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XAI SUES FORMER ENGINEER, ALLEGING HE STOLE TRADE SECRETS AFTER BEING PAID $7M

xAI has accused a former employee, Xuechen Li, of taking confidential information and trade secrets before resigning and joining rival OpenAI. It has filed a lawsuit alleging that Li willfully and maliciously copied documents from his work-issued laptop onto at least one personal system the day after being paid a large sum in cash for his xAI shares. Li allegedly took extensive measures to conceal his misconduct, including deleting his browser history and system logs and renaming and compressing files before uploading them to his personal system. Li resigned from xAI on July 28 and was scheduled to start at OpenAI on August 19.

CRACKS ARE FORMING IN META'S PARTNERSHIP WITH SCALE AI

At least one of the executives Alexandr Wang brought to Meta to help run Meta Superintelligence Labs has already departed the company. Ruben Mayer, Scale AI's former Senior Vice President of GenAI Product and Operations, says he was very happy with his Meta experience and that he left for a personal matter. Meta's relationship with Scale AI appears to be shifting as it is working with third-party data labeling vendors other than Scale AI to train its upcoming AI models. Meta's researchers reportedly see Scale AI's data as low quality and have expressed a preference to work with Surge and Mercor, two of Scale AI's largest competitors.

ASTRA PILL CUTS HARD-TO-TREAT BLOOD PRESSURE IN LATE-STAGE TRIAL

AstraZeneca's experimental hypertension pill reduced blood pressure by more than twice as much as standard treatment during a large late-stage study. The drugmaker aims to file for regulatory approval by the end of the year. More studies are still required to confirm safety and assess outcomes over a long period of time before use of the pill can be approved. The drug works by reducing the production of aldosterone, a hormone made in the adrenal gland that helps the body regulate levels of salt and water.

BREAKTHROUGH BREAST CANCER PILL EXTENDS SURVIVAL IN 7-YEAR TRIAL

Lilly Oncology's Abemaciclib pill, sold under the brand name Verzenio, can significantly reduce the risk of relapse in some types of early breast cancer that have spread to the lymph node, according to the results of a phase 3 clinical trial that has yet to be peer reviewed. Verzenio is already approved for advanced or metastatic breast cancer cases that are hormone receptor-positive and for early-stage breast cancers at high risk of recurrence. It works in conjunction with hormone therapy to prevent breast cancer cells from proliferating.

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AI-ASSISTED DEVELOPMENT: A THREE-ACT PLAY

There are three fundamentally different approaches emerging in AI-assisted development. The first is Vibe Coding, which can be described as asking large language models to build applications and iterating on the code via chat until it is ready for production. The second approach is using AI as a Copilot, where the developer asks models to build parts of applications, and then they review changes, fix whatever they need manually, and approve or deny the changes. The third approach is using AI tools as a HUD, only using them to write code. Each approach has its pros and cons and is suited for different tasks and skillsets.

WHY DO BROWSERS THROTTLE JAVASCRIPT TIMERS?

JavaScript's setTimeout(0) can actually run 4 milliseconds later. A lot of websites spam setTimeout, so browsers set the delay to avoid draining users' batteries or other issues. Developers could just use other alternatives. While these options can still be abused, they are permitted for now.

CUTTING-EDGE AI WAS SUPPOSED TO GET CHEAPER. IT'S MORE EXPENSIVE THAN EVER

The latest AI models are doing more 'thinking', driving up the costs to complete tasks despite the cost of tokens dropping. This is the opposite of what many analysts and experts predicted even just a few months ago. Reasoning can deliver meaningfully better responses, but it spends significantly more tokens in the process. One way to lower costs is to use 'dumber' AIs - many use-cases don't require cutting-edge AI.

THE AMUSEMENT PARK FOR ENGINEERS

Anduril started with lofty ambitions of reinventing the defense ecosystem. The company has now deployed more than 30 products with thousands of field-tested systems and changed the arc of American defense technology. This article looks back at the years of explosive growth to give other founders, engineers, investors, operators, and everyone else a glimpse of what growth at Anduril was actually like.

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COGNITIVE LOAD IS WHAT MATTERS

Cognitive load is how much a developer needs to think in order to complete a task.

VIBE CODING TERMINAL EDITOR

Large language models don't magically solve all software engineering problems, and they don't solve maintenance.

I SAT DOWN WITH WERNER VOGELS

A summary of an interview with Werner Vogels, the CTO of Amazon, where he covers two decades of lessons from building some of the most critical infrastructure on the Internet.

VIBE SHIFT? SENIOR DEVELOPERS SHIP NEARLY 2.5X MORE AI CODE THAN JUNIOR COUNTERPARTS

Senior developers may simply be better equipped to catch and correct AI's mistakes.

WHY HAVEN'T QUANTUM COMPUTERS FACTORED 21 YET?

The factoring-21 circuit is more than one hundred times more expensive than the factoring-15 circuit.

THE EVIDENCE THAT AI IS DESTROYING JOBS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE JUST GOT STRONGER

Understanding real-time changes to the economy is hard work, and overconfidence in any direction is inadvisable.

MICROSOFT STARTS TESTING AI MODEL THAT COULD ESCALATE COMPETITION WITH OPENAI

Microsoft has started testing its MAI-1-preview model on LMArena. MAI-1-preview is a foundation model trained end-to-end in-house by Microsoft. The model will be rolled out for certain text use cases within Copilot over the coming weeks. Developers can fill in a form to request early access.

ELON MUSK REVEALS WHEN SPACEX WILL PERFORM FIRST-EVER STARSHIP CATCH

Elon Musk says that SpaceX will attempt to catch Starship on Flight 13, 14, or 15, depending on how well the V3 flights go. The V3 rocket is more powerful than V2 in terms of initial thrust and booster thrust, and it has a higher payload-to-orbit rating. V4 will likely be the first version to carry humans to space. Musk has previously said that SpaceX hopes to attempt a catch of Starship this year, but the company will need to launch two more flights before the end of the year to get to his expected first catch attempt of Flight 13.

STARSHIP WILL REDUCE BANDWIDTH LAUNCH COST BY UP TO 50X

Even if fully expendable, Starship already has an around 40% lower cost per kilogram than a mature Falcon 9. With reuse, Starship's cost per kilogram quickly falls towards a $60 per kilogram floor. Starship introduces a different cost regime that will transform the industry to be supply-rich, price-flexible, and capability-driven. For Starlink, this will mean faster scale, richer service tiers, and room to price for demand and margin.

THE WORLD'S LARGEST SAND BATTERY JUST WENT LIVE IN FINLAND

Finnish Firm Polar Night Energy has built an industrial-scale sand battery in Pornainen, Finland. The battery is set to reduce carbon emissions from the local heating network by as much as 70%. At 42 feet tall and 50 feet wide, the battery can store up to 100 MWh, enough to heat the whole town for a week. The sand battery can hold a charge for months at a time, helping balance the energy grid during periods of high demand. A video of the battery being put together is available in the article.

INTRODUCING GPT-REALTIME AND REALTIME API UPDATES FOR PRODUCTION VOICE AGENTS

OpenAI's Realtime API, powered by gpt-realtime, enables developers to build reliable, production-ready voice agents. It supports remote MCP servers, image inputs, and phone calling through Session Initiation Protocol. OpenAI has released two new voices in the Realtime API, Cedar and Marin. OpenAI's most advanced speech-to-speech model yet, gpt-realtime shows improvements in following complex instructions, calling tools with precision, and production of speech that sounds more natural and expressive.

GROK CODE FAST 1

grok-code-fast-1 is a speedy and economical reasoning model that excels at agentic coding. xAI built the model from scratch using a brand-new model architecture. The model has mastered the use of common tools like grep, terminal, and file editing. It is free for a limited time for users of select launch partners, including GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Cline, Roo Code, Kilo Code, opencode, and Windsurf.

WILL ALL OUR DRUGS COME FROM CHINA?

The West's big car manufacturers are facing an existential threat from Chinese manufacturers, which relatively recently began pushing the boundaries of performance, cost-efficiency, driver experience, and autonomy. Western carmakers have been content to innovate in a gradual way for far too long, and it could cease to be competitive. This could also happen to the biotech industry. There has been a steady rise in Chinese companies as a source of genuinely new drugs. Chinese companies are now responsible for about a quarter of new trial starts.

ARE PEOPLE'S BOSSES REALLY MAKING THEM USE AI TOOLS?

Many companies are making employees use AI tools, outsourcing responsibilities to a technology that often gets things completely wrong. AI is completely incapable of doing analytical work that requires creative and soft skills and a lot of experience. Large language models are language processing systems, so it shouldn't be surprising that they can only regurgitate generic advice. Workers stuck using AI tools need to document their use carefully so they are able to demonstrate how the tools cause problems, slowdowns, or other disappointing outcomes.

WE'RE LOOKING FOR A GROWTH MARKETING LEAD TO HELP GROW TLDR! (FULLY REMOTE, $150K-$200K)

TLDR is hiring a Growth Marketing Lead [12] with deep expertise in Meta ads to help us grow our subscriber base. If you're excited to work with the latest AI tools, discover and scale non-obvious growth channels, and work with a fast-paced fully remote team to grow our newsletters beyond 7 million subscribers, please apply here [12].

ON CONTINUOUS AI FOR TEST IMPROVEMENT

Using AI for Continuous Test Improvement can make software better, higher quality, and more tested.

GOOGLE UNVEILS LAYER 1 CHAIN FOR BANKS WITH PYTHON-BASED SMART CONTRACTS

The Google Cloud Universal Ledger (GCUL) is a credibly neural and performant Layer 1 that enables Python-based smart contracts.

OPEN SOURCE IS ONE PERSON

Most open source projects are maintained by independent individuals.

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YOU NO LONGER NEED JAVASCRIPT

It's pretty incredible what HTML and CSS alone can achieve.

THE FOUR STYLES OF CONFIDENCE ON A TEAM

Teams need people who can estimate how likely they are to be right and can communicate their level of confidence effectively.

DO THE SIMPLEST THING THAT COULD POSSIBLY WORK

A lot of engineers try to design ideal systems instead of spending that time understanding the current system deeply, then doing the simplest thing that could possibly work.

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TIKTOK OWNER BYTEDANCE EYES VALUATION OF OVER $330 BILLION AS REVENUE SURPASSES META

ByteDance is set to launch a new employee share buyback that will value it at more than $330 billion. It plans to offer current employees $200.41 per share in the repurchase program. The buyback is expected to be launched in the autumn. It's becoming increasingly common for late-stage private companies to conduct regular buybacks to retain and provide liquidity to employees without an exit, such as an initial public offering.

GOOGLE HAS ELIMINATED 35% OF MANAGERS OVERSEEING SMALL TEAMS IN PAST YEAR, EXEC SAYS

Google has eliminated more than a third of its managers overseeing small teams in the last year. Many of those managers have stayed with Google as individual contributors. Google eliminated about 6% of its workforce in 2023 and has implemented cuts in various divisions since then. The company has offered buyouts to employees since January and has slowed hiring.

BLUESKY NOW PLATFORM OF CHOICE FOR SCIENCE COMMUNITY

Many science communicators moved to Bluesky after Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and renamed it X. The online scientific community on Bluesky has now hit a critical mass. Many are finding it to be a better environment for discussing their interests. Bluesky is user-friendly with no algorithm. It provides helpful tools for beginners, and users have the ability to block or mute people.

FULLY FUNCTIONING HUMAN SKIN GROWN IN LAB, COMPLETE WITH VESSELS AND PIGMENTATION

Researchers from the University of Queensland have successfully grown fully functional human skin in a laboratory. They used stem cells to create a replica of human skin with blood vessels, capillaries, hair follicles, multiple layers of tissue, and immune cells. The skin model took six years to develop. It will be transformative for skin graft transplants, wound healing, and the study of skin disorders.

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I MANAGED A SWARM OF 20 AI AGENTS FOR A WEEK AND BUILT A PRODUCT. HERE ARE THE 8 RULES I LEARNED

AI isn't just about writing code faster, it's about changing the nature of work. Engineers' value is shifting from the act of implementation to the art of direction. Their worth will be measured by how many agents they can effectively manage and how well they can architect an intelligent, self-improving system. Senior engineers and systems thinkers are about to become even more valuable because they have the architectural vision to direct these agentic systems.

THE UNEXPECTED PRODUCTIVITY BOOST OF RUST

At some point, codebases get too big for developers to keep all of the parts in their heads at the same time. Projects typically hit a significant slowdown at this stage. However, Rust's strong safety guarantees make it easier for developers to refactor even critical parts of apps, giving them more confidence and increasing their productivity. This allows developers to worry less and try out more things without worrying about breaking the existing stuff.

THE RISE OF FRONT-LOADED VESTING

Front‑loaded vesting - higher Year‑1 value, a smaller initial grant, and refreshers as the engine of long‑term pay - is becoming the default. It tightens the link to performance, shifting rewards from tenure to contribution. Employees should evaluate offers on the first two years and steady‑state and insist on transparent refresher rules before signing. With this model, value arrives earlier, so document impact, broaden cross-functional reach, and align to promotion rubrics, as mobility and visibility matter.

GOOGLE COULD GET BROKEN UP THIS WEEK. HERE'S WHAT IT WOULD MEAN

A court is widely expected to decide on Google's fate this week after a decision last year that held that the company broke antitrust laws by using illegal means to maintain a monopoly over online search. The court has several options, including breaking up Google by ordering it to sell Chrome or Android, or making it share valuable data with its rivals. Whatever it decides, the measure of success is whether people who work at big companies start quitting their jobs to start new companies. Previous antitrust cases against large tech companies have helped spawn industries.