diff --git a/capa/main.py b/capa/main.py
index d88722a2..d6817f8b 100644
--- a/capa/main.py
+++ b/capa/main.py
@@ -620,7 +620,7 @@ def get_rules(rule_paths: List[str], disable_progress=False) -> RuleSet:
 
     for path, content in pbar(zip(rule_file_paths, rule_contents), desc="parsing ", unit=" rules"):
         try:
-            rule = capa.rules.Rule.from_yaml(content)
+            rule = capa.rules.Rule.from_yaml(content.decode("utf-8"))
         except capa.rules.InvalidRule:
             raise
         else:
diff --git a/capa/rules/__init__.py b/capa/rules/__init__.py
index ac344334..028f023a 100644
--- a/capa/rules/__init__.py
+++ b/capa/rules/__init__.py
@@ -743,7 +743,7 @@ class Rule:
         return self.statement.evaluate(features, short_circuit=short_circuit)
 
     @classmethod
-    def from_dict(cls, d, definition) -> "Rule":
+    def from_dict(cls, d: Dict[str, Any], definition: str) -> "Rule":
         meta = d["rule"]["meta"]
         name = meta["name"]
         # if scope is not specified, default to function scope.
@@ -813,7 +813,7 @@ class Rule:
         return y
 
     @classmethod
-    def from_yaml(cls, s, use_ruamel=False) -> "Rule":
+    def from_yaml(cls, s: str, use_ruamel=False) -> "Rule":
         if use_ruamel:
             # ruamel enables nice formatting and doc roundtripping with comments
             doc = cls._get_ruamel_yaml_parser().load(s)