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X MONEY OFFICIALLY LAUNCHES IN THE US WITH APPLE WALLET SUPPORT AFTER INVITE-ONLY BETA

X is rolling out Premium and Premium+ subscribers in the US, enabling them to instantly send, receive, or request money from others on the platform without fees or limits.

FINDING BUGS IN RAFT IMPLEMENTATIONS

Cheap and abundant compute has made it possible to test software in ways we couldn't before.

TWO-WAY DOORS SOMETIMES LOCK BEHIND YOU

Maintaining your options has a cost.

HOW NVIDIA BUILDS OPEN MODELS FOR THE AGE OF AI

Nvidia is the largest publisher of open AI models in the world.

OPEN SOURCE MUST BE FUN (OR IT WILL DIE)

The scarcest resource in open source is the motivation of the maintainers.

THE PRODUCTIVITY MIRAGE

Ultimately, what matters most is solving the right problems, not your productivity setup.

Read how we built the world's fastest API for GLM-5.2

NVIDIA IN TALKS WITH OPENAI TO GUARANTEE $250 BILLION FINANCING FOR DATA CENTER

Nvidia is in talks to provide a roughly $250 billion backstop for OpenAI as part of a massive data-center project. The guarantee will help OpenAI lease a 10-gigawatt project that Softbank's energy subsidiary is developing. Nvidia's backing allows the data center developer to raise debt at more favorable terms. Under the deal, Nvidia would guarantee a series of financing vehicles intended to make lenders feel more confident that funding behind the project is secure.

META GIVES FACEBOOK MARKETPLACE ITS OWN APP CALLED SELLER

Seller is an early experimental app from Meta that aims to be to sellers what tools to edit videos were to content creators. It is free and will also be available in web browsers. The app has AI features that make selling items less of a hassle. Users can sign into Seller with their Facebook accounts, and listings are automatically synced.

SPACEX EYES TOWER CATCH FOR NEXT STARSHIP AFTER AUSPICIOUS END TO 13TH FLIGHT

SpaceX's 13th Starship test flight ended in an intact splashdown in a remote section of the Indian Ocean on Friday. The vehicle appeared to be in fine shape on landing. SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with its launch tower on the next test flight. The next steps for Starship are getting to orbit and returning the ship to the launch site, which will give SpaceX the capability to begin launching operational Starlink V3 satellites.

TEAM USES ALPHAFOLD AI TO REDESIGN GENE-EDITING PROTEINS TO MAKE THEM SAFER

A team based in China modified AlphaFold to help identify what parts of a gene-editing protein enable mistakes. They then modified these areas to reduce problematic off-target effects. Producing gene-editing systems tailored to prevent known off-target events is useful for fine-tuning protein-DNA interactions, which could have applications beyond gene editing.

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ISOCHRONES API

The Isochrones API calculates the area that a person can reach from a specific origin point within a set amount of time. An isochrone accounts for actual road network travel times to create a polygon that represents true reachability. The API can be useful for delivery logistics, finding properties within a set distance from a landmark, and urban planning.

THE NEW RULES OF CONTEXT ENGINEERING FOR CLAUDE 5 GENERATION MODELS

Anthropic removed over 80% of Claude Code's system from its more advanced models. This post discusses how to apply the lessons its team learned from context engineering in Claude Code. The prompt is only a small part of the context Claude gets. The rest of the context is assembled from Skills, CLAUDE.md files, memory, and other sources. Context engineering has a big impact on the results generated when using Claude Code.

AI IS OIL, NOT GOD

AI is more of an economically useful commodity than a supremely intelligent being that will make humanity subservient. Several leaders in the AI industry have recently come out in support of open-weight models. If these leaders believed that AI was going to become conscious and take over the world, they likely wouldn't be as openly pro-diffusion.

SILICON VALLEY SPLITS OVER CLOSING THE BORDERS TO CHINESE AI

Companies like Anthropic and OpenAI claim some AI models are too dangerous to be developed in the open and must be tightly controlled for safety. The rest of the industry says that open source AI models must remain open for people to further develop technologies and build new businesses. China's rapid progress in open source AI models is escalating the fight. US officials are still debating whether to approach regulating Chinese open source models as a national security issue or issue a kind of blanket ban.

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HOW WE TEACH AI MODELS

This post provides a high-level overview of how AI models learn new skills and behaviors.

AN INSIDE LOOK AT THE RELAY MARKET POWERING TOKEN RESELLERS AND FRAUD

Relays are services that proxy traffic to US models, often at a deep discount.

WAYMO REPORTEDLY MULLING A BREAKUP WITH UBER

Waymo plans to offer robotaxis in its own app starting in January, and its contract with Uber ends in May.

WHAT WILL MORE INTELLIGENCE ACTUALLY DO FOR US?

BEING LINUX TORVALDS

Automatic programming, when done well, means to assume the role of Linus, with the AI agents assuming the role of the different maintainers of the different subsystems.

TESLA AND SPACEX'S LIKELY MERGER, PORTFOLIO CHANGE

There are many collaborations between SpaceX and Tesla, so it makes sense to merge the companies the more they overlap.

STRIPE IN TALKS TO BUY BUZZY AI-MODEL MARKETPLACE OPENROUTER

Stripe is in talks to acquire OpenRouter, a startup that helps developers choose between AI models. The talks are still ongoing and could fall apart. Industry experts estimate that the business could fetch about $10 billion in a sale. Stripe is separately pursuing a deal for PayPal.

OPENAI MAKES CHATGPT HEALTH AVAILABLE TO ALL US USERS

ChatGPT Health is now available to all US-based users over 18. The feature helps users with health-related queries. Users can let the feature access data from apps and integrate medical records from hospital systems. While several studies have found that AI bots are not reliable for medical advice, this has not deterred AI companies from launching health-related features.

THE ROBOTS COMETH

Unitree's GD01 is a transformable mecha robot. It can transport a pilot in its torso-mounted cockpit, walk on either two legs or four, and wield fists powerful enough to knock down walls. Standing 9 ft tall and weighing half a ton, it has heavy-duty mechanical hinges that connect titanium-alloy limbs to a protective carbon fiber casing. Pictures of the robot are available in the article.

SPACEX IS TURNING AWAY FALCON CUSTOMERS IN MAJOR BET ON STARSHIP

SpaceX has started to turn away satellite operators seeking dedicated rides on its Falcon 9 rocket beyond 2028. The company has also stopped building some non-reusable components for the Falcon family. SpaceX has publicly stated that it intends to offramp its Falcon 9 rocket for Starship, but has not disclosed a timeline. The company is likely to still use the Falcon 9 for launches for the Department of Defense and NASA.

ENGINEER AWAY THE SLOP

The field of formal verification and deterministic system testing is about to cross a chasm. There are not enough skilled practitioners in the field. Bug-catching tools, when used in conjunction with adversarial code reviews by an LLM and with language analyzers driven by pre-commit hooks, will be a key component in software factories. They will enable people/agents to deliver reliable software without the burden of having to learn this specialized knowledge.

WHY SOFTWARE FACTORIES FAIL

No amount of harness engineering or loopsmaxxing can solve what is fundamentally a model-training issue. Engineers are still stuck reading code. Companies can move 10x-100x faster by convincing themselves that the code doesn't matter anymore, but they could also embrace their constraints and just move 2x-3x faster, safely.

FRONTIER DIFFUSION & CONTROL

Optimizing the cost-to-outcome frontier in real world context means using the right model for each task, and optimizing the context, skills, tools, and agent harness around it. It's possible to take saturated frontier capabilities and deliver them at scale and at lower cost through models optimized for high-usage products, while continuing to use frontier models for frontier needs. The model is only one part of the hill-climbing system. Harness, memory, context, tools, skills, and user interactions all shape the evals and performance of these agentic systems.

INSIDE CHINA'S ALL-OUT PUSH TO CATCH UP WITH AMERICAN AI CHIPS

Huawei is leading the way in reducing China's dependence on foreign AI chips. The company claims it has figured out workarounds for making near state-of-the-art silicon without leading-edge machinery. Huawei's deputy chairman attributes the company's progress to the restrictions the US has imposed on hardware exports. China still lags far behind the US, and chip-production capacity problems are preventing Chinese companies from deploying AI as quickly as they would like.

GOOGLE STUDY SAYS AI IS HELPING WORKERS, NOT REPLACING THEM

Google's research points to a future where the demand for highly skilled workers is accentuated rather than diminished.

CANVAS UI

Canvas UI is an open source library of creative, framework-agnostic components drawn on canvas.

FRONTIER

The 'frontier' moniker justifies capital spending to investors, who believe that the spending is the moat.

EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW SIMD

SIMD is just about as easy as a for loop.

HOW TO BECOME A 10X RAMBLE-CODER

Download a dictation app and start talking.

FORGOT YOUR GOOGLE PASSWORD? NOW YOU CAN LOG IN WITH A SELFIE

Google has added a new video selfie option for account recovery.

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OPENAI UNVEILS PRESENCE, A NEW PLATFORM THAT LETS ENTERPRISES LAUNCH AND MANAGE REALTIME VOICE AGENTS AND CHATBOTS

Presence is a new enterprise product from OpenAI for deploying and managing voice AI agents and chatbots across customer-facing and internal business workflows. It is designed for eligible enterprise customers who want agents that operate under company-defined policies, permissions, and evaluation standards. Presence is now available through a limited general availability program led by OpenAI forward-deployed engineers and select global systems integrators. OpenAI has not disclosed pricing, geographic limits, contractual terms, or expected costs for integration.

APPLE PLANS OVERHAUL OF MACBOOKS, IMAC IN PUSH TO MEET AI DEMAND

Apple is preparing to debut new versions of every Mac it sells. The wave of new devices will begin with a refreshed low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro and new iMacs. The machines will likely start shipping in the fall. Apple is preparing to launch a device leasing program that includes the Mac on July 28.

SCIENCE CORPORATION'S VISION-RESTORING CHIP WINS EU APPROVAL

Science Corporation has won approval from Europe's medical device regulator to begin selling its PRIMA device, which restores vision lost from age-related macular degeneration. The device has also received a designation from the US FDA, the first step toward an expedited regulatory review. It requires an hour-long outpatient procedure that plants a small chip in the back of the eye. The product gives functional vision through camera-equipped glasses that transmit a view of the world to the chip.

TRAVIS KALANICK'S ROBOTICS COMPANY RAISES $1.7B, LED BY A16Z

Travis Kalanick's robotics company, Atoms, has raised $1.7 billion in a funding round joined by Uber, reconnecting Kalanick back with the company he founded. Atoms is a rebranded holding company created from a ghost kitchen project Kalanick has been working on since he resigned from Uber. Kalanick has yet to go into specifics about what he wants to build with Atoms, but he has indicated he wants to build a wheelbase for robots and make everyone more productive. A large portion of the funding will likely go toward hiring.

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THE STATE OF WEBMCP

WebMCP lets web pages register typed JavaScript functions that browser AI agents can call. While there is strong industry support behind the spec, site adoption is close to zero. No mainstream agent consumes the tools yet, but Google says Gemini in Chrome will be the first. The API changed locations in a recent draft, which means early adopters already carry migration debt.