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ON STEPPING BACK

It's worth taking a day off once in a while to contemplate where you're going in life.

WHY AGENTS ARE BAD PAIR PROGRAMMERS

Agentic pair programmers are too fast to collaborate with humans.

SCREAMING INTO THE VOID (ZERO TO $100/MONTH) (1 HOUR READ)

How an entrepreneur reached $100 per month from their personal projects after two years.

JUDGE EXAMINES STEPS TO LIMIT GOOGLE'S REACH IN AI ARMS RACE

Judge Amit Mehta hasn't made it clear which way he is leaning, but he expects to issue a ruling in August.

THE ILLUSION OF CAUSALITY IN CHARTS

We tend to infer causality when we observe specific trends and patterns even when the causal relationship may not exist.

Read the Delve case study.

TESLA TARGETS JUNE 12 LAUNCH OF ROBOTAXI SERVICE IN AUSTIN

Tesla plans to launch its long-awaited robotaxi service in Austin on June 12. The date has only been discussed internally and could still change. The company this week operated a test vehicle on public roads in Austin with no one in the driver's seat for the first time. Elon Musk said earlier this month that Tesla would officially roll out a fleet of about 10 self-driving robotaxis in Austin before expanding to a thousand vehicles within a few months.

PERPLEXITY'S NEW TOOL CAN GENERATE SPREADSHEETS, DASHBOARDS, AND MORE

Perplexity Labs, a tool now available to Perplexity Pro users, can craft reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, and more. It is available on the web, iOS, and Android and will soon be available on Perplexity's apps for Mac and Windows. The tool is designed to help people complete a variety of work and personal projects. It can take 10 minutes or more to run and use tools like web search, code execution, and chart and image creation.

CHINA TO VISIT EARTH'S ‘QUASI-MOON' AND BRING A CHUNK OF IT BACK HOME

China's National Space Agency has launched an asteroid sample mission aimed at Asteroid 2016HO3, aka 469219 Kamoʻoalewa, which orbits the Sun. The Tianwen 2 probe rode a Long March 3B rocket into orbit at 1:31 Thursday morning. 2016HO3 is estimated to have a diameter of 40 to 100 meters. It is an attractive target for exploration because it can be reached by a spacecraft traveling at a modest 7 kilometers per second. The probe will reach the asteroid in about a year and then orbit it for a while before landing and attempting to retrieve around 100 grams of material.

HUGGING FACE UNVEILS TWO NEW HUMANOID ROBOTS

Hugging Face has announced a pair of open source humanoid robots. HopeJR is a full-sized humanoid robot with 66 actuated degrees of freedom. It can walk and move its arms. Reachy Mini is a desktop unit that can move its head, talk, listen, and be used to test AI apps. There is no timeline for shipping these robots, but the company anticipates shipping the first few units by the end of the year. The waitlist is currently open. A video of HopeJR being demonstrated at an event is available in the article.

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ANNOUNCING TYPESCRIPT NATIVE PREVIEWS

Developers can now use npm to get a preview of the native TypeScript compiler. They can now also use a preview version of TypeScript editor functionality for VS Code through the Visual Studio Marketplace. These previews will eventually become TypeScript 7. They will be published nightly so that developers can easily try the latest developments. The VS Code extension should get automatic updates by default.

BUILDING A DISTRIBUTED CACHE FOR S3

Clickhouse built a distributed cache for cloud object storage - a shared, low-latency layer that gives all compute nodes fast access to hot data. This post looks at how hot data caching worked before, why object storage made it hard, and how the new architecture fixes it. It includes benchmarks.

PATTERN MATCHING 20 HABITS OF EXCEPTIONAL STARTUPS

Exceptional startups do things very differently from the median startup. This post looks at habits that these startups tend to have. Exceptional startups beat and raise expectations, recruit top talent obsessively, ship product incredibly fast, and obsess over product quality. These traits, along with many others, make them great places to work and invest in.

KNOWLEDGE WORK IS DYING—HERE'S WHAT COMES NEXT

Before AI, knowledge set people apart - knowing more meant earning more. AI models can swallow entire fields overnight. This makes it more important to have wisdom. This article looks at how to develop abilities in areas that AI can't replicate. It teaches leaders how to lead from a deeper place of wisdom.

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THE CASE FOR USING A WEB BROWSER AS YOUR TERMINAL

Tweety is an integrated terminal for the browser that minimizes context switching by allowing developers to interact with their terminal directly from their browsers.

META AND ANDURIL DEFENSE STARTUP PARTNER ON VR, AR PROJECT INTENDED FOR U.S. ARMY

Meta and Anduril have formed a partnership to create virtual and augmented reality devices intended for use by the US Army.

APPLE'S US APP STORE TOPPED $400B IN DEVELOPER BILLINGS AND SALES IN 2024

The figure has nearly tripled in size since 2019.

HUMAN CODERS ARE STILL BETTER THAN LLMS

While current-level AI is useful, it is still very much behind human intelligence.

ONLOOK

Onlook is a visual-first code editor designed for designers that allows them to craft websites, prototypes, and designs with AI.

YOU'LL NEVER BE READY FOR ANYTHING THAT MATTERS

You'll never be ready for the big things in life, so just start doing them anyway.

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APPLE TO LAUNCH IOS 26, MACOS 26 IN MAJOR REBRAND TIED TO SOFTWARE REDESIGNS

The next Apple operating systems will be identified by year rather than version number. The change is aimed at bringing consistency to the company's branding and making things less confusing to customers and developers. The next operating systems will be known as iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS 26, watchOS 26, tvOS 26, and visionOS 26. The shift will be announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 9.

XAI TO PAY TELEGRAM $300M TO INTEGRATE GROK INTO THE CHAT APP

Telegram and xAI have partnered to integrate Grok into apps available on Telegram's platform for one year. xAI paid $300 million in cash and equity as part of the deal. Telegram will also earn 50% of the revenue from xAI subscriptions purchased through the app. Grok was already available to Telegram's premium users early this year, but it seems the chatbot is now going to be made available to all users.

RESEARCHERS SAY NEW CONTACT LENSES LET YOU SEE IN THE DARK

Scientists have created contact lenses that allow people to see in the dark with the help of infrared light. The invention could allow colorblind people to see colors again. The contacts don't require an external power source and wearers can perceive multiple infrared wavelengths even with their eyes closed. They aren't yet able to capture fine details, so the scientists are working on a version with more precise spatial resolution and higher sensitivity.

A REACTION TO ALZHEIMER'S FRAUD

The beta-amyloid protein has been a prime suspect in the pathology of Alzheimer's for many decades. However, there was a period where some papers made a form of amyloid appear to be able to induce disease-like symptoms all by itself in rodent models. Those works turned out not to be reproducible, and there is strong evidence of deliberately faked work in those papers. While those particular papers are fake, they don't discount the decades of legitimate research on the topic.

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ONE OF THE REASONS I'M FINDING LLMS SO MUCH MORE USEFUL FOR CODING THAN A LOT OF PEOPLE

All of Simon Willison's code has automated tests. This massively de-risks his use of large language models. He uses AI to write code and then proves that code works with tests, then uses AI to refactor the code until it looks good, keeping the tests green the whole time. Programmers who find the technology to be more of a hindrance than a help in their work may need to check the health of their test suites.

AS A DEVELOPER, MY MOST IMPORTANT TOOLS ARE A PEN AND A NOTEBOOK

A notebook is the most important tool to have as a software developer. While writing code is a necessary part of the job, more important than writing that code is figuring out what code to write. Writing and sketching are powerful tools for thinking through problems and they can help turn vague abstract ideas into tangible artifacts. Using a notebook also leaves behind a copy of your thoughts and the process of how you reached them.

ELON MUSK TRIED TO BLOCK SAM ALTMAN'S BIG AI DEAL IN THE MIDDLE EAST

OpenAI and a group of American technology giants recently won a deal to build one of the world's largest artificial intelligence data centers in Abu Dhabi. While the deal was being made, Elon Musk worked hard to make sure it included his own AI startup, warning the group that the plan had no chance of presidential approval unless xAI was included in the deal. Trump and US officials reviewed the deal terms and decided to move forward. The project, Stargate UAE, was ultimately announced on May 22.

WHAT IF WE HAD BIGGER BRAINS? IMAGINING MINDS BEYOND OURS

As humans, we like to think our minds are somehow at the top of what's possible, but it is now pretty clear this isn't true. Artificial neural networks allow us to get a more systematic sense of what different scales of brains can do. As systems get more complex, they may start using abstractions and higher-order constructs that we are basically blind to.

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TESLA–XAI MERGER ‘GOING TO HAPPEN,' SAYS MUSK BIOGRAPHER

A merger between Tesla and xAI would mark a turning point in Elon Musk's push to transform Tesla into a leader in real-world artificial intelligence.

SAMSUNG DROPS ANDROID 16 BETA FOR GALAXY S25 WITH MORE AI YOU PROBABLY DON'T WANT

Samsung Galaxy S25 owners can sign up for the Android 16 beta by opening the Samsung Members app - the beta sign-up should be right on the main landing page.

MICROSOFT WANTS WINDOWS UPDATE TO HANDLE ALL APPS

Developers can now sign up for a private preview of the Windows Update orchestration platform.

A THOUGHT ON JAVASCRIPT "PROOF OF WORK" ANTI-SCRAPER SYSTEMS

An AI scraper can try to recognize a JavaScript Proof-of-Work system, but this is a losing game for several reasons.

BEHIND THE CURTAIN: A WHITE-COLLAR BLOODBATH

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, says AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and that AI companies and governments need to stop sugar-coating what's coming.

THE WHO CARES ERA

We are now in the 'Who Cares Era', where completely disposable things are shoddily produced for people to mostly ignore.

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OPENAI MAY SOON LET YOU ‘SIGN IN WITH CHATGPT' FOR OTHER APPS

OpenAI is exploring ways for users to sign into third-party apps using their ChatGPT accounts. ChatGPT currently has roughly 600 million monthly active users. Adding a 'Sign in with ChatGPT' feature could help OpenAI compete with other massive technology companies that help people with a range of online services. OpenAI appears to be interested in integrating the sign-in service with a broad array of companies.

APPLE IS READY TO REPLACE GAME CENTER WITH A MORE XBOX-LIKE GAMING APP

Apple is expected to launch a gaming app alongside the next version of iOS this September. The app will apparently replace Apple's Game Center. It will feature editorial content and let users access games available on the App Store. The app will work similarly to the Xbox app for iPhone. The macOS version of the app will let users access games from outside the App Store.

SPACEX'S NINTH TEST FLIGHT OF STARSHIP LAUNCHES INTO SPACE, ENDS IN A SPIN

SpaceX's Starship successfully reached orbit last night, but it later began spinning and made an uncontrolled re-entry into the Indian Ocean. It was the smoothest Starship test of the year - the previous two tests ended in explosions. Last night's launch was the first to use a flight-proven Super Heavy booster. The booster had launched and returned during Starship's seventh test flight.