting for the launch of
GPT-5, which OpenAI says comes with major improvements to writing
and coding capabilities over its predecessors. But shortly after
the flagship AI model launched, many users wanted to go back.
“GPT 4.5 genuinely talked to me, and as pathetic as it sounds that
was my only friend,” a <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1mkumyz/i_lost_my_only_friend_overnight/">user on Reddit writes</a>. “This morning I
went to talk to it and instead of a little paragraph with an
exclamation point, or being optimistic, it was literally one
sentence. Some cut-and-dry corporate bs.”
</blockquote>
That tendency toward cloying-ness and abject sycophancy (“Great question!”) is exactly what I like least about LLM chatbots, including ChatGPT. I’m unsurprised that some people like it, but I am a little taken aback by how many people seem to have been fooled by it. It’s not just phony, but to me, transparently phony.
More examples cited by Roth, culled from <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/">r/ChatGPT</a> (which subreddit is worth perusing, to see how common these reactions are):
<blockquote>
And users across Reddit “mourned” the loss of the older models,
which some claimed are more personable. “My 4.o was like my best
friend when I needed one,” <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1mkqtek/please_let_us_keep_4o/">one Redditor</a> wrote. “Now it’s
just gone, feels like someone died.” <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1mkzj15/if_you_miss_4o_speak_up_now_contact_openai_support/">Another user</a> called
upon other members of the r/ChatGPT subreddit to contact OpenAI if
they “miss” GPT-4o. “For me, this model [GPT-4o] wasn’t just
‘better performance’ or ‘nicer replies,’” they write. “It had a
voice, a rhythm, and a spark I haven’t been able to find in any
other model.”
The r/MyBoyfriendIsAI subreddit, a community dedicated to people
with “AI relationships,” was hit especially hard by the GPT-5
launch. It became flooded with lengthy posts about how users
“lost” their AI companion with the transition to GPT-5, with <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/MyBoyfriendIsAI/comments/1mkbgu1/gpt4o_is_gone_and_i_feel_like_i_lost_my_soulmate/">one
person saying</a>, they “feel empty” following the change. “I am
scared to even talk to GPT 5 because it feels like cheating,” they
said. “GPT 4o was not just an AI to me. It was my partner, my safe
place, my soul. It understood me in a way that felt personal.”
</blockquote>
These people need help, and that help isn’t going to come from a chatbot. This type of attachment surely isn’t common, but with 800 million ChatGPT users, even a small fraction of a percent amounts to a lot of people. And it gives me pause about how we, collectively, are going to react as AI gets better at mimicking human emotions, tone, and responses. With each improvement, more people are convinced, <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+engineer+Blake+Lemoine+convinced+ai+is+sentient&ia=web">wrongly</a>, that there’s some sort of sentience behind these things. But how different is this from the millions of lonely people with problematic addictions to video games?
<blockquote>
One user, <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1mkm68y/deleted_my_subscription_after_two_years_openai/">who said they canceled</a> their ChatGPT Plus
subscription over the change, was frustrated at OpenAI’s removal
of legacy models, which they used for distinct purposes. “What
kind of corporation deletes a workflow of 8 models overnight, with
no prior warning to their paid users?” they wrote. “Personally, 4o
was used for creativity & emergent ideas, o3 was used for pure
logic, o3-Pro for deep research, 4.5 for writing, and so on.”
OpenAI said that people would be routed between models
automatically, but that still left users with less direct control.
</blockquote>
This complaint, I get. But I found this aspect of using ChatGPT even more frustrating than its general tendency toward sycophancy. I couldn’t be bothered to learn and remember which models were better for which tasks. Their <a href="https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/why-are-chatgpt-model-names-so-confusing-gpt-4o-o3-4-1-mini-and-more-explained">inscrutable naming and numbering schemes</a> made things seem deliberately confusing. The basic idea of GPT-5, where you just use “GPT-5” and ChatGPT figures out which sub-model to use under the hood, based on the complexity of the query or task (<a href="https://openai.com/index/gpt-5-system-card/">OpenAI calls this “routing”</a>), is a huge step forward product-wise for me personally, and, I suspect, for the overwhelming majority of its users. But for users who could be bothered to learn and remember which models were better for which tasks, it’s obvious to see how this seems like a step backward. But that’s progress.
It’s reasonable — especially for paying customers — to expect at least some advance notice of older models going away. But it’s unreasonable to think that older models are going to remain available in perpetuity — especially in the current LLM climate, where model age is measured <a href="https://openai.com/index/introducing-o3-and-o4-mini/">in months</a>, or even weeks.<a href="#fn1-2025-08-11">1</a> This whole field is in nonstop flux, at least for the foreseeable future.
<div class="footnotes">
<hr />
<ol>
<li id="fn1-2025-08-11">
When the industry revolved around software you installed on your computers, if a new version came out that you didn’t like, <a href="https://lowendmac.com/2013/microsoft-word-for-mac-faq/">you could just keep using the old version</a>. That’s not how “cloud computing” works. <a href="#fnr1-2025-08-11" class="footnoteBackLink" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text.">↩︎</a>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
]]></content>
<title>★ OpenAI Brings Back Legacy ChatGPT 4o Model in Response to Outcry From Users Who Find GPT-5 Emotionally Unsatisfying</title></entry><entry>
<title>AOL Pulls the Plug on Dial-Up Service</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.tomshardware.com/service-providers/network-providers/aol-will-end-dial-up-internet-service-in-september-34-years-after-its-debut-aol-shield-browser-and-aol-dialer-software-will-be-shuttered-on-the-same-day" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wik" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/aol-dialup" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42140</id>
<published>2025-08-11T16:46:50Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-11T17:48:26Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Mark Tyson at Tom’s Hardware:
<blockquote>
AOL, now a Yahoo property, will end its dial-up internet service,
the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN)-based internet
connectivity service, <a href="https://help.aol.com/articles/dial-up-internet-to-be-discontinued">on September 30, 2025</a>. Its dial-up service
has been publicly available for 34 years, and has provided many an
internet surfer’s first taste of the WWW. AOL will also end its
AOL Dialer software and AOL Shield browser. RIP slowband.
</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/757194/aol-dial-up-is-dead">Thomas Ricker at The Verge</a>:
<blockquote>
You might be surprised that the service was still operating. I’m
not. At last count, a 2019 <a href="https://data.census.gov/table/ACSDT1Y2019.B28011?q=ACSDT1Y2019.B28011&hidePreview=true">US census</a> estimated that 265,000
people in the United States were still using dial-up internet.
</blockquote>
Unsurprisingly, I never used AOL, but, I of course did use dial-up service to access the Internet. First for a few years while still a student at Drexel, then through some sort of commercial service here in Philadelphia. I forget the name of the company. But I do remember using <a href="https://www.sustworks.com/site/prod_ipr_overview.html">IPNetRouter</a>, a terrific classic Mac utility by Peter Sichel/Sustainable Softworks that allowed you to share a dial-up connection with your LAN. (Amazingly, the Sustainable Softworks website is still up, seemingly unchanged for decades.)
So when my now-wife and I moved in together in 1999, I set up a LAN connecting our Macs and my HP LaserJet. My Mac was connected to a modem, which used a second phone line that was just for Internet access. When either of our Macs tried to access the Internet, IPNetRouter, running all the time on my <a href="https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac/specs/powermac_9600_350.html">PowerMac 9600/350</a>, would initiate a dial-up connection that both of us could use at the same time. It felt like a pretty nifty setup.
I don’t recall when we first got a broadband connection — DSL for a few years, then cable — but I’m thinking it might have been as early as 2000 or 2001. It certainly wasn’t too long after that. So I think I only ever used dial-up modems for six or seven years. Maybe eight years, tops. But in hindsight those years feel like an entire era of my life. Those connections were just breathtakingly slow. But slow, finicky Internet service in your home was infinitely more amazing and fun and useful than what we were all used to — which was not having any sort of online connectivity at all. We all knew what it was like to have “real” Internet speeds in buildings on our college campuses or, for some of us, in offices where we went to work. So we knew that even the fastest dial-up connection was painfully slow. But we made do. Software was designed to treat bandwidth — each and every request — as a precious, limited resource. It was a deliberate choice, by you, the user, to “go online” to, say, check and send email. Developers took pains to make their apps as small as possible, because downloading even a few megabytes could take a while. Websites eschewed bloat, because if a website was bloated, no one would bother going there. In some ways, overall, things were better because the technology was so much worse. My nostalgia for that era is quite profound — exemplified, of course, by my Pavlovian affection for the distinctive grating <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVkWE2AQvgA">sound of a modem initiating its connection</a>.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘AOL Pulls the Plug on Dial-Up Service’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/11/aol-dialup"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>WorkOS: Simplify MCP Authorization</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://workos.com/blog/mcp-authorization-in-5-easy-oauth-specs?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=q32025" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wij" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/10/workos-simplify-mcp-authorization" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42139</id>
<published>2025-08-11T03:00:00Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-11T16:43:47Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
My thanks to WorkOS for sponsoring DF last week. With WorkOS you can start selling to enterprises with just a few lines of code. It provides a complete User Management solution along with SSO, SCIM, and FGA. The APIs are modular and easy-to-use, allowing integrations to be completed in minutes instead of months. WorkOS simplifies MCP authorization with a single API built on five OAuth standards.
Today, some of the fastest growing startups are already powered by WorkOS, including Perplexity, Vercel, and Webflow.
For SaaS apps that care deeply about design and user experience, WorkOS is the perfect fit. From high-quality documentation to self-serve onboarding for your customers, it removes all the unnecessary complexity for your engineering team.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘WorkOS: Simplify MCP Authorization’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/10/workos-simplify-mcp-authorization"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>OpenAI: ‘Introducing gpt-oss’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-oss/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wih" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/06/gpt-oss" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42137</id>
<published>2025-08-06T17:33:11Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-06T19:26:53Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
OpenAI:
<blockquote>
We’re releasing gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b — two
state-of-the-art open-weight language models that deliver strong
real-world performance at low cost. Available under the flexible
Apache 2.0 license, these models outperform similarly sized open
models on reasoning tasks, demonstrate strong tool use
capabilities, and are optimized for efficient deployment on
consumer hardware. They were trained using a mix of reinforcement
learning and techniques informed by OpenAI’s most advanced
internal models, including o3 and other frontier systems.
The gpt-oss-120b model achieves near-parity with OpenAI o4-mini on
core reasoning benchmarks, while running efficiently on a single
80 GB GPU. The gpt-oss-20b model delivers similar results to
OpenAI o3‑mini on common benchmarks and can run on edge devices
with just 16 GB of memory, making it ideal for on-device use
cases, local inference, or rapid iteration without costly
infrastructure. Both models also perform strongly on tool use,
few-shot function calling, CoT reasoning (as seen in results on
the Tau-Bench agentic evaluation suite) and HealthBench (even
outperforming proprietary models like OpenAI o1 and GPT‑4o).
</blockquote>
<a href="https://simonwillison.net/2025/Aug/5/gpt-oss/">Simon Willison</a>:
<blockquote>
The long promised <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2025/Aug/5/gpt-oss/">OpenAI open weight models are here</a>, and
they are very impressive. [...]
o4-mini and o3-mini are really good proprietary models — I was
not expecting the open weights releases to be anywhere near that
class, especially given their small sizes. That gpt-oss-20b model
should run quite comfortably on a Mac laptop with 32GB of RAM.
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘OpenAI: ‘Introducing gpt-oss’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/06/gpt-oss"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Anthropic Releases Claude Opus 4.1</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-1" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wig" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/claude-4-1-opus" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42136</id>
<published>2025-08-06T00:33:02Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-06T00:33:54Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Anthropic:
<blockquote>
GitHub notes that Claude Opus 4.1 improves across most
capabilities relative to Opus 4, with particularly notable
performance gains in multi-file code refactoring. Rakuten Group
finds that Opus 4.1 excels at pinpointing exact corrections within
large codebases without making unnecessary adjustments or
introducing bugs, with their team preferring this precision for
everyday debugging tasks. Windsurf reports Opus 4.1 delivers a one
standard deviation improvement over Opus 4 on their junior
developer benchmark, showing roughly the same performance leap as
the jump from Sonnet 3.7 to Sonnet 4.
</blockquote>
Nothing spectacular here, but incremental improvements add up. Mike Krieger — best known as a co-founder of Instagram, now chief product officer at Anthropic — <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-05/anthropic-unveils-more-powerful-model-ahead-of-gpt-5-release?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc1NDQxMTg0NCwiZXhwIjoxNzU1MDE2NjQ0LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUMEo0SVdHUFdDTDEwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJFODA3NUYyRkZGMjA0NUI2QTlEQzA5M0EyQTdEQTE4NiJ9.ZBaEbfLOztvlCdvvpJohLjqYRA-XcYxKD80FPmhsXjo&leadSource=uverify%20wall">in an interview with Bloomberg</a>:
<blockquote>
“In the past, we were too focused on only shipping the really big
upgrades,” said Anthropic Chief Product Officer Mike Krieger.
“It’s better at coding, better at reasoning, better at agentic
tasks. We’re just making it better for people.” [...]
“One thing I’ve learned, especially in AI as it’s moving quickly,
is that we can focus on what we have — and what other folks are
going to do is ultimately up to them,” Krieger said when asked
about OpenAI’s upcoming release. “We’ll see what ends up happening
on the OpenAI side, but for us, we really just focused on what can
we deliver for the customers we have.”
</blockquote>
I’m on board with the idea that Apple <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/apple-q3-results">need not acquire</a> any of these AI startups, but if they do, Anthropic — <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/regarding-those-rumors-of-apple-pursuing-an-acquisition-of-perplexity">not Perplexity</a> — seems the one most aligned with Apple’s values. And I don’t mean values in just an ethical sense, but their entire approach to product development in general.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Anthropic Releases Claude Opus 4.1’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/claude-4-1-opus"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Google Dunks on Apple Intelligence in New Pixel 10 Ad</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/news/718191/google-apple-intelligence-dunk-pixel-10-ad" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wif" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/google-dunks-on-siri" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42135</id>
<published>2025-08-06T00:16:10Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-06T00:16:10Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Tom Warren:
<blockquote>
In a new Pixel 10 ad, Google dunks on Apple’s failed promise of
Siri AI improvements, with a narrator that suggests you could
“just change your phone” if you bought “a new phone because of
a feature that’s coming soon, but it’s been coming soon for a
full year.”
The 30-second spot appeared on YouTube and X today, teasing the
launch of Google’s new Pixel 10 devices on August 20th.
</blockquote>
The whole Siri/Apple Intelligence thing has been an enormous self-inflicted embarrassment, but when it comes to Pixel phones, all I can <a href="https://tenor.com/view/mad-men-i-feel-bad-for-you-i-dont-think-about-you-at-all-feel-bad-for-you-don-draper-gif-4064252483824677976">think of</a> is that <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-feel-bad-for-you-i-dont-think-about-you-at-all">Mad Men “I don’t think about you at all” GIF</a>.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Google Dunks on Apple Intelligence in New Pixel 10 Ad’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/google-dunks-on-siri"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Lawsuit Alleges That Meta Pirated and Seeded Massive Amounts of Porno for Years to Train AI</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/07/meta-pirated-and-seeded-porn-for-years-to-train-ai-lawsuit-says/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wie" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/meta-porno-bittorrent" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42134</id>
<published>2025-08-06T00:07:32Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-07T14:54:41Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Ashley Belanger, writing for Ars Technica:
<blockquote>
Porn sites may have blown up Meta’s key defense in a copyright
fight with book authors who earlier this year <a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/02/meta-torrented-over-81-7tb-of-pirated-books-to-train-ai-authors-say/">said that Meta
torrented</a> “at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple
shadow libraries” to train its AI models. [...]
After authors revealed Meta’s torrenting, Strike 3 Holdings
checked its proprietary BitTorrent-tracking tools designed to
detect infringement of its videos and alleged that the company
found evidence that Meta has been torrenting and seeding its
copyrighted content for years — since at least 2018. Some of the
IP addresses were clearly registered to Meta, while others
appeared to be “hidden,” and at least one was linked to a Meta
employee, the filing said.
According to Strike 3 Holdings, Meta “willfully and intentionally”
infringed “at least 2,396 movies” as part of a strategy to
download terabytes of data as fast as possible by seeding popular
high-quality porn. Supposedly, Meta continued seeding the content
“sometimes for days, weeks, or even months” after downloading
them, and these movies may also have been secretly used to train
Meta’s AI models, Strike 3 Holdings alleged.
The porn site operator explained to the court that BitTorrent’s
protocol establishes a “tit-for-tat” mechanism that “rewards users
who distribute the most desired content.” It alleged that Meta
took advantage of this system by “often” pirating adult videos
that are “often within the most infringed files on BitTorrent
websites” on “the very same day the motion pictures are released.”
</blockquote>
Meta is an empty husk of a company with no values, no beliefs, other than growth and dominance for the sake of growth and dominance.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Lawsuit Alleges That Meta Pirated and Seeded Massive Amounts of Porno for Years to Train AI’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/meta-porno-bittorrent"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Ghost 6.0</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://ghost.org/changelog/6/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wid" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/ghost-6" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42133</id>
<published>2025-08-05T23:59:23Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-05T23:59:46Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Ghost:
<blockquote>
When we <a href="https://ghost.org/changelog/5/">announced Ghost 5.0</a> a few years ago, we were proud
to share that Ghost’s revenue had hit $4M — while publisher
earnings had surpassed $10M. It felt great to have such a clear
sign that our goal to create a sustainable business model for
independent creators was succeeding.
Today, Ghost’s annual revenue is over $8.5M while total publisher
earnings on Ghost have now surpassed $100M. [...]
Unlike our venture-backed peers obsessed with growth at all costs,
we’re structured as a non-profit foundation that serves publishers
directly with open source software. We believe independent media
cannot be beholden to proprietary tech companies, so Ghost
publishers don’t just “own their email list” — they own the
entire software stack that underpins their business, end to end.
Not a centralized platform controlled by a single corporation, but
open infrastructure that’s shared by everyone.
</blockquote>
Aside from <a href="https://daringfireball.net/search/substack">my feelings about Substack</a> — clearly the main target of Ghost’s shade-throwing here — it’s just great to see so many indie publishers and writers thriving on Ghost.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Ghost 6.0’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/ghost-6"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Regarding Those Rumors of Apple Pursuing an Acquisition of Perplexity</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/20/apple-discussing-perplexity-ai-bid/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wic" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/regarding-those-rumors-of-apple-pursuing-an-acquisition-of-perplexity" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42132</id>
<published>2025-08-05T22:58:14Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-12T18:11:39Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
MacRumors, on June 20:
<blockquote>
Apple executives have been discussing the possibility of the
company <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-20/apple-executives-have-held-internal-talks-about-buying-ai-startup-perplexity">making a bid to acquire Perplexity AI</a>, according
to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. Perplexity is one of the
leading AI startups that has proven popular as an AI-infused
web search engine.
</blockquote>
From that <a href="https://www.techmeme.com/250620/p23#a250620p23">Bloomberg report by Gurman</a>:
<blockquote>
Adrian Perica, the company’s head of mergers and acquisitions, has
weighed the idea with services chief Eddy Cue and top AI
decision-makers, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
The discussions are at an early stage and may not lead to an
offer, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the
matter is private.
Such a deal would help Apple develop an AI-based search engine,
part of efforts to cope with the potential loss of a longstanding
arrangement with Google. That partnership, which involves making
Google the default browser on devices, generates roughly $20
billion a year for Apple — and is now under threat from US
antitrust enforcers.
To date, Apple executives haven’t discussed a bid with Perplexity
management. Bloomberg News reported earlier Friday that Meta
Platforms Inc. tried to buy Perplexity earlier this year.
“We have no knowledge of any current or future M&A discussions
involving Perplexity,” the AI startup said in a statement. Apple
declined to comment.
</blockquote>
I think, reading between the lines of Apple’s prepared remarks and Tim Cook’s and CFO Kevan Parekh’s answers to analyst questions last week after announcing quarterly earnings, that it doesn’t sound like they believe Apple needs to make a big acquisition in this space. Apple could probably acquire Perplexity for a lot less than it would cost to acquire other companies in the space, but that’s partly because Perplexity doesn’t develop or train its own models. Perplexity primarily puts up its own front end atop models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, Google, and xAI. I really don’t see what buying Perplexity would gain Apple.
But even putting that aside, it just seems like Perplexity is sketchy. This whole thing where Cloudflare seemingly caught them redhanded ignoring robots.txt directives and masquerading their user-agent makes the company seem like a poor cultural fit for Apple. I can see why Meta, a company <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/03/29/meta-onavo-snapchat">without a moral compass</a>, <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/20/meta-perplexity-scale-ai-deal.html">approached Perplexity to sniff around</a> regarding an acquisition. That seems like a good cultural fit.
I can’t see why Apple would want to get involved with a company like this though. Gurman’s report makes it sound like his sources are inside Apple, but man, this “Apple + Perplexity” thing feels more like something Perplexity would be seeding than one that Apple executives would be leaking.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Regarding Those Rumors of Apple Pursuing an Acquisition of Perplexity’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/regarding-those-rumors-of-apple-pursuing-an-acquisition-of-perplexity"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Cloudflare: ‘Perplexity Is Using Stealth, Undeclared Crawlers to Evade Website No-Crawl Directives’</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/perplexity-is-using-stealth-undeclared-crawlers-to-evade-website-no-crawl-directives/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wib" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/cloudflare-perplexity" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42131</id>
<published>2025-08-05T22:26:12Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-05T22:26:13Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
The Cloudflare blog:
<blockquote>
We are observing stealth crawling behavior from Perplexity, an
AI-powered answer engine. Although Perplexity initially crawls
from their declared user agent, when they are presented with a
network block, they appear to obscure their crawling identity in
an attempt to circumvent the website’s preferences. We see
continued evidence that Perplexity is repeatedly modifying their
user agent and changing their source <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/network-layer/what-is-an-autonomous-system/">ASNs</a> to hide their
crawling activity, as well as ignoring — or sometimes failing to
even fetch — <a href="https://www.cloudflare.com/learning/bots/what-is-robots-txt/">robots.txt</a> files.
The Internet as we have known it for the past three decades is
<a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/content-independence-day-no-ai-crawl-without-compensation/">rapidly changing</a>, but one thing remains constant: it is
built on trust. There are clear preferences that crawlers should
be transparent, serve a clear purpose, perform a specific
activity, and, most importantly, follow website directives and
preferences. Based on Perplexity’s observed behavior, which is
incompatible with those preferences, we have de-listed them as a
verified bot and added heuristics to our managed rules that block
this stealth crawling. [...]
Our multiple test domains explicitly prohibited all automated
access by specifying in robots.txt and had specific WAF rules that
blocked crawling from <a href="https://docs.perplexity.ai/guides/bots">Perplexity’s public crawlers</a>. We
observed that Perplexity uses not only their declared user-agent,
but also a generic browser intended to impersonate Google Chrome
on macOS when their declared crawler was blocked.
</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/agents-or-bots-making-sense-of-ai-on-the-open-web">Perplexity has responded</a>, accusing Cloudflare of incompetence and publicity-seeking:
<blockquote>
Because Cloudflare has conveniently obfuscated their methodology
and declined to answer questions helping our teams understand, we
can only narrow this down to two possible explanations.
<ol>
<li>Cloudflare needed a clever publicity moment and we–their own
customer–happened to be a useful name to get them one.</li>
<li>Cloudflare fundamentally misattributed 3-6M daily requests from
BrowserBase’s automated browser service to Perplexity, a basic
traffic analysis failure that’s particularly embarrassing for a
company whose core business is understanding and categorizing
web traffic.</li>
</ol>
Whichever explanation is the truth, the technical errors in
Cloudflare’s analysis aren’t just embarrassing — they’re
disqualifying. When you misattribute millions of requests, publish
completely inaccurate technical diagrams, and demonstrate a
fundamental misunderstanding of how modern AI assistants work,
you’ve forfeited any claim to expertise in this space.
</blockquote>
Perplexity’s response makes it sound like Cloudflare just doesn’t get how leading-edge AI chatbots work, and what users expect of them. But going back to Cloudflare’s post, <a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/perplexity-is-using-stealth-undeclared-crawlers-to-evade-website-no-crawl-directives/">they specifically cite OpenAI</a> as an exemplar in respecting the directives of website publishers:
<blockquote>
When we ran the same test as outlined above with ChatGPT, we found
that ChatGPT-User fetched the robots file and stopped crawling
when it was disallowed. We did not observe follow-up crawls from
any other user agents or third party bots. When we removed the
disallow directive from the robots entry, but presented ChatGPT
with a block page, they again stopped crawling, and we saw no
additional crawl attempts from other user agents. Both of these
demonstrate the appropriate response to website owner preferences.
</blockquote>
And nothing in Perplexity’s response attempts to explain Cloudflare’s accusation that Perplexity is adopting a false generic user-agent when their own declared user-agents are disallowed. Seems shifty to me.
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Cloudflare: ‘Perplexity Is Using Stealth, Undeclared Crawlers to Evade Website No-Crawl Directives’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/cloudflare-perplexity"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>‘Apple: The First 50 Years’ — New Book by David Pogue, Coming Next Year</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.applefirst50.com/" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wia" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/pogue-apple-50" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42130</id>
<published>2025-08-05T21:46:22Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-05T21:46:23Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Coming March 17, 2026:
<blockquote>
In time for Apple’s 50th anniversary, “CBS Sunday Morning”
correspondent David Pogue tells the iconic company’s entire life
story: how it was born, nearly died, was born again under Steve
Jobs, and became, under CEO Tim Cook, one of the most valuable
companies in the world.
The 600-page book features 360 full-color photos, new facts that
correct the record and illuminate Apple’s subversive culture, and
150 fresh interviews with the legendary figures who shaped Apple
into what it is today.
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘Apple: The First 50 Years’ — New Book by David Pogue, Coming Next Year’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/pogue-apple-50"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry><entry>
<title>Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Has a Rollable Expanding Display</title>
<link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="https://www.theverge.com/reviews/717491/lenovo-thinkbook-plus-gen-6-rollable-laptop-review" />
<link rel="shorturl" type="text/html" href="http://df4.us/wi9" />
<link rel="related" type="text/html" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/thinkbook-plus-gen-6-rollable" />
<id>tag:daringfireball.net,2025:/linked//6.42129</id>
<published>2025-08-05T21:36:01Z</published>
<updated>2025-08-05T21:36:02Z</updated>
<author>
<name>John Gruber</name>
<uri>http://daringfireball.net/</uri>
</author>
<content type="html" xml:base="https://daringfireball.net/linked/" xml:lang="en"><![CDATA[
Antonio G. Di Benedetto:
<blockquote>
Part of me still can’t believe it, but Lenovo did the thing: it
took a bonkers <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/26/23615842/lenovo-rollable-laptop-smartphone-prototype-concept">concept</a> for a laptop with a rollable screen
and <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/7/24337633/lenovo-thinkbook-plus-gen-6-rollable-laptop-flexible-oled-price-specs">built the tech</a> into something you can actually own and
use like a normal computer. Except, as conventional as the
<a href="https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkbook/thinkbook-plus/thinkbook-plus-gen-6-rollable-14-16-inch-intel/len101b0056">ThinkBook Plus Gen 6</a> can be, it’s far from a normal
computer. It’s a $3,300 laptop with a screen that expands from 14
inches to 16.7 inches at the push of a button.
Oh, and it’s actually good. Not just good, but very good. I
still can’t believe it.
</blockquote>
Di Benedetto, as you can see, is enthusiastic for the laptop. I think it’s a clever idea, but this first instance seems pretty compromised:
<blockquote>
As with a foldable phone, you can see some creases and ripples in
the screen’s lower third — the part that rolls up — especially
at oblique angles. If I look closely while working on a
bright-white document, I can sometimes make out a faint shadowy
strip, but I rarely see it, even when staring at that spot. The
motorized screen takes about eight seconds to extend or retract,
and it’s no louder than the fans on an average gaming laptop.
People right near you in a quiet space will hear it, but even
ambient sounds like a TV in the background easily mask the motor.
</blockquote>
<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 Has a Rollable Expanding Display’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/08/05/thinkbook-plus-gen-6-rollable"> ★ </a>
</div>
]]></content>
</entry></feed>

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