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Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Roblox Set to Introduce AI Game-Building Feature, Including on iOS

about.roblox.com/newsroom/2026/07/build-without-limits-on-roblox

Roblox executives Nick Tornow and Vlad Loktev, on the Roblox blog: Twenty years ago, Roblox launched with a simple idea: “You make the game.” At the time, that was a radical proposition — most games were made by studios and professionals, and the idea that anyone could b...

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Apple Raises Prices for Apple Music and Apple One Subscriptions

9to5mac.com/2026/07/17/apple-raises-prices-for-apple-music-and-apple-one-subscriptions/

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac:

Here are the new monthly prices for Apple Music and Apple One as of today:

Apple Music:

  • Individual: $11.99 (up from $10.99)
  • Family: $19.99 (up from $16.99)
  • Student: $6.99 (up from $5.99)

Apple One:

  • Individual: $19.95 (unchanged)
  • Family: $27.95 (up from $25.95)
  • Premier: $39.95 (up from $37.95)

Link: 9to5mac.com/2026/07/17/apple-raises-prices-for-apple-music…

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

OpenAI’s Product Shake-Up Put the Complexifiers in Charge

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

Wired, back on May 15: OpenAI says it’s folding ChatGPT, its AI coding agent Codex, and its developer-facing API into one core product team. The company says that Codex is increasingly powering its consumer and enterprise offerings, which are gaining the ability to perfo...

xkcd.com Valid
Text

Latitude and Longitude

NGS and IERS are complaining that they left CLEAR instructions to set the washing machine to WGS84 (G2296) instead of WGS84 (G730).

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

MG Siegler: ‘OpenAI Makes ChatGPT ChatGPT Again’

spyglass.org/chatgpt-brings-back-chatgpt/

MG Siegler, writing at Spyglass: In that light, we can see the dilemma. But there were also probably about a dozen better ways to do this roll-out — as highlighted by how fast they’re fixing these things — and they just missed the mark. While they undoubtedly knew there ...

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

OpenAI Starts Cleaning Up the Utter Mess It Made of ChatGPT

x.com/thsottiaux/status/2077928427936710901

Thibault “Tibo” Sottiaux, the OpenAI engineering lead who’s taking the most public credit for this and thus probably deserves the most blame, on Twitter/X: Evening! We’ve gotten lots of great feedback on the new ChatGPT desktop app (which we didn’t get totally quite righ...

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Linus Torvalds: ‘AI Is a Tool, Just Like Other Tools We Use. And It’s Clearly a Useful One.’

lore.kernel.org/linux-media/CAHk-=wi4zC+Ze8e+p3tMv8TtG_80KzsZ1syL9anBtmEh5Z40vg@mail.gmail.com/

Linus Torvalds:

I realize that some people really dislike AI, but this is an area where I’m willing to absolutely put my foot down as the top-level maintainer.

Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it.

Or just walk away.

AI is a tool, just like other tools we use. And it’s clearly a useful one.

It may not have been that “clearly” even just a year ago, but it’s no longer in question today.

There are other questions around AI (like what the economy of it will actually look like in the end), but “is it useful” is no longer one of those questions. Anybody who doubts that clearly hasn’t actually used it.

Link: lore.kernel.org/linux-media/CAHk-=wi4zC+Ze8e+p3tMv8TtG…

Longreads Valid
Text • Brendan Fitzgerald

My Mother Died On Screen But Survived Hollywood

"Making sense of a complicated family legacy."

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

BBEdit 16

barebones.com/products/bbedit/bbedit16.html

Speaking of BBEdit, version 16 dropped just before WWDC, and adds a slew of nifty improvements, headlined by vastly expanded support for Shortcuts. You can also search for text in images, use the W3C HTML syntax checker, and of all things, use vi keyboard emulation. There’s a lot more, of course — and as always the changes, improvements, and additions are copiously documented in the release notes.

New licenses are $60, upgrades from v15 cost $30, and upgrades from older versions are $40. In the Mac App Store it’s a $5/month or $50/year subscription.

See also: Jason Snell at Six Colors and Adam Engst at TidBITs.

Link: barebones.com/products/bbedit/bbedit16.html

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

ArtfulType: Markdown Writing App for the 68K Macintosh

github.com/ActionRetro/ArtfulType

Sean Malseed — “Action Retro” on YouTube — created a Markdown editor for the original Macintosh. Source code on GitHub; intro video on YouTube. It’s written in C, not Pascal, and uses the modern Retro68 GCC-derived compiler. I absolutely love that this exists. I don’t like ...

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Happy iCal Day

threads.com/@joannastern/post/Da5rgIvjrLM

Joanna Stern explains why this emoji is correct today: 📅. (This one too: 📆)

Link: threads.com/@joannastern/post/Da5rgIvjrLM

Simone Giertz Updates instantly via WebSub
Video

I can't leave this table until I finish this puzzle

Daring Fireball Valid
Text • John Gruber

Google and Epic Give Up Fighting — Third-Party Android App Stores Are Coming Next Week

theverge.com/policy/965792/google-epic-withdraw-injunction-third-party-app-stores-coming-google-play?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IkZpdmhlVXFoV0giLCJwIjoiL3BvbGljeS85NjU3OTIvZ29vZ2xlLWVwaWMtd2l0aGRyYXctaW5qdW5jdGlvbi10aGlyZC1wYXJ0eS1hcHAtc3RvcmVzLWNvbWluZy1nb29nbGUtcGxheSIsImV4cCI6MTc4NDczNTA1NSwiaWF0IjoxNzg0MzAzMDU1fQ.zPHCDeRVkCOK73sdt6bKC2evAofTI582EsJ0N-rk79g

Sean Hollister, reporting for The Verge (gift link): Here’s Google’s full statement on withdrawing its proposed modifications to Judge Donato’s permanent injunction, via Google spokesperson Dan Jackson: We’ve agreed with Epic to withdraw our motion to modify the US C...

Radiolab Updates instantly via WebSub
Audio • WNYC Studios

Neither Confirm Nor Deny

In an episode we first ran back in 2019, we explore how a sunken nuclear submarine, a crazy billionaire, and a mechanical claw gave birth to a phrase that has hounded journalists and lawyers for 40 years and embodies the tension between the public’s desire for transparency a...

Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
Text

Quoting Kimi K3

Is there something I can actually help you with today?

— Kimi K3, after refusing to leak its system prompt

Tags: kimi, ai-personality, generative-ai, ai, llms

Colossal Valid
Text • Kate Mothes

‘Voices in the Mirror’ Honors the Legacy of Pioneering Photographer Gordon Parks

‘Voices in the Mirror’ Honors the Legacy of Pioneering Photographer Gordon ParksThe exhibition also celebrates the 20th anniversary of The Gordon Parks Foundation.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article ‘Voices in the Mirror’ Honors the Legacy of Pioneering Photographer Gordon Parks appeared first on Colossal.

Longreads Valid
Text • Longreads

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Showcasing stories from William Finnegan, Meghan Flaherty, Kulsoom Ijaz, Amy Weiss-Meyer, and Dan Werb.

sorry, this post is only available to Longreads members. To become a member, visit longreads.com/join.

Daniel Pietzsch Verified Updates instantly via WebSub Supports Webmention Valid
Text

🎬 Motel Hell

letterboxd.com/danielpietzsch/film/motel-hell/

Movie poster for “Motel Hell”.
This review may contain spoilers. Tap or click to view.

That was actually pretty funny. But where did all the "zombies" go at the end??? I think this had more potential, especially the ending. But I also wish they had more utilised "Ivan and the Terribles". Nonetheless, this was worth a watch.


Next event: The Haunted on July 24, 2026, 20:00 at Turock, Essen.

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

In The Heart Of NYC, A Refuge For Birds (Classic)

A hospital and rehab center for birds in Manhattan started with a woman who just wanted to do all she could to help an injured goose. Decades later, it has become an institution.

READ MORE IN THE ATLAS: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/wild-bird-fund


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Simon Willison's Weblog Supports Webmention
Text

Spot birds not golf

Suggestion for hyperscalers feeling pressure over data center water use:

Buy up a few exclusive country clubs, convert the golf courses into public parks, pay for guides and binoculars to get the previous members into birdwatching - help them embrace a more sustainable hobby!

Google used 10.9 billion gallons in 2025, so about 30 million gallons per day.

The Coachella Valley has 120 golf courses each using ~800 acre-feet per year, which is ~750,000 gallons per day.

So Google buying up 40 of those courses (1/3) should do the trick.

Tags: ai-energy-usage, ai