Designator

DOGE Veterans Are Landing Big Jobs at Prediction Markets

Former DOGE affiliates are taking key roles at prediction market companies like Polymarket and Novig.

30 Jul3 min read

Zoox clears final federal hurdle to launch paid robotaxi service

Zoox received a temporary exemption to charge customers for rides in its custom-built robotaxi, clearing a major hurdle for its commercial launch.

RFC 8890 – The Internet is for End Users (2020)

The Internet Architecture Board published RFC8890, emphasizing the Internet is for end users, guiding IETF decisions to prioritize their needs.

'VPNs are lawful technical tools,' says EU Court in landmark copyright ruling

The EU Court rules VPNs are lawful technical tools, not liable for copyright infringement.

30 Jul2 min read

Spotify adds a running mode to its app

Spotify adds a running mode to its app, cueing songs based on run phases and user preferences.

30 Jul4 min read

The Verge

Spotify Running Mode helps match tunes to tempo

Spotify introduces Running Mode, an AI-powered feature that matches music to running tempo and workout goals.

30 Jul3 min read

9to5Google

Snapdragon chip prices are officially going up, maybe by ‘double digits’ [U]

Qualcomm officially confirmed it will raise prices on Snapdragon chips starting September 1 due to increased input costs across various semiconductor components.

A pharmacy chain in Vermont implemented AI for efficiency

A Vermont pharmacy chain's implementation of an AI tool for prescription refills has led to customer frustration, incorrect orders, and privacy concerns, highlighting a gap in regulatory oversight for AI in healthcare.

30 Jul9 min read

Microsoft is openly competing with OpenAI, Anthropic more than ever

Microsoft is increasingly competing with its AI partners OpenAI and Anthropic, promoting its own models and agentic infrastructure to enterprise customers for greater control and lower costs.

The Productivity Mirage

Solving the right problems, not elaborate tools or workflows, ultimately drives productivity and impact, as demonstrated by a prolific engineer using basic software.

29 Jul1 min read

Mark Zuckerberg predicts that billions of people will have personal AI agents in five years

Mark Zuckerberg predicts billions of people will use personal AI agents within five years, viewing them as foundational for Meta's future products and revenue despite current financial challenges.

29 Jul4 min read

Microsoft logs $3.2B from Anthropic investment, but OpenAI was a mixed bag

Microsoft logged a $3.2 billion gain from its Anthropic investment.

Zuckerberg says Meta’s enterprise AI opportunity extends beyond agents

Meta's enterprise AI ambitions extend beyond customer service agents to include APIs and compute sales.

29 Jul4 min read

The Verge

Microsoft confirms Copilot ‘super app’ coming this year

Microsoft is developing a Copilot super app that combines chat, coding, and agentic features.

Ars Technica

Mythos attack on 3rd-round PQC algorithm candidate puts it out of commission

Mythos attack breaks HAWK, a post-quantum cryptography algorithm candidate, due to a previously unknown flaw.

29 Jul7 min read

The Verge

Mark Zuckerberg is planning a big push into personal AI agents

Mark Zuckerberg plans a big push into personal AI agents that can work on users' behalf.

29 Jul4 min read

Encore AI raises $30M to build AI agents that learn from customer calls

Encore AI secured $30 million in Series A funding to develop AI agents that learn effective communication strategies by analyzing customer interactions, enhancing sales and support.

9to5Google

Pixel 11 in green probably inspired this unreleased Pixel Buds Pro 2 color [Gallery]

Leaked images suggest Google's unreleased Pixel Buds Pro 2 will feature a dark green color, likely inspired by the upcoming Pixel 11 series' "Moss" and "Pine" color options.

Choose DuckDB rather than SQLite

DuckDB significantly outperforms SQLite on identical hardware, demonstrating 3x to 15x faster write throughput and handling 100x more data points for dashboard queries.

29 Jul16 min read

Wired

X Says Australia’s Under-16 Social Media Ban Risks Interfering With Foreign Law

X argues Australia's proposed under-16 social media ban and its information-gathering powers risk interfering with international law and privacy rights, calling the measures "invasive" and "disproportionate.

29 Jul5 min read

9to5Google

Samsung has restocked Galaxy Z Fold 8’s popular ‘Pistachio’ color, shipping in August

Samsung has restocked the popular "Pistachio" Galaxy Z Fold 8 in the US, with shipping dates for all variants now moved up to August 21, significantly earlier than previous estimates.

Ars Technica

What happens when you put AI to work deciphering lost languages?

AI can accelerate the decipherment of lost languages by rapidly testing human hypotheses and identifying patterns in ancient texts, but it still requires human insight and an anchor language to provide context.

TokenTown: A visual way to understand how LLMs work

TokenTown visualizes language models as a city, with each district representing a stage of the transformer model process.

Handbook.md shows that long policy documents do not reliably govern agents

Researchers find that long policy documents do not reliably govern language-model agents' behavior over time.