Episodes

In three parts I’ll make the case that in Q1 of this year, the AI race has become basically a land grab for design and development tasks. MLB fully embraces our new prediction market overlords. Even if they’re behind in AI Apple is still making big money from AI. And Uber is still placing bets in the self-driving race. Google introduces 'vibe design' with Stitch (The Deep View) OpenAI to Acquire Startup Astral, Expanding Push Into Coding (Bloomberg) Crypto.com cuts around 12% of staff as CEO pus...

At long last, the government has issued guidance to crypto on what is or is not allowed. The blowup from gamers has caused Jensen to push back. A tale of contrasting IPOs from wildly different industries. And is your boss about to ask you to submit expense reports for your token use? SEC, CFTC Move to Define Which Digital Assets Are Securities (Bloomberg) Jensen Huang says gamers are 'completely wrong' about DLSS 5 — Nvidia CEO responds to DLSS 5 backlash (TomsHardware) Meta to Discontinue Key M...

All the headlines from Nvidia’s big event yesterday. Can Apple make fetch happen with foldable phones cause nobody else seems to be able to. One hour deliveries is the new, screw it, we’re doing five razorblades. And the robots are really coming to Disney theme parks, right now. NVIDIA claims DLSS 5 will deliver 'photoreal' image quality with AI this fall (Engadget) Nvidia Makes Trillion-Dollar Forecast at Annual Product Expo (Bloomberg) Samsung to Stop Selling $2,899 TriFold Phone After Three M...

Is Meta about to do the mother of all layoffs? New AirPods Max 2. Why OpenAI delayed its sexytime chat… the calls to do so were coming from inside the house. What does it mean if the San Francisco real estate market is ripping again? And what if it ends up Apple has played a blinder by sitting out AI CAPEX spending? Exclusive: Meta planning sweeping layoffs as AI costs mount (Reuters) Apple quietly launches AirPods Max 2 (TechCrunch) Encyclopedia Britannica sues OpenAI over AI training (Reuters)...

Meta’s big new AI model is delayed because they still can’t get to state of the art. The social media addiction trial is winding down. All the video apps are going to end up looking exactly like one another eventually. And, of course, the Weekend Longreads Suggestions. Meta Delays Rollout of New A.I. Model After Performance Concerns (NYTimes) Lawyers in landmark social media addiction trial make final appeals to the jury (AP) Peacock expands into AI-driven video, mobile-first live sports, and ga...

More AI inspired job cuts. I gotta say, adding AI to Google Maps makes it sound like it might work much, much better. A new entrant into the AI health space. An Iran-war-related hacking takes down a company. And Mark Gurman tells us what to expect from a foldable iPhone. Atlassian slashes 10% of workforce to ‘self-fund’ investments in AI and enterprise sales (CNBC) You can now ask Google Maps ‘complex, real-world questions’ — and Gemini will answer (The Verge) Anthropic’s Claude AI can respond w...

Sources say the US government is investigating Binance around Iranian sanction evasion. Meta is helping authorities worldwide crack down on scammers. YouTube literally now is, officially, the biggest media entity in the world. And the legal way to listen to full songs right inside of TikTok. Justice Department Probes Iran’s Use of Binance to Evade Sanctions (WSJ) Meta, Thai police shut down 150,000 scam accounts (Axios) Anthropic is launching a new think tank amid Pentagon blacklist fight (The V...

Meta moves for the social network for AI bots. Code Review for Claude Code seems to be like another revolution for the software development industry. Yan LeCun raises the biggest European seed round of all time. And the MacBook Neo… worth investing in or not? Exclusive: Meta hires duo behind Moltbook (Axios) OpenAI and Google employees rush to Anthropic’s defense in DOD lawsuit (TechCrunch) This new Claude Code Review tool uses AI agents to check your pull requests for bugs - here's how (ZDNet) ...

Anthropic is fighting the government in court. Microsoft is turning to Anthropic to get agentic in all its productivity products. A big new hyperscaler startup has raised a monster round. And could the war with Iran be something that could pop the AI bubble? Anthropic is suing the Department of Defense (The Verge) Microsoft announces Copilot Cowork with help from Anthropic — a cloud-powered AI agent that works across M365 apps (VentureBeat) Nscale Raises $2 Billion and Adds Sandberg, Clegg to Bo...

Dario might need some message discipline as Anthropic is officially designated a risk by the US government. GPT-5.4 is here. Oracle is considering laying off a ton of people and Softbank is considering taking on a ton of debt, both for the same reason. An early warning system for AI job destruction. And, of course, The Weekend Longreads Suggestions. Anthropic says it will challenge Defense Department's supply chain risk designation in court (Engadget) Anthropic CEO apologizes for lashing out at ...

Is the long war between Google and Epic Games finally over? OpenAI wants you to know its revenue numbers are also stellar. Maybe ChatGPT isn’t so great at medical advice. Maybe the chip shortage isn’t great for Nintendo specifically. And maybe the MacBook Nano isn’t great for the Windows ecosystem generally. Google Revamps Android App Stores to Resolve Antitrust Claims (Bloomberg) Tim Sweeney signed away his right to criticize Google until 2032 (The Verge) Google’s AI-powered workspace is now av...

Apple unveils its Chromebook sort of competitor, the MacBook Neo. Anthropic might be the fastest growing startup in history. Polymarket will no longer let you bet on thermonuclear war. Sony will no longer plans to release its big single-player PlayStation 5 games on PC. Apple announces $599 MacBook Neo running A18 Pro chip — budget laptop features 16-hour battery and comes in fun colors (Tom's Hardware) MacBook Neo hands-on: Apple's $599 laptop feels shockingly great (Engadget) Anthropic’s Claud...

Apple continues its week of product refreshes, now with MacBooks, now with new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. People continue to get rich frontrunning news on the betting markets. And Sam Altman says, no, sorry, we rushed things. The government swears it won’t use our AI for mass surveillance after we asked them nicely not to. Apple announces M5 MacBook Air with 2x storage, $1099 starting price (9to5Mac) Apple Unveils MacBook Pro Featuring M5 Pro and M5 Max Chips With New Fusion Architecture (MacRumor...

Apparently, it’s going to be a week of Apple updates and it kicks off with the iPhone 17e and an M4 iPad Air. AWS service is struggling in the Middle East. An important ruling in terms of AI copyright. Anthropic makes it easy to switch to Claude. And what exactly went on with that whole Pentagon/Anthropic dispute. ⁠Apple announces the iPhone 17E⁠ (The Verge) ⁠Apple speeds up the iPad Air with an M4 upgrade, starting at $599 ⁠ (TechCrunch) ⁠Amazon's cloud unit reports fire after objects hit UAE d...

I’ve got everything for you today. OpenAI closed its round. Anthropic draws a line with the Pentagon and Sam Altman supports it. A huge AI inspired layoff round, maybe. Netflix walks away from the deal, and, of course, The Weekend Longreads Suggestions. OpenAI announces $110 billion funding round with backing from Amazon, Nvidia, SoftBank (CNBC) Sam Altman says OpenAI shares Anthropic's red lines in Pentagon fight (Axios) Employees at Google and OpenAI support Anthropic’s Pentagon stand in open ...

Nano Banana 2 is here already. Nvidia tries to assure everybody there IS no bubble. Marc Benioff tries to assure everybody there IS not SaaS-pocalypse. Did Google just do exactly what Apple has been unable to do? And how do you put an old AI model out to pasture? You give it a Substack. Google’s Nano Banana 2 brings advanced AI image tools to free users (The Verge) Nvidia Shares Slide After Sales Forecast Underwhelms Investors (Bloomberg) Salesforce chief dismisses ‘SaaS-pocalypse’ fears of AI o...

The new Galaxy S26 lineup is here. Remote control for Claude is here. But is Anthropic about to wash its hands when it comes to working with the Pentagon? Could Stripe buy PayPal. Oh, and speaking of AI and war, you might not want to hear how often AI chose thermonuclear war when it was asked to play a wargame. I tried the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra and need the Privacy Display feature on my iPhone ASAP (ZDNet) Gemini is getting its first agentic capabilities (The Verge) Exclusive: Hegseth gives A...

That AI essay I shared with you yesterday sure got Wall Street’s attention. Anthropic says Chinese models are training off of Claude. A significant new breakthrough in chip production technology. And as fun as that tri-fold phone might be, you probably want to wait for later iterations of the form factor. Software Stocks Are Having Another Ugly Day (WSJ) Anthropic Accuses Chinese Companies of Siphoning Data From Claude (WSJ) Meta and AMD Agree to AI Chips Deal Worth More Than $100 Billion (WSJ) ...

Sam Altman has a lot of stuff to say about AI and let’s just say comms needs to have a quiet word with him. SaaS may or may not be dead, but is the replacement vertical AI? And a big thought experiment. If the AI bulls are right and AI transforms the economy, what might that look like? Sam Altman Says Companies Are ‘AI Washing’ Layoffs (Gizmodo) People Loved the Dot-Com Boom. The A.I. Boom, Not So Much. (NYTimes) Sam Altman would like to remind you that humans use a lot of energy, too (TechCrunc...

When your AI bot breaks your operations, even when you’re AWS. More on OpenAI’s hardware plans. Hey, remember Perplexity? What’s up with them? Is Uber roadkill in the self-driving car horserace? And, of course, the Weekend Longreads Suggestions. Amazon service was taken down by AI coding bot (FT) Ex-Googlers Charged With Stealing Phone Processor Secrets (Bloomberg) OpenAI Plans to Price Smart Speaker at $200 to $300, as AI Device Team Takes Shape (The Information) Microsoft has a new plan to pro...

Gemini is getting with the increased cadence of AI releases. Honestly, can we even keep up at this point? A dispatch from the social media trial as Zuck takes the stand. At long last, Amazon dethrones Walmart. Apple seems poised to unleash a slew of AI wearables. And the new storage system to preserve data, Canticle for Leibowitz -style. Google announces Gemini 3.1 Pro for ‘complex problem-solving’ (9to5Google) Mark Zuckerberg said he reached out to Apple CEO Tim Cook to discuss ‘wellbeing of te...

New pixel phone. A bunch of new AI models including Gemini’s entry into the music AI space. Everybody is trying to make AI fetch happen in India. And Matthew Ball’s state of the gaming industry report doesn’t paint as gloomy a picture as our own headlines might have suggested this year. The Pixel 10A is a little too much like last year’s phone (The Verge) Anthropic releases Sonnet 4.6 (TechCrunch) Google’s AI music maker is coming to the Gemini app (The Verge) Adani bets $100 billion on data cen...

The big regulatory guns are out for Grok. Memory chip shortage now hit the Steam Deck. Manus is already coming to your favorite messaging app. Turns out Buy Now Pay Later really works for vacations. And another lengthy AI essay, this time detailing what it’s doing, and has the potential to do to SaaS companies. EU privacy watchdog opens probe into Elon Musk’s X over sexualised AI images (FT) Valve’s Steam Deck OLED will be ‘intermittently’ out of stock because of the RAM crisis (The Verge) Raspb...

OpenClaw’s creator is joining OpenAI, but the OpenClaw project lives on. The AI-caused memory shortage might delay the next Playstation. Is the Pentagon about to cut ties with Anthropic? And Vitalik Buterin is growing concerned with the prediction markets. OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI (The Verge) Peter Steinberger Chose OpenAI. The Code Was Never the Point. (Implicator.AI) Rampant AI Demand for Memory Is Fueling a Growing Chip Crisis (Bloomberg) ByteDance to curb AI video...