TLDR 2025-10-08

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NVIDIA TO FINANCE MUSK'S XAI CHIPS AS PART OF $20 BILLION DEAL

xAI has raised its ongoing funding round to $20 billion, more than initially planned. The financing includes equity and debt in a special purpose vehicle that will buy Nvidia processors and rent them to xAI for use in its Colossus 2 project. Nvidia is investing as much as $2 billion in the equity portion of the transaction. The funding effort may continue to grow.

TESLA REVEALS CHEAPER VERSIONS OF ITS CARS

Tesla has revealed cheaper versions of its Model Y and Model 3. The new Model Y will cost $40,000, and the Model 3 will sell for $37,000. They have the same basic body shapes as the existing models, but have cloth interiors, fewer speakers, and less soundproofing. The cheaper Model Y has dual headlights rather than a continuous illuminated bar. Both vehicles can travel 320 miles between charges, slightly less than the costlier versions.

ENGINEERED PROTEIN THAT RESPONDS TO LIGHT COULD HELP RESTORE SIGHT

Science Corp., a Californian company, has created an engineered protein that could help blind people see. The protein, opsin, creates electrical currents when hit with light. Opsins usually need a powerful light source to generate a current, but Science's scientists were able to create opsins that generate an electrical current when exposed to regular indoor lighting. Science is currently building several things, including a device to restore vision and a chip that plugs into the brain using living neurons instead of wires - the new protein could help with both pursuits.

2025 NOBEL PRIZE IN PHYSICS AWARDED FOR MACROSCALE QUANTUM TUNNELING

John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret, and John M. Martinis have been awarded the 2025 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of macroscopic quantum tunneling and energy quantization in an electrical circuit. Their work opens up opportunities to develop next-generation quantum technology, including quantum cryptography, quantum computers, and quantum sensors. They will split the prize money of $1.1 million. The presentation ceremony will take place in Stockholm on December 10.

BIRTH OF PRETTIER

It's been almost 10 years since Prettier was released. This post tells the story of its birth and how technological innovation made an underlying source of tension - spaces versus tabs - no longer a thing. Prettier solved formatting, one of the most controversial engineering topics, in the span of just a few years. It is now rare to see a mainstream programming language that does not have a formatter that's widely adopted by its community.

JSON SCHEMA COMPATIBILITY AND THE ROBUSTNESS PRINCIPLE

Developers using a lenient policy with JSON Schema may prefer backward compatibility over full compatibility. Full compatibility doesn't allow developers to evolve sum types. The most common way to evolve a sum type is by adding a new variant, which is a backward-compatible change, but now a fully compatible one.

OPENAI'S WINDOWS PLAY

OpenAI is making a play to be the Windows of AI. While Apple's strategy of integrating hardware and software was immensely profitable, it left the door open for a competing platform to emerge. Microsoft's DOS operating system put IBM in a dominant role and secured Microsoft's position. OpenAI is trying to make ChatGPT the operating system of the future. It has the users, and now it is trying to attract developers.

QUALCOMM IS BUYING ARDUINO, RELEASES NEW RASPBERRY PI-ESQUE ARDUINO BOARD

Qualcomm is acquiring Arduino, an Italian company known mainly for its open source ecosystem of microcontrollers and software. Arduino will retain its independent brand, tools, and mission. The acquisition still needs to be approved by regulators and go through other customary closing conditions. While Arduino is committed to open-source hardware and software, there are concerns that the acquisition will mean that its ecosystem will eventually be locked down.

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ASK NOT WHY WOULD YOU WORK IN BIOLOGY, BUT RATHER: WHY WOULDN'T YOU?

Working in biology means you will be working to either prevent or, at the very least, alleviate the inevitable moment that Mother Nature decides to extract a pound of flesh from you.

I'M BUILDING A BROWSER FOR REVERSE ENGINEERS

This post looks at how a developer created a real web reverse-engineering Swiss Army knife.

FCC MIGHT OPEN THE FLOODGATES FOR STARLINK AND OTHER SATELLITE EXPANSIONS

The Federal Communications Commission has announced a new effort to fast-track approvals for satellite systems, a process that typically takes a year or more.

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WHO NEEDS GIT WHEN YOU HAVE 1M CONTEXT WINDOWS?

gemini-2.5-pro, which has a one-million-token context window, can retrieve data from conversations long past.

NYSE OWNER TO INVEST UP TO $2 BILLION IN POLYMARKET

The deal values Polymarket, a popular crypto-based prediction market, at roughly $8 billion.

TESLA ABANDONED PLANS TO MAKE THOUSANDS OF OPTIMUS ROBOTS THIS YEAR

Elon Musk said on an earnings call earlier this year that Tesla was planning to build 10,000 Optimus robots for internal use, but the company has apparently abandoned those plans.