News

RIP Joe Caldwell, ‘Dark Shadows’ Writer and Barnabas’ Co-Creator

Caldwell and co-writer Ron Sproat are why 'Dark Shadows' endure to this day and will get an upcoming animated TV series.

9to5Mac Uncovers Dozens of Disguised Gambling Apps on the App Store in Brazil

9to5Mac: Brazilian users browsing the App Store rankings in categories such as Navigation, Travel, and Weather have noticed a growing number of poorly made games appearing among the top results, many of them featuring AI-generated illustrations of animals as their app icons. As i…

The cleanup trap: Stop asking RAG to fix bad data

The enterprise technology ecosystem is caught in a costly cycle. Over the past two years, millions of dollars have been funneled into generative AI pilots, yet many of these initiatives stall out before ever reaching a live production environment. When a project fails, the immedi…

venturebeat.com

The Animation Industry Still Hopes for Hollywood’s Full Respect

What needs to be done for Hollywood to quit holding animation at arm's length? Industry veterans have some ideas.

Netflix paid $587M for Ben Affleck’s AI filmmaking startup

Netflix revealed that it paid $587 million in cash for InterPositive, a startup co-founded by Ben Affleck.

★ Mornings in Cupertino Have the Aroma of Napalm Once Again

‘It Seems You Have a Different Policy’ Ben Thompson, in a subscriber-only Stratechery update Tuesday: I got a fun email from former Apple executive, Nest founder, and one-time Stratechery Interview subject Tony Fadell in response to yesterday’s Update about Apple suing OpenAI (pu…

daringfireball.net

International tech

The art of small talk: 10 subtle phrases that make people light up when you first meet them

For years my actual job was to make strangers feel like regulars before the bread hit the table. Restaurants run on it. A guest walks in cold, slightly on guard, half-convinced they’ve overdressed, and you’ve got about ninety seconds to melt all that. You don’t do it with a scrip…

siliconcanals.com

AI Phones Are Not Competing on Models: The Real Battle Is Over the User Entry Point, and Super Apps Hold the Key

WAIC 2026 reveals AI phone industry consensus: the real competition is not model capability but agentic OS entry points, system-level permissions, and who controls service distribution away from super apps.

Huawei Cloud Unveils Enterprise AI at WAIC: Zhou Yuefeng Breaks Down the Steps for Scaling AI Agents Into Production Systems

Huawei Cloud CEO Zhou Yuefeng unveils AgentArts platform and openJiuwen framework at WAIC 2026, targeting enterprise-grade agent deployment with stability, security, and multi-agent coordination.

China MAZU AI Weather System to Reach 30 Countries: Fengyun Satellites, AI Models, and Radar Unite as Meteorological Infrastructure Goes Global

President Xi announces MAZU intelligent early warning system deployment to 30 countries at WAIC 2026 as China exports integrated meteorological infrastructure combining Fengyun satellites, AI, and radar.

Corgi, a startup that insures other startups, doubled its valuation to $2.6 billion three weeks after its last round — and because the same investors backed both, the jump is drawing quiet scrutiny over “internal markups”

The company says revenue growth justified the step-up. Some limited partners aren’t sure paper markups should count for as much as they do.

siliconcanals.com

Hong Kong Cyberport Is Becoming the Springboard for Chinese AI Going Global: From Computing Power to Standards to Markets

Hong Kong Cyberport emerges as China AI globalization hub: 3000 PFLOPS AI supercomputing center, 30B HKD funding program, and three-board strategy connecting mainland AI to Southeast Asia and Middle East.

What to watch for after Jensen Huang’s Japan visit

Jensen Huang left Tokyo with deals spanning Japan's entire tech ecosystem.

Can an Apple lawsuit derail OpenAI’s hardware plans?

On the latest episode of Equity, we debate whether Apple's lawsuit will cast over OpenAi's much-discussed plans to get into hardware and go public.

Watch a Mad Scientist YouTuber Make Lightning in a Bottle From Mercury and Neon

Yes, of course it's Styropyro.

Trending

Remembering the Zilog Z80 as it Turns Fifty Years Old

Perhaps the saddest thing about the Zilog Z80 is that this humble 8-bit microprocessor wasn’t allowed to live until its 50th birthday. This, fortunately, doesn’t prevent people like [David Oberhollenzer] …read more

MCP vs A2A vs ACP: How AI Agents Actually Talk to Each Other

Agents are capable on their own. Combined with tools and other agents, their capabilities compound.

What I learned selling 2,500 MIDI recorders: Hardware is not so hard

Article URL: https://chipweinberger.com/articles/20260719-hardware-is-not-so-hard Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48966713 Points: 385 # Comments: 191

chipweinberger.com

What is the value of one hour of a startup founder's time?

Startup founders undervalue their time. Here's why you should act like it's $1000/hr, and how it changes the decisions you make.

longform.asmartbear.com

Recycling Laptops and iMacs Makes PC Building Fun and Affordable Again

Building a PC used to be a fun adventure — what’s the latest, what’s the greatest, what can I afford? Well, that last question seems to have taken over and …read more

Minecraft: Java Edition now uses SDL3

Article URL: https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/minecraft-26-3-snapshot-4 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48967256 Points: 256 # Comments: 167

QT6 brings BASIC to the Web Browser, or Your Computer

In the old days, you either swore by BASIC or you swore at it — but just about everybody got their start on the educational language. Nowadays, the kids are …read more

Claude Code uses Bun written in Rust now

Article URL: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/19/claude-code-in-bun-in-rust/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48966569 Points: 368 # Comments: 502

simonwillison.net

Hackaday Links: July 19, 2026

We’ll start this week off by giving our congratulations to Skyroot Aerospace of India for successfully launching the country’s first privately developed orbital rocket yesterday. The company’s Vikram-1 booster stands …read more