Designator

Third Drone Shot Down in Three Days in Romanian Territory

Romanian Air Force F-16 aircraft shot down a third drone in national airspace in three days.

26 Jul9 min read

The Verge

The vertical video takeover is here

TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube have adopted vertical video formats, following the lead of Snapchat's popular Stories feature.

26 Jul12 min read

The Best Backpacking Sleeping Pads, Tested on the Trail (2026)

Wired tested high-tech sleeping pads from various brands for backpacking comfort and rest.

26 Jul18 min read

All the Ways You Can Make Reading on Your Phone Easier

Adjusting display settings and using reading modes can make phone screens more suitable for extended reading sessions.

The Solution to the Power Grid's Woes Might Just Be Sitting in Your Driveway

Electric vehicles are becoming capable of providing backup power to the grid when demand spikes, creating a potential revenue stream for drivers.

26 Jul5 min read

The Best Motorola Phones, From Razr to Moto G (2026)

Motorola phones offer reasonable prices, colorful designs, and simple software, making them good wallet-friendly Android smartphones.

26 Jul20 min read

The Best Subscription-Free Home Security Cameras I’ve Tried

Subscription-free home security cameras now offer advanced features like AI detection without monthly fees or cloud uploads.

26 Jul15 min read

Monday.com is the latest tech company to blame AI for layoffs — here are 20 others

Monday.com laid off 20% of its workforce, over 600 employees, as part of a restructuring tied to an "AI-driven growth strategy," joining other tech companies citing AI for job cuts.

Git rebase -I is not that scary

Git's interactive rebase command, git rebase -i, is not intimidating because it merely opens a text file for editing, allowing users to abort changes or recover work using the reflog.

Systems and Delays

A review of "Thinking in Systems" highlights how delays, often counterintuitive, impact system behavior, using a car dealership inventory model to illustrate their effects on ordering and stock levels.

Inflect-Micro-v2: complete voice in 9.36M parameters

Inflect-Micro-v2 offers complete, fixed-voice English text-to-waveform speech synthesis with under 10 million parameters, enabling local CPU or CUDA inference for high-quality audio generation.

DeepSeek pause fundraise after comments on compute gap to US leaked (transcript) [pdf]

DeepSeek reportedly paused its fundraising efforts after a leaked transcript revealed concerns about the significant compute gap between China and the United States.

Cloudflare's new AI traffic options for customers

Cloudflare introduces new AI traffic options for customers to manage and optimize their online presence.

GM Backs Sodium Ion Batteries for U.S. Grid Storage

General Motors backs Peak Energy's effort to develop sodium-ion batteries for US grid storage.

25 Jul9 min read

Warner Bros. lawsuit accuses Amazon of illegally poaching executives

Warner Bros. accuses Amazon of illegally poaching executives through interference with contracts and unfair competition.

25 Jul3 min read

Ars Technica

SDCC teaser gives us our first good look at Blade Runner 2099

Prime Video debuts the first teaser for Blade Runner 2099 at San Diego Comic-Con.

The new rules of context engineering for Claude 5 generation models

Developers removed 80% of Claude Code's system prompt for advanced models with no loss in coding evaluations.

25 Jul15 min read

The hacker who humiliated spyware makers and was never caught

Phineas Fisher, a prolific hacktivist, targeted spyware makers and governments, exposing scandals and remaining uncaptured for over a decade.

Producing ammonia and fertiliser using wind power in Morris, Minnesota

A facility in Minnesota is producing low-carbon ammonia using wind power for local fertiliser production.

25 Jul3 min read

Elon Musk’s Boring Company reportedly raising funding at a $20 billion valuation

The Boring Company is reportedly raising funding at a $20 billion valuation in a $4 billion round.

Running a 28.9M parameter LLM on an $8 microcontroller

Researchers ran a 28.9M parameter large language model on an $8 microcontroller.

25 Jul10 min read

9to5Google

Google Maps rolling out Immersive Navigation, speedometer in Android Auto to more users

Google Maps is expanding the rollout of Immersive Navigation and a live speedometer feature for Android Auto to a broader user base, appearing on non-beta devices.

25 Jul3 min read

The Verge