One more from Matthew Butterick, from his Typography for Lawyers, and a good pairing with Mark Simonson’s “The Scourge of Arial”: Yet it’s an open question whether its longevity is attributable to its quality or merely its ubiquity. Helvetica still inspires enough affect...

Typographer Mark Simonson, all the way back in 2001: Arial is everywhere. If you don’t know what it is, you don’t use a modern personal computer. Arial is a font that is familiar to anyone who uses Microsoft products, whether on a PC or a Mac. It has spread like a virus ...

Back on November 28, I bought a new cap from New Era’s web store. They offered a discount of some sort if I gave them a phone number and permitted them to send me marketing messages. That got me curious about what they’d do with my number, and it was a 50-some-dollar cap, so...

Todd Spangler, reporting last week for Variety: As Disney has gone into business with OpenAI, the Mouse House is accusing Google of copyright infringement on a “massive scale” using AI models and services to “commercially exploit and distribute” infringing images and vid...

John Keilman, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (gift link): The company that makes Roomba robotic vacuums declared bankruptcy Sunday but said its devices will continue to function normally while the company restructures. Massachusetts-based iRobot has struggled fin...

My thanks to Jaho Coffee Roaster for sponsoring last week at DF. Great coffee changes the day. Since 2005, Jaho’s family-owned roastery has taken the slow and careful approach, sourcing small-lot coffees, roasting in small batches and shipping every bag fresh. Award-winning coffee delivered to your home or office, shipped fresh nationwide.

Jaho was kind enough to send me a few bags of their beans, and I can vouch that they roast excellent coffee — the kind of tasty beans where, when I finish my last morning cup, I’m tempted to brew a little more even though I know I’m fully caffeinated.

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Link: jaho.com/s/df

Deadline:

The bodies of Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Reiner have been found in their Brentwood home, sources confirmed to Deadline.

It appears the acclaimed director and his wife were slain by knife wounds.

The LAPD are on the scene, but have not issued an official confirmation yet. A press conference is expected to take place tonight.

People:

Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, were killed by their son, Nick, multiple sources confirm to People.

So it goes.

Link: deadline.com/2025/12/rob-reiner-two-reported-dead-at-home…

Marcus Mendes, 9to5Mac: Now, on the same day that F1 The Movie debuted at the top of Apple TV’s movie rankings, the company confirmed that Pluribus has reached another, even more impressive milestone: it is the most watched show in the service’s history. Busy day. [...] ...

From the LucasFonts account, in a comment on Hacker News: Professional typography can be achieved with both serif and sans-serif fonts. However, Times New Roman — a typeface older than the current president — presents unique challenges. Originally crafted in Great Britai...

Peter Kafka, writing at Business Insider: And last: It’s possible that Middle Eastern countries are investing in an American media conglomerate solely for a financial return, and would have zero interest in the content that conglomerate makes and distributes. But that’s ...

This is very funny, but also a good indication of just how far away these things are from actual intelligence. First, a reasonable human being would never get caught in a loop like this. Second, only humans can not only recognize what’s going on here, but also see the humor in it.

Link: instagram.com/reel/DRd2ldWkQYr

Paris Buttfield-Addison: A major brick-and-mortar store sold an Apple Gift Card that Apple seemingly took offence to, and locked out my entire Apple ID, effectively bricking my devices and my iCloud Account, Apple Developer ID, and everything associated with it, and I ha...

Six-minute segment from Amazon’s AWS re:Invent keynote last week: Payam Mirrashidi, VP, Cloud Systems & Platforms, Apple, explains how AWS Graviton helps improve developer velocity at scale. Hear Swift’s journey from the premier programming language for the Apple eco...

Weekly sponsorships have been the top source of revenue for Daring Fireball ever since I started selling them back in 2007. They’ve succeeded, I think, because they make everyone happy. They generate good money. There’s only one sponsor per week and the sponsors are always r...

Youki Terada, writing for Edutopia in 2022 (via Jens Kutílek): Under close scrutiny, the evidence for dyslexia-friendly fonts falls apart. In a 2017 study, for example, researchers tested whether OpenDyslexic, a popular font with thicker lines near the bottom of the lett...

Small follow-up point re: my post this week on iMessage’s delivery architecture being built atop the Apple Push Notification service: APNs can only relay messages up to 4 or 16 KB in size, depending on the iOS or iPadOS version. If the message text is too long or if an a...

OpenAI:

In ChatGPT, GPT‑5.2 Instant, Thinking, and Pro will begin rolling out today, starting with paid plans. In the API, they are available now to all developers.

Overall, GPT‑5.2 brings significant improvements in general intelligence, long-context understanding, agentic tool-calling, and vision — making it better at executing complex, real-world tasks end-to-end than any previous model.

5.1 was released just one month ago, but 5.2 delivers a slew of measurable improvements across the board. Where 5.1 was seemingly more about the feel of responses, the personality, 5.2 was clearly focused on tangible and benchmarkable gains.

Link: openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-5-2/

Before anyone starts patting the Trump administration on its back for one good typographic decision, take a gander at the hard-to-believe-this-is-real new signage at (and alas, on) the White House. This is the sort of signage that typically spells “Business Center” across from the check-in desk at a Courtyard Marriott. The Biden State Department replacing Times New Roman with Calibri was a typographic misdemeanor. Festooning the White House with signage set in gold-plated Shelley Script ought to land Trump in The Hague.

(The idea that the Oval Office ought to be explicitly labeled “The Oval Office” — whatever the typeface or signage style — brings to mind this classic Far Side cartoon, which I think aptly illustrates the president’s mental faculties.)

Link: yahoo.com/news/articles/white-house-just-revealed-another…

The fifth of five rules in Matthew Butterick’s “Typography in Ten Minutes”:

And finally, font choice. The fastest, easiest, and most visible improvement you can make to your typography is to ignore the fonts already loaded on your computer (known as system fonts) and the free fonts that inundate the internet. Instead, buy a professional font (like those found in font recommendations). A professional font gives you the benefit of a professional designer’s skills without having to hire one.

If that’s impossible, you can still make good typography with system fonts. But choose wisely. And never choose Times New Roman or Arial, as those fonts are favored only by the apathetic and sloppy. Not by typographers. Not by you.

(Via Antonio Cavedoni.)

Link: practicaltypography.com/typography-in-ten-minutes.html

I’m a big believer in reading original source material. For example, when Apple provided me, alongside only a handful of other outlets, with a statement regarding their decision to delay the “more personalized Siri” back in March, I ran the full statement, verbatim. I added ...

Michael Crowley and Hamed Aleaziz, reporting for The New York Times: While mostly framed as a matter of clarity and formality in presentation, Mr. Rubio’s directive to all diplomatic posts around the world blamed “radical” diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility p...

From Apple’s iMessage Security Overview: Apple iMessage is a messaging service for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, and Apple Vision Pro. Relying on the Apple Push Notification service (APNs), iMessage lets users send texts and attachments like photos, contacts, locations...

Sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson, back in 2009:

The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology.

A related adage I heard, and internalized, recently: “We’re not thinking creatures who feel; we’re feeling creatures who think.” (Via Jason Kottke.)

Link: harvardmagazine.com/2009/09/james-watson-edward-o-wilson…

Justin Elliott, Robert Faturechi, and Alex Mierjeski, reporting for ProPublica: For months, the Trump administration has been accusing its political enemies of mortgage fraud for claiming more than one primary residence. President Donald Trump branded one foe who did so ...

Joe Flint, Brian Schwartz, and Natalie Andrews, reporting for The Wall Street Journal (gift link, also in News+): “Just tried calling you about new bid we have submitted,” Ellison texted Zaslav. “I heard you on all your concerns and believe we have addressed them in our ...

The Guardian:

There on a plinth, with “Donald J Trump” emblazoned on it in capital letters, was the uncoveted trophy: a golden globe resting on five golden hands big enough to compensate any tiny-handed recipient feeling sore about the Nobel peace prize.

But wait, there was more. “There is also a beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go,” added Infantino, knowing that with Trump there is no such thing as too much.

Glowing oranger than usual under the stage lights, Trump eagerly put the medal around his neck without waiting for Infantino to do the honours. He told the audience of 2,000 people: “This is truly one of the great honours of my life.”

It’s just perfect that Trump put the medal around his own neck.

The jokes practically wrote themselves.

Link: theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/05/trump-peace-prize-fifa…

Donald Trump, on his blog: The only reason Marjorie “Traitor” Brown (Green turns Brown under stress!) went BAD is that she was JILTED by the President of the United States (Certainly not the first time she has been jilted!). Too much work, not enough time, and her ideas ...

Ben Thompson at Stratechery yesterday: It’s important to note that the President does not have final say in the matter: President Trump directed the DOJ to oppose AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, but the DOJ lost in federal court, much to AT&T’s detriment. Inde...

The Wall Street Journal yesterday: Paramount launched a $77.9 billion hostile takeover offer for Warner Bros. Discovery Monday, taking its case for acquiring the storied entertainment company directly to shareholders just days after Warner agreed to a deal with Netflix. ...

CNBC: Apple chip leader Johny Srouji addressed rumors of his impending exit in a memo to staff on Monday, saying he doesn’t plan on leaving the company anytime soon. “I love my team, and I love my job at Apple, and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon,” he wrote. Bloomb...