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APPLE LOOKED INTO BUILDING ITS OWN AWS COMPETITOR

ILYA SUTSKEVER BECOMES CEO OF SAFE SUPERINTELLIGENCE AFTER META POACHED DANIEL GROSS

OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever will assume the CEO role at Safe Superintelligence, the artificial intelligence startup he launched last year, as the previous CEO, Daniel Gross, was poached by Meta. Safe Superintelligence co-founder Danielle Levy will now serve as president. The company's technical team will continue to report to Sutskever. Sutskever plans to keep running the company as an independent organization.

RECORD-BREAKING RESULTS BRING FUSION POWER CLOSER TO REALITY

Germany's Wendelstein 7-X, an advanced fusion reactor, set a record last May by magnetically 'bottling up' superheated plasma for 43 seconds. The large Joint European Torus (JET) fusion reactor near Oxford, England, achieved even longer containment times of up to 60 seconds in final experiments before its retirement in December 2023. These results, among other recent advances in the field, are bringing fusion power closer and closer to reality. This article presents an overview of the current field of fusion to show how the elusive dream of controlled nuclear fusion may soon be within reach.

SCIENTISTS SPOT MYSTERY OBJECT BELIEVED TO COME FROM BEYOND SOLAR SYSTEM

Astronomers have discovered a new object hurtling through the solar system. Known as 3I/Atlas, the object is about 416 million miles away from the Sun and believed to be traveling at about 37 miles per second relative to the Sun. If confirmed, it will provide more evidence that such interstellar wanderers are relatively common in our galaxy. The comet poses no threat to Earth. It will reach its closest approach to the Sun - within about 130 million miles - around October 30.

INTRODUCING TMUX-RS

This developer ported tmux to Rust - they recently reached the milestone of having the code base being 100% unsafe Rust. This post discusses the process of porting the original code base from around 67,000 lines of C code to around 81,000 lines of Rust, excluding comments and empty lines. The post covers interesting bugs, C patterns in Rust, development tools, and more. The developer's next goal is to convert the code base to safe Rust.

CACHING IS AN ABSTRACTION, NOT AN OPTIMIZATION

Caching is best understood as a tool for making software simpler rather than as a tool to improve performance. It resembles an abstraction rather than an optimization. Understanding this makes it possible to come up with designs that work and satisfy the functional requirements of systems from the perspective of 'having adequate, fast access to the data it needs'. The problem should be figuring out how to get data into fast storage as often as possible instead of gaming a system that is holding data access storage.

SAMSUNG SEEMS TO HAVE LEAKED ITS OWN TRIFOLD PHONE DESIGN

Samsung's latest One UI 8 build update contains animations that show what the trifold Samsung flagship might look like. While it is labeled the ' Multifold 7' in the files, the device is speculated to be called the 'Galaxy G Fold'. The animations reveal how the device will likely fold - there are two differently sized hinges, with the left-hand display folding inward, suggesting the right-hand display is designed to sandwich over the top. Samsung is expected to reveal the latest generation of its Z Fold and Z Flip devices at its next Unpacked event on July 9.

TESLA OPTIMUS IS IN SHAMBLES AS HEAD OF PROGRAM EXITS, PRODUCTION DELAYED

Tesla's humanoid robot program is reportedly in disarray due to the departure of the senior vice-president in charge. Production has been delayed due to a new redesign. The robot has yet to prove useful in Tesla's factories. Elon Musk's goal for Tesla to produce 5,000 to 10,000 Optimus humanoid robots this year has been delayed - Tesla has informed suppliers of a two-month halt on orders. The company is likely to unveil a new generation of Optimus robots at its shareholders' meeting this year.

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THE UV BUILD BACKEND IS NOW STABLE

The uv build backend is an alternative to setuptools, hatchling, and similar tools for pure Python projects with a focus on good defaults, user-friendly error messages, and performance.

STRIPE'S FIRST EMPLOYEE, THE FOUNDER OF FINTECH INCREASE, SORT OF BOUGHT A BANK

Darragh Buckley has bought a big enough stake in Twin City Bank to trigger a public disclosure of the transaction by the Federal Reserve Board.

OPENING UP ‘ZERO-KNOWLEDGE PROOF' TECHNOLOGY TO PROMOTE PRIVACY IN AGE ASSURANCE

Google's Zero-Knowledge Proof libraries contain powerful cryptographic tools that make it much easier for private and public sector developers to build their own privacy-enhancing applications and digital ID solutions.

I BUILT SOMETHING THAT CHANGED MY FRIEND GROUP'S SOCIAL FABRIC

This developer wrote a Discord bot to help his friends keep in contact and play games together without it resulting in a mess of notifications.

LIES PER SECOND, MEETINGS PER DECISION RATIO, AND OTHER IMPORTANT BIZ METRICS

Novel metrics can help explain people and situations from a unique perspective.

AN ALGORITHM FOR A BETTER BOOKSHELF

A new approach to solving the 'bookshelf problem' may open the door to new applications of list labeling in settings where it wasn't useful before because the cost was infeasible.

Read the Delve case study.

IPHONE FOLD REPORTEDLY ON TRACK FOR POTENTIAL LAUNCH NEXT YEAR, AS PROTOTYPES TESTED

The iPhone Fold is on schedule for a potential launch in the second half of next year. It reportedly reached a realistic prototyping stage sometime last month. If everything stays on track, the prototype could complete testing by the end of 2025. It will then move on to other testing stages to confirm the design is practical to manufacture before moving on to the Engineering Verification Test stage.

OCULUS FOUNDER PALMER LUCKEY LEADS GROUP OF TECH BILLIONAIRES LAUNCHING NEW CRYPTO-BANK — AIMS TO FILL THE VOID LEFT BY SILICON VALLEY BANK'S 2023 COLLAPSE

Palmer Luckey and a group of tech billionaires have founded a new crypto-focused US bank called Erebor. The bank will focus on providing capital for technology startups, AI ventures, defense and manufacturing industries, and cryptocurrency endeavors, as well as for individuals looking to invest in these spaces. It has applied for a national bank charter and is pushing for a digital-only model. Erebor will differentiate itself by doing business with entities and customers that are not as well served by traditional financial institutions, particularly those with insufficient access to credit.

GENE THERAPY RESTORES HEARING IN TODDLERS AND TEENAGERS BORN WITH CONGENITAL DEAFNESS – NEW RESEARCH

Researchers have developed a form of gene therapy that can successfully restore hearing in toddlers and young adults born with OTOF-related deafness, a condition caused by mutations in the OTOF gene. People with this condition have healthy hearing structures in their inner ear, but one crucial gene isn't working properly - fixing the faulty gene restores hearing. The researchers used a virus as a delivery system to carry a working copy of the OTOF gene directly to the inner ear's hearing cells, restoring hearing sometimes to near-normal levels.

AI VIRTUAL PERSONALITY YOUTUBERS, OR ‘VTUBERS,' ARE EARNING MILLIONS

Advances in AI are fueling a new wave of virtual creators on YouTube like Bloo, a fully virtual personality powered by artificial intelligence with a massive following of 2.5 million subscribers and more than 700 million views. Bloo has already generated more than seven figures in revenue, according to its creator. Everything else on Bloo's channel is handled by AI technology from ElevenLabs, OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic. The rise in AI-generated content has led to growing criticism from users who say it's harder to find meaningful or original material.

RUBY ON RAILS: THE OPEN-SOURCE BLUEPRINT

Ruby on Rails has embraced open source principles since its debut in 2004, giving developers freedom, flexibility, and a strong community-driven direction. Rails thrived because anyone could contribute, companies invested in it while keeping it free, and its modular design allowed endless customization. The project proved that open source software can compete with and often surpass commercial alternatives. This article looks at why Rails' choice of using the MIT License was revolutionary, how Rails inspired a generation of frameworks, and why Rails is so good for open source projects.

CONTINUOUS AI IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

Continuous AI is the concept of integrating AI tooling automatically into existing development flows. This doesn't include tooling that purports to write and test entire changes for developers. Continuous AI can add a surprising amount of value. This article discusses some ways in which to integrate AI to perform automated checks, organizational tasks, and help with other parts of the software engineering process.

CEOS START SAYING THE QUIET PART OUT LOUD: AI WILL WIPE OUT JOBS

Several CEOs have publicly stated their views on how AI will replace workers over the coming years. Automation software, AI, and robots are being rolled out to make operations as lean as possible. Few roles will be unchanged by AI. While it is unclear how much work will be reshaped by AI, past technological revolutions have shown that new jobs often emerge.

MICROSOFT TO LAY OFF ABOUT 9,000 WORKERS

Microsoft plans to cut another 9,000 workers, less than 4% of the tech giant's global workforce, in its latest round of layoffs. The cuts to staff will span levels, geographies, tenure, and teams. Companies across many sectors have been reducing their workforces while looking to boost productivity. The increasing use of artificial intelligence may eliminate the need for certain roles.

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TESLA'S GLOBAL VEHICLE DELIVERIES PLUNGED IN SECOND QUARTER

Tesla's global vehicle sales fell 13.5% in the second quarter compared to a year ago.

TESLA'S $800 BILLION ROBOTAXI DREAM IS FINALLY FACING REALITY

Tesla is now offering paid rides in a handful of Model Y robotaxis in Austin, Texas - in a limited area with invite-only customers and a 'safety monitor' in each vehicle.

MORE ASSORTED NOTES ON LIQUID GLASS

Apple's latest user-interface redesign makes the company look like it's just making things up as it goes.

NYT TO START SEARCHING DELETED CHATGPT LOGS AFTER BEATING OPENAI IN COURT

A US district judge has suggested that OpenAI's user agreement specifies that its data can be retained as part of legal processes.

COMING TO POSTGRESQL: ON-DISK DATABASE ENCRYPTION

The Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) extension, part of the open source Percona Distribution for PostgreSQL, encrypts all database files on disk, ensuring sensitive information remains secure even if storage is compromised.

AT LEAST 5 US CEOS ACCUSE INDIAN TECHIE SOHAM PAREKH OF MOONLIGHTING, BUT SAY HE'S ‘REALLY SMART'

Soham Parekh moonlighted at several different companies simultaneously - recruiters report that he did great in interviews.

Read the Delve case study.

ELON MUSK'S XAI RAISES $10 BILLION IN DEBT AND EQUITY AS IT STEPS UP CHALLENGE TO OPENAI

xAI has raised a combined $10 billion in debt and equity through secured notes, term loans, and a strategic equity investment. The funding will give the startup more firepower to build out infrastructure and develop its Grok AI chatbot. xAI has already installed 200,000 GPUs at its Colossus facility in Memphis, Tennessee. It plans to build a 1 million GPU facility outside of Memphis.

SAM ALTMAN SLAMS META'S AI TALENT-POACHING SPREE: ‘MISSIONARIES WILL BEAT MERCENARIES'

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has hinted that the company is evaluating compensation for the entire research organization in response to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's recent AI talent-poaching spree. He has dismissed the recruiting efforts, saying that Meta's actions will lead to deep cultural problems down the road. Altman says that Meta failed to get OpenAI's top people and that Meta had to go quite far down the list.

MODERNA SAYS MRNA FLU VACCINE SAILED THROUGH TRIAL, BEATING STANDARD SHOT

Moderna's mRNA-based seasonal flu vaccine was 27% more effective at preventing influenza infections than a standard flu shot in a study that included nearly 41,000 people aged 50 and above. The new shot, dubbed mRNA-1010, hit the highest efficacy target set for the trial. The positive results come in the wake of one of the worst flu seasons in years. An estimated 770,000 people in the US were hospitalized for the flu during the 2024-2025 flu season.

TESLA UNVEILS ITS LFP BATTERY FACTORY, CLAIMS IT'S ALMOST READY

Tesla claims that its lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery cell factory in Nevada is nearly ready to start production. The company's cheapest electric vehicles all utilize LFP cells, as does its entire range of energy storage products - it currently heavily relies on Chinese manufacturers. Tesla aims to produce about 10 GWh of LFP battery cells per year at the new factory. The cells are expected to be used in the Tesla Megapack, which is produced in the US.

CONTEXT ENGINEERING REALIZED: CONTEXT WINDOW ARCHITECTURE

The Context Window Architecture (CWA) is a conceptual reference architecture aimed at bringing engineering discipline to every large language model (LLM) prompt construction. It directly addresses fundamental limitations with LLMs, including statelessness, cognitive fallibility, and ad-hoc prompting. The real value of an AI application isn't just the LLM, but the system intelligently managing its context. Adopting CWA increases reliability, predictability, debuggability, and security; lowers maintenance requirements; creates clear control points for sensitive data, ethical guidelines, and compliance; and provides a shared vocabulary and mental model for collaborative development.

I SHIPPED A MACOS APP BUILT ENTIRELY BY CLAUDE CODE

Context is a native app for debugging MCP servers powered by Apple's SwiftUI framework. It was built almost completely by Claude Code. Of the 20,000 lines in the project, less than 1,000 lines were written by hand. This post explains how Context's developer chose their tools, what those tools are good at and bad at, and how other developers can leverage them to maximize the quality of their generated code output. IDEs of the future will focus on enabling developers to prime context for agents and set up the feedback loops that are essential to helping agents succeed with tasks.

PAY UP OR STOP SCRAPING: CLOUDFLARE PROGRAM CHARGES BOTS FOR EACH CRAWL

Cloudflare is experimenting with a new feature that allows content creators to charge a fee to stop AI crawlers from scraping their websites. The 'pay-per-crawl' feature is currently in a private beta - any content creator interested in joining can sign up. It allows publishers to set a price for bots to pay before scraping content. Publishers have the option to charge some bots while letting other bots scrape for free.

CHINA IS QUICKLY ERODING AMERICA'S LEAD IN THE GLOBAL AI RACE

Companies and organizations in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia are turning to large language models from Chinese companies as alternatives to offerings from the US. While US AI technology is widely seen as the industry's gold standard, Chinese companies offer performance that is nearly as good at vastly lower prices. Leading Chinese AI companies have open-sourced their models, which could pressure rivals in the US to justify keeping their models private and the premiums they charge for their services.

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X IS PILOTING A PROGRAM THAT LETS AI CHATBOTS GENERATE COMMUNITY NOTES

AI-generated notes will go through the same vetting process as notes submitted by humans to encourage accuracy.

INTRODUCING PAY PER CRAWL: ENABLING CONTENT OWNERS TO CHARGE AI CRAWLERS FOR ACCESS

Cloudflare's Pay per crawl feature, currently in private beta, grants domain owners full control over their monetization strategy.

GRAMMARLY ADDS SUPERHUMAN EMAIL APP TO EXPAND ITS AI PLATFORM. HERE'S WHAT THAT COULD MEAN FOR YOU

Grammarly plans to create a new way of working where AI agents collaborate across communication tools.