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SPACEX TO SPEND $100 BILLION ON NEW SPACEPORT IN LOUISIANA

SpaceX is committing $100 billion to build a launch facility in southern Louisiana as part of its plans to send multiple rockets into space every day. The new facility, named Starbase Louisiana, will be located on 125,000 acres of coastal marshland and bring 3,000 jobs to the area. SpaceX will need at least several locales to fulfill its goal of sending thousands of rockets into orbit a year. The company is constantly exploring viable sites to expand its operations, domestically and internationally.

AMAZON EYES ‘FULLY AUTOMATED' DELIVERY STATIONS TO BRING ROBOTICS TO THE LAST MILE

Amazon's fulfillment centers are equipped with the latest robots and automation, but its delivery stations still remain mostly manual. The company is now developing an internal project to build fully automated delivery stations. The technology behind Project Tetromino could come from Boxbot, a robotics startup that uses conveyors and AI-driven storage trays to automatically sequence packages for vehicle loading. Amazon has opened up a Last Mile Innovation Center in Germany to test delivery station technologies.

KNOWLEDGE COMPRESSOR

Natural language tends to contain quite a bit of repetition and redundancy, which isn't inherently bad, but it comes with tradeoffs. With AI, repetition can cost a significant amount of tokens when working with substantial knowledge content. This study looks at whether documentation can be made less repetitive through compression. It found that typical technical documentation can have its token count cut in half without substantially reducing its usefulness to language models.

INTRODUCING RUN SDK: SECURE EVAL FOR YOUR AGENTS

Run SDK is a package from Vercel for executing untrusted JavaScript or TypeScript without giving it direct access to apps or systems. It evaluates JavaScript or type-stripped TypeScript in a fresh QuickJS context inside a worker thread and exposes selected operations through hostFunctions. Calls cross the sandbox boundary through serialization. A host function may return a promise, so existing service clients can sit behind this interface without being passed into the sandbox.

APPLE HOLDS FAREWELL PARTY FOR TIM COOK AS TERNUS PREPARES TO TAKE OVER

Tim Cook will step down as Apple's CEO on September 1. The company held a celebration for Cook on August 23, a day before his 15th anniversary as Apple CEO. Approximately 200 people attended the party, where the band OneRepublic performed. Cook will remain with Apple and become the company's executive chairman. John Ternus, who has been at Apple since 2001, will take over as CEO.

COULD NVIDIA DEFAULT?

Credit Default Swaps insuring against an Nvidia debt default have doubled in price in the last two months. The company gave a $105 billion residual value guarantee for OpenAI's Ohio data center earlier this month, and it has also been involved in two other $500 billion deals this month. It has been reported to have been involved in over 300 financing deals in the last five years. Analysts are worried an AI downturn could see the circular deals entered into by Nvidia with other AI players unravel, which could result in cascading losses.

SOME RECENT APPLICATIONS OF AI

Some recent applications of AI include gathering mostly unstructured real-world data and checking stuff and high-judgment lifestyle questions.

ENGINEERING THEATRE

Engineering theater is when something looks like engineering but really isn't.

LET ME CLICK

Examples of the 'Let me click' principle in user interface design.

A CAUTIONARY TALE ABOUT DATA BREACH CLAIMS, VERIFICATION, AND CARHARTT

Take headline numbers with a grain of salt unless you're confident in the processes of those making the claims.

X SENDS CEASE-AND-DESIST TO OPEN SOURCE PROJECT NITTER OVER ALLEGED SCRAPING

Nitter and its instances offer a handy way for people to keep up with posts on X without an account.

INTRODUCING INDEX: BUILDING THE WORLD'S LARGEST AND MOST DIVERSE PHYSICAL DATASET

Figure's Index is an app that was created to help the company collect the physical data that its AI stack needs, directly from humans at scale.

Download the whitepaper.

APPLE GEARS UP TO LAUNCH ITS FIRST NEW MAC MINI IN TWO YEARS

Apple's first new Mac mini in almost two years will debut as soon as the next few days. The upgrade follows a surge in demand for the current Mac mini, which has become popular for running AI applications locally. It is part of a wave of new products Apple plans to release in the second half of this year. Apple is set to hold an event on September 9 where it will introduce its first foldable smartphone, as well as the iPhone 18 Pro line. The company is also preparing a range of new Apple Watches and fresh AirPods.

TESLA CONFIRMS CYBERCAB LAUNCH COMING NEXT WEEK

Tesla is holding an invite-only event to launch the Cybercab in Austin on September 3. The invitations are going to the riders who logged the most Robotaxi trips and winners of a draw. Estimates currently put Tesla's active unsupervised fleet at roughly 20 to 30 vehicles. Tesla claims to have driven about 380,000 cumulative unsupervised miles as of its July earnings call.

DATA CENTERS BECOME “KILLER APPLICATION” FOR NEW POWER TRANSFORMER TECH

The AI data center boom has accelerated investment into solid-state power transformers. This technology relies on high-frequency semiconductor switching to perform voltage conversions and can be mass-manufactured using semiconductor materials such as silicon carbide. Solid-state power transformers are physically smaller and lighter than conventional transformers and have modular designs that enable easy upgrades and replacements of parts. They can directly convert AC power from a local grid's distribution network into the DC power that data centers require.

APPROACHING ROBOTICS HARDWARE TAKEOFF

The World Humanoid Games in Beijing showed how much has changed since last year. The robots are faster, more intelligent, and more capable. The rapid pace of robotic hardware and software innovation is enabling a robust ecosystem that can both build things and isn't afraid to break them. There is now a massive number of companies producing a truly amazing number of robots.

HOW UBER BUILT A SOFTWARE FACTORY FOR AGENTIC CODING: THE MCP GATEWAY AND THE PLATFORM UNDERNEATH

More than 70% of pull requests at Uber are now written by AI agents. Code shipped per engineer has doubled in a year. This was enabled through a software factory that runs on a platform that Uber built. The platform gives agents the pieces they need to work safely across thousands of engineers. This post looks at how the factory was built. It covers what MCP gateways are and why they are needed for agentic coding at scale, workflows, and more.

THE STATE MACHINE NOBODY DESIGNED

Every part of an agent harness adds information to the model's context, controls what information is allowed into that context, or checks the model's output after it is generated. This is just context engineering. Thinking in terms of harnesses makes developers think in terms of adding components. Context is limited, so it's not just about what you can add, but about what's worth keeping as well. The context window is the whole state machine.

THE BIGGEST DOGS IN STREAMING WANT YOU TO USE ONLY THEIR APP

YouTube and Roku are racing to become one-stop shops for all of the content people watch on their TVs. Some paying YouTube subscribers will soon have access to content from Peacock as part of a recent deal between the two companies. The streaming wars have now morphed into a bundling war. The biggest streaming companies no longer just want to have the most subscribers - they also want to be the main entry point to everything streaming has to offer.

HOW UNIVERSITIES SHOULD PREPARE FOUNDERS

Universities tend to resist the idea of keeping students less busy with coursework, partly because educators feel they have to take active measures to achieve something. However, student founders should be left alone to their own projects, partly because they will be more excited to work on a project that's entirely their own, and because many projects wouldn't survive official recognition. It seems excessive to change the whole schedule of a university just to encourage would-be founders, but giving students some of their time back would help all of the most energetic and ambitious ones. They'd have time to explore new things if the pressure of work were relieved for even a week or two.

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YOUR EXECUTABLE IS A SQLITE DATABASE

This post explores whether it is possible to replace ELF with SQLite as an executable format.

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE REALLY HATE DATA CENTERS

75% oppose local data center development, despite the economic benefits.

THE HARNESS IS THE COMPANY

Leaders should work on building an organization where great people can do their best work, and then use AI to multiply that.

GOOD CULTURE IS THE BIGGEST PRODUCTIVITY HACK, NOT AI

Making employees worry about their jobs breaks a good culture as it totally decreases psychological safety.

STARLINK'S INTERESTING APPROACH TO CELLULAR

StarLink plans to enter the terrestrial cellular business by building a large number of cell sites provisioned with satellite backhaul.

AI'S NEXT BIG LEAP IS INTO THE REAL WORLD

Doing real physical work requires world models, aka 'large action models'.

READ THE REPORT.

APPLE'S FOLDABLE IPHONE WILL HELP BRING SOME MAGIC BACK

Apple is set to introduce its foldable iPhone at a launch event on or around September 9. Samsung has stolen some of the thunder from the launch by introducing a similar design, but that just reinforces that the new form factor is a winner. Apple's device reportedly excels as a camera viewfinder, but it lacks a telephoto camera, which could be an issue for early adopters spending over $2,000. The design also relies on Touch ID rather than Face ID.

NVIDIA CUSTOMERS NOTIFIED ABOUT AI-RELATED PRICE HIKES ABOVE 15%

Some of Nvidia's biggest customers have been told that the price of the AI servers containing its flagship Vera Rubin and Grace Blackwell chips is going up by more than 15% due to the soaring costs of memory chips. The price hikes will go into effect early next year. The increases will depend on the generation of Nvidia chips and the memory configurations. Nvidia has also raised prices for its gaming-oriented PC graphics cards.

CHINESE HUMANOID ROBOTS SMASH HUMAN RECORDS IN 100M SPRINT AND HIGH JUMP AT BEIJING ROBOT GAMES

The opening day of the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing on Saturday saw Chinese humanoid robots break records set by humans, including Usain Bolt's 100-meter sprint world record. More than 2,000 humanoid robots participated in the event. There were 51 events and more than 1,000 competitions, including running, table tennis, and soccer. While the games showcased humanoid robots' rapidly evolving abilities, experts say it will still take time to achieve mass real-world deployment and that these robots are mostly still used for demonstrations, performances, and research.

AMAZON'S TOASTER-SHAPED ROBOTAXIS ARE HITTING THE ROAD

Amazon's all-electric toaster-shaped Zoox taxis are the first robotaxis offering rides on the roads without standard driver features like a dashboard or pedals. They can drive in either direction and hold up to four passengers sitting facing each other. Amazon has started rolling out the vehicles across San Francisco and Las Vegas. Tesla's Cybercab lacks a steering wheel and pedals, but it has not received the same regulatory approval as Zoox to begin offering rides to the public.

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* the agentic loops powering kody.codes

* Cursor automations * Sentry webhooks + Seer * what's next for Kody

THE NEW MCP ROADMAP

The updated roadmap for the Model Context Protocol (MCP) sets the direction for protocol work over the coming months. It is organized into five priority areas: agentic messaging primitives, HTTP-native transport unification and hardening, agent identity and enterprise-ready security, improved primitives, and improved SDK developer experience. Specification Enhancement Proposals that fall within these priority areas get expedited review and have the best chance of acceptance.

THERE'S NO REASON FOR SOFTWARE TO BE SLOW ANYMORE

A lot of the tedium it used to take to get a tricky optimization working is now gone. Many optimizations that were previously too risky to try make sense to try out now. AI drastically reduces the cost of optimization. It can turn days or weeks of work into a trivial loop.

GTM ENGINEER, APPLIED AI AT TLDR ($175-205K BASE + $40-60K BONUS, FULLY REMOTE)

TLDR is hiring a GTM Engineer to join our Applied AI team and own our AI-native GTM stack. We're looking for someone comfortable building AI agents and working with HubSpot. Click here to learn more [15]!

FABLE & THE END OF THE FREE LUNCH

When Moore's Law was in full effect, it didn't make sense to ruthlessly optimize code, as a new CPU would arrive in 18 months that would double performance. Developers only started to have to think about parallelization, architecture, memory locality, etc, after Moore's Law started slowing down in the mid-2000s. Prior to Fable, it felt like a waste to spend too much time improving coding harnesses or context strategies, as a new model would arrive at the same price or cheaper in just a few months that would cover most of the problem. Fable is incredible, but the cost is so high that developers are now starting to think about what work should go where and optimizing their harnesses to provide weaker models with sufficient context to perform well.

‘MAYBE I'M PSYCHO': WHY TECH FOUNDERS AND VCS ARE SO ONLINE

New news is coming out so fast that it seems crazy for a founder not to be fully plugged in. Being online can help build a presence and keep people as informed as possible. Posting frequently can help drive inbound interest. Tech Twitter can provide a view of emerging consensus, but few immediately actionable insights. It's important to actively maintain cognitive security and cognitive hygiene, as spending too much time online can be dangerous.

Build with the right model for every request. SEE HOW IT WORKS.

HOW I FIND PROBLEMS TO SOLVE AS A STAFF ENGINEER

Finding problems comes from staying engaged with people's work long enough to see what no single request can show you.

FAST AND HARD CODE

AI enables developers to pick less common languages and work with much harder technologies.