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By John Gruber

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John Gruber

‘AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making’

ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/ai-mania-is-eviscerating-global-decision-making/

Fascinating essay by Nikhil Suresh: On a trip overseas, I had the privilege of a meeting with one of the Fortune 500 executives mentioned at the beginning of the post, who will remain anonymous so that they are not executed by firing squad by their board. As we were chat...

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John Gruber

EU Fines Google $1 Billion for DMA Competition Violations, Including Making Search Results More Useful

digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/commission-fines-google-eur890-million-breaches-digital-markets-act-2026-07-23_en

The European Commission on Thursday: The Commission found that Google gives preferential treatment to its own services, including shopping, hotels, transport and sports results, over those of third parties in Google Search, thereby breaching its obligations under the DMA...

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John Gruber

Court Grants SerpApi’s Motion to Dismiss Google Lawsuit

serpapi.com/blog/google-v-serpapi-the-court-granted-our-motion-to-dismiss/

Julien Khaleghy, CEO of SerpApi: The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted our motion to dismiss Google’s lawsuit, marking a win not just for SerpApi, but for all who depend on an open internet. We’re pleased that the court rejected Google’s...

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John Gruber

Apple Maps to Power Navigation Experience for Ford’s New EVs

apple.com/newsroom/2026/07/apple-maps-to-power-navigation-experience-for-ford-uev-platform/

Apple Newsroom:

Apple and Ford today announced that Apple Maps will be integrated directly into Ford’s upcoming Universal Electric Vehicle (UEV) Platform through Apple’s new MapKit for Automotive SDK. Coming to Ford’s UEV Platform in 2027, this integration will deliver a beautiful and easy-to-use navigation experience powered by Apple Maps directly to the vehicle’s displays. Road-level Maps information will also enable Ford’s Latitude AI team to build a seamless hands-free driving experience.

See also: Techmeme’s roundup of commentary.

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John Gruber

Measles Cases Hit New Record in U.S., as Stupid-Americans Reject Vaccines

nytimes.com/2026/07/24/well/measles-record-united-states-numbers.html?unlocked_article_code=1.0VA.4jBf.vqAYN4Bwu807

Teddy Rosenbluth, reporting for The New York Times: On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that there have been 2,318 confirmed cases of measles so far this year. The case count toppled the record set last year, when measles infected more tha...

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John Gruber

bIRC — A New Native IRC Client for Mac

birc.app/

For a long time the best native Mac IRC client was Textual, but although Textual still works, it’s been sunset by the author. Not to fear, however. Fredrik Blank just launched bIRC: Creating an IRC client in 2026 is not something that will pay the bills : ) It would be j...

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John Gruber

★ Regarding Ad Blockers and Daring Fireball

Ultimately, when you install a content blocker extension, you take responsibility for any overzealousness in what they block.

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John Gruber

Coiner of ‘Enshittification’ Endorses ‘Dickover’

pluralistic.net/2026/07/21/dickovers/

Speaking of dickovers, here’s Cory Doctorow, writing this week at Pluralistic: Seizing the means of computation isn’t theft, it’s bargaining. Commercial surveillance companies will tell you that by spying on you, they are simply engaged in a marketplace exchange in which...

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John Gruber

Sixers Sign LeBron James

inquirer.com/sixers/live/lebron-james-signs-philadelphia-76ers-contract-salary-roster-updates-reaction-20260724.html

The betting odds for the Sixers to win the NBA championship went from 20-1 to 10-1. Here’s James on Twitter/X, explaining his decision:

This is my last decision. I’m not going for money. I’m not going for family. What am I really playing for at this point?

I still want to sacrifice. I still want to work. I still want to grind. I still want to compete, to win and to have a chance at the feeling of winning another championship.

I believe I can help make the Philadelphia 76ers a championship team and I am so excited to energize a new fan base and start this incredible journey one last time.

James signed for the league minimum for a veteran: two years at just $4 million per year. He’s going to love playing here.

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John Gruber

Dickover of the Week: Tomtoc

daringfireball.net/2026/05/what_is_a_dickover

Here’s a real gem that a reader sent me. Tomtoc is a maker of laptop bags and sleeves. Visit their homepage and, of course, you’ll get a dickover asking you to join their mailing list “for exclusive updates and get a chance to win a free tech pouch every month.” But here’s the gem. If you do subscribe, and you decide later to unsubscribe, you get this:

Screenshot from an iPhone of Tomtoc’s “you’ve been unsubscribed from our mailing list” webpage presenting a dickover asking you to subscribe to their mailing list.

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John Gruber

The Talk Show: ‘A Scam Held Together With Patriotism and Golden Paint’

daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2026/07/23/ep-452

Quinn Nelson returns to the show to discuss OpenAI’s ChatGPT/Codex “native” app migration fiasco, Siri AI in Apple’s OS 27 betas, MacOS 27 Golden Gate, and the hottest new cell phone of the year, the Trump T1.

Sponsored by:

  • Notion: Try the powerful, all-in-one Notion AI today.
  • Factor: Healthy eating, made easy. Get 50% off your first box, plus free daily greens, with code talkshow50off.
  • Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code TALKSHOW.
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John Gruber

Bond Movie Filming Locations Map

department-m.agency/

“From a Bond fan to Bond fans worldwide.” Nice work.

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John Gruber

★ The Ads on Apple News Continue to Suck, but at Least There Are a Lot of Them

The obvious truth is that Apple’s ads just plain suck. They are not good at advertising-based services. And it shouldn’t be surprising that they’re not good at advertising-based services, because the incentives for advertising-based services are in direct opposition to the incentives for everything Apple actually is good at.

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John Gruber

John Dvorak on Computer Chronicles in 1987 to Discuss the Then-New IBM PS/2

youtube.com/watch?v=uY2WF_sPecI

Dvorak is best known for all the takes he was jacktastically wrong about, but what gave his schtick staying power is that he was technically savvy. His take here on the PS/2 was actually spot-on: that it was technically impressive in many ways, especially the way it was assembled without any cables, but that it was doomed in the market against ugly mess-of-cables commodity PCs.

“Computer Chronicles” was the real show from the 1980s that Adam Lisagor so lovingly and spectacularly spoofed with “Computer Show” a decade ago.

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John Gruber

John Dvorak Drops Dead at 80

appleinsider.com/articles/26/07/23/famed-technology-journalist-john-c-dvorak-dies-aged-80

William Gallagher, AppleInsider: Legendary technology columnist, pundit, author and podcast host John C. Dvorak has died, age 80. He is survived by his wife Mimi Dvorak. Today Dvorak is best known for co-hosting the “No Agenda” podcast with Adam Curry, where he would cr...

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John Gruber

Flighty New Connection Assistant Feature

9to5mac.com/2026/07/07/flighty-update-adds-powerful-new-connection-assistant-feature/

Chance Miller, 9to5Mac: Flighty’s new Connection Assistant feature includes step-by-step information for your specific connection. This includes things like terminal changes, security checkpoints, passport control, and more. Connection Assistant also gives you estimates ...

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John Gruber

★ European Commission: ‘Guidance to Google for AI Interoperability on Android & Sharing of Google Search’

What the EC is dictating to Google is just breathtaking in scope.

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• Daring Fireball Department of Commerce

[Sponsor] WorkOS MCP: Manage Your Auth Platform From Any AI Agent

workos.com/blog/management-mcp-server?utm_source=daringfireball&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=q32026

Debugging SSO, managing users, adjusting auth policies, configuring branding: every configuration task has lived behind a UI that only a human can drive.

The WorkOS MCP server gives agents the same access as your dashboard login. Hundreds of operations, discoverable at runtime. Connect in one command via OAuth, with scoped tokens instead of a master API key. Pass a screenshot of your marketing site and ask your agent to match the login page. If a human had to do it before, an agent can do it now.

Connect your agent →

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John Gruber

‘Who’s Afraid of Chinese Models?’

stratechery.com/2026/whos-afraid-of-chinese-models/

Ben Thompson, on the hype regarding Kimi K3, at Stratechery: This is a point that bears repeating: because U.S. open weight model makers must follow the frontier labs’ terms of service, they (1) are worse than Chinese alternatives and (2) end up distilling the distillati...

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John Gruber

Paper

paper.design/?utm_source=df

My thanks to Paper for sponsoring last week at DF. Paper is a new professional design tool where every layer is real HTML and CSS. Your design is already code, which means fewer handoffs, translations, and layers of abstraction between what you design and what you actually ship.

Paper works both ways: code to design, and design to code. Connect any AI agent through MCP and the agent can read and edit your designs. Or use Paper Snapshot to capture your live site as editable layers and make new iterations. Agents handle the tedious work so you can focus on your craft and the decisions that matter.

Try Paper at paper.design (great domain name), and check out the documentation and FAQ for more info.

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John Gruber

9to5Mac Uncovers Dozens of Disguised Gambling Apps on the App Store in Brazil

9to5mac.com/2026/07/17/investigation-reveals-dozens-of-disguised-gambling-apps-on-the-app-store-in-brazil/

9to5Mac: Brazilian users browsing the App Store rankings in categories such as Navigation, Travel, and Weather have noticed a growing number of poorly made games appearing among the top results, many of them featuring AI-generated illustrations of animals as their app ic...

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John Gruber

★ Mornings in Cupertino Have the Aroma of Napalm Once Again

I think maybe John Ternus is more of a “*Hey, what* would *Steve have done here?*” kind of guy. What would Steve Jobs do with this OpenAI situation? He’d go to war.

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John Gruber

Apple Sends Letters to Dozens of Former Employees Now at OpenAI

ft.com/content/1b8c9d52-88a9-426b-ba47-f1811f859166?syn-25a6b1a6=1

Michael Acton, reporting for the Financial Times from San Francisco:

About 40 former employees now working at OpenAI have been sent letters directing them to preserve documents and communications and demanding meetings with Apple’s lawyers, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. Apple and OpenAI declined to comment.

The decision to hit employees with personal legal letters highlights Apple’s aggressive tactics after it last week launched a blockbuster lawsuit accusing OpenAI and two employees of stealing secret hardware plans.

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John Gruber

Apple Books and Amazon Are Lousy With AI-Generated Books Ripping Off Legitimate Authors

thenewthings.com/p/apple-big-ai-book-slop-problem

Joanna Stern at New Things, last month: Last month, just days after my book went on sale, AI knockoffs of the ebook version flooded Apple Books. There was Joanna Stern On I Am Not A Robot by Sophie Mercer. I AM NOT A ROBOT by Finn Tech. I AM NOT A ROBOT by Joana Stern — ...

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John Gruber

Google Runs Out of Appeals, Must Pay Record $4.7 Billion EU Antitrust Fine

cnbc.com/2026/07/02/alphabet-google-android-eu-antitrust-fine-4-1-billion-euro-appeal.html

Arjun Kharpal, reporting for CNBC, back on July 2: Europe’s top court on Thursday upheld Google’s fine of around 4.1 billion euros ($4.67 billion) over alleged anti-competitive practices. In 2018, the European Commission slapped Google with the record-breaking penalty o...

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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...

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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)
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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...

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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 ...

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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...