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TechCrunch Mobility: The battle over robotaxi rules

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility, your hub for the future of transportation and now, more than ever, how AI is playing a part.

Kimi: Threat or menace?

Chinese company Moonshot AI released a new version of its Kimi model this week, prompting concern about "full AI communism."

Waymo says San Francisco service has resumed after one-hour pause

This isn’t the first time power outages have caused issues for Waymo.

Apple Sends Letters to Dozens of Former Employees Now at OpenAI

Michael Acton, reporting for the Financial Times from San Francisco: About 40 former employees now working at OpenAI have been sent letters directing them to preserve documents and communications and demanding meetings with Apple’s lawyers, according to multiple people familiar w…

★ 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

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…

International tech

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.

To Make Chips, First Build a Vacuum World: How Extreme Vacuum Technology Enables Modern Semiconductor Manufacturing

From Magdeburg hemispheres to EUV lithography, semiconductor manufacturing requires extreme vacuum environments to prevent contamination, enable precision etching, and stabilize plasma for sub-nanometer chip production.

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.

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.

The adults who stay genuinely happy in their 70s and 80s aren’t the ones with the most family nearby — they’re the ones with at least one relationship in which they’re still allowed to be fully honest

My grand-aunt sat at the head of every family table for as long as I knew her. She was the one you cleared the big decisions with, whose opinion could end an argument, the matriarch three generations arranged themselves around. Birthdays happened at her house. News got reported t…

siliconcanals.com

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

Yes, of course it's Styropyro.

Apple Has Reportedly Started Recording and AI-Summarizing Conversations at the Genius Bar

It's limited in scope; it's opt-in; and managers don't get to see the summaries. Employees are still nervous.

Anker Solix S2000 Review: The Little 2kWh Battery That Could

I love the Solix S2000’s size and portability, but it isn’t up to every task.

Trending

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

Qwen 3.8 Max Preview

Article URL: https://www.qwencloud.com/pricing/token-plan Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48966190 Points: 213 # Comments: 1

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.

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: 246 # Comments: 322

simonwillison.net

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

https://www.qwencloud.com/pricing/token-plan Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48966120 Points: 542 # Comments: 394

A Pop-Up Truck Camper for Less

We live in a veritable Cambrian Explosion of camping options, ranging from a tarp on the ground to multi-million dollar RVs. Somewhere around the middle is the pop-up truck camper, …read more

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

OpenAI reduces Codex Model Context Size from 372k to 272k

Article URL: https://github.com/openai/codex/pull/33972/files Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48965850 Points: 202 # Comments: 93