John Gruber

Some people do crosswords. I fill in redacted names.

The redacted email screenshot in Apple's lawsuit against Michael Ramacciotti and Jon Prosser was set in Arial (of fucking course). So I pixel-fitted the font size and used red text to superimpose the redacted names, along with surrounding words, to show which names fit the redactions exactly:

Jul 20, 2025 at 10:36pmIvory for Mac
Show threadJohn GruberJul 20, 2025

And I have a spitball theory who wrote the anonymous tipster email to Apple. Here’s an MD5 hash of my spitball, for future reference, in case someone else names them first:

72ecce571403600a27e986d40c0155b2

Show threadJohn GruberJul 21, 2025
Me, one day later, trying to chase down the full story:
Show threadThomas SturmJul 21, 2025
@gruber 😁
Show threadNick HeerJul 21, 2025
@gruber “Why the fuck would they go to the Russians?” https://youtu.be/UPvOA2UCsOY?feature=shared
Burn After Reading (2008) - Malkovich finds about the Russians and gets served

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Show threadErnie SmithJul 21, 2025

@gruber When I figured out that the buyers of Deadspin were involved in the online casino industry, this was me.

You’re on the right track.

Show threadPatrick ToomeyJul 20, 2025
@gruber is this guess nonced or should we await the brute force guessing of a semi-limited input space to reveal the answer?
Show threadJohn GruberJul 21, 2025
@ptoomey3 It's a full sentence, so it's highly unlikely someone is going to brute force it.
Show threadPatrick ToomeyJul 21, 2025
@gruber 😀
Show threadAndy NapperJul 20, 2025

@gruber Shades of Robert Hooke!

‘When Robert Hooke discovered his law of elasticity in 1676, he didn’t publish it in the ordinary way. Instead, he published it as an anagram: “ceiiinosssttuv.” He revealed this two years later as the Latin ut tensio, sic vis, meaning “as the extension, so the force.” This ensured that if someone else made the same discovery, Hooke could reveal the anagram and claim priority’

https://www.aps.org/archives/publications/apsnews/200811/backpage.cfm

Show threadSon of a SailorJul 21, 2025
@gruber This is a much cooler way to assert primacy than what they did back in the day: put the info in an envelope and mail it to themselves.
Show threadMichael CritzJul 21, 2025
@gruber That’s super clever
Show threadGordon MeyerJul 21, 2025
@gruber clever way to “seal” a prediction!
Show threadMichael JosephsonJul 21, 2025

@gordonmeyer almost the 10th anniversary of when @gruber used the same technique to correctly make another prediction.

https://x.com/gruber/status/635874893221859328

John Gruber (@gruber) on X

MD5 checksum for future reference, regarding what I believe to be a masquerade Twitter account: 71a53aa348618d2a78f39ecfd5470e49

X (formerly Twitter)
Show threadcantstopthesignalJul 21, 2025
@gruber clever
Show threadDaniel JalkutJul 21, 2025
@gruber 30313bba29a8c1663f6afc4bf347b236
Show threadPaul BowsherJul 21, 2025
@gruber to the rainbow tables!
Show threadGreg WhiteheadJul 20, 2025
@gruber Hah, I have a puzzle/game for you ;-) https://www.counterwavegames.com/omby/
OMBY

OMBY for iOS and Android

Show threadMārtiņš BruņenieksJul 21, 2025
@grwster @gruber there is also a Wikipedia based game where you try to guess the article https://redactle.net/
Redactle | Wikipedia based Puzzle Game

The most popular, fully featured, ad-free Redactle game! Daily puzzles with no ads, multiplayer, device sync, smart word matching and more. Your mission is to unveil the title of the redacted Wikipedia pages in as few guesses as possible. You can also play in Redactle Unlimited mode with no restrictions on the numebr of puzzles you can play every day.

Redactle
Show threadNeal LindsayJul 20, 2025
@gruber I was going to sarcastically ask "who does these redactions?" but I realized I actually am curious. Is it the court just being incompetent? One of the parties being cavalier about it because they don't really care?
Show threadJohn GruberJul 20, 2025
@neall That's a copy of Apple's original legal filing, so it was Apple who redacted the sender, the recipients, and some of the names from the screenshot.
Show threadRyan JonesJul 20, 2025
@gruber 👏
Show threadMarsh RayJul 20, 2025
@gruber Those are the only possible names that fit in that number of (sub)pixels, or were they chosen from a short list?
Show threadJohn GruberJul 21, 2025
@marshray I can't say they're the only names that fix exactly. It turns out, for example, that “Ethan" and “Lipnik" are *precisely* the same width in Arial, regarding the short redaction in the final sentence.
Show threadEric StephanJul 25, 2025
@gruber @marshray yeah, it is a statistical question, how common is it for two names to have the same pixel length. Without that info we don't know how much info your red letter process did or did not give.
Show threadNeal LindsayJul 20, 2025
@gruber Just noticed that “Lipnik” is redacted in the body but not the subject.
Show threadJohn GruberJul 20, 2025
@neall They only redact “Lipnik" in the last sentence, where it alleges that he has “leaked iOS information to ________________ and others in the past”.
Show threadadacostaJul 21, 2025
@gruber I love this, time some of these leakers got shutdown. I noticed some of them them listed in email are turning this obsession into some kind social climbing business endeavor for the past 10 years now. It gets annoying.
Show threadNylon 6-6Jul 21, 2025
@gruber Suggests to me that such emails should use inconsistent name spellings, Oxford commas, and grammar.
Show threadSteve BarnesJul 21, 2025

@NotCaprolactum –

(I'm enjoying the ambiguity of that remark.)

Show threadEshu MarneediJul 21, 2025
@gruber The redactions would make me believe those folks aren’t in trouble, right? I.e., they weren’t involved in actually stealing trade secrets. Makes me wonder what they *were* involved in.
Show threadThomas BrandJul 21, 2025
@gruber @danielpunkass when can we expect Black Ink to accept Apple Legal as a puzzle source?
Show threadCesare ForelliJul 21, 2025
@gruber Gruber, John Gruber
Show threadErnie SmithJul 21, 2025
@gruber You’re pretty good at this lol
Show threadNeil HargreavesJul 23, 2025
@gruber it was fooking Deep Throat! More seriously I can't help feeling a bit of schadenfreude for the stupid leak industry. My first guess is that the snitch is a pundit looking to boost their credits with Apple PR, anyway more interesting to see who snitched than to know or speculate about some lame rumors.
Show threadJohn GruberJul 23, 2025
@glotcha Apple says the email was anonymous, so whenever sent it isn’t getting any thanks from Apple.
Show threadNeil HargreavesJul 24, 2025
@gruber on MBW they mention in the evidence something about someone recognizing the apartment. Whatever may happen there's a nice link back to Steve and the iPhone bar case https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UAmWvK__qo
Steve Jobs On The Missing Iphone 4g prototype.flv

YouTube