Sean Hollister, The Verge (gift link): After doing something similar in its Google Discover news feed, it’s starting to mess with headlines in the traditional “10 blue links,” too. We’ve found multiple examples where Google replaced headlines we wrote with ones we did no...

Regarding my earlier post expressing confusion/discomfort with Bluesky announcing a $100 million funding round almost an entire year after it closed, I had an interesting back-and-forth with Adam Vartanian on Bluesky (natch), where he wrote: If you see press reports that...

Bluesky: In April 2025, Bluesky raised $100 million in Series B funding led by Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from Alumni Ventures, Anthos Capital, Bloomberg Beta, Knight Foundation and True Ventures. In the months since, we’ve focused on scaling our team to mee...

Quiche Browser is a rather astonishing app from the one-man indie developer Greg de J./Quiche Industries. (What a killer domain name that is.) Quiche Browser is a very robust, exquisitely designed, stunningly handsome web browser exclusively for iPhone. Just iPhone — althoug...

Jeff Johnson, linking to my “Your Frustration Is the Product” piece: My browser extension StopTheMadness Pro stops autoplaying videos and hides Sign in with Google on all sites. It also hides sticky videos and notification requests on many sites. For more extreme measur...

Javier C. Hernández, reporting for The New York Times:

He was responding to a question about why Japan and other allies had received no advance notice of the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran.

“We didn’t tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise,” he said. “Who knows better about surprise than Japan, OK? Why didn’t you tell me about Pearl Harbor, OK? Right?”

There was some laughter from the officials and journalists gathered in the room. “You believe in surprise, I think, much more so than us,” he added.

As Trump sinks further into dementia and his presidency slides further into disarray, his administration, in a sick way, gets funnier and funnier.

Link: nytimes.com/2026/03/19/us/politics/trump-japan-pearl-harbor…

Anne Applebaum, writing for The Atlantic (gift link): Specifically, they remember that for 14 months, the American president has tariffed them, mocked their security concerns, and repeatedly insulted them. As long ago as January 2020, Trump told several European official...

Mark Simonson:

Just by coincidence, I discovered a copy of U&lc magazine in the graphics classroom. U&lc was published by ITC, the International Typeface Corporation, a typeface publisher, and the designer and editor was the legendary Herb Lubalin. I’d never seen such beautiful typography and design. It was a motherlode for an aspiring typophile like me. [...]

I decided right then that someday, somehow, I wanted to design typefaces.

Link: marksimonson.com/notebook/view/the-day-i-discovered-type…

Adamya Sharma, reporting for Android Authority: When Google execs previously said sideloading would become a high-friction process on Android, they really weren’t kidding. The company is finally sharing what Android’s new sideloading flow will look like in practice, and ...

One of the most controversial opinions I’ve long espoused, and believe today more than ever, is that it was a terrible mistake for web browsers to support JavaScript. Not that they should have picked a different language, but that they supported scripting at all. That decisi...

Here’s a simple AppleScript I wrote this week — one that solves a minor itch I’ve had for, jeez, 20 years. Almost every item I post to Daring Fireball goes through MarsEdit, the excellent Mac blogging client from Red Sweater Software (my friend Daniel Jalkut). MarsEdit has a...

Shubham Bose, “The 49MB Web Page”: I went to the New York Times to glimpse at four headlines and was greeted with 422 network requests and 49 megabytes of data. It took two minutes before the page settled. And then you wonder why every sane tech person has an adblocker i...

Special guest David Pogue discusses his excellent and amazingly comprehensive new book, Apple: The First 50 Years.

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Link: daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2026/03/18/ep-443

This support page is a fascinating footnote regarding the recent changes Apple has made to their U.S. key cap labels.

Link: support.apple.com/en-us/102743

Who do you turn to when you’re Christie’s and you want to commission the finest rostrum the world has ever seen? Who else but Jony Ive and LoveFrom. I mean, I’d love to snark about this, but goddamnit, that’s a lovely piece of furniture.

Link: youtube.com/watch?v=HLXDxx06_EM

David Heaney, writing for UploadVR:

Meta Horizon Worlds is dropping VR support in June, meaning it will only be available as a flatscreen experience for the web and smartphones.

By March 31, Meta says the Horizon Worlds app will be delisted from Quest’s store, and key first-party worlds such as Horizon Central, Events Arena, Kaiju, and Bobber Bay will no longer be accessible in VR. Then, from June 15, the Horizon Worlds app will be removed from Quest headsets, and all worlds will no longer be accessible in VR.

Yours truly, three months ago: “Meta Says Fuck That Metaverse Shit”.

Link: uploadvr.com/meta-horizon-worlds-dropping-vr-support/

Jake Conley, reporting for Yahoo Finance: If the deal closes, Zaslav will receive $517.2 million in equity that would trigger if and when the sale goes through, along with roughly $34.2 million in cash and $44.2 million in benefits tied to the value of health coverage re...

MacKenzie Sigalos, writing for CNBC, under the misleading headline “Tim Cook Squashes Retirement Rumors, Says He ‘Can’t Imagine Life Without Apple’”: Asked about reports that he was preparing to step aside, Cook told ABC, “No, I didn’t say that. I haven’t said that. I lo...

Fox Sports, on Twitter/X:

Tonight, watch the WBC Final in a full immersive experience on the Fox Sports XR app for the Galaxy XR headset powered by Android XR!

The Fox Sports app in the App Store is native only on iOS (iPhone and iPad), Apple TV, and Apple Watch. So, unless I’m missing something, not only are they not streaming it immersively on VisionOS, they don’t even have a native VisionOS app.

Link: x.com/mlbonfox/status/2033902946174271992?s=46

Jess Weatherbed, The Verge:

Samsung is preparing to axe its first three-panel foldable phone less than three months after launching the device in the US. Sales of the $2,899 Galaxy Z TriFold will first be wound down in Korea and then discontinued in the US once remaining inventory has been cleared, an unnamed Samsung spokesperson told Bloomberg.

Maybe five blades on a razor is too many?

Link: theverge.com/tech/895879/samsung-galaxy-z-trifold…

Stephen Hackett:

I was just going about my day then James Thomson of PCalc and other fine applications dropped these images on me and said I could share them.

Also, something fun for those of you with 3D printers.

Link: 512pixels.net/2026/03/lil-finder-5k-wallpapers/

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Another crackerjack essay on design and attention from Terry Godier. (Note that the Casio in the essay not only shows the actual time, but has functional buttons.)

Link: terrygodier.com/the-last-quiet-thing

Apple Newsroom today: Apple today announced AirPods Max 2, bringing even better Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), elevated sound quality, and intelligent features to the iconic over-ear design. Powered by H2, features like Adaptive Audio, Conversation Awareness, Voice Iso...

Some camera-equipped Apple devices have dedicated camera indicator lights. E.g. recent MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs have them in the notch, next to the camera itself. The Studio Display has one in the bezel, next to its camera. Other devices — like iPhones and, now, the Mac...

David Pogue absolutely killed it hosting this live event last week. Glad I saved it to watch on my TV. Special guests include Chris Espinosa, John Sculley, and Avie Tevanian. A legit treat.

Link: youtube.com/live/eCSNJgI2LFI

My thanks to Finalist for sponsoring last week at Daring Fireball. Finalist is a remarkable, ambitious, and novel app for iPhone, iPad, and the Mac from indie developer Slaven Radic. It’s a planner — a digital take on traditional paper planners — that (with permission) pulls...

Resume.org, summarizing their survey of 1,000 U.S. hiring managers:

59% admit they emphasize AI when explaining hiring freezes or layoffs because it plays better with stakeholders than citing financial constraints.

Reminds me of the “Not Me” ghost in Bil Keane’s The Family Circus comic strip.

Link: resume.org/the-great-turnover-9-in-10-companies-plan-to…

Horace Dediu, under the headline “The Most Brilliant Move in Corporate History?”: Apple used to be the biggest capex spender, mainly because it paid for most of the property plant and equipment in the factories that made its phones and computers. [...] But that all chan...

Katie Paul, Jeff Horwitz and Deepa Seetharaman, reporting for Reuters: Meta is planning sweeping layoffs ​that could affect 20% or more of the company, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters, as Meta seeks to offset costly artificial intelligence infrastruct...