Meta has agreed to acquire Manus, a Singapore-based company that
conducts deep research and performs tasks for paying users
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TLDR
TLDR 2025-12-30
📱
BIG TECH & STARTUPS
META BUYS AI STARTUP MANUS FOR MORE THAN $2 BILLION (4 MINUTE READ)
[4]
Meta has agreed to acquire Manus, a Singapore-based company that
conducts deep research and performs tasks for paying users. Meta will
continue to operate and sell Manus' services while integrating it into
its suite of social media products. The deal will help Meta cement its
position in the product segment of AI agents. It is one of the first
times a major US tech company has bought a startup with Chinese roots.
NVIDIA SPENDS $5B ON INTEL BAILOUT, INSTANTLY GETS $2.5B RICHER (4
MINUTE READ) [5]
Nvidia locked in a purchase price of $23.28 per share for Intel when
the companies struck a deal in September. The deal had been under
scrutiny by the US Federal Trade Commission, but was then greenlighted
on December 18. The purchase of 214 million shares closed on December
26, and Intel shares closed Monday at $36.68, making Nvidia's $5
billion purchase worth $7.58 billion. The deal will involve the
companies jointly developing multiple generations of chips for
datacenters and PCs.
🚀
SCIENCE & FUTURISTIC TECHNOLOGY
RESEARCHERS MAKE “NEUROMORPHIC” ARTIFICIAL SKIN FOR ROBOTS (5
MINUTE READ) [6]
Chinese researchers have created an artificial robotic skin that can
sense pressure and locate input and injuries. The neuromorphic robotic
e-skin (NRE-skin) is assembled from a collection of segments that snap
together using magnetic interlocks, automatically linking up any
necessary wiring. Each segment broadcasts a unique identity code, so
it is relatively easy to pop out the damaged segment and replace it
with fresh hardware if the system identifies damage.
CLINIC-IN-THE-LOOP (16 MINUTE READ) [7]
Biomedical progress has become less productive for the last several
years despite staggering advances in basic science. One of the reasons
for this is that institutional bureaucracy has become harder to
overcome. Increasing the number and efficiency of clinical trials
would help create a faster feedback loop and result in better data to
inform models and ideas. This could help decrease the cost of bringing
new drugs to market and break a trend that has held since the 1950s.
💻
PROGRAMMING, DESIGN & DATA SCIENCE
WHY WE ARE LEAVING RESTRICTIVE DIETS IN 2025 (SPONSOR) [8]
Pressure. Extreme diets. All-or-nothing mindset. This doesn't need to
be you on 01/01. There is a clinically proven weight loss tool [8]
that's helped users lose over 18 million pounds. Take a quick quiz and
get a science-backed plan built just for you—plus Blinky, a
Tamagotchi-style accountability buddy that keeps you on track. It's
crazy effective. Get your personalized plan for at least 50% OFF [8].
WELCOME TO THE MACHINE, A GUIDE TO BUILDING INFRA SOFTWARE FOR AI
AGENTS (20 MINUTE READ) [9]
The primary users of infrastructure software are rapidly shifting
from developers to AI agents. AI uses systems very differently from
how developers do, and it changes many long-held assumptions about how databases should be used. Many things developers took for granted need rethinking. The focus of engineers is shifting from perfected
individual systems to designing foundational capabilities that AI can
use at scale, iterate on, and run cheaply.
CLOPUS-WATCHER: AN AUTONOMOUS MONITORING AGENT (8 MINUTE READ) [10]
AI will likely make 24/7 on-call a thing of the past. 24/7 monitoring
is a lot simpler than the development process. There are often
reference documents that engineers can follow to bring systems back
up, and if they fail, there's always a backup and recovery plan in
place. On-call jobs have always been more systematic. This post
introduces an autonomous monitoring agent that does what an on-call
engineer would do, but autonomously, forever.
🎁
MISCELLANEOUS
CAPITAL IN THE 22ND CENTURY (58 MINUTE READ) [11]
Labor and capital have traditionally complemented each other. While
wealthy people can keep accumulating capital, it becomes less valuable
when there aren't enough hands to use all of it, and hands grow more
valuable when capital is plentiful. However, this correction mechanism
breaks in the world of advanced robotics and AI. A global and highly progressive tax on capital (or at least capital income) may be the
only way to prevent inequality from growing extreme.
2025 IN REVIEW: JAGGED INTELLIGENCE BECOMES A FAULT LINE (10 MINUTE
READ) [12]
The immediate AI risk comes from people overestimating AI's
capabilities. A lack of reliability and trust is preventing wide
adoption. There is a growing AI perception gap between quantitative
users and qualitative users. AI leaders aren't even attempting to
explain how AI works because it's complicated, and they're also
incentivized to oversimplify and overpromise.
⚡
QUICK LINKS
ALL EXPERTISE GROWS LOGARITHMICALLY, NOT EXPONENTIALLY (6 MINUTE
READ) [13]
Both human and computer expertise grow quickly in the beginning, for
a short while, then more slowly, until growth is imperceptible.
HOW GOOD IS AI AT CODING REACT (REALLY)? (25 MINUTE READ) [14]
AI models excel at isolated React tasks, but don't do as well on
multi-step integrations.
YOU CAN'T DESIGN SOFTWARE YOU DON'T WORK ON (11 MINUTE READ) [15]
Generic design advice is useless for most practical software design
problems.
SOFTWARE ENGINEERING IN 2026 (5 MINUTE READ) [16]
The software engineering field will broadly become more mechanized
and more productive.
A FEW THEMES FOR 2026 (5 MINUTE READ) [17]
2026 will see breakthroughs in continual learning and a blockbuster
IPO.
LG IS ANNOUNCING ITS OWN FRAME-STYLE TV AT CES (2 MINUTE READ) [18]
The LG Gallery TV is a mini-LED TV with a special screen that reduces
glare and minimizes reflections for an art-like viewing experience.
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