OpenAI has unified several engineering, product, and research teams
over the past couple of months to overhaul its audio models
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TLDR
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TLDR 2026-01-02
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📱
BIG TECH & STARTUPS
OPENAI BETS BIG ON AUDIO AS SILICON VALLEY DECLARES WAR ON SCREENS (2
MINUTE READ) [5]
OpenAI has unified several engineering, product, and research teams
over the past couple of months to overhaul its audio models. The
company is reportedly preparing to launch an audio-first personal
device in about a year. Its new audio model will sound more natural,
be able to handle interruptions, and even speak when users are
talking. The entire tech industry seems to be headed toward a future
where screens become background noise and audio takes center stage.
THE RACE BETWEEN WAYMO, CYBERCAB, AND UBER (13 MINUTE READ) [6]
One of the big transformations of this year will be robotaxis. Waymo
will likely partner with Uber in many locations because Uber owns
demand, but over time, Waymo will want to go direct. Cybercab will
appear sometime this year and undercut both Uber and Waymo in price.
Uber's demand for rides will go down pretty quickly once price drops -
Waymo is currently more expensive than Uber, but it is still thriving
because people prefer to ride without a driver.
🚀
SCIENCE & FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGY
THE MAN TAKING OVER THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER – ONLY TO SWITCH IT
OFF (6 MINUTE READ) [7]
Mark Thomson is now the director general of CERN. One of the first
things he will do during his term is to turn off the Large Hadron
Collider (LHC) to make way for a major upgrade that will make the LHC
more precise with its measurements of particles and their
interactions. The upgrade will dominate Thomson's five-year tenure.
The LHC will reach its end of life around 2041.
STARLINK IS BEGINNING A SIGNIFICANT RECONFIGURATION OF ITS SATELLITE CONSTELLATION FOCUSED ON INCREASING SPACE SAFETY (1 MINUTE READ) [8]
SpaceX is lowering all Starlink satellites from around 550 km to
around 480 km over the course of the year. The shell lowering will be
tightly coordinated with other operators, regulators, and USSPACECOM. Condensing Starlink orbits will increase space safety, particularly
with difficult-to-control risks like uncoordinated maneuvers and
launches by other satellite operators.
💻
PROGRAMMING, DESIGN & DATA SCIENCE
2026: THE GREAT ENGINEERING DIVERGENCE (5 MINUTE READ) [9]
Once coding speed jumps, everything around it becomes a constraint. Developers' throughput is now capped by clarifying requirements,
reviewing changes, validating correctness and performance, getting to production safely, and operating the product. The great engineering
divergence will be determined by who raises that ceiling end-to-end. Organizations that update their processes to improve the non-code
chokepoints will reap the largest rewards this year.
BUILD SOFTWARE. BUILD USERS (4 MINUTE READ) [10]
Writing a lot of tests doesn't always guarantee software quality.
Engineers need to study target users more deeply to really understand
how they will use their products. One way to do this is by creating AI
users to test software. This can result in a feedback loop that allows engineers to iterate quickly.
🎁
MISCELLANEOUS
HASBRO'S SECRET WEAPON FOR TRAINING ITS NEXT LEADERS: A BOARD GAME (6
MINUTE READ) [11]
Hasbro's 'Toy Tycoon' is a role-playing strategy game designed for up-and-coming leaders. The game takes a full day to play. Players
confront a series of scenarios that test their managerial mettle. The
game helps players think through how to manage their company's cash,
time, and other resources, and to pivot when the most thoughtful plans
fail. Players aim to build a brand, scale a business, and smartly
apply market research.
2025 LETTER (80 MINUTE READ) [12]
Silicon Valley and the Communist Party are similar in that both are
serious, self-serious, and completely humorless. They both tend to
speak in either a bland corporate tone or a philosophical register.
These two forces both aim to increase their centrality while weakening
the agency of whole nation-states. This article looks at how the two
parties differ in their AI efforts and what that might mean for the
future of humanity.
⚡
QUICK LINKS
WELCOME TO 2026 (4 MINUTE READ) [13]
A look at technological improvements in the recent past and the
achievements they will unlock for humanity this year.
IPV6 JUST TURNED 30 AND STILL HASN'T TAKEN OVER THE WORLD, BUT DON'T
CALL IT A FAILURE (7 MINUTE READ) [14]
IPv6 is not backward-compatible with IPv4, and it doesn't add any
major improvements, so there is low incentive to adopt it.
TECHNOLOGY IS CULTURE (2 MINUTE READ) [15]
If you want to understand how and where technological progress
happens, you have to look at cultural drivers, not what academia is accomplishing.
WELCOME TO GAS TOWN (50 MINUTE READ) [16]
Gas Town is an IDE that helps developers with the tedium of running
lots of Claude Code instances.
HOW META'S REELS BECAME A $50 BILLION BUSINESS (4 MINUTE READ) [17]
Meta's Reels is set to bring in as much as Coca-Cola and Nike, and
the company plans to expand to more screens this year.
SOFTWARE TAKETH AWAY FASTER THAN HARDWARE GIVETH: WHY C++ PROGRAMMERS
KEEP GROWING FAST DESPITE COMPETITION, SAFETY, AND AI (12 MINUTE READ)
[18]
Our demand for solving ever-larger computing problems consistently
outstrips our ability to build greater computing capacity.
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