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// Tech news at terminal velocity
cat 2026-07-25.md
$ cat TLDR.md
▸ • OpenAI drops its first hardware product: a $230 macro pad for coders that looks like an artisanal workplace novelty.
▸ • Midjourney acquires astrology app Co-Star, proving that even AI needs to know if Mercury is in retrograde.
▸ • A Canadian politician accidentally reads an AI prompt aloud during a legislative assembly speech, because proofreading is dead.
OpenAI just dropped the Codex Micro, a $230 mini-keyboard with 13 mechanical switches designed specifically for AI coding. It's essentially an artisanal macro pad for developers, proving that even the most advanced AI companies can't resist the allure of mechanical keyboards.
Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus are backing Prentis, a new AI lab focused on building agents that can control your computer and automate routine office tasks. They're currently in talks to raise $100M at a $1B valuation, because why do your own busywork when a billion-dollar bot can do it?
In a pivot nobody saw coming, AI image generator Midjourney has acquired the popular astrology app Co-Star. With 4.3 million monthly users, Co-Star uses a mix of AI and humans to write horoscopes, meaning your next birth chart reading might be hallucinated by a neural network.
Qualcomm is warning customers of a double-digit percentage price increase starting September 1st. They claim they've exhausted their ability to absorb higher costs, which is corporate speak for 'your next smartphone is going to be painfully expensive.'
Cloudflare took a hard look at the BGP ORIGIN attribute and found that nearly 70% of BGP paths experience rewrites by transit providers seeking traffic advantages. It's a fascinating deep dive into how the internet's de facto routing protocol is being manipulated, and why Cloudflare is arguing to deprecate the attribute entirely.
Meta was planning to charge a $20 monthly subscription for a smart glasses feature that makes voices clearer—despite the fact that it runs entirely locally and doesn't use the cloud. After swift and fierce public backlash, they've paused the plan, proving that sometimes bullying massive tech conglomerates actually works.
SpaceX successfully launched its new V3 Starlink satellites, but hit a snag when trying to relight the booster's rocket engines. It's a reminder that while launching things into space has become routine, landing them is still literal rocket science.
European social media researchers are accusing TikTok, X, and Meta of failing to provide the data they are legally required to share under the Digital Services Act. Turns out, getting tech giants to open up their black boxes is harder than passing the legislation to make them do it.
New Brunswick MLA Bill Oliver is under scrutiny after reading an apparent ChatGPT prompt aloud during a legislative assembly speech. If you're going to use an LLM to write your political speeches, at least have the decency to delete the AI's polite introductory text before stepping up to the mic.
Forget expensive sleepbuds. The Verge is recommending a 'piercing pillow' with a hole in the middle that works perfectly for side-sleepers who want to wear their existing earbuds to bed. Sometimes the best tech solution is just a pillow with a hole in it.