📱Big Tech & Startups
Apple Plots Expansion Into AI Robots, Home Security, and Smart Displays (13 minute read)
Apple is banking on an ambitious product road map to help get its AI effort on track. It is working on a slate of new devices, including robots, a lifelike version of Siri, a smart speaker with a display, and home-security cameras. The centerpiece of the company's AI strategy is a tabletop robot that serves as a virtual companion. Home security is also seen as another big opportunity.
Amazon launches same-day delivery of meat, eggs, produce in more than 1,000 cities (3 minute read)
Amazon is rolling out same-day delivery of fresh foods to more than 1,000 cities and towns in the US. There are plans to reach at least 2,300 locations by the end of the year. The service is free for Prime members for orders over $25 in most cities, or $2.99 for orders under $25. Shoppers without a Prime membership pay $12.99 regardless of order size.
🚀Science & Futuristic Technology
This Google Spin-Off Wants to Beam 100Gbps Internet From the Ocean, Mountaintops (5 minute read)
Aalyria, a startup born from Alphabet's Loon internet balloon project, successfully beamed a 100Gbps internet connection across 40 miles by harnessing optical lasers. The link has been operational for several weeks. Aalyria's Tightbeam system can deliver high-speed internet connections from the air. It is engineered for resilience in dynamic weather conditions and has adaptive optics and tracking algorithms to minimize the impact of transient environmental changes to end users. Aalyria aims to deliver Tightbeam technology for land, sea, air, and even satellite communications.
Why China is becoming the world's first electrostate (13 minute read)
China installed more solar power in April than Australia has in all of its history - and Australia is a global leader in the space. China is embracing renewable technologies across every aspect of its society at an astonishing rate. Its aim is to stop relying on imported fossil fuels and fix the pollution caused by them. By putting its economic might and willpower behind renewable technologies, China is accelerating the end of the fossil fuel era and bringing about the age of the electrostate.
💻Programming, Design & Data Science
pyx (3 minute read)
pyx is an optimized backend for uv that makes uv even faster, more secure, and hardware-aware. It can be used to host private packages or as a frontend to public sources like PyPI. pyx solves many of the problems in uv that can't be solved with a client alone, but could be solved with a server. It is not yet generally available, but the development team is currently looking for more early users.
sshrc (GitHub Repo)
sshrc works just like ssh, but it also sources the ~/.sshrc on your local computer after logging in remotely. It can be used to set environment variables, define functions, and run post-login commands. sshrc can be very useful for developers who share servers with multiple users and can't edit the server's ~/.bashrc without affecting them, or if they have several servers that they don't want to configure independently.
🎁Miscellaneous
I'm Worried It Might Get Really Bad (12 minute read)
There are indicators that the US, and perhaps the rest of the world, may experience a spontaneous recession type of thing in the next few months or years. Really talented people are losing their jobs, business leaders are explicitly saying they're looking to replace human workers with AI, most workers aren't putting much effort in, and the effects of tariffs haven't even fully hit yet. There are many things happening right now, or that could happen soon, that could combine to create a narrative of panic in a population that's just barely holding on.
Huawei AI chip-powered DeepSeek R2 tipped to launch this month (2 minute read)
DeepSeek R2 is expected to go official later this month. It is expected to be an advanced Mixture-of-Experts model. The model will be powered by the Huawei Ascend AI chip at launch. Analysts expect the pricing of DeepSeek R2 to be significantly lower than that of OpenAI's GPT-5, indicating it may subvert the pricing model of existing AI services.
⚡Quick Links
Snooping On Slow Builds (Using Syscalls) (6 minute read)
What The Fork is a cross-platform tool that helps speed up builds by uncovering build-specific problems.
Tesla Eyes New York City for Robotaxis With Test-Driver Job Posting (2 minute read)
Tesla is hiring data collectors to drive vehicles around New York City.
Today was my last day at xAI, the company that I helped start with Elon Musk in 2023 (4 minute read)
Igor Babuschkin has left xAI to launch Babuschkin Ventures, which will support AI safety research and back startups in AI and agentic systems.
git-who (GitHub Repo)
git-who is a command-line tool that reveals who is responsible for entire components or subsystems in a code base - it's like git blame but for file trees rather than individual files.
NGINX Introduces Native Support for ACME Protocol (4 minute read)
The ACME protocol (Automated Certificate Management Environment) is a communications protocol primarily designed to automate the process of issuing, validating, renewing, and revoking digital security certificates.
Why Does AI Feel So Different? (15 minute read)
AI represents a multi-dimensional revolution that impacts our defining human ability of thinking.