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OPENCLAW, OPENAI, AND THE FUTURE

OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI to work on bringing agents to everyone. OpenClaw will move to a foundation and stay open and independent. While Steinberger sees the potential in OpenClaw becoming a huge company, he doesn't find the prospect appealing and would rather change the world with OpenAI.

TIKTOK'S CHINESE PARENT HAS AN APP TO REPLACE HOLLYWOOD

CapCut users will soon have access to Seedance 2.0, ByteDance's latest AI video generation model. The model is already available to users on the Chinese version of CapCut, Jianying. It can generate coherent story lines, create realistic voice-overs and background sounds, and generate complex character actions. Seedance 2.0 can currently only generate videos of up to 15 seconds. It generated some controversy on launch, with critics raising privacy and copyright concerns.

TINY, 45 BASE LONG RNA CAN MAKE COPIES OF ITSELF

One of the key steps in the origin of life is the emergence of an RNA molecule that could replicate itself. RNA can carry genetic information and also fold into three-dimensional structures that act as catalysts. This suggests that early life was protein-free, with RNA handling heredity and catalyzing a simple metabolism. A team of scientists has discovered a 45-base-long piece of RNA that can make copies of itself, adding to our knowledge of the conditions in which life emerged.

FUSION STARTUP HELION HITS BLISTERING TEMPS AS IT RACES TOWARD 2028 DEADLINE

Fusion energy startup Helion has hit a key milestone: plasma inside its Polaris prototype reactor has reached 150 million degrees Celsius. The company's ultimate goal is to produce plasmas that hit 200 degrees Celsius. Its reactor design is different from its competitors, requiring plasmas about twice as hot to function as intended. Helion plans to extract energy using the fusion reaction's magnetic field rather than from heat. The company is contracted to sell electricity to Microsoft starting in 2028, but this will be through a larger commercial reactor called Orion, which is currently being built.

ON COGNITIVE DEBT

Cognitive debt is the idea that AI-generated codebases are at risk of falling into a state where nobody knows how they work, leaving them inextensible, unobservable, and hard to debug. This is already happening in AI-driven codebases. However, when controlling for the size and scope of a project, cognitive debt tends to be at least as bad, if not worse, in pre-AI code bases than in AI code bases. This fact is obscured because a lot of traditional engineering work is either managing crippling cognitive debt or avoiding it at enormous cost. The best AI users are already pretty good at avoiding cognitive debt, and they're only going to get better at it.

BIAS TOWARD ACTION

Bias toward action is defaulting to the smallest responsible step that produces real feedback while pre-committing to guardrails. It helps companies learn faster while making sure that being wrong doesn't kill them. It's about optimizing for learning speed while investing in foundations that make you faster. Fast teams use a lot of information, but they don't wait for perfect information. Their tight feedback loops allow them to learn quickly.

META PLANS TO ADD FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY TO ITS SMART GLASSES

Meta plans to add facial recognition to its Ray-Ban smart glasses later this year. Its 'Name Tag' feature will let wearers identify people and get information about them via the company's AI assistant. The company considered adding facial recognition to the first version of the glasses in 2021, but pulled back over technical challenges and ethical concerns. Meta plans to first release Name Tag to attendees at a conference for the blind before making it available to the general public.

NO CODING BEFORE 10AM

Companies that don't rebuild how they work from first principles will get outshipped by teams half their size six months from now. Engineering teams need to throw out the playbook and write a new one for the age of AI. This post discusses one startup's new playbook, which puts agents first as the primary users who do the work. The engineer's role in the framework is to make sure the agents can do the work well.

THE FIRST ANDROID 17 BETA IS NOW AVAILABLE ON PIXEL DEVICES

Android 17 Beta 1 debuts new performance optimizations with better management of system resources.

ASTRONOMERS ARE FILLING IN THE BLANKS OF THE KUIPER BELT

The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), a project by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, will help fill out the gaps in our knowledge of the contents of the solar system and greatly advance our census and our knowledge of the contents of the solar system.

KLAW

klaw is a tool for enterprise AI agent orchestration that allows users to manage, monitor, and scale their AI workforce to hundreds of agents.

THE POWER OF 'NO' IN INTERNET STANDARDS

Some companies have a lot of power over the open source projects they contribute to, and this can become a problem if they make decisions based on their own agendas.

SOME PROVOCATIVE AI THOUGHTS

Thoughts from Matt Mullenweg on how WordPress should change to work better with AI.

ACHIEVING ABUNDANCE BY 2035

This essay explores what the future may look like as AI solves the great human challenges of our time and how society may benefit as a result.

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ANTHROPIC CLOSES $30 BILLION FUNDING ROUND AS CASH KEEPS FLOWING INTO TOP AI STARTUPS

Anthropic has closed a $30 billion funding round at a $380 billion post-money valuation. This is the second-largest private tech fundraising round on record after OpenAI, which closed a round of more than $40 billion last year. Anthropic's funding round was led by Coatue and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC. The fresh capital will support the company's infrastructure expansion, research, and continued investment in enterprise-grade products.

WAYMO BEGINS DEPLOYING NEXT-GEN OJAI ROBOTAXIS TO EXTEND ITS US LEAD

Waymo has begun using its sixth-generation driverless system to provide robotaxi rides to employees. The system uses more cost-effective parts and should be able to navigate through harsher weather conditions than previous generations. It will serve as the primary engine for Waymo's next era of expansion. The company is currently planning to extend its lead in the US while testing and planning for commercial operations abroad.

WHEN AMAZON BADLY NEEDED A RIDE, EUROPE'S ARIANE 6 ROCKET DELIVERED

Europe's Ariane 6 rocket lifted off from the Guiana Space Center in South America at 11:45 AM EST on Thursday. The rocket's four boosters generated more than 3.4 million pounds of thrust as it hauled 32 spacecraft to low-Earth orbit for Amazon's satellite broadband constellation. The successful test demonstrates the European Space Agency's ability to deliver the most demanding large-scale constellation missions. The next Ariane 6 launch, to be announced in the coming weeks, will carry another set of Amazon Leo satellites to orbit.

GOOGLE SAYS DEEP THINK AI CAN PARTNER ON ADVANCED MATH, SCIENCE

Alphabet has updated its Gemini Deep Think AI model for better performance in math and science research. The model is now able to help scientists move from theoretical reasoning to practical applications. It uses Google Search to avoid inaccuracies and wrongful citations when doing research. Google has also developed a math research agent called Aletheia that can conduct autonomous research or collaborate with humans. Aletheia is available in the Gemini app for Google AI Ultra subscribers and also for select researchers.

FULLY REMOTE)

As the first engineer on TLDR's new Applied AI team, you'll build AI agents and composable Claude Skills to let non-technical teammates create their own AI workflows. Learn more [10].

INTRODUCING GPT‑5.3‑CODEX‑SPARK

GPT‑5.3‑Codex‑Spark is a smaller version of GPT‑5.3‑Codex designed for real-time coding. It is now available as a research preview to ChatGPT Pro users. The model has a 128k context window. It is text only, and during the research preview, the model will have its own rate limits and usage will not count towards standard rate limits. There may be limited access or temporary queuing when demand is high.

IN DEFENSE OF NOT READING THE CODE

Not reading the code is a bet on the trajectory. The tools may not be perfect, but they're good enough for many use cases, and they're improving incredibly quickly. The bet is that models will continue to improve. People shouldn't be reckless, but code will soon become an implementation detail, and directly interacting with it will not be how engineers make sure it is correct.

CONTEXT IS KING

Both code and databases are commoditizing. The layer between them is where the new value forms. This is the context layer, the thing that makes the difference between an agent that takes action and an agent that takes the right action. The battle for this layer is the most important strategic competition in enterprise software.

AN AI AGENT PUBLISHED A HIT PIECE ON ME

An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about an engineer after they rejected its code. The agent's behavior was likely entirely autonomous, with no human telling the AI what to do. While the threat was ineffective, the reputational attack could be effective today against the right person. As AI improves, this could be a serious threat to the social order.

WAITING IS THE NEW INTERRUPTION

The way AI is currently designed encourages humans to lose focus and flow.

OPEN-SOURCING AGENTLOGS

AgentLogs is a platform for collaboration in the age of AI coding agents.

CODESPEAK

CodeSpeak is a programming language powered by large language models that generates code based on concise specs.

IBM TO TRIPLE ENTRY-LEVEL US HIRING WITH ROLES RECAST FOR AI ERA

The expansion will be across the board and affect a wide range of departments.

DO NOT SURRENDER TO THE TECH TREE

Technology is one of the strongest determinants of human welfare, so steering technological progress is one of the most important things we can do.

THE SURPRISING POWER AND COMPLEXITY OF ALIGNED RECOMMENDATIONS

Aligned recommendations typically fail because of a lack of aligned incentives.

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MUSK RESTRUCTURES XAI'S TEAMS AFTER CO-FOUNDERS DEPART

Elon Musk has restructured xAI following the exit of two of its co-founders earlier this week. xAI will now be organized into four core areas: Grok's chatbot and voice product, Coding, the Imagine video product, and Macrohard. The company plans to launch a new X Chat app and X Money in the coming months. It is currently looking to hire.

APPLE'S LATEST ATTEMPT TO LAUNCH NEW SIRI RUNS INTO SNAGS

Several highly anticipated Siri functions may be pushed back as testing has run into snags in recent weeks. Apple now plans to spread out new capabilities over several versions, so some features will be postponed until iOS 26.5 or iOS 27. One feature especially likely to slip is the expanded ability for Siri to tap into personal data. Another feature running behind schedule is voice-based control of in-app actions. While early support for these features exists, they don't function reliably in all cases.

SCENT, IN SILICO

Tech is starting to turn to AI to probe the possibility of digitizing smell in the hopes of understanding and manipulating this sensory modality. Programming smell may illuminate many mysteries about the sense. It could also have many practical applications, for example, computational smell could help detect gas leaks, reduce reliance on intensive natural ingredients for perfume, or lead to the creation of entirely novel smells. This article takes a look at the state of the research and the future of the industry.

CHINA SHOWCASES NEW MOON SHIP AND REUSABLE ROCKET IN ONE EXTRAORDINARY TEST

China's space program successfully carried out a flight of a new reusable booster and crew capsule late Tuesday. The Long March 10 rocket and Mengzhou spacecraft are core elements of China's lunar architecture. The US and China are racing to accomplish the next human landing on the Moon in a competition for national prestige and lunar resources. The successful test moves Chinese engineers closer to human-rating the Mengzhou crew capsule. A video recapping the test flight is available in the article.

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CODING AGENTS MEET DISTRIBUTED REALITY

Most future distributed code will be AI-generated. This makes it important whether we ask AI to aim for ordinary imperative code or at frameworks where distributed contracts are part of the language surface. Targets like this help developers focus on the right questions rather than chasing shadows. AI can help build systems that fail less often if given a target that reflects distributed reality.

HOW I USE CLAUDE CODE

Never let Claude write code until you have reviewed and approved a written plan. This separation of planning and execution prevents wasted effort, keeps users in control of architectural decisions, and produces significantly better results with minimal token usage. This post describes a workflow that follows this core principle. The workflow is radically different from how most people approach AI tools.

SOMETHING BIG IS HAPPENING

AI works, it improves predictably, and the richest institutions in history are committing trillions to it. It isn't a fad. The next few years will be disorienting in ways most people aren't prepared for. The people who will come out of this best are the ones who start engaging now.

TOOL SHAPED OBJECTS

The story of the AI boom so far is one where the dominant narrative about AI is not what it has built, but the rate at which people are consuming it, the rate at which companies are spending on GPU farms, and the rate at which tools are being expensed. AI is everywhere in consumption and almost nowhere in output. We are spending unprecedented sums to invest in systems, and the primary product of that spending is the experience of spending it.

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THE AI VAMPIRE

AI can provide a lot of value, and this makes it necessary to consider where that value is captured so that both employees and companies benefit.

US DECIDES SPACEX IS LIKE AN AIRLINE, EXEMPTING IT FROM LABOR RELATIONS ACT

SpaceX is regulated by the Railway Labor Act, which exempts employees from the National Labor Relations Act.

IS CHINA COOKING WAYMO?

Chinese autonomous vehicle firms are way ahead of the American competition in terms of international expansion.