× + newsletter-2026-03-05
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// Tech news at terminal velocity

cat 2026-03-05.md

Nothing Hides, Gates Goes Nuclear, and The 30% Tax Dies

$ cat TLDR.md

• Google and Epic bury the hatchet: The Play Store tax drops to 20% (plus fees, naturally).

• Anthropic gets ghosted by the Pentagon while OpenAI swoops in to steal the defense contract.

• Bill Gates' TerraPower finally gets the green light to build a next-gen nuclear reactor in Wyoming.

Headlines & Launches

📱 Nothing Phone 4A Pro Decides to Wear Clothes

After years of showing us its insides, Nothing's new 4A Pro features a metal, opaque back. It's a shocking pivot from 'transparent tech' to 'just a phone,' but at least the Glyph lights are still blinking.

Source: The Verge

🛑 Nvidia Closes the Checkbook on OpenAI

Jensen Huang says Nvidia is done pouring cash into OpenAI and Anthropic. His explanation is vague, but it sounds a lot like 'we have enough leverage already, thanks.'

Source: TechCrunch

🏷️ Apple Music Slaps 'AI' Stickers on Songs

Apple is rolling out 'Transparency Tags' to identify AI-generated tracks. It's an opt-in system for labels, which means the most egregious deepfakes will definitely, totally volunteer to tag themselves. Right?

Source: TechCrunch

🎨 Google Canvas Enters AI Mode

Google Search's Canvas tool now supports AI drafting and coding directly in the browser. It's another step toward making 'Googling it' synonymous with 'having Google do it for you.'

Source: Google Blog

Deep Dives

💔 The Pentagon's AI Love Triangle

Anthropic is scrambling to save its relationship with the DoD after being flagged as a 'supply chain risk,' while OpenAI is reportedly sliding into the Pentagon's DMs to take their place. It's a high-stakes drama of safetyism vs. defense contracts, and right now, safety is losing.

Source: The Verge

💸 The 30% App Store Tax is Dead(ish)

Google and Epic Games have settled their antitrust brawl. The result? Google drops the Play Store commission to 20% (plus a 5% billing fee if you use your own system). It's a win for Epic, but Google still gets a cut of every transaction, proving the house always wins—just slightly less than before.

Source: Ars Technica

🧬 Decoding Life with the Large Genome Model

Forget LLMs; we now have LGMs. Researchers have released an open-source AI trained on trillions of DNA bases to identify genes and regulatory sequences. It's like ChatGPT for your chromosomes, but hopefully with fewer hallucinations about having six fingers.

Source: Ars Technica

Engineering & Research

🍏 Nvidia PersonaPlex 7B on Apple Silicon

A new implementation gets Nvidia's PersonaPlex 7B running locally on Mac using Swift and MLX. It supports full-duplex speech-to-speech, proving you don't need a heater-sized GPU to talk to your computer anymore.

Source: Ivan.digital

🔒 NetBSD Jails: Kernel-Enforced Isolation

NetBSD is getting 'Jails' for native resource control and isolation. It's a classic concept (FreeBSD says hi) brought to NetBSD to keep your processes from touching things they shouldn't.

Source: Petermann Digital

🛡️ Cloudflare's Always-On WAF Detections

Cloudflare is ditching the 'log vs. block' trade-off with new Attack Signature Detection. By correlating payloads with server responses, they claim to catch exploits without the manual tuning nightmares of traditional WAFs.

Source: Cloudflare Blog

Odds & Ends

👽 Space Command: 'No Aliens Here, Folks'

The chief of Space Command officially stated there are no UAPs in space, just 'comets and things.' Exactly what someone hiding space aliens would say.

Source: Ars Technica

📸 The Poor Man's Polaroid

A hacker built a DIY instant camera because buying film is too easy. It's a charming reminder that sometimes the best tech is the kind you cobble together with duct tape and code.

Source: Boxart.lt

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