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There’s a Devil Wears Prada sequel coming… “Gird your loins.”

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Although I am slightly disappointed this isn’t a “real” crossword puzzle, I do admire Randall Munroe’s commitment to the bit. And then there’s the gray letters…

Tags: crossword puzzles · games · Randall Munroe · XKCD

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I’ve linked to these before, but the Do Not Reply images (which gently dunk on social media reply guys) are now available on their own site — and you can order IRL stickers too.

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Well, the teaser trailer answers almost no questions about the second season of Severance, so job well done with the teasing there lads. Here’s one thing though: the season starts on January 17, 2025 on Apple TV+. Oh, and this: In season two, Mark and his friends learn t...

Camilla Hodgson and George Hammond, reporting for The Financial Times: Microsoft has given up its seat as an observer on the board of OpenAI while Apple will not take up a similar position, amid growing scrutiny by global regulators of Big Tech’s investments in AI start-...

Pre-show: Casey’s tales of woe Fully Herman Miller Jarvis Follow-up: An 🎵 accidental 🎵 miss from the iPod Tier List special (via Scott Shuchart) The origins of S-Tier in tier lists (via David Schaub) Grading in Japan AirPods Pro do have an inward-facing microphon...

Joe Rossignol, MacRumors: Walmart+ members have early access to the deal as of 12 p.m. Eastern Time today, and it will be available to all Walmart customers starting at 6 p.m. Eastern Time today. Walmart first began selling the MacBook Air with the M1 chip for $699 in M...

Did you know you can renew your US passport online now? The State Department is beta testing the new online renewal system for the next several months.

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I’ve been a big fan of Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro since his term as our attorney general. He was absolutely fantastic in the aftermath of the 2020 election, when Trump attempted to steal Pennsylvania.

But as of this week he might be my favorite politician in the entire country. He accomplished what I had long ago given up hope of ever seeing: replacing PA’s fugly-as-sin license plates with a new design that’s among the best I’ve ever seen. Good typography, great colors, and a new slogan and icon that exemplify Pennsylvania’s role as the birthplace of the longest-standing democracy the world has ever seen: the Liberty Bell.

Bravo.

(Next job: Apply this same design language to our god-awful driver’s licenses.)

Update: Design credit for both the new plates and welcome signage goes to Robyn Kanner.

Link: x.com/governorshapiro/status/1810662109073588268

Quinn Nelson on X: Watch Ultra is the most shameless copy of an Apple product in ages — and it’s hideous Wait, it gets more shameless — Buds3 and Buds3 Pro are clones of AirPods It’s sad to see Samsung — who once was a leader in design and innovation — start knocking ...

New book out this fall: Comic Sans: The Biography of a Typeface. “Author Simon Garfield tells the story of how Comic Sans emerged from speech bubbles on educational software to become one of the most recognized — and reviled — typefaces on Earth.”

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Fenne Lily is a singer and songwriter from Dorset, England. She released her first album in 2018, but I didn’t find her music until 2023, when she put out her third album, Big Picture. The album she released in between those two was one that got a little lost in the lockdown, when all her touring plans around it got canceled. All of that plays into the story she tells in this episode, about making her song “Lights Light Up” from that third album. I spoke to Fenne in front of a live audience at WBUR CitySpace in Boston. Coming up, you’ll hear how the song evolved across different versions of demos and then in the studio, where she recorded it with Grammy-nominated producer Brad Cook.

For more, visit songexploder.net/fenne-lily.

For National Geographic, Tony Hale (who played Fear in Inside Out 2) talks to psychologist and author Dr. Lisa Damour about Pixar’s new film, her role as a consultant for the filmmakers, and what science says about the emotions in the movie. From The Kid Should See This: ...

Nelson Aguilar and Blake Stimac, writing for CNet: That’s right. There’s a hidden flight tracker built right into iMessage that you probably would have never noticed unless you threw in the right combination of details within a message. [...] Although the airline name/f...

Dave Grochocki, writing for Microsoft’s Windows Insider Blog: With this update, Notepad will now highlight misspelled words and provide suggestions so that you can easily identify and correct mistakes. We are also introducing autocorrect which seamlessly fixes common typ...

Kieran Kelly, reporting for LBC: New cars that are sold in Europe from this week will host automatically-installed speed limiters, following the introduction of a new EU law. Even though the rule to install the technology does not apply in the UK, many of the cars will ...

The Ringer’s Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Van Lathan take shelter from an F5 tornado to rewatch ‘Twister,’ starring Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Producer: Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Imagine you could go back in time when Alex Bell started his phone company. Imagine for a moment that you could have owned a piece of his network. Well, you can’t. Until someone invents a time machine. Which they haven’t. What you can do however is own a piece of the next telecom juggernaut. Dabba is a low cost broadband internet service provider in India owned and powered by FAANG engineers and startup founders from around the world. Check it out, it’s the time machine you wish you had.

Link: dabba.com/daringfireball

Mark Gurman, in his Power On column for Bloomberg: For the first time, the digital assistant will have precise control over actions inside of Apple’s apps. That means you can ask Siri to, say, edit a photo and then ship it off to a friend. It also will have the ability t...

My thanks to BriefLook for sponsoring last week at DF. BriefLook is a clever iPhone app that does one thing and does it well: it summarizes your postal (paper) mail. Just point your iPhone camera at a letter, and boom, a few moments later you get an AI-generated summary. Who it’s from, what it’s about, and what you’re expected to do about it. That’s useful for summarizing long letters in your own native language, but BriefLook can read and translate between dozens of languages. Truly an amazing use case for AI. Not too long ago a “universal mail translator / summarizer” was the stuff of science fiction. Now you can carry one in your pocket.

Download BriefLook and try it free of charge. Super useful, yet so utterly simple.

Link: brieflook.app/?dfrss