Lucasfilm confirms the original Star Wars will be released in movie theaters in 2027 for the film's 50th anniversary

The original Star Wars cut comes to movie theaters in 2027

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Advertising as a major source of human dissatisfaction (2019) [pdf]

The third-person mode for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora required a lot of work, but has now become Ubisoft devs' preferred way to play.

Avatar: Frontier’s of Pandora’s third-person mode was lot harder to develop than you’d think

A complete guide on how to kill Oscar in Black Ops 7 Zombies Astra Malorum and acquire the LGM-1 wonder weapon.

How to kill Oscar in Black Ops 7 Zombies and get the LGM-1 wonder weapon

Pantone's color of the year for 2026 is white - sorry, Cloud Dancer. Pantone announced the shade on Thursday, and describes it as a "discrete white hue offering a promise of clarity." The accompanying image shows a person with cropped hair in billowy white clothing, arms outstretched over a background of clouds. "PANTONE 11-4201 Cloud […]

Pantone’s ‘Cloud Dancer’ color party is a recession indicator

After a bidding war that reportedly also involved Paramount, Comcast, Amazon, and Apple, on December 5th, Netflix struck a deal to buy Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion, buying the studio, HBO / HBO Max, Warner Games, and more, while leaving cable and sports assets, including CNN, TNT Sports, and the Discovery channels out. There are […]

Netflix is buying Warner Bros: All of the latest updates

When it launched the Switch 2’s compatibility with various webcams was hit or miss. A webcam isn’t a necessary accessory, but since the Switch 2 lacks one of its own, you need one to take full advantage of the console’s GameChat feature that can livestream players’ faces during multiplayer matches. Switch 2 webcam compatibility has […]

You can now use Pixel phones as a Switch 2 webcam

It's been well established that the Trump Phone doesn't exist. But that isn't the only phone Trump Mobile sells. It also offers a range of refurbished Apple and Samsung handsets that you can buy right now. You really shouldn't though. I was relieved reading Allison's coverage over the last two weeks to discover that not […]

Trump Mobile’s refurbished iPhones are an unsurprisingly bad deal

Postal: Bullet Paradise was revealed by Running With Scissors and Goonswarm Games, and quickly canceled after generative AI art accusations.

New Postal game announced, then canceled over AI backlash

One of the easiest things to do during the holidays is spend too much money. It happens to many of us, even when we swear that things are going to be different this year. We want to help you stay true to your intentions to save money when possible, and we're doing that with a […]

The best Christmas gifts we love under $50

After indie narrative horror game Horses was banned from Steam two years ago, it put the studio, Santa Ragione, at risk of closure. Studio cofounder and Horses producer Pietro Righi Riva had to make a difficult phone call to the game’s director, Italian filmmaker Andrea Lucco Borlera. “I was terrified for him,” Riva said in […]

Horses is a hit, but its studio might still be in trouble

Fans are not happy that an event type from Black Ops 6 has been brought back, due to how it rewards people who grind the game too much.

Black Ops 7's big season 1 event causing FOMO for Call of Duty players

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SpaceX in Talks for Share Sale That Would Boost Valuation to $800B

His particular set of skills is actually a better match for this dark detective story

This forgotten Liam Neeson thriller deserved to replace Taken as his signature franchise

On Monday, several dozen members of the public are lined up outside 100 Centre Street in Lower Manhattan, hoping to squeeze into the courtroom to hear testimony from witnesses called by the state against Luigi Mangione - the man accused of shooting and killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson a year ago. Despite the endless news […]

The Luigi Mangione trial is all about narrative control

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Show HN: SerpApi MCP Server

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Why we built Lightpanda in Zig

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WikiFlix: Full Movies Hosted on Wikimedia Commons

Google has announced several autofill improvements being rolled out to the mobile and desktop versions of Chrome. The updates will give autofill access to more of your data from places like Google Wallet and make it easier to select the right info a form is asking for when there are multiple suggestions. Autofill can now […]

Chrome can now autofill details from your Google account

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Shingles vaccination prevented or delayed dementia

Pedro Martín-Calero and Isabel Peña’s The Wailing expertly conveys terrible truths about sexual violence, as a supernatural entity stalks three women.

It Follows fans shouldn't miss this terrifying Spanish horror film

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman declared a "code red" situation earlier this week, pushing staff to respond quickly to increased competition from Google and Anthropic. Sources familiar with OpenAI's plans tell me that the company is planning its first response to Gemini 3 with its upcoming GPT-5.2 update. I understand GPT-5.2 is ready to be released, […]

OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 ‘code red’ response to Google is coming next week

Alex Jordan recorded about 420 hours worth of dialogue for The Alters over the course of around two-and-a-half years.

The Alters star played 12 characters and still got snubbed by The Game Awards

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Onlook (YC W25) the Cursor for Designers Is Hiring a Founding Fullstack Engineer

Tim Caine, who created the first Fallout games and directed The Outer Worlds, has revealed he's back at Obisidian for a secret project

Fallout creator Tim Caine is working on a secret Obsidian game

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Jony Ive's OpenAI Device Barred from Using 'Io' Name

Meg James, reporting for The Los Angeles Times (<a href="https://apple.news/Ak1molISkQ4GGq7cNQtPOSw">News+ link</a>):

<blockquote>
 The two companies announced the blockbuster deal early Friday
morning. The takeover would give Netflix such beloved characters
as Batman, Harry Potter and Fred Flintstone.
</blockquote>

Fred Flintstone?

<blockquote>
 “Our mission has always been to entertain the world,” Ted
Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, said in a statement. “By combining
Warner Bros.’ incredible library of shows and movies — from
timeless classics like Casablanca and Citizen Kane to modern
favorites like Harry Potter and Friends — with our
culture-defining titles like Stranger Things, KPop Demon
Hunters and Squid Game, we’ll be able to do that even better.”
</blockquote>

Not sure Squid Game belongs in the same comparison as Citizen Kane, but the Warners library is incredibly deep. Stanley Kubrick’s post-2001: A Space Odyssey films were all for Warner Bros.

<blockquote>
 Netflix’s cash and stock transaction is valued at about $27.75 per
Warner Bros. Discovery share. Netflix also agreed to take on more
than $10 billion in Warner Bros. debt, pushing the deal’s value to
$82.7 billion. [...] Warner’s cable channels, including CNN, TNT
and HGTV, are not included in the deal. They will form a new
publicly traded company, Discovery Global, in mid-2026.
</blockquote>

I don’t know if this deal makes sense for Netflix, but Netflix has earned my trust. Netflix is a product-first company. They care about the quality of their content, their software, their service, and their brand. If you care about the Warner/HBO legacy, an acquisition by Netflix is a much, much better outcome than if David Ellison had bought it to merge with Paramount.

The LA Times article goes on to cite concerns from the movie theater industry, based on Netflix’s historic antipathy toward theatrical releases for its films. Netflix is promising to keep Warner Bros.’s film studio a separate operation, maintaining the studio’s current support for theatrical releases. I hope they do. I grew up loving going to the movies. I still enjoy it, but the truth is I go far less often as the years go on. Movie theaters shouldn’t be a protected class of business just because there’s so much affection and nostalgia for them. If they continue sliding into irrelevance, so be it. That’s how disruption, progress, and competition work.

<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Netflix Agrees to Buy Warner Bros., Including HBO, for $83 Billion’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/05/netflix-buying-warner-bros"> ★ </a>
</div>

Netflix Agrees to Buy Warner Bros., Including HBO, for $83 Billion

Everyone is doing it, so why not Wikipedia? Everyone’s favorite free online encyclopedia has decided to launch its own customized Year in Review feature on its mobile app. Of course, you’ll need the app installed and have been using it for the feature to be of much use. But clearly, the Wikimedia Foundation hopes this […]

Wikipedia is getting in on the yearly wrapped game

The Chainsaw Man Movie: Reze Arc hits digital on Dec. 9, riding the wave of the anime’s success and momentum of Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle

Chainsaw Man The Movie: Reze Arc digital release date announced

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Synadia and TigerBeetle Pledge $512,000 to the Zig Software Foundation

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Patterns for Defensive Programming in Rust

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Zellij: A terminal workspace with batteries included

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Gemini 3 Pro: the frontier of vision AI

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I'm Peter Roberts, immigration attorney who does work for YC and startups. AMA

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Framework Laptop 13 gets ARM processor with 12 cores via upgrade kit

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Cloudflare outage on December 5, 2025

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Influential study on glyphosate safety retracted 25 years after publication

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Show HN: Pbnj – A minimal, self-hosted pastebin you can deploy in 60 seconds

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Most technical problems are people problems

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Making RSS More Fun

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Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros

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UniFi 5G

How could someone who would even *consider* leaving Apple for Meta rise to a level of such prominence at Apple, including as one of the few public faces of the company?

★ Alan Dye Was in Tim Cook’s Blind Spot

<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46155619">Comments</a>

BMW PHEV: Safety fuse replacement is extremely expensive

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Netflix’s AV1 Journey: From Android to TVs and Beyond

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Trick users and bypass warnings – Modern SVG Clickjacking attacks

It might have made some sense to bring someone from the fashion/brand world to lead software design for Apple Watch, but it sure didn’t seem to make sense for the rest of Apple’s platforms. And the decade of Dye’s HI leadership has proven it.

★ Bad Dye Job

<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46151299">Comments</a>

I have been writing a niche history blog for 15 years

Straight/dumb quotation marks. Some default Instagram typeface. That period just hanging there, outside the closing quote. This is the post from the man who led Apple’s software design for a decade.

Not to mention the gall to use any quote from Steve Jobs, let alone this particular one, which is <a href="https://9to5mac.com/2012/01/29/steve-jobs-legacy-lives-on-at-apple-campus-with-posters-and-quotes/">enshrined by Apple on the wall outside Town Hall</a> at the old Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino, and provides the title for the splendid book published (<a href="https://book.stevejobsarchive.com/">in a delightful interactive version on the web</a>, and in <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/04/14/make-something-wonderful-ebay">gorgeous limited print editions</a>) by the Steve Jobs Archive and LoveFrom.

“Just figure out what’s next” for Alan Dye, after his supposedly wonderful accomplishments at Apple, is ... going to work for Meta? Jiminy H. Christ, that takes stones.

<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Alan Dye Comments on His Career Move in an Instagram Story’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/04/alan-dye-instagram-story"> ★ </a>
</div>

Alan Dye Comments on His Career Move in an Instagram Story

Tyler Hall, just one week ago:

<blockquote>
 Maybe it’s because my eyes are getting old or maybe it’s because
<a href="https://tyler.io/2020/09/surtainly-not/#active-window">the contrast between windows</a> on macOS keeps getting worse.
Either way, I built a tiny Mac app last night that draws a border
around the active window. I named it “Alan”.

In Alan’s preferences, you can choose a preferred border width and
colors for both light and dark mode.

That’s it. That’s the app.
</blockquote>

The timing of this is remarkably serendipitous — releasing an app named “Alan” to fix an obvious glaring design shortcoming in recent versions of MacOS just one week before Alan Dye left Apple. (<a href="https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/12/03/alan-and-aaron/">See Michael Tsai</a> for more on the app’s name, including a callback to <a href="https://www.mymac.com/interview-greg-landweber/">Greg Landweber</a>’s classic Mac OS extension <a href="https://www.macintoshrepository.org/538-aaron-1-x">Aaron</a>.)

It’s worth following Hall’s “the contrast between windows” link, which points to <a href="https://tyler.io/2020/09/surtainly-not/#active-window">his own post from five years ago</a> lamenting the decline in contrast between active and inactive windows in MacOS. That 2020 post of Hall’s refers back to Steve Jobs’s introduction of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard in 2007:

<blockquote>
 As I was preparing the above video for this post, I completely
forgot there was a final feature about the new Leopard Desktop
that was highlighted in that keynote.

Jobs took time out of a keynote to callout that it was now easier
to tell which window is focused. At 1:29 in that clip, you’ll hear
an outsized “Wooo!” from some of the audience just for this one
improvement.
</blockquote>

Jobs even <a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/12/leopard-active-window.jpeg">prepared a slide</a>, highlighting “Prominent active window” as a noteworthy new feature. In 2007, the increase of visual prominence for the active window, going from 10.4 Tiger to 10.5 Leopard, drew applause from the audience. But the level of visual prominence indicating active/inactive windows was much higher <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2005/04/macosx-10-4/">in 10.4 Tiger</a> than in any version of MacOS in the last decade under Alan Dye’s leadership.

<a href="https://pxlnv.com/linklog/alan-app/">Nick Heer on Alan</a> (the app, and, indirectly, the man):

<blockquote>
 I wish it did not feel understandable for there to be an app that
draws a big border around the currently active window. That should
be something made sufficiently obvious by the system.
Unfortunately, this is a problem plaguing the latest versions of
MacOS and Windows alike, which is baffling to me. The bar for what
constitutes acceptable user interface design seems to have fallen
low enough that it is tripping everyone at the two major desktop
operating system vendors.
</blockquote>

<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Alan.app’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/03/alan-app"> ★ </a>
</div>

Alan.app

Back in July, I was lucky enough to have my friend Louie Mantia <a href="https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/2025/07/31/ep-428">on The Talk Show</a> to talk about Liquid Glass and (as I wrote in the show notes) “the worrisome state of Apple’s UI design overall”. This was probably my favorite episode of the show all year, and I think it holds up extremely well now that we’re all using Liquid Glass, across Apple’s platforms, in release versions.

Included in the show notes was a link to Mantia’s essay making his case against Dye’s decade-long stint leading Apple’s UI design teams, “<a href="https://lmnt.me/blog/a-responsibility-to-the-industry.html">A Responsibility to the Industry</a>”, which began thus:

<blockquote>
 Firstly, I maintain that it makes absolutely no sense that Alan
Dye has the power he has, because he simply has no taste. But
what’s worse is that he wields that power so clumsily, so
carelessly. And because it goes unchallenged, unchecked by someone
higher than him, the entire industry suffers the consequences.
</blockquote>

<a href="https://pdx.social/@louie/115657549705092757">Here’s Mantia today</a>, regarding the news of Dye leaving Apple for Meta:

<blockquote>
 And good riddance!!
</blockquote>

<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Louie Mantia on The Talk Show in July, Talking About Alan Dye and Liquid Glass’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/03/mantia-the-talk-show-dye"> ★ </a>
</div>

Louie Mantia on The Talk Show in July, Talking About Alan Dye and Liquid Glass

That doesn’t look like one of the fancy <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCENWnBTqPE">Mitsubishi traction elevators</a> at Apple Park, but otherwise, this jibes.

<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Nick Heer Obtained Video of Alan Dye’s Exit From Apple’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/03/heer-dye-video"> ★ </a>
</div>

Nick Heer Obtained Video of Alan Dye’s Exit From Apple

Mark Gurman, with blockbuster news at Bloomberg:

<blockquote>
 Meta Platforms Inc. has poached Apple Inc.’s most prominent design
executive in a major coup that underscores a push by the social
networking giant into AI-equipped consumer devices.

The company is hiring Alan Dye, who has served as the head of
Apple’s user interface design team since 2015, according to people
with knowledge of the matter. Apple is replacing Dye with longtime
designer Stephen Lemay, according to the people, who asked not to
be identified because the personnel changes haven’t been
announced.

Apple confirmed the move in a statement provided to
Bloomberg News.

“Steve Lemay has played a key role in the design of every major
Apple interface since 1999,” Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook said
in the statement. “He has always set an extraordinarily high bar
for excellence and embodies Apple’s culture of collaboration and
creativity.”
</blockquote>

It sounds like Dye chose to jump ship, and wasn’t squeezed out (as it seems <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-03/apple-design-executive-alan-dye-poached-by-meta-in-major-coup?embedded-checkout=true">with former AI chief John Giannandrea</a> earlier this week). Gurman/Bloomberg are spinning this like a coup for Meta (headline: “Apple Design Executive Alan Dye Poached by Meta in Major Coup”), but I think this is the best personnel news at Apple in decades. Dye’s decade-long stint running Apple’s software design team has been, on the whole, terrible — and rather than getting better, the problems have been getting worse.

<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Alan Dye Leaves Apple for Meta, Replaced by Longtime Designer Stephen Lemay’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/03/alan-dye-leaves-apple-for-meta"> ★ </a>
</div>

Alan Dye Leaves Apple for Meta, Replaced by Longtime Designer Stephen Lemay

<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46130260">Comments</a>

Show HN: HCB Mobile – financial app built by 17 y/o, processing $6M/month

Todd Vaziri, on the HBO Max Mad Men <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/02/hbo-max-butchers-mad-men">fiasco</a>:

<blockquote>
 It appears as though this represents the original photography,
unaltered before digital visual effects got involved. Somehow,
this episode (along with many others) do not include all the
digital visual effects that were in the original broadcasts and
home video releases. It’s a bizarro mistake for Lionsgate and HBO
Max to make and not discover until after the show was streaming to
customers.

<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/tvaziri.com/post/3m6zcqcrzsc2a">I decided to help illustrate the changes</a> by diving in and
creating images that might do better than words. The first thing I
noticed is that, at least for season one, the episode titles and
order were totally jumbled. The puke episode is “Red in the Face”,
not “Babylon”.
</blockquote>

So HBO Max not only ruined several episodes by “remastering” the wrong footage, but they both mis-numbered and mis-titled the episodes. Breathtaking ineptitude. Think about it. This is the entire raison d’être — streaming high quality movies and episodic series. That’s the one and only thing HBO Max does. And they have zero care or craft for what they do. They didn’t just do this to any show. They did it to one of the most cinematically beautiful and carefully crafted shows ever made.

Vaziri’s post, as is his wont, is replete with illustrated and animated examples of the mistakes in HBO’s versions compared to the correct originals available from AMC and iTunes. Vaziri notes:

<blockquote>
 The fun thing about this restoration mistake is that now we, the
audience, get to see exactly how many digital visual effects were
actually used in a show like “Mad Men”, which most would assume
did not have any digital effects component. In this shot, not only
were the techs and hose removed, but the spot where the pretend
puke meets Slattery’s face has some clever digital warping to make
it seem like the flow is truly coming from his mouth (as opposed
to it appearing through a tube inches from his mouth, on the other
side of his face).
</blockquote>

<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Look How They Massacred My Boy’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/02/mad-men-massacred-my-boy"> ★ </a>
</div>

Look How They Massacred My Boy

Alan Sepinwall, writing for Wired (<a href="https://apple.news/A7hteXTouRPitd6GIpZuOfA">News+ link</a> in case Wired’s paywall busts your balls):

<blockquote>
 Last month, HBO Max announced a major new addition to its library.
Not only would the streamer be adding Mad Men — a show that HBO
execs infamously passed on back when Matthew Weiner was a writer
on The Sopranos — but it would be presenting the period drama’s
episodes in a new 4K remastering. This would, according to the
<a href="https://press.wbd.com/us/media-release/hbo-max/mad-men-comes-hbo-max-december-1">press release</a>, give “audiences and longtime Mad Men fans
the opportunity to enjoy the series’ authentically crafted
elements with crisp detail and enhanced visual clarity.”

As it turned out, there was perhaps too much clarity. Not long
after the series went live on HBO Max, a screencap began floating
around social media from a scene in the Season One episode “Red in
the Face,” where Roger Sterling is vomiting in front of a group of
horrified Sterling Cooper clients. When it aired — and in the
version still available on AMC+ — seven men are onscreen, all of
them wearing period-appropriate suits and ties. The HBO Max
version, on the other hand, features two men who appear very out
of place in 1960: crew members lurking in the background, feeding
a hose to create the illusion that actor John Slattery is puking.
</blockquote>

It’s not like the crew members are only partially on-screen, or out of focus far in the background. <a href="https://daringfireball.net/misc/2025/12/mad-men-hbo-max-puke.jpeg">They’re right there</a>. It’s glaringly obvious that no one at HBO Max even watched this. That’s how rotten the culture at Warner Bros. Discovery is. They obtained the rights to one of the greatest TV shows ever made (one that I personally hold alongside The Sopranos as my favorite ever), processed the episodes in some sort of “remastering” that did not need to happen, and didn’t even bother to watch the fucking new versions they produced before putting them on their service for the world to stream.

<a href="https://www.amcplus.com/mad-men">AMC+ has the entire original series</a>, as originally broadcast, and it looks gorgeous. I bought <a href="https://tv.apple.com/us/show/mad-men/umc.cmc.260bmp43ucaq656rs0tw6aioj">all seven seasons from iTunes</a> back in the day, and they look as good, if not better, in those versions. David Zaslav — <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2023/03/13/zaslav-hbo-max.php">a well-known idiot</a> — should go to prison for this.

<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘HBO Max Butchers ‘Mad Men’ in Botched ‘Remastering’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/02/hbo-max-butchers-mad-men"> ★ </a>
</div>

HBO Max Butchers ‘Mad Men’ in Botched ‘Remastering’

Aditya Kalra and Munsif Vengattil, reporting for Reuters:

<blockquote>
 Apple does not plan to comply with a mandate to preload its
smartphones with a state-owned cyber safety app and will
convey its concerns to New Delhi, three sources said, after
the government’s move sparked surveillance concerns and a
political uproar.

The Indian government has confidentially ordered companies
including Apple, Samsung and Xiaomi to preload their phones with
an app called Sanchar Saathi, or Communication Partner, within 90
days. The app is intended to track stolen phones, block them and
prevent them from being misused.

The government also wants manufacturers to ensure that the app is
not disabled. And for devices already in the supply chain,
manufacturers should push the app to phones via software updates,
<a href="https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/india-orders-mobile-phones-preloaded-with-government-app-ensure-cyber-safety-2025-12-01/">Reuters was first to report on</a> Monday. [...]

Apple however does not plan to comply with the directive and will
tell the government it does not follow such mandates anywhere in
the world as they raise a host of privacy and security issues for
the company’s iOS ecosystem, said two of the industry sources who
are familiar with Apple’s concerns. They declined to be named
publicly as the company’s strategy is private.

The second source said Apple does not plan to go to court or take
a public stand, but it will tell the government it cannot follow
the order because of security vulnerabilities. Apple “can’t do
this. Period,” the person said.
</blockquote>

To my knowledge, there are no government-mandated apps pre-installed on iPhones anywhere in the world. I’m not even sure how that would work, technically, given that third-party apps have to come from the App Store and thus can’t be installed until after the iPhone is configured and the user signs into their App Store Apple Account.

<blockquote>
 The app order comes as Apple is locked in a court fight with an
Indian watchdog over the nation’s antitrust penalty law. Apple has
said it risks facing a fine of up to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/apple-contests-indias-antitrust-penalty-law-with-risk-38-billion-fine-filing-2025-11-26/">$38 billion in a case</a>.
</blockquote>

This is another one of those laws like the EU’s DMA, where maximum possible fines are based on a percentage of global revenue. No one in India seems to actually be threatening any such fine, but it’s ludicrous that it’s even possible.

<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Apple to Resist Order in India to Preload State-Run App on iPhones’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/02/apple-india-preload-state-run-app"> ★ </a>
</div>

Apple to Resist Order in India to Preload State-Run App on iPhones

<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46118986">Comments</a>

Compassionate Curmudgeon: Why we must root ourselves in the real world

<a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/01/giannandrea-out">Speaking of</a> Apple executive HR news, in his Power On Bloomberg column last weekend, Mark Gurman pooh-poohed <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/11/15/ft-apple-tim-cook-succession">the Financial Times’s recent report</a> that Tim Cook was likely to retire early next year (paywalled, alas, but <a href="https://www.macrumors.com/2025/11/23/gurman-on-tim-cook-remaining-apple-ceo/">summarized by MacRumors</a>):

<blockquote>
 In October, I wrote that the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-10-05/who-will-be-apple-s-next-ceo-after-tim-cook-apple-shelves-vision-air-m5-ipad">internal spotlight on Ternus was
“intensifying,”</a> and that barring unforeseen circumstances
he would be the leading candidate. But I didn’t put a date on when
a change might happen. Then, around midnight two Fridays ago, the
Financial Times published a report with three central claims:
Apple is “intensifying” succession planning; Ternus is likely the
next CEO; and Cook is expected to step down between late January
and June.

The first two points are anything but revelations if you’ve read
Bloomberg coverage and Power On, or have simply been paying
attention to the realities of Cook’s age and tenure. The timing,
however, is another matter entirely. It’s a huge deal that the FT
did this: A respected publication should only predict the CEO
transition date for a company of Apple’s scale with a high level
of confidence — based on people legitimately in the know.

This is where I have concerns. Based on everything I’ve learned in
recent weeks, I don’t believe a departure by the middle of next
year is likely. In fact, I would be shocked if Cook steps down in
the time frame outlined by the FT. Some people have speculated
that the story was a “test balloon” orchestrated by Apple or
someone close to Cook to prepare Wall Street for a change, but
that isn’t the case either. I believe the story was simply false.
</blockquote>

They can’t both be right. Either the Financial Times or Bloomberg and Gurman will have a serving of claim chowder no later than June. But as Gurman points out, the only disagreement in their reporting is regarding timing: soon vs. soon-ish.

It could be that we see something like the following next year. Current board chairman Arthur Levinson turned 75 this year, the <a href="https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/01/26/apple-will-be-on-the-hunt-for-two-new-board-members-soon">suggested age limit</a> for Apple Board members. So maybe he rides off into the sunset and Apple names Cook, who already has a seat on the board, executive chairman. Maybe in February, ahead of Apple’s annual shareholder meeting. Then, in the second half of the year, Cook steps down as CEO, Ternus takes the CEO job, and Cook remains chairman of the board for the next decade or so. One change at a time, with a drip-drip series of leaks to trusted business news publications, like the one to the Financial Times last month — seemingly from the board itself — to make none of it come as a surprise.

I don’t think the leak — from multiple sources — to the FT was a “test balloon” (cue John Siracusa on <a href="https://atp.fm/666">ATP 666</a> regarding “trial balloon” being the correct idiom). It was more of a “heads up, this is what’s coming”.

<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Gurman Pooh-Poohs Financial Times Report That Tim Cook Is Retiring in First Half of 2026’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/01/gurman-pooh-poohs-ft-on-cook"> ★ </a>
</div>

Gurman Pooh-Poohs Financial Times Report That Tim Cook Is Retiring in First Half of 2026

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Nimony (Nim 3.0) Design Principles

Does your app get fake signups, throwaway emails, or users abusing your free tier? Or worse, bots attacks and brute force attempts?

WorkOS Radar can block all this and more. A simple API gives you advanced device fingerprinting that can detect bad actors, bots, and suspicious behavior.

Your users trust you. Let’s keep it that way.

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<a title="Permanent link to ‘Protect Your App From Bots and Abuse With WorkOS Radar’" href="https://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/2025/12/protect_your_app_from_bots_and"> ★ </a>
</div>

[Sponsor] Protect Your App From Bots and Abuse With WorkOS Radar

Apple Newsroom, “John Giannandrea to Retire From Apple”:

<blockquote>
 Apple today announced John Giannandrea, Apple’s senior vice
president for Machine Learning and AI Strategy, is stepping down
from his position and will serve as an advisor to the company
before retiring in the spring of 2026. Apple also announced that
renowned AI researcher Amar Subramanya has joined Apple as vice
president of AI, reporting to Craig Federighi. Subramanya will be
leading critical areas, including Apple Foundation Models, ML
research, and AI Safety and Evaluation. The balance of
Giannandrea’s organization will shift to Sabih Khan and Eddy Cue
to align closer with similar organizations.
</blockquote>

After <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/something_is_rotten_in_the_state_of_cupertino">the fiasco around Apple Intelligence and the “more personalized Siri” features</a> — which were announced at WWDC in June 2024, but postponed until 2026 in <a href="https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/apple_is_delaying_the_more_personalized_siri_apple_intelligence_features">a tail-between-their-legs announcement in March 2025</a> — and <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/03/20/gurman-rockwell-siri">the executive reshuffling immediately after that delay was announced</a> that put Mike Rockwell in charge of Siri and moved all or most of Apple Intelligence and Siri under Craig Federighi, it would have been much more surprising if Giannandrea had stayed at Apple. In fact, I’m surprised he wasn’t out before WWDC this past June.

I don’t think we need to wait for additional details to know that he was squeezed out. If, <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-20/apple-vision-pro-chief-mike-rockwell-named-siri-head-giannandrea-keeps-ai-role">as Mark Gurman reported back in March</a>, “Tim Cook has lost confidence in the ability of AI head John Giannandrea to execute on product development”, why was he still there?

As for Subramanya, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/amar-subramanya-3642498a/">according to his LinkedIn profile</a>, he was at Google for 16 years, and left to join Microsoft <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/amar-subramanya-3642498a_super-excited-to-share-that-ive-started-activity-7353453746091081729-ElkV">only five months ago</a>. Either he didn’t like working at Microsoft, or Apple made him an offer he couldn’t refuse (or, perhaps, both).

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<a title="Permanent link to ‘John Giannandrea Is Out’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/01/giannandrea-out"> ★ </a>
</div>

John Giannandrea Is Out

A user-hostile “lose your phone, lose your account history” architecture may well be “secure” in a technical sense, but it’s the sort of brittleness that’s kept Signal from achieving more mainstream use.

★ Signal Secure Backups Are Now Available on iOS

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Building a Copying GC for the Plush Programming Language

Special guest: <a href="https://www.thisweekstrend.xyz/">Tyler Hayes</a>. Topics include how to get a small phone today, which way foldables should fold, the state of Apple TV (including its new “sonic logo”), and some holiday gift gadget recommendations.

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<a title="Permanent link to ‘The Talk Show: ‘Financial Boner’’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/11/30/the-talk-show-436"> ★ </a>
</div>

The Talk Show: ‘Financial Boner’

My thanks to Dekáf for sponsoring Daring Fireball this week. They’ve just launched a nice lineup of holiday gift bundles — curated sets of their most-loved coffees that make gift-buying easy.

Nine single origins. Six signature blends. Four Mizudashi cold brews. All micro-lot and top-rated coffees are shipped within 24 hours of roasting. No shortcuts. No crash. Dekáf is coffee at its most refined, just without the caffeine. I’ve gone through a few bags, and each one tasted great — like high quality regular coffee.

And, there’s a special offer just for DF readers: get 20% off with code DF.

<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘Dekáf Coffee Roasters’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/11/29/dekaf-coffee-roasters"> ★ </a>
</div>

Dekáf Coffee Roasters

<a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/12/05/festivitas">Last year</a> developer Simon Støvring launched a fun new app for the Mac called Festivitas, which let you decorate your menu bar and Dock with animated holiday lights and falling snow. This year he’s added an iOS version for iPhone and iPad that lets you create widgets to decorate your home screens with holidays lights and festive photo frames. Pure fun.

See also: Jason Snell on using Festivitas’s Shortcuts support to <a href="https://sixcolors.com/post/2025/11/festivitas-adds-snow-shortcuts-iphone-widgets-to-its-holiday-package/">create an automation that gives a 10 percent chance of snow every 20 minutes</a>. Støvring’s own Shortcuts examples (available in the app’s Settings window) include things like turning on the lights when music starts playing. With support for Shortcuts, users can create their own fun.

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<a title="Permanent link to ‘Festivitas — Now for iOS, Thanks to Widgets’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/11/29/festivitas-2025"> ★ </a>
</div>

Festivitas — Now for iOS, Thanks to Widgets

Delightful, and there’s an equally delightful <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANqqg8BoNoU">behind-the-scenes video</a>.

<div>
<a title="Permanent link to ‘‘A Critter Carol’ — Apple’s 2025 Holiday Short Film’" href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/11/29/a-critter-carol"> ★ </a>
</div>

‘A Critter Carol’ — Apple’s 2025 Holiday Short Film

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