TLDR 2025-10-21

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AWS SERVICES RECOVER AFTER DAYLONG OUTAGE HITS MAJOR SITES

Amazon Web Services experienced a major outage yesterday that took down numerous websites. Many sites came back online within a few hours. All AWS services returned to normal operations shortly after 6 PM ET. The outage was first reported at 3:11 AM ET. The AWS status page said it was a DNS issue with DynamoDB, a database service that underpins many AWS applications.

HOW SAM ALTMAN TIED TECH'S BIGGEST PLAYERS TO OPENAI

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman went on a dealmaking blitz to achieve his vision of securing seemingly endless computing power for his company. He played the egos of Silicon Valley's giants, resulting in a game of financial one-upmanship that has tied the fates of the world's biggest semiconductor and cloud companies to OpenAI. Vast swaths of the US economy are now betting on the success of a startup that is nowhere near turning a profit and facing a mounting list of business challenges. Investors don't seem to be bothered, as the stock prices of companies that have made deals with OpenAI have soared.

VISION RESTORED USING PROSTHETIC RETINAL IMPLANT

THE NEXT REVOLUTION IN BIOLOGY ISN'T READING LIFE'S CODE — IT'S WRITING IT

Genome writing is humanity's next great moonshot. The Human Genome Project-write (HGP-write) and SynHG, the Synthetic Human Genome Initiative, aim to develop the technology to write DNA. DNA synthesis could transform biology, medicine, and industry. Global cooperation would ensure that the technology is used wisely and for the common good.

CLAUDE CODE IS UNREASONABLY GOOD AT BUILDING MVPS

Concerns about technical debt and quality are premature in the prototyping and validation stage. Perfect code isn't required to validate whether people want your product. What is needed is the ability to test more ideas quickly. Claude Code allows people to validate through building and testing. The ideas that survive contact with actual users are the ones worth refactoring, hardening, and scaling.

FRONT-END MAXIMALISM

Just considering a front-end maximalist approach can lead to better designs. Doing almost everything on the front end is underrated and increasingly viable. Don't divide responsibilities between the front and back end just out of habit. It is possible to get all the modularity you need by structuring your code appropriately.

WITH SPACEX BEHIND SCHEDULE, NASA WILL SEEK MORE MOON LANDER IDEAS

NASA is looking for a Plan B to carry astronauts to the Moon's surface because SpaceX is behind schedule. It is opening bidding on a contract to build a new lunar lander. The agency wants to beat China, which is aiming to send astronauts to the Moon by 2030. President Trump wants the moon landing to occur before the end of his term. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk responded dismissively to the news, saying that SpaceX is moving at a lightning pace compared to the rest of the industry and that Starship will end up doing the whole Moon mission.

LETTER TO A YOUNG PERSON WORRYING ABOUT AI

It is possible to act without prediction. Most good businesspeople don't attempt to predict the future. They instead design their lives and organizations for fast adaptation under uncertainty. You can safely ignore any essay that attempts to predict the future. Just look at what is happening right now - you'll have plenty of time to adapt.

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THIS IS HOW MUCH ANTHROPIC AND CURSOR SPEND ON AMAZON WEB SERVICES

Anthropic spent $1.359 billion in 2024, Cursor's AWS spend in 2025 through to September was $69.99 million.

ONE OF GOOGLE'S NEW YORK OFFICES NEEDS LITERAL DEBUGGING

A bedbug infestation was discovered in a building at Google's Chelsea campus.

MY PROGRAMMING CAREER IS A HISTORICAL ARTIFACT

In a few years, humanity will look back and think how funny it was that people once actually programmed machines.

GIVE YOUR METRICS AN EXPIRY DATE

Having an expiry date means you can step back and reassess whether the metric is still useful.

THE CSS RESET, AGAIN

This post looks at several CSS resets and discusses their pros and cons.

ATOMIC-SCALE PROTEIN FILTERS

Cell walls show how often, in biology, solutions to complicated problems are strikingly simple.