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Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

★ AI Is Technology, Not a Product

Steven Levy, writing for Wired last month after Apple’s CEO transition was announced, under the provocative headline “Apple’s Next CEO Needs to Launch a Killer AI Product” (News+ link to get around Wired’s miserly paywall): Much more recently, I quizzed Ternus and global...

Dan’s Polaroids
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16.05.2026

A view of the Rhine from a hillside with a castle and a child in the foreground and a little town in the background.
More hiking and more views today.

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

ArXiv to Ban Researchers for a Year if They Submit AI Slop

404media.co/new-arxiv-rules-ai-generated-papers-ban/

Samantha Cole, writing for 404 Media: Late Thursday evening, Thomas Dietterich, chair of the computer science section of ArXiv, wrote on X: “If generative AI tools generate inappropriate language, plagiarized content, biased content, errors, mistakes, incorrect reference...

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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Quoting Julia Evans

[...] in the last 10 years I’ve learned to really love and respect CSS as a technology.

So I decided years ago that I wanted to react to “CSS is hard” by getting better at CSS and taking it seriously as a technology, instead of devaluing it. Doing that changed everything for me: I learned that so many of my frustrations (“centering is impossible”) had been addressed in CSS a long time ago, and that also what “centering” means is not always straightforward and it makes sense that there are many ways to do it. CSS is hard because it’s solving a hard problem!

— Julia Evans, Moving away from Tailwind, and learning to structure my CSS

Tags: css, julia-evans

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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Western Gull, Rock Pigeon

Western Gull, Rock Pigeon, in Los Angeles Area (custom), CA, US I went for a bird walk in the morning before PyCon, and we spotted a local seagull enjoying a Starbucks.

Dan’s Polaroids
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15.05.2026

A field with a leafless tree on top and big summer clouds in the sky.
We hiked a little.

Dan’s Polaroids
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14.05.2026

Part of a roof of a hut photographed from inside through a window.
Hut view.

The Atlas Obscura Podcast Updates instantly via WebSub
Audio • SiriusXM Podcasts & Atlas Obscura

Weekend Road Trip: The Bob Baker Marionette Theater

The Bob Baker Marionette Theater is a beloved place in Los Angeles, California. The theater almost closed down when its founder, Bob Baker, died in 2014. But it has managed to survive.  

Randel Metz is the director of the Storybook Puppet Theater in Oakland, California, and the author of Enchanted Strings: Bob Baker Marionette Theater.   

This episode is part of our Weekend Road Trip Series, where we bring you stories of the strange, incredible, and wondrous places right here in the United States, that you can see from the road. This series was produced in partnership with T-Mobile.


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Greg Brockman Officially Takes Control of Products at OpenAI, a Very Stable Well-Run Company

wired.com/story/openai-reorg-greg-brockman-product/

Maxwell Zeff, reporting for Wired (News+ link): OpenAI told staff on Friday that it would reorganize the company as part of an ongoing effort to unify its product offerings, Wired has learned. OpenAI cofounder and president Greg Brockman will now lead the company’s produ...

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

The Talk Show: ‘A Sociopathic Father’

daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2026/05/15/ep-447

Adam Lisagor returns to the show to talk about Hovercraft, his new virtual presentation camera app for Mac, and how he’s developing it with AI coding tools. Also, delicious Japanese spite sandwich cookies.

Sponsored by:

  • Parcel: Track your packages in one place, with native apps for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and Mac.
  • Scribe: Instantly capture and optimize workflows so your teams and AI agents do their best work.
  • Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code TALKSHOW.

Link: daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2026/05/15/ep-447

xkcd.com Valid
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Speedrun

Usain Bolt holds the world record in the 100 meter speedrun.

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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inaturalist-clumper 0.1

Release: inaturalist-clumper 0.1

Part of the infrastructure I use for publishing my iNaturalist sightings on my blog. I've been running this in production for a few weeks now, inspiring some iterations on how it works, so I decided to ship a 0.1 release.

You can see an example of the output in this JSON file.

Tags: projects, inaturalist

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
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datasette-llm-limits 0.1a0

Release: datasette-llm-limits 0.1a0

This plugin works in conjunction with datasette-llm and datasette-llm-accountant to let you configure a per-user (or global) spending limit for LLM usage inside of Datasette. Configuration looks something like this:

plugins:
  datasette-llm-limits:
    limits:
      per-user-daily:
        scope: actor
        window: rolling-24h
        amount_usd: 1.00

Tags: llm, datasette

Rick Beato Updates instantly via WebSub
Video

Eddie Kramer on Jimi Hendrix #guitar #jimihendrix #shorts

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein on who should read...

Physicist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein on who should read books about physics. “The question of ‘What is space-time?’ doesn’t belong only to scientists. It belongs to everyone who has ever wondered about the bigger picture.”

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

Quaker principles line up quite well with modern...

Quaker principles line up quite well with modern parenting research. “Infused in all of these practices is the conviction that children are not lesser proto-adults, but fellow beings worthy of respect and agency regardless of their behavior.”

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Wanton Destruction of CBS Property

youtube.com/watch?v=eBKWKu2Rqxc

“Good night and good luck, motherfuckers.”

Link: youtube.com/watch?v=eBKWKu2Rqxc

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

The Revolt Against the Girl Bosses…...

The Revolt Against the Girl Bosses… “Empowerment won’t fix the mess we’re in. Women know it now. They’re mad as hell. Anyone trying to sell them advice instead of a way to use that anger to build a better world for women deserves to be fired.”

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Dropover, a Mac Shelf Utility That Makes Clever Use of Mouse Shaking

dropoverapp.com/

Yesterday, regarding the “Magic Cursor” feature Google teased for its upcoming Googlebook/Aluminium OS platform, I wrote: Shaking your cursor over something is an interesting gesture. The only feature I’m aware of that uses that gesture is MacOS’s feature that makes your...

kottke.org Valid
Text • Jason Kottke

The Night Witches: The Female Nazi Hunters of WWII

The Night Witches were an all-female Soviet bomber regiment that attacked Nazi forces during World War II. An attack technique of the night bombers involved idling the engine near the target and gliding to the bomb-release point with only wind noise left to reveal thei...