TLDR 2026-02-09

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SPACEX IS EXPLORING A “STARLINK PHONE” FOR DIRECT-TO-DEVICE INTERNET SERVICES

SpaceX may be considering building a mobile device designed to connect directly to the Starlink satellite constellation. Elon Musk has acknowledged the idea of a potential mobile device, saying that a Starlink phone isn't out of the question. Starlink has become SpaceX's dominant commercial business, generating about $8 billion in profit last year. The company currently serves over 9 million users worldwide with more than 9,500 Starlink satellites.

APPLE PREPARES TO KICK OFF 2026 WITH THE IPHONE 17E, NEW IPADS, AND MACS

Apple plans to release a slew of products over the next several weeks. The iPhone 17e is set to launch imminently at $599, and updated iPads with Apple Intelligence will be coming soon. There are also several Macs coming shortly, including new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros, a new MacBook Air with an M5 processor, and upgraded Mac Studio desktops. Apple is launching a new low-cost MacBook in the first half of the year designed to compete with less expensive Windows laptops and Chromebooks. Other releases later in the year include iOS 26.4, Apple's first foldable iPhone, a MacBook Pro with an OLED screen and touch support, and the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max.

SPACEX DELAYS MARS PLANS TO FOCUS ON MOON

SpaceX will delay a mission to Mars planned for this year to instead focus on a long-promised lunar voyage for NASA. The company is targeting March 2027 for a lunar landing without humans on board. Before heading to the Moon, SpaceX will need to demonstrate that Starship can be frequently launched and refuel while in orbit. Blue Origin is pushing to beat SpaceX to the moon with its own moon-landing system. It has paused its suborbital tourism business to also focus on lunar efforts.

TO REUSE OR NOT REUSE—THE ETERNAL DEBATE OF NEW GLENN'S SECOND STAGE REIGNITES

Blue Origin engineers have been debating for over 15 years whether the upper stage of New Glenn should be fully reusable or to ruthlessly cut its manufacturing costs. A new job posting for a director of upper stage development suggests that the debate may be swinging back toward reusing the upper stage. With the planned upgrade to New Glenn, an upper stage may cost around $100 million to manufacture, putting pressure on the company to find a pathway to reuse. Upper stage reuse is still a new field, so the new director has their work cut out for them.

SOFTWARE FACTORIES AND THE AGENTIC MOMENT

The Agentic Moment has profoundly changed the economics of software. Creating high-fidelity clones of SaaS applications was always possible, but not economically feasible. These clones can be used to validate at volumes and rates that far exceed production limits and allow for the testing of failure modes that would be dangerous or impossible against live services. This is handy when developing tests for software factories, non-interactive development environments where specs and scenarios drive agents that write code, run harnesses, and converge without human review.

VOUCH

Vouch is a community trust management system. It requires people to be vouched for before they can interact with certain parts of a project. People can be explicitly denounced to block them from interacting with a project. The implementation can be used for any project on any code forge. Vouch lists can be configured to read other projects' lists of vouched or denounced users, so projects with shared values can share their trust decisions with each other.

END GAME PLAY

The opening has been engineered out. However, the endgame is still an unknown playing field. Elon Musk skips the middlegame, and it works - SpaceX and Tesla are examples of terminal endgame reasoning. Endgame play is a symptom of simulation: Musk simulates forward and treats everything between here and the terminal state as bottleneck. However, it's important not to confuse simulating an endgame with arriving at one. The ability to model the terminal state doesn't mean that the terminal state is close.

THE ANTHROPIC HIVE MIND

Anthropic's employees often describe it as a hive mind entirely run on vibes. There is a lot of chaos, and it is not run like any other company of its size. Anthropic has yet to bother with becoming 'professional', yet it is clearly in the middle of a Golden Age. Organizations reflect their leaders, so this chaos is likely intentional.

CLAUDE: SPEED UP RESPONSES WITH FAST MODE

Claude's new fast mode, currently in research preview, is 2.5 times faster, but costs 6 times the normal price.

CLOUDED JUDGEMENT 2.6.26 - SOFTWARE IS DEAD...AGAIN...FOR REAL THIS TIME...MAYBE?

The markets are underestimating the moat that SaaS companies have in the short term, but in the long term, agents will create a ton of disruption.

EIGHT MORE MONTHS OF AGENTS

The best software for an agent is whatever is best for a programmer.

LIFE AT THE EDGE

A lot of the computation for basic AI functions will happen on users' devices in the future.

YOU'RE NOT TAKING ON ENOUGH TECH DEBT

The cost of servicing tech debt will drop in time because of AI, so developers are better off taking on more tech debt in projects on the bet that LLMs will clean up the debt in the future.

WHY TOKENS CAN'T COMPOUND

Today's crypto networks pass value through instead of compounding it, but once someone figures out how to retain and reinvest value the way a great business does, tokens will become equity in all but name.