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THE SCALING LAWS GOVERN AI PROGRESS

Grok 3 is a massive leap forward compared to Grok 2 - it performs at a level compared to, and in some cases exceeding, models from OpenAI, Google, DeepMind, and Anthropic.

HELLO, DEEPSEEK OPEN INFRA!

DeepSeek is open sourcing five repositories that contain the building blocks of its online service to share its progress with full transparency.

* New trends such as AI-driven pricing and outcome-based models

* 2025 pricing predictions and how to stay competitive

Kyle Poyar_

SPOTIFY COLLABORATES WITH ELEVENLABS TO ENHANCE AI-NARRATED AUDIOBOOKS

Spotify now allows audiobooks narrated with ElevenLabs' AI voice technology, enabling authors to upload AI-narrated works through Findaway Voices. The feature supports narration in 29 languages, although publishing requires passing a review process.

TOGETHER AI ANNOUNCES $305M SERIES B

Together AI announced a $305 million Series B funding round led by General Catalyst and Prosperity7, with participation from investors like NVIDIA and Salesforce Ventures. This investment will enhance Together AI's position as a leader in AI Cloud solutions, with a focus on supporting open-source AI models and NVIDIA Blackwell GPU deployment. Together AI's platform enables efficient AI application development, offering enterprise-grade inference, training, and model fine-tuning. The company has planned infrastructure expansions to support rapid ecosystem growth.

THE FUTURE OF LEGAL WORK WITH EUDIA

Eudia has secured $105 million in Series A funding to transform legal operations through augmented intelligence, enhancing the capabilities of legal teams rather than replacing them. By partnering with notable Chief Legal Officers, Eudia aims to streamline legal processes and shift legal departments from being cost centers to strategic value drivers. This marks a significant shift towards AI-empowered legal functions within Fortune 500 companies.

QWEN 2.5 VL TECHNICAL REPORT

Report for the strongest open weights vision language model from the Qwen team.

END TO END DRIVING RL MODEL TRAINED WITH GAUSSIAN SPLATS

Interesting proof of concept paper that uses Photorealistic environments rendered with 3D Gaussian splats. It achieves a 3x lower collision rate overall.

MODEL-GUIDANCE FOR DIFFUSION MODELS

This paper introduces Model-Guidance (MG), an objective that improves diffusion model training by incorporating posterior probabilities, significantly boosting training speed, inference efficiency, and achieving state-of-the-art results on ImageNet 256 benchmarks.

EFFICIENT WEB CRAWLING FOR LLM PRE-TRAINING

Most data from web crawls gets thrown away due to poor text extraction performance. This work dramatically improves how many documents get saved and uses that to train stronger models on a fraction of the crawled data.

OPEN REASONER ZERO

Open replication of the zero reasoning paradigm. It is fully open source with training data, scripts, and weights.

EVALUATING FACTUALITY IN LLMS

LLM-Oasis is a large-scale dataset designed to train and evaluate systems for assessing factuality in outputs from LLMs.

AN AI ALCHEMIST AND HIS DEEPSEEK JOURNEY

Wenfeng Liang, a hedge fund manager, launched DeepSeek, a self-funded open-source AI platform that has rapidly gained global attention for its innovative LLMs like DeepSeek-R1, comparable to OpenAI's models. Using more cost-effective training methods and consumer-grade hardware compatibility, DeepSeek has sparked interest among both major tech companies and small institutions. Liang's focus on open-source AI development, backed by his success with Magic Square Quantitative, emphasizes collaboration and technological progress over commercial pressures.

FLEX 1 IMAGE GENERATION MODEL (HUGGING FACE HUB)

An interesting side project from the community. This was a model fine-tuned from Flux Schnell, which means it is Apache licensed. It is designed to be fine-tuned at 8B parameters and runs quite quickly while not sacrificing performance.

PYTORCH COMPILER ROADMAP

Development roadmap for the next year for the PyTorch compilation team.

NEURONICS MEDICAL (PRODUCT)

Neuronics Medical is a medical device company developing AI for acute stroke detection.

OLLAMATALK

A nice flutter app that provides a simple front end to Ollama.

SEARCH YOUR SCREEN WITH GOOGLE LENS ON IOS

Google Lens now lets iPhone users visually search directly from their screen within Chrome or the Google app using gestures like highlighting or tapping.

EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK EXPLORES USING DIGITAL LEDGERS TO SETTLE TRANSACTIONS IN CENTRAL BANK MONEY

The European Central Bank (ECB) is exploring a digital ledger-based settlement system for central bank money, aiming to improve financial market efficiency while maintaining stability. This initiative includes a two-track plan: developing a settlement platform and enabling central bank money use in digital asset transactions, especially for foreign exchange and cross-border payments.

TRADFI INVESTORS PILED $38.7B INTO BITCOIN ETFS, THREE TIMES MORE THAN PREVIOUS QUARTER

Institutional investors increased their spot Bitcoin ETF holdings to $38.7B in Q4 2024, more than triple the $12.4 billion reported in Q3, according to SEC filings. Major entities like Wisconsin's investment board and Paul Tudor Jones' hedge fund expanded their positions to tens of millions of dollars of BTC. BlackRock's IBIT has attracted around 1,100 institutional holders since its release in January 2024 – by this time, most ETFs have fewer than 10 institutions invested.

INTRODUCING SOLANA SMART WALLETS

Crossmint has introduced Solana Smart Wallets, a new generation of programmable, gasless wallets designed for mass adoption. These wallets enhance user experience and security by eliminating transaction approval prompts, supporting multiple authentication methods, and integrating seamlessly with AI, gaming, and financial applications.

SHADE AGENTS: THE FIRST TRULY AUTONOMOUS AI AGENTS

NEAR Protocol has launched Shade Agents, a new framework for creating autonomous agents that can execute transactions across multiple chains. They use trusted execution environments and Chain Signatures for decentralized key management and chain abstraction. The system combines on-chain smart contracts with off-chain worker agents that can interact with AI models and external data sources, while maintaining security through a decentralized network of TEE-verified workers rather than relying on single points of failure. This infrastructure enables various applications including automated trading, decentralized solving, and AI-driven asset management.

IMPLICATIONS OF KAITO TOKEN RELEASE

AI-powered information analytics company Kaito released their token at a $1B+ valuation, breaking from the traditional venture capital path typically followed by offchain entities like research and data companies. With challenging market conditions making raising from venture capital more difficult, a token launch is an attractive alternative to traditional equity fundraising. This precedent could trigger a broader trend of centralized crypto companies opting for token launches over venture capital rounds, potentially accelerating the movement toward tokenization of traditional equity structures.

HOW AI HAS CHANGED STARTUPS FOREVER

AI has dramatically increased startup productivity, reducing costs across software development, marketing, and operations, with coding efficiency skyrocketing from 1.5x to 4x in just three years. As startups require less funding and fewer employees to scale, defensibility will rely on proprietary data, network effects, deep integrations, and trust rather than just software alone.

ARGENTINA ETHEREUM COMMUNITY

Argentina's Ethereum community has already made big contributions to the ecosystem, and its builders are determined to use crypto for long-term societal progress. Vitalik Buterin believes hosting Devconnect in Argentina could highlight the region's potential while fostering education, adoption, and lasting impact in the Ethereum space.

BRIAN ARMSTRONG ON MEMECOINS

Coinbase CEO, Brian Armstrong, acknowledges the potential and staying power of memecoins, going so far as to suggest Bitcoin and the US Dollar are in some sense memecoins. Coinbase wants to be the place where anyone can buy any memecoin, and not be opinionated about what's listed as long as it is regulatory compliant. He recommends removing bad actors from the space and calling out their illegal insider trading activities while using memecoins as one of many mechanisms to bring a billion users onchain.

OPENSEA RECLAIMS NFT MARKET SHARE, SURGING TO 71.5% AFTER SEA TOKEN ANNOUNCEMENT

Opensea's market share in Ethereum NFT trading surged from 25.5% to 71.5% in just four weeks, largely at Blur's expense, following the announcement of its long-awaited $SEA token.

ETHEREUM FOUNDATION LOOKS TO HIRE 'SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER' IN LATEST BID TO WIN BACK COMMUNITY APPROVAL

The Ethereum Foundation has responded to criticism that it has become disconnected from its user base by attempting to hire a social media manager to improve engagement and communication.

THE FOUR ACTS OF VIRTUALS' EVOLUTION

Virtuals is positioning itself as the “Shopify of AI Agents” with early success from individual agent tokens reaching hundred-million-dollar valuations.

FED'S MICHAEL BARR RESPONDS TO CRYPTO DEBANKING CONCERNS, SAYS THE CENTRAL BANK TRIES TO BE 'STRAIGHT UP THE MIDDLE'

THE IPHONE 16E HAS AN ANNOYING HIDDEN DESIGN FLAW

THE HUMANE SOCIETY REBRANDS AS THE HUMANE WORLD FOR ANIMALS TO SHOWCASE ITS GLOBAL EFFORTS

The Humane Society rebranded as Humane World for Animals to highlight its global advocacy. The new name and logo reflect its work beyond shelters, addressing wildlife trafficking, factory farming, and animal testing. The refreshed brand, supported by a multimedia campaign that features billboards and ads, emphasizes interconnected ecosystems and international efforts.

MICROSOFT REVEALS NEW GAMING-FOCUSED GENERATIVE AI MODEL ‘MUSE' THAT COULD REVIVE CLASSIC GAMES

Microsoft Research has introduced a generative AI model for gameplay ideation. Developed with Ninja Theory and trained on seven years of gameplay, Muse generates virtual sequences and enhances AI-driven opponents. It may also help preserve classic games. Microsoft plans to open-source Muse's weights and data for researchers via Azure AI Foundry.

HOW I REVIEW DESIGN WORK

Ted Goas outlines key principles for defining and reviewing good design, emphasizing early collaboration, strategic feedback, originality, and balancing consistency with innovation. He highlights the importance of prototyping, UX copy, and critical thinking to ensure designs meet creative and business goals.

AI IS RESHAPING UI — HAVE YOU NOTICED THE BIGGEST CHANGE YET?

AI transforms UI design by shifting from direct manipulation to intuitive, intent-driven interactions, allowing users to define goals while AI determines the best path. Building on familiar patterns like open-ended prompts, generative AI integration, and collaborative AI interactions is crucial to designing seamless AI experiences.

ASK LUKEW: CONVERSATIONAL AI USABILITY STUDY

A usability study revealed that users value suggested questions, citations, and visual content but found text-heavy answers intimidating. Concerns about outdated information arose - some wanted AI to integrate with their design tools. Future improvements will enhance retrieval accuracy and include more inline media.

CONSISTENT BRANDING AND DESIGN ACROSS MULTIPLE PRESENTATIONS

Design and control templates in Figma while customer-facing teams create and share clear, on-brand presentations with deckd.

VARIABLE VISUALIZER (FIGMA PLUGIN)

This Figma plugin turns complex variable relationships into an intuitive visual map, letting you see and manage all your variables in one infinite canvas.

THE UX CRISIS: WHY 1 IN 3 DIGITAL EXPERIENCES ARE FAILING

One in three digital experiences fail users, costing brands 8% of annual revenue. Prioritizing style over usability, neglecting accessibility, and a lack of deep user research hinder UX. Successful brands integrate accessibility, research, and branding into design. Ongoing optimization and a balance between function and friction create digital experiences that engage and retain users.

AI WILL “TRANSFORM AND MAINSTREAM” TYPOGRAPHY

Monotype's Re:Vision report predicts AI will transform typography by enhancing accessibility, streamlining font selection, and automating design tasks. AI-driven tools will help users find typefaces using natural language and analyze text for optimal matches. While AI prompts industry reflection, Monotype believes it will ultimately empower creativity and innovation in typography.

HOW TO TEST AND MEASURE CONTENT IN UX

Content testing ensures clarity and usability by evaluating how users perceive information. Techniques include Banana Testing, content heat mapping, and moderated sessions. The proper test depends on understanding, mental models, and user needs. Effective wording impacts user experience, making careful selection crucial.

MEGHAN MARKLE FACES LOGO DESIGN DISPUTE WITH UNEXPECTED OPPONENT

Meghan Markle's lifestyle brand, As Ever, is under scrutiny for its emblem's similarity to the coat of arms of Porreres, Mallorca, though legal action is unlikely due to cost concerns.

INCLUSIVE SANS MAKES THE CASE FOR ACCESSIBILITY BEING STANDARD, NOT SECONDARY

Designed by Olivia King, Inclusive Sans prioritizes accessibility and readability.

MANUAL'S ENERGETIC REBRAND OF THE OBAMA FOUNDATION EXPANDS ON ITS VISUAL LEGACY

The Obama Foundation's rebrand by Manual modernizes its identity with a new typeface, refreshed colors, dynamic motion, and a balance of presidential and approachable design.

* New trends such as AI-driven pricing and outcome-based models

* 2025 pricing predictions and how to stay competitive

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THE LNO FRAMEWORK

The LNO Framework is a way to categorize your tasks into three buckets—Leverage (L), Necessary (N), and Optional (O)—to ensure you use your limited energy on the things that truly move the needle. Leverage tasks (L) are the high-impact work that directly advances your product or strategic objectives. Necessary tasks (N) are routine responsibilities you can't ignore—like approvals or maintenance—but don't spark huge outcomes. Optional tasks (O) are the ones you can drop without significant consequences.