TLDR 2026-01-08

ChatGPT Health allows users to securely connect their medical records and wellness apps to the platform. The feature is supposed to help users navigate everyday questions rather than intended for diagnosis or treatment. The data will make ChatGPT's responses more relevant by grounding them in user data. ChatGPT Health will initially be made available to a small group of test users. OpenAI will expand access in the coming weeks.

Waymo is preparing to update its lineup with a new van built by Chinese automaker Zeekr and a modified Hyundai Ioniq 5s. The vehicles will be added to Waymo's growing operations this year, but the company has yet to specify which cities will see them. The Zeekr vehicle will be called the Waymo Ojai in the US. Zeekr will construct the body of the van in China before shipping it to the US, where Waymo will fit its software suite and array of sensors. The vehicle will not be affected by US regulations aimed at preventing Chinese cars from being sold to customers in the US.

Quantum computing holds the key to winning the rest of the 21st Century. Google's quantum AI lab in Santa Barbara contains Willow, Google's latest quantum chip. Willow has settled the discussion about whether quantum computers can do tasks that classical computers can't, and it has also solved a benchmark problem in minutes that would have taken the best computer in the world 10 septillion years. This article gives readers a tour through the Santa Barbara lab and discusses the state of quantum computing and the potential impacts it may have in the future.

Vaccine technology has changed inconceivably in the 230 years since the accidental discovery of the first vaccine. Many diseases that plagued humanity are now mostly forgotten. It has become far easier and faster to develop new vaccines, and they can be engineered to be safer and more precise than ever before. With progress speeding up in recent years, the golden age of vaccine development seems imminent.

75% of Tailwind's engineering team lost their jobs due to the impact AI has had on the business. Traffic to Tailwind's docs is down about 40% from early 2023. The docs are the only way for people to discover Tailwind's commercial products, so this is resulting in less income for the project. While Tailwind is growing faster than ever and is bigger than it has ever been, its revenue is down close to 80%.

The job of the PM used to be to translate what customers want into specs that would be handed to engineers. That translation layer is compressing. PMs are now writing specs for AI agents to implement. The bottleneck has shifted upstream as the implementation barrier has dropped. The scarce resource is now knowing what's actually worth building.

Microsoft's 'hackquisition' of Inflection in 2024 was groundbreaking and led basically all of its rivals to copy the same general structure. Microsoft first conceived the plan when Sam Altman was ousted as CEO in November 2023. It had planned to hire the entire company if OpenAI refused to reinstate Altman. Altman was quickly reinstated, but the situation clearly planted the seed that would grow into the 'hackquisition' model.

Phones are too powerful - screenless AI devices will flop, as will 'always listening' devices. Mini-apps will unlock UGC personal software. There will be two big general-purpose AI chatbots by 2030. Performance marketing for apps is dead. The fastest consumer product to reach $1 billion ARR will be an AI webcam girl. Whoever figures out how to unlock use cases for AI beyond search and chat will be the next big consumer platform.

Self-driving cars will change quite a lot wherever the technology is allowed to proceed.

Include evidence that your code works along with your pull requests to ensure you are not moving work downstream.

To compete with the large cloud providers, you need to make businesses 100% comfortable with doing business with you.

Stack Overflow's revenue has roughly doubled to $115 million since ChatGPT's 2022 debut.

Paramount's offer would require an extraordinary amount of debt financing and other terms that make it less likely to be completed than a Netflix merger.

AIs are now capable of real, sustained work that actually matters, and this is starting to change how developers approach tasks.