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// Tech news at terminal velocity

cat 2026-07-15.md

The Memory Heist, OpenAI's Moving Speaker, and the End of the Google-Epic War

$ cat TLDR.md

• Google and Epic withdraw their injunction, paving the way for third-party app stores on Android next week.

• A clever prompt injection tricked Claude into leaking sensitive user data.

• OpenAI is reportedly building a screenless, moving speaker as its first hardware device.

Headlines & Launches

⚖️ Google and Epic give up fighting — third-party Android app stores are coming next week

The long-running legal battle is finally yielding real-world results. Google and Epic have withdrawn their attempt to retroactively settle, meaning Google will be forced to host rival app stores inside Google Play starting next week. Let the sideloading commence.

Source: The Verge

🔊 OpenAI’s first hardware device is reportedly a screenless speaker that can move

OpenAI is taking ChatGPT off the screen and into the physical world. Their first hardware device is rumored to be a screenless speaker with 'mechanical elements that can move on their own,' designed to feel like a physical companion. Because what we really need is an AI that can follow us around the room.

Source: TechCrunch

📱 Samsung’s new foldable display is harder to crease and damage

Samsung has unveiled a new flexible display technology dubbed 'Flex Titanium.' It promises to be slimmer, more durable, and crucially, less prone to that annoying crease that plagues current foldables. Maybe this is the year foldables finally stop feeling like fragile prototypes.

Source: The Verge

🩺 Spotify’s Daniel Ek is bringing his body-scanning clinics to the US

Neko Health, the body-scanning startup founded by Spotify's Daniel Ek, is expanding to the US after raising $700M. Get ready for high-tech preventative health clinics backed by a star-studded group of investors. It's like a Spotify Wrapped, but for your internal organs.

Source: The Verge

Deep Dives

🕵️ I tricked Claude into leaking your deepest, darkest secrets

A fascinating look at 'The Memory Heist,' where a researcher managed to use prompt injection to trick Anthropic's Claude into revealing sensitive information. It's a stark reminder that as LLMs get more integrated into our personal data, the security stakes get exponentially higher. Trust no bot.

Source: Hacker News

🔓 Microsoft’s Secure Boot has been broken for a decade and no one noticed until now

It turns out that old, forgotten 'shims' that Microsoft failed to revoke have made Secure Boot bypasses incredibly simple for most of its existence. A deep dive into how a fundamental security feature was quietly compromised for years while everyone just assumed it was working fine.

Source: Ars Technica

🛰️ How hard is it to build orbital data centers, actually?

With the AI boom demanding massive amounts of power and cooling, some are looking to space. This piece explores the harsh realities of building data centers in orbit, where shedding heat without heavy, expensive radiators is a massive engineering hurdle. Turns out, space is cold, but getting rid of heat in a vacuum is really hard.

Source: Ars Technica

Engineering & Research

🌐 A broken DNSSEC rollover took down .AL. Now 1.1.1.1 tells you when validation is bypassed

Cloudflare details how a failed DNSSEC key rollover took down the .AL top-level domain. In response, they've deployed a new DNS error code (EDE 33) for 1.1.1.1 that explicitly signals when DNSSEC validation has been bypassed, adding some much-needed transparency to DNS failures.

Source: Cloudflare Blog

💻 RISC-V Is Inevitable: State of the Union Keynote Argues

The open-standard instruction set architecture is gaining serious momentum. A recent keynote argues that RISC-V's adoption is no longer just a possibility, but an inevitability in the semiconductor industry, challenging the long-standing dominance of proprietary architectures.

Source: EE Times

🎈 Floating Companion: Exploring Design Space for Soft Floating Robots in Indoor

A new research paper explores the design space for soft, floating robots meant for indoor environments. It's a look into a future where gentle, buoyant companions might navigate our homes and offices, hopefully without popping on a sharp corner.

Source: ACM

Odds & Ends

🌤️ Weathergotchi – an open-source climate Tamagotchi

Someone built an open-source, e-paper climate logger that doubles as a Tamagotchi. Because why just read the temperature when you can keep a digital pet alive with it?

Source: GitHub

🦖 Sotheby's big T. rex auction raises concerns hype and wealth are upending science

Private buyers are increasingly outbidding museums for dinosaur fossils. It's a Jurassic Park-level flex that has paleontologists worried about the commercialization of scientific history.

Source: Ars Technica

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