FeedCity: Featured

Typically interesting thoughts about AI from Neal Stephenson. “I see parallels between...

Typically interesting thoughts about AI from Neal Stephenson. “I see parallels between these and the hydrogen bomb tests that were conducted in your back yard during the 1950s.”

Daring Fireball
15 May 21:17 • John Gruber

★ That EU App Store Warning About External Purchases Is Not New, and Apple Proposed Improving It Nine Months Ago

Some interesting follow-up on that piece yesterday about the warning — with a prominent red “!” icon — in App Store listings for apps in the EU that use their own payment processing. Apple told me that exact same warning has been in place since the very beginning of their DM...

Daring Fireball
15 May 20:47 • John Gruber

More Old Mac Font Memories

leancrew.com/all-this/2025/05/font-memories-of-old-macs/

Dr. Drang, writing at And Now It’s All This: Back before the LaserWriter and PostScript (it’s an all InterCaps day here at ANIAT) made resolution independence commonplace, most printers were of the dot-matrix variety, usually at a fairly low resolution. The original Imag...

Daring Fireball
15 May 20:47 • John Gruber

Apple, Appealing €500M DMA Fine, Contends It Made a Series of Proposals to the European Commission Throughout 2024 but Did Not Receive Feedback

politico.eu/article/apple-to-appeal-e500m-digital-fine-over-eus-silence-in-compliance-talks/

Jacob Parry, reporting last week for Politico: “We have spent hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and made dozens of changes to comply with this law, none of which our users have asked for,” said Apple spokesperson Emma Wilson. “Despite countless meetings, the Com...

Accidental Tech Podcast
15 May 20:36

639: Crimp the World

01:58:47

Pre-show: Marco’s [kinda] brief review of the M4 MacBook Pro CalDigit TS5 Follow-up: Letterboxd SF Symbol Procured via volunteer Alyce D! 💙 Custom Symbols App (App Store link) AI App Store summaries != spam email filtering (via Kevin Markham) “A fine is a p...

kottke.org
15 May 20:33 • Jason Kottke

Future Ruins is a one-day music festival featuring film and TV composers...

Future Ruins is a one-day music festival featuring film and TV composers like Ben Salisbury, Hildur Guðnadóttir, Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, Isobel Waller-Bridge, and Mark Mothersbaugh. Nov 8 in LA.

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kottke.org
15 May 19:45 • Jason Kottke

Color Photography of Paris From 1914

Albert Kahn sent photographers all over the world in the early 1900s and amassed over 72,000 color photos in the process. Here are a few shots of his from Paris on the eve of World War I. That photo is of the entrance to the Passage du Caire at the corner of Rue d’Alexandrie and Rue Sainte-Foy in the 2nd arrondissement. Here’s what it looks like today: [This is a vintage post originally from Dec 2012.] Tags: Albert Kahn · early color photography · Paris · photography · timeless posts

Daring Fireball
15 May 19:38 • John Gruber

Trump Says He Has ‘A Little Problem With Tim Cook’ Regarding Apple’s Plans to Increase iPhone Production in India

theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/15/trump-little-problem-tim-cook-apple-india-production-iphones

Arjun Kharpal, reporting for CNBC: “I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump said. “I said to him, ‘my friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500 billion, but now I hear you’re building all over India.’ I don’t want you building in India....

kottke.org
15 May 17:50 • Jason Kottke

U.S. Military Bans Men With Girl Names From Combat. “Suppose your special...

U.S. Military Bans Men With Girl Names From Combat. “Suppose your special forces team is parachuting into hostile territory. Can you really order someone named Ashley to jump out of a plane? It defies common sense.”

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kottke.org
15 May 16:35 • Jason Kottke

The true story of how a deep-cover KGB spy living in the...

The true story of how a deep-cover KGB spy living in the US recruited his son. “I am not who you think I am. I am not a German, and I’m not called Rudi. I am a Czech man named Dalibor Valoušek, and I work for the Soviet Union, for the KGB.”

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Daring Fireball
15 May 2025 • John Gruber

CarPlay Ultra, the Next Generation of CarPlay, Is Now Available in New Aston Martins

apple.com/newsroom/2025/05/carplay-ultra-the-next-generation-of-carplay-begins-rolling-out-today/

Apple Newsroom: Starting today, CarPlay Ultra, the next generation of CarPlay, is available with new Aston Martin vehicle orders in the U.S. and Canada, and will be available for existing models that feature the brand’s next-generation infotainment system through a softw...

kottke.org
15 May 14:52 • Jason Kottke

Power Houses, a photographic look “inside the living rooms of notable New...

Power Houses, a photographic look “inside the living rooms of notable New Yorkers”. Incl. Spike Lee, Colson Whitehead, Ella Emhoff, Huma Abedin, Martin Scorsese, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Maya Lin.

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kottke.org
15 May 14:01 • Jason Kottke

A Longevity Expert’s 5 Tips for Aging Well, e.g. strength training, better...

A Longevity Expert’s 5 Tips for Aging Well, e.g. strength training, better sleep, pay attention to mental health. (Having money helps w/ all this.) And 100%: “If they’re hawking a supplement. I would kick them off the list of being credible.”

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kottke.org
15 May 13:29 • Jason Kottke

“British researchers have discovered that a ‘copy’ of Magna Carta owned by...

“British researchers have discovered that a ‘copy’ of Magna Carta owned by Harvard Law School is in fact an extraordinarily rare original from 1300.” Harvard bought it for $27.50 — it’s likely worth $10s of millions.

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Daring Fireball
15 May 2025 • John Gruber

‘Max’, the Dumbest Name Ever, Changes Back to ‘HBO Max’

variety.com/2025/tv/news/max-changes-name-hbo-max-1236397399/

Variety: The surprise announcement, made less than two months after Max tweaked its logo to look more like the classic black-and-white HBO color scheme, was revealed at Warner Bros. Discovery’s upfront presentation to ad execs in New York on Wednesday. In a press releas...

Daring Fireball
14 May 2025 • John Gruber

The App Store Shows a Warning for EU Apps That Use External Purchases

mjtsai.com/blog/2025/05/14/critical-warning-for-external-purchases-in-app-store/

The app in question, Instacar, is not available in the US App Store, but multiple people in the EU have confirmed this warning on its App Store page is real: This app does not support the App Store’s private and secure payment system. It uses external purchases. The wa...

kottke.org
14 May 21:48 • Jason Kottke

Astronaut Don Pettit’s Marvelous Photos From Space

The NY Times has a nice feature on NASA astronaut Don Pettit’s photography from his latest stay in space, a 220-day mission aboard the ISS.

Now, you know I like a good astronomical image (like the one above of an ISS sunrise), but the thing that really caught my eye was the video of Pettit’s experiment involving charged water droplets and a teflon needle:

I could watch that allllll day long.

More Pettit: Swirling Green Aurora Captured From the ISS.

Tags: astronomy · Don Pettit · photography · science · space · video

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kottke.org
14 May 20:53 • Jason Kottke

10,000 Drum Machines is a growing collection of web-based drum machines. I...

10,000 Drum Machines is a growing collection of web-based drum machines. I like the Extremely Long-Term Drum Machine (“20 bass drums a millennium”).

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kottke.org
14 May 20:02 • Jason Kottke

Nine Rules for Evaluating New Technology

In 1987, Wendell Berry wrote an essay called Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer. In it, he outlined his standards for adopting new technology in his work. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it rep...

kottke.org
14 May 18:59 • Jason Kottke

The End of Rule of Law in America. “After these first three...

The End of Rule of Law in America. “After these first three tyrannical, lawless months of this presidency, surely Americans can understand now that Donald Trump is going to continue to decimate America for the next three-plus years.”