TLDR 2025-09-12
OpenAI Microsoft deal 🤝, inside Chrome's history 🌎, front-loaded vesting 💰
Samsung taking market share from Apple in U.S. as foldable phones gain momentum (10 minute read)
Shipments from Samsung surged in the US in the second quarter while Apple's market share declined. Apple remains on top of the US smartphone market, but it is experiencing turbulence for the first time in well over a decade. Samsung's Galaxy and Z phone lineup has a massive span of devices that stretches from $650 up to $2,400, targeting customers at every single price point. Apple may release a folding phone next year - trying out new form factors offers Apple the opportunity to sell devices at higher prices.
Microsoft, OpenAI Truce Clears Hurdle in Path to For-Profit Conversion (6 minute read)
Microsoft and OpenAI have reached a deal to extend their partnership. The agreement could ease OpenAI's path toward changes into a for-profit corporation. The companies have not disclosed the terms of the new contract but said that the current agreement was nonbinding. The agreement is a tentative win for OpenAI, which needed Microsoft's approval for its non-profit plan before it could be formally shared with state regulators. OpenAI told its venture-capital investors it would complete the restructure by the end of the year or risk losing out on $19 billion in funding.
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Science & Futuristic Technology
Early Experiments Show Fast-Acting Antidote Targets Carbon Monoxide Poisoning (2 minute read)
A newly engineered protein therapy called RcoM-HBD-CCC has been shown to cling to carbon monoxide and expel the poison via the kidneys within minutes when given intravenously to mice. The protein quickly sponges up the toxin without binding to nitric oxide, a gas molecule that plays a key role in relaxing blood vessels. The protein was shown to cling to carbon monoxide in human blood in test tubes. It is unknown how the treatment will work in human bodies until it is tested, but human trials are still likely to be a few years away.
Reality Is Ruining the Humanoid Robot Hype (5 minute read)
There are still many issues, such as battery life, reliability, and safety, that need to be solved before humanoid robots can scale. However, before that, it is important to consider whether it is worth the trouble to make a bipedal robot. We already have reliable, efficient, and cost-effective robots, just without legs. Safe and reliable humanoid robots have the potential to revolutionize the market at some point in the future, but it might not be worth the effort.
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Programming, Design & Data Science
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A/B testing can't keep up with AI (4 minute read)
Evals are still a new practice for many product teams. A/B testing is no longer sufficient for AI product optimization because it's expensive to create variants. AI eliminates this constraint - it is now possible to have unlimited variants that automatically update periodically based on real-user feedback. The companies that evolve to think in evals will build products that improve faster than their competitors can run in a single A/B test.
Hashed sorting is typically faster than hash tables (18 minute read)
The two standard approaches for counting the unique values in a large array of mostly-unique uint64s are to insert into a hash table and return the number of entries, or to sort the array, then count positions that differ from their predecessor. Sorting is typically faster than hash tables in a well-tuned implementation. This problem and its variants are the inner loop of some of the world's biggest CPU workloads. This article takes a look at why sorting wins, when one should choose hash tables versus a sort, and why it matters.
Front-Loaded Vesting: Why Your Tech Offer Looks Different Now (10 minute read)
The even equity vesting schedule is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Many companies are now shifting to front-loaded vesting. This shift is a philosophical pivot toward a more dynamic, performance-driven compensation strategy. Top performing employees stand to benefit, while others will have more uncertainty of compensation in subsequent years.
Google Chrome at 17 - A history of our browser (72 minute read)
Google launched Chrome in the fall of 2008. The project has grown from a secret skunkworks into a browser used by billions. Chrome turns 17 this week. This post walks through Chrome's origins and evolution across speed, security, stability, and simplicity, and highlights key milestones. The journey has been one driven by relentless performance improvements, cutting-edge security efforts, and an uncompromising focus on user experience.
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Stay Ahead of the GenAI Curve – Executive Strategy Guide (Sponsor)
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How to think about AI progress (3 minute read)
Progress is continuing, but it will take some time before it is visible to actual users and consumers.
My (speculative) master plan for immortality (7 minute read)
Solve the machine learning problem of continual learning, build AI-powered glasses, improve these glasses by integrating signals from the brain, and then upload human minds to silicon to achieve immortality.
Pay-per-output? AI firms blindsided by beefed up robots.txt instructions (12 minute read)
The 'Really Simple Licensing' standard adds an automated licensing layer designed to block bots that don't fairly compensate creators for content.
Behind The Scenes of Bun Install (43 minute read)
Bun is fast because it treats package installation as a systems programming problem.
When the government can see everything: How one company – Palantir – is mapping the nation's data (8 minute read)
Palantir's Gotham represents how modern governance might function: through data, connections, continuous monitoring, and control.
The bloat of edge-case first libraries (7 minute read)
Libraries should implement the main use case, with alternatives or plugins providing the edge cases and minority needs.
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