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DON'T GET BETWEEN BILL REBHOLZ AND HIS LOVE OF SIGNS

Bill Rebholz draws from California's worn cityscapes, especially aged signage, shaping his evolving style in lettering and painting.

LADY GAGA'S NEW LOGO IS CAUSING LEGAL MAYHEM - SHE'S BEING SUED FOR $100 MILLION

Surfboard company Lost International is suing Lady Gaga for $100 million.

A GLIMPSE INTO THE HISTORY OF WINDOWS DESIGN

Windows' design evolved over the decades by balancing user needs, innovation, and collaboration across disciplines.

Try the Nylas Notetaker API

SHOPPING IN ‘GOD MODE' WITH AI

AI is transforming online shopping into a hyper-personalized, predictive experience that eliminates choice overload and replaces it with curated, context-aware recommendations. From virtual try-ons and smart wardrobes to real-time customization and automated deal-finding, shopping is shifting from search-based to assistant-led, seamlessly blending personalization, style, and intelligence at scale.

THE DEATH OF PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT AS WE KNOW IT

AI is reshaping how teams build products, shifting from structured, role-based processes to fast, flexible, IC-driven workflows. The future belongs to small, high-agency teams that prototype rapidly, prune ruthlessly, and leverage AI as a creative partner to move faster and smarter.

THE MAGIC OF MARKETPLACES

Marketplaces have long connected communities through commerce, evolving from ancient trade hubs to digital platforms. As AI advances, they must deepen personalization, streamline supply, enhance trust, and offer exclusive value to remain relevant and harness AI's transformative power.

LLMS: AN OPERATOR'S VIEW

The rapid advancement of LLMs is reshaping software development by boosting productivity and transforming organizational structures, hiring, and code review processes. To stay competitive while ensuring quality and security, leaders must embrace AI-driven tools, train teams effectively, and rethink hiring strategies.

HOW TO GET YOUR SITE INTO CHATGPT

GPT-4 Turbo pulls live web results from Bing, making Bing SEO crucial for visibility in AI-generated search results. Optimizing for long-tail Bing-specific keywords, implementing structured data like FAQ schema, and creating thematic content clusters can help businesses appear in ChatGPT responses and drive organic leads.

SUBSCRIPTION CHURN METRICS AND BENCHMARKS FOR OPERATORS

Churn is the silent ceiling on growth, especially after achieving product-market fit. Addressing it requires more than just high-level metrics. Tackle first-term churn, involuntary cancellations, and weak engagement with tailored strategies—such as activation, payment recovery, and flexible pricing—to unlock real retention gains and long-term value.

7 WINNING A/B TESTS THAT FEEL ILLEGAL TO KNOW

A/B testing often fails because teams prioritize quantity over strategy—89% of tests from 2020 to 2024 failed to outperform the control. Winning tests in 2025 show that clarity beats simplicity, action-based CTAs outperform benefit-first ones, and outdated tactics like customer logos, strike pricing, and competitor comparisons can actually hurt conversions.

HOW TO BECOME AN EXPERT AT ANYTHING: 5 SCIENTIFIC STEPS TO MASTERY

Becoming an expert requires more than vague motivational advice—it demands mastering fundamentals, embracing challenges, and engaging in deliberate, focused practice rather than mindless repetition. Effective learning involves distributed practice, constructive feedback, and overlearning to prevent knowledge decay. Expert teams thrive on shared mental models and clear communication.

JOINING A STARTUP VALUED AT 60X REVENUE: SMART MOVE OR SUCKER'S BET?

When considering a leadership role at a high-growth AI startup, key factors include strike price vs. preferred price, revenue growth, potential dilution, and long-term success. Securing a stake outweighs valuation concerns if the company is poised to be an industry giant.

AI WON'T FIX YOUR PRODUCT DISCOVERY

To leverage AI in Product Discovery, integrate it as a supercharging layer rather than relying on direct generation.

WAYS TO SEGMENT CUSTOMER DATA

Generic segmentation masks key insights; nuanced, product-specific slices reveal true user behavior.

ELON MUSK SAYS XAI HAS ACQUIRED X IN DEAL THAT VALUES SOCIAL MEDIA SITE AT $33 BILLION

xAI has merged with X in an all-stock transaction that valued the artificial intelligence company at $80 billion and the social media company at $33 billion. As both companies are privately held and controlled by Elon Musk, the transaction was likely a stock swap, with X investors getting paid out in xAI shares. The companies have several mutual investors. X and xAI were already intertwined, with xAI's Grok chatbot available to X users.

THE SECRETS AND MISDIRECTION BEHIND SAM ALTMAN'S FIRING FROM OPENAI

OpenAI was set up to be a different kind of tech company from the start - one governed by a nonprofit board with a duty not to the shareholders, but to humanity. While Sam Altman's surprise firing was an explosive headline around the world, OpenAI's board had no answers for why he was fired beyond that he had not been consistently candid with the board. Altman was quickly reinstated after it was clear that the only way to keep the company from imploding was to bring him back. This article tells the inside story in detail.

FIRST THERAPY CHATBOT TRIAL YIELDS MENTAL HEALTH BENEFITS

Dartmouth researchers have published the results of the first-ever clinical trial of a generative AI-powered therapy chatbot. The software resulted in significant improvement in participants' symptoms - people in the study reported they could trust and communicate with the system to a degree that is comparable to working with a mental health professional. The study showed that AI has the potential to provide real-time support for the many people who lack regular or immediate access to a mental health professional. While there is no replacement for in-person care, there are nowhere near enough providers available - generative AI could help the huge number of people outside of the in-person care system.

FIRST HORMONE-FREE MALE BIRTH CONTROL PILL CLEARS ANOTHER MILESTONE

Researchers from the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy have laid the groundwork for the first hormone-free male birth control pill to enter clinical trials. YCT-529 is a hormone-free and orally administered male contraceptive that works by stopping the production of sperm. It appears to have no side effects (apart from infertility) in mice and non-human primates - both groups regained fertility after stopping the drug. The drug is currently undergoing safety and efficacy testing.

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GEMINI 2.5 IS THE NEW SOTA

While Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental is not the best model for everything, it is the model you want for reasoning and raw intelligence. It can solve practical problems, it's fast, and it's not $200 a month. The model's release shows that Google can offer high-end large models, as well as the small models with large context windows that it has so far been releasing.

MCP - IT'S HOT, BUT WILL IT WIN?

Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a new open source software layer that can connect large language models to domain specific software. A broad set of companies have announced support for MCP. Middleware never quite lives up to its promises in practice. Over time, the negatives of either being easily replaced or having user experience and feature innovations ignored end up making the commitment to middleware look like a poor investment.

THE GEN X CAREER MELTDOWN

Those who entered media or image-making in the 90s are probably now doing something else for work because those industries have shrunk or transformed radically, shutting out those whose skills were once in high demand. People who once imagined they would be able to have a solid career while flexing their creative muscles have seen their work dry up over the past few decades as digital technology began seeping into their lives. Many in Generation X now find themselves shut out economically and culturally from their chosen fields. The shedding of jobs and upending of longstanding business models has come at a bad time, with the cost of living skyrocketing.

EMMETT SHEAR IS BACK WITH A NEW COMPANY AND A LOT OF ALIGNMENT

Emmett Shear, Adam Goldstein, and David Bloomin have a new 10-person start-up called Softmax. Softmax is part research lab and part aspiring money maker. It aims to figure out how to fuse the goals of humans and AI in a novel way. It is unknown yet what form the technology Softmax hopes to develop will take in terms of an actual product. The startup has raised an undisclosed amount from Andreessen Horowitz, Lionheart Ventures, and Plural.

POSTGRES LANGUAGE SERVER

This repository contains a collection of language tools and a Language Server Protocol (LSP) implementation for PostgreSQL.

WE FOUND THE ATOP BUG EVERYONE IS GOING CRAZY ABOUT

It's usually prudent to spend extra time with controlled disclosure because if someone malicious were to reproduce and exploit a bug before a patch is found, they would have free reign to take over affected systems until the bug is fixed.

THE HIGH COST OF QUANTUM RANDOMNESS IS DROPPING

Pseudorandomness is a theoretical way to represent quantum randomness that's indistinguishable from the real thing, without the computational load.

THE 500 MILLION WORKER PROBLEM

India had predicted that its roughly 500 million citizens entering the workforce over the next two decades would boost it to economic superpower status, but rapid advances in AI may erode all of the advantages of India's rich demographic dividend.

XAN, THE CSV MAGICIAN

xan is a command-line tool that can process CSV files directly from the shell.

OPENAI'S LATEST FUNDING ROUND COMES WITH A $20 BILLION CATCH

OpenAI could lose half of its upcoming $40 billion funding round if it is unable to successfully restructure into an independent for-profit company by the end of the year.

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XAI ACQUIRES X IN $80B ALL-STOCK DEAL

xAI has officially acquired X in an all-stock transaction that values the combined company at over $110 billion.

GEMINI 2.5: OUR MOST INTELLIGENT AI MODEL

Gemini 2.5 Pro, an advanced AI model, is leading LMArena benchmarks by a significant margin. It enhances performance and accuracy through improved reasoning capabilities. The model "thinks" by analyzing information and making informed decisions, building on Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking advancements.

ANNOUNCING ARC-AGI-2 AND ARC PRIZE 2025

The ARC Prize has launched ARC-AGI-2, a challenging benchmark aimed at advancing general AI systems. Current AIs score significantly lower compared to humans. The accompanying ARC Prize 2025 competition, hosted on Kaggle with a $1 million prize pool, aims to drive open-source innovation by rewarding efficiency and capability in solving ARC-AGI-2 tasks.

TEST-TIME VISUAL IN-CONTEXT TUNING

A novel method to adapt VICL models at test time using only the test sample, improving generalization under domain shifts across various visual tasks.

HARMFUL FINE-TUNING ATTACKS

Researchers highlight vulnerabilities in existing defenses against harmful fine-tuning attacks and propose Panacea, an adaptive perturbation method that preserves model safety while maintaining fine-tuning performance.

HIGH-FIDELITY SIMULTANEOUS SPEECH-TO-SPEECH TRANSLATION

Kyutai has released its next amazing audio system which is a real time, audio to audio, translation system. It is built on a powerful multi stream transformer and boasts expressive voice ability.

Listen to the podcast here.

MOBILE-VIDEOGPT

A lightweight multimodal video model under 1B parameters that features dual visual encoders and token pruning for real-time inference on edge devices.

MULTIMODAL ADAPTATION METHODS

A curated list of approaches for multimodal adaptation that covers traditional domain adaptation, test-time adaptation, and newer methods.

REASONING AUGMENTED GENERATION CODE

Traditional Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems rely on a two-step process: first, semantic search retrieves documents based on surface-level similarities. Then, a language model generates answers from those documents. While this method works, it often misses deeper contextual insights and can pull in irrelevant information. ReAG – Reasoning Augmented Generation – offers a robust alternative by feeding raw documents directly to the language model, allowing it to assess and integrate the full context. This unified approach leads to more accurate, nuanced, and context-aware responses.

AWESOME VISION-TO-MUSIC GENERATION

A curated and regularly updated list of methods, datasets, and demos for turning visual inputs into music. It covers both academic and industrial advances in V2M.

OPENAI RESHUFFLES SAM ALTMAN'S JOB ONCE AGAIN

OpenAI has expanded Brad Lightcap's role to oversee operations and partnerships, allowing CEO Sam Altman to concentrate on research and product development. Mark Chen and Julia Villagra have been promoted within the company amid leadership restructuring following recent executive departures. OpenAI is also transitioning to a for-profit model, leading to a lawsuit from cofounder Elon Musk.

TIM COOK SAYS CHINA'S DEEPSEEK AI IS 'EXCELLENT' DURING VISIT

Despite DeepSeek AI's security and privacy issues, Tim Cook praised it as "excellent" during his China visit. The AI, developed in China, rivals top global models at lower development costs but faces investigations in the US and Europe. Cook, who is attending the China Development Forum, often has to make diplomatic remarks about China due to Apple's business interests there.