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COINBASE ADDS PREDICTION MARKETS AND STOCK TRADING IN PUSH TO BE ONE-STOP TRADING APP

Coinbase's CEO, Brian Armstrong, wants to make the platform a place to trade everything.

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OPENAI'S CHATGPT UPDATED TO MAKE IMAGES BETTER AND FASTER

The new version of ChatGPT Image is designed to make and edit images more precisely. It can generate pictures up to four times faster than the previous image-generation model. OpenAI is creating a new section within ChatGPT specifically for making images. The company is aiming to cater to a mix of personal and professional uses.

WARNER BROS. PLANS TO REJECT PARAMOUNT BID ON FUNDING, TERMS

Warner Bros. plans to reject Paramount's hostile takeover bid due to concerns about financing and other terms. The board will urge shareholders to reject the tender offer. It views the company's existing agreement with Netflix as offering greater value, certainty, and terms than what Paramount has proposed. While Warner Bros.' agreement with Netflix bars it from soliciting proposals from other bidders, it is allowed to entertain incoming proposals.

IF AI COULD INTERACT AND LEARN FROM THE PHYSICAL WORLD, COULD IT MAKE MORE SCIENTIFIC ADVANCES?

OpenAI partnered with Red Queen Bio to introduce a new evolutionary framework that uses GPT-5 to optimize cloning protocols. The project involved the pilot of an autonomous robot to carry out the protocols. GPT-achieved a 79x cloning efficiency gain and introduced a new enzyme-based approach. While this is not a bio breakthrough, the novel optimization shows that GPT-5 is at the level of a competent PhD student at this task.

SAWING A DAM IN HALF (ON PURPOSE)

Fontana Dam started showing cracks in 1972, caused by concrete expansion. Engineers decided to give the concrete more room to grow rather than patching cracks as they appeared. They cut a relief slot all through the dam without draining the reservoir or causing any disruptions to the hydropower plant. This post explains how this was achieved. A video showing footage of the procedure is available.

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ON THE SUCCESS OF ‘NATURAL LANGUAGE PROGRAMMING'

Machines can now be programmed in our native tongues. This year, the industry has made significant progress on how to use AI agents and is seeing significant returns from that effort. There's still more work to learn how to use them efficiently, but there's no doubt that the technology is the future of programming. This will bring the power of computing to more places, more people, and more problems.

FACILITATING AI ADOPTION AT IMPRINT

Working on internal AI adoption is a thing every engineering leader will need to do. This post details how Imprint approached the problem, detailing the lessons learned during the process. It is still early for AI adoption, so focusing on the rate of learning is more valuable than anything else. Engineers leading the internal AI initiative must also be using the tools they are introducing.

INSTAGRAM REELS IS COMING TO A TV NEAR YOU

Meta has unveiled a dedicated Instagram Reels TV app. The app will debut on Amazon's Fire TV before expanding to other platforms. It will allow users to watch Instagram Reels' short-form, user-generated videos on bigger screens. Social video is increasingly capturing big-screen attention, with platforms like YouTube gaining more watch time on TV than anything else.

MESSAGING IS A MOAT, NOT A BUSINESS

Messaging platforms command astronomical acquisition prices, but they often flounder when left to stand alone in the public markets. Messaging is perhaps the most valuable loss leader in digital history. It creates massive utility, commands unparalleled user attention, and offers high retention, but captures almost no direct financial value of its own.

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PEOPLE ARE THE NEW OIL

When scarce resources become abundant, the bottleneck flips to whatever was cheap before.

THE GITHUB ACTIONS CONTROL PLANE IS NO LONGER FREE

GitHub is introducing a $0.002 per-minute platform fee for all GitHub Actions usage.

THE NON-SHARED BASELINE

Designers who rely too heavily on AI from the very beginning risk never developing vision and taste skills.

ALPHABET-OWNED WAYMO IN TALKS TO RAISE $15 BILLION IN FUNDING

Waymo is spending heavily to ramp up its fleet and continue expanding to more regions.

US THREATENS PENALTIES AGAINST EUROPEAN TECH FIRMS AMID REGULATORY FIGHT

The US has been pushing Europe to open up its tech sector to American firms, but the EU has not walked back broader regulation of company business practices and has proceeded with investigations of major US tech firms.

THIN DESIRES ARE EATING YOUR LIFE

Thick desires change you in the process of pursuing them, and while they may be difficult to achieve, they won't leave you feeling emptied out.

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EARLY IOS 26 SOFTWARE LEAK UNCOVERS DOZENS OF UPCOMING APPLE FEATURES

Software from an iPhone prototype running an early build of iOS 26 leaked last week. This article lists the most notable feature flags found in the software code. The list shows what Apple was working on around June. Some of the features include Vision Pro stickers, Live Captions, Tilt to Scroll, and a Dynamic Sports Tier Manager.

PAYPAL APPLIES TO ESTABLISH BANK

PayPal has filed with the Utah Department of Financial Institutions and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to establish PayPal Bank. As a Utah-chartered industrial lone company, the bank will be able to lend money, hold FDIC-insured deposits, and be owned by a non-financial institution. The proposed bank would help make PayPal's lending to small businesses more efficient, as it would reduce reliance on third parties. PayPal also plans to offer interest-bearing savings accounts to customers through the proposed bank.

ECONOMICS OF ORBITAL VS TERRESTRIAL DATA CENTERS

The economics of putting data centers in space are savage. While it is theoretically possible, it's definitely not a sure thing. Only one company, SpaceX, is positioned to even try due to its vertical integration - having to buy launches, buses, hardware, deployment, and pay margin at every interface will kill any other attempt. While building this infrastructure may be a mediocre trade on strict near-term unit economics, the second-order effects could be enormous.

TESLA STOCK CLOSES AT 2025 HIGH AFTER MUSK CONFIRMS DRIVERLESS ROBOTAXI TESTS UNDERWAY IN AUSTIN

Tesla is now testing driverless vehicles in Austin, Texas. The company still hasn't announced when it will be able to operate a ride-hailing service without human safety supervisors or drivers on board. Texas will require authorization from the DMV for commercial use of self-driving vehicles starting in May 2026. California's DMV and Public Utilities Commissions say that Tesla has yet to apply for the permits needed to conduct driverless testing in the state without a human at the wheel, or to operate a commercial robotaxi service.

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PART 2: DESIGN IS A SEARCH FOR THE OPINIONS

The deeper someone gets into a field, the more specific their tools get. Experts don't just use generic items. This applies to software as well. Everything in software is opinionated. The work is in choosing which opinions to embed and where to design something meaningful without dissolving into blandness.

CLOUDFLARE RADAR 2025 YEAR IN REVIEW

The Cloudflare Radar 2025 Year in Review looks at Internet patterns and trends observed through Cloudflare's global network. It is organized into six sections: Traffic, AI, Adoption & Usage, Connectivity, Security, and Email Security. This page presents an interactive view of the data.

NETFLIX CEOS SEEK TO REASSURE STAFF ABOUT WARNER BROS. DEAL

Netflix doesn't plan to close any studios after its bid for Warner Bros. streaming and studio businesses. The battle for Warner Bros. is expected to face stiff regulatory scrutiny. Paramount has launched a hostile bid and may propose an even higher bid. Netflix is committed to releasing Warner Bros. movies in theaters if its bid is successful.

LIAR'S VALUATION

Startups are raising money without really understanding what it all entails. This post was written to clear up a lot of the terms so people understand what they are signing up for. It covers how startup equity mechanics get manipulated, so people considering joining startups know exactly what they're getting into. Time is the only asset you can't make more of, so you should know what you are trading it for.

WHAT'S NEXT FOR TIKTOK IN THE US AS DEAL PROSPECTS REMAIN UNCERTAIN?

The Trump administration had previously claimed that a TikTok deal was done, but neither TikTok, ByteDance, nor China has announced the approval of a sale.

THE FUTURE OF PREDICTION MARKETS LIVES IN GROUP CHATS

Protocols like XMTP allow builders to deploy mini-apps and agents without permission, turning group chats into a new type of app store.

CEOS TO KEEP SPENDING ON AI, DESPITE SPOTTY RETURNS

68% of CEOs plan to increase AI spending in 2026, despite less than half of current AI projects generating more returns than they had cost.

YES, AGI CAN HAPPEN – A COMPUTATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

Today's models are nowhere near the compute or efficiency ceilings of the hardware, and there's at least an order of magnitude more computation available.

IDEAS AREN'T GETTING HARDER TO FIND

Ideas remain as discoverable as ever, it's just that there's a flaw in the markets that prevents that creativity from being rewarded economically.

COREWEAVE'S STAGGERING FALL FROM MARKET GRACE HIGHLIGHTS AI BUBBLE FEARS

CoreWeave has seen $33 billion of value vaporize in six weeks.

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SPACEX STARTS A WALL STREET BAKE-OFF TO HIRE BANKS FOR POSSIBLE IPO

SpaceX has started the selection process for a banker to advise it on its initial public offering. Investment banks are scheduled to make their first pitches this week. SpaceX is also pursuing a secondary share sale that would value the company at roughly $800 billion. The US IPO market is picking up momentum after several years of relative quiet.

CAN NETFLIX HELP SAVE THE AMERICAN MALL?

The Netflix House is a new permanent brand activation/movie theater/retail outlet designed to extend the lives of Netflix's most popular shows. They will enable fans of shows to experience more of a franchise in real life. The company has already opened a Netflix House location at the King of Prussia mall in the Philadelphia suburbs and a second at the former Belk department store, which anchors the Galleria Dallas mall in Texas. It plans to open a third location at BLVD Las Vegas in 2027.

IF A META AI MODEL CAN READ A BRAIN-WIDE SIGNAL, WHY WOULDN'T THE BRAIN?

Our brains are able to both detect and produce magnetic fields. Researchers at Meta were able to decode the brain's magnetic fields into actual images and words by training models on public datasets. This opens up the possibility that the brain may be able to read and write its own field. This article explores the idea and how it could relate to consciousness.

WHAT HAPPENED TO QUANTIFIED SELF?

The Quantified Self movement has largely fizzled out. It's not easy to collect data about yourself, and it's hard to make real use of it. There's also a cost to building vast data profiles of yourself that people may want to avoid. People still track their data, just not as a larger self-quantification project.

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DESIGN IS SEARCH

Design is like a search, not a production pipeline. The design process is valuable. Early design needs freedom, but later design needs reality. You might ship faster when you collapse these phases, but you lose a lot in the process. New technology makes it faster to build, but that's not what design is really about.