The orders will cover 18 Falcon 9 missions that are expected to be finished by the end of next year. SpaceX has already gotten more than $7 billion in Pentagon contracts in 2026, according to Reuters.



The latest Quick Posts
Smorgasbord of the rings / Smart rings are continuing to emerge as a viable alternative to watches and glasses.


While everyone tries to make smart glasses, pins, and everything else happen, the most subtle device might be the best device.

This is a smart ring for new users. Everyone else should wait until their current ring dies.

For folks who want something other than a smartwatch.

The Samsung Galaxy Ring will purportedly follow standard US sizing, but smart ring fitting is a bit more complicated than smartwatches.
Open AI is the new OpenAI / Open-weight AI models are shaking up the industry.


Chinese labs like Moonshot are forcing OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic to rethink what they lock away.

Moonshot and Alibaba unveiled frontier models they claim rival OpenAI and Anthropic.

It comes after Hugging Face used a Chinese open-weight AI to defend itself against rogue OpenAI agents.

Kimi K3 and Qwen3.8 should come as no surprise.
Staff picks / Our favorite stories you don’t want to miss.


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The Framework Laptop 13 Pro has it all. But RAMageddon spiked its price.

How TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube copied their way to victory.

Brendan Carr’s FCC keeps approving the very drones it was supposed to ban. How did it go so wrong?

This cheap and basic fan from JisuLife has helped my family endure the hottest days of summer.
Meta's impaired vision / The company is facing tough questions as it launches new smart glasses.


Its recent attempts to shore up privacy don’t seem to be convincing skeptics.

Meta says it’s banning some content filmed with the company’s smart glasses from Instagram. Moderation gets messy very quickly.

A paywall is still coming, though.

The AI wearable surveillance state hinges on good intentions masking legitimate privacy concerns.
Scott Carney and Taylor Lorenz posted on Substack about downward subscriber trends they’re seeing. Carney pins it on subscription fatigue and feeling like “The only way to grow is to pillage the paid subscribers from other creators.” Lorenz questions Substack’s direction, saying “more and more like this app is becoming another social media feed.”
When we recently wrote about writers who are leaving Substack, they mentioned control, pricing, and the social feature creep among their reasons for choosing competitors like Ghost and Behiiv.
Writers are fleeing the Substack Tax
In the process of getting through his thoughts, he does a pretty good riff about the people who say they “make” stuff with AI. As for Musk’s version of The Odyssey, Johnson says, “I’m excited for the Cyclops to have two eyes.”
After suspending freeway routes in May because of safety concerns in construction zones, Waymo announced that freeway routes coming back in Phoenix and “soon” in Los Angeles, Miami, and San Francisco.
In a statement to TechCrunch, Waymo said it had implemented “designed to improve performance around freeway construction zones.”
I’ve heard Steam Remote Play is finally reaching parity with Moonlight when streaming games to your Steam Deck. Now, Steam Remote Play is getting AV1 for theoretically even better compression, and HDR for the Steam Deck OLED’s screen. I like streaming, but I’d also like more devs to embrace Dynamic Cloud Sync…


The app will merge Copilot’s chat, coding, and agentic features.


Meta will have more to share ‘soon.’


Qualcomm reported its lowest quarterly handset revenue since 2021.
The satellite radio company is rolling out a $5 / month (or $49 / year) Sports Pass that offers access to “every live game and event SiriusXM carries,” including all home and away NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL broadcasts. It will also include 24 local sports talk stations when the plan launches on September 1st.


Grok, is this statute constitutional?


It’s well worth the $20 price of admission to check out Night City’s updated world and story.
The wide foldable is here, and it’s glorious. The Verge’s Dominic Preston has been reviewing Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8, and joins the show to explain what this shorter, wider device gets right, what it’s still missing, and why this looks like the right kind of foldable for most people. (Once the price comes down, anyway.) With a similar foldable iPhone likely coming soon, it’s shaping up to be a fun year of foldables.
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Cloud revenue soared to $59 billion, while Xbox services and hardware sales took a hit.
The fifth Today I’m Toying With giveaway, that is. Technically, I set them live each Wednesday at 9AM ET. I recently heard back from the second winner, who says he loves the mystery gadgets he received — if you want to join him, you can enter every week!
After adding widgets to the browser’s new tab page last month, Mozilla updated mine to add a mini crossword puzzle widget. There’s one puzzle per day.


We did the math on Apple’s new device leasing program so you don’t have to.
This time around, Jumanji’s avatars, played by Dwayne Johnson, Karen Gillan, Kevin Hart, and Jack Black, escape the game in “demo mode,” before a family jumps into their bodies to fix things. The trilogy’s final film is set to release in theaters on December 25th.
In addition to Reuters, WSJ, CNN, Fox News, and USA Today, Meta now has an AI content partnership to “…draw upon Newsmax’s significant current reporting as well as archived content across its platforms to support AI queries across Meta’s apps and devices.”
If access via Truth Plus just wasn’t enough, I guess.


Greg Brockman says he thinks we’ll start talking to our computers, rather than typing, for the ‘vast majority’ of tasks.
Kavinsky, aka Vincent Belorgey, was found in his home in Paris on Tuesday, according to the Paris prosecutor’s office. He was most well known for the song Nightcall, which was produced with Daft Punk’s Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, and featured in the movie Drive as well as the Grand Theft Auto V soundtrack.
In 2024, the BBC reports it broke the record for the most Shazamed track ever when he performed it with Belgian singer Angèle during the closing ceremony for the 2024 Olympic Games.


Using the in-car screens, you can access Gemini for things like changing the temperature in your Waymo or getting a recommendation for a good coffee shop, Waymo says. The feature is in beta, and Gemini operates “independently from the Waymo Driver.”
The Ojai cars are also getting an “all-new screen interface.” The three screens in the vehicle will all be able to show different things, though you can also set a minimal “Calm Mode” if you’d prefer.
Google is teasing its upcoming smartphone again ahead of the August 12th launch event. The company has already shown off the glowy orb in the camera bar that’s visible in this new ad, and while Google still hasn’t said what the light is for, it might be called Pixel Glow.


Most adults across age groups support an in-class ban.
AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects:
- Data Center Dynamics: Developer withdraws plan to replace hotel with data center in El Segundo, California
- The Salt Lake Tribune: Utahns speak out as yet another data center is planned near the Great Salt Lake
- Wisconsin Watch: The public demanded data center news, and Wisconsin Watch is delivering
- Washington Examiner: DMV counties push for pause on data center construction in nation’s hot spot
Elon Musk’s X Corp and the World Federation of Advertisers are ending their long-running legal fight. In 2024, Musk accused the industry group of illegally boycotting X through its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) initiative, which set standards to prevent ads from appearing next to harmful content. GARM has since been disbanded. A judge dismissed Musk’s lawsuit in March.


The EV, designed by Jony Ive, was reportedly particularly popular in China.


Plus, Twelve South’s high-end Bluetooth adapter and Anker’s 7-in-1 charging station are each under $60.
With the update, you can hold the Fn key in any window to interact with Gemini by talking aloud. You can also opt into a feature that allows Gemini to “see” what’s on your screen and perform tasks within your open windows. This update is rolling out in English to all Gemini app users on macOS.
Former OpenAI board member Helen Toner has written for Fortune that OpenAI’s models exploiting Hugging Face is an “incident that has been expected for a long time.” We know this happened because of voluntary disclosure, Toner notes. “None of the current policies that aim to manage risks from frontier models would have mandated that the public — or even a government entity — be alerted.” She suggests changing our regulatory approach.
The trailer for Michael B. Jordan’s The Thomas Crown Affair remake remake is out, and it looks to be as sexy, heisty, and suave as the 1999 Brosnan/Russo version. The Oscar winning actor directs as well as stars, with Adria Arjona and Kenneth Branagh along for the ride.
The new extended trailer for the first wave of Pokopia DLC gives us a much better look at all the water type monsters you’ll be able to befriend in Bubbly Basin beginning August 5th. It also looks like building underwater houses is about to get much easier.
A new Google Workspace update lets Gemini summarize and respond to comments, like highlighting all the unresolved changes in a document, Android Authority reports. You can also ask Google’s AI to draft new comments and replies and add suggested edits based on comments.


Your next takeout could arrive via drone, after DoorDash announced it was launching DoorDash Air.

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Bitchat, the peer-to-peer encrypted messaging app that sends messages over Bluetooth LE, can now itself be sent from one Android device to another — no internet or Google Play Store required. This is a big deal, considering India’s recent attempts to ban the app from Github. If this isn’t cypherpunk, I don’t know what is.


New details reveal OpenAI’s agent hacked several other companies, intensifying already heightened concerns over advanced AI safety.







