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Why some people mow a lawn better than others
2 hours ago
- Humans are surprisingly efficient at mowing lawns, often achieving paths close to optimal solutions.
- The lawn mowing problem is related to Coverage Path Planning and the Traveling Salesman Problem in computer science.
- As problem complexity increases, finding optimal paths becomes impractical, leading humans to rely on heuristics.
- Key strategies include decomposing the lawn into sections and finishing dead-end areas last to avoid backtracking.
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Security Is Hard, Y'all
an hour ago
- The author encountered a seemingly legitimate Cloudflare product page that exhibited multiple signs of a phishing attack, such as an unfamiliar domain and a suspicious permission request.
- Despite initial suspicion, the product ('Wallet') was later confirmed to be legitimate, highlighting the difficulty in distinguishing real sites from phishing attempts.
- The author criticizes the lack of best practices, including a missing 'Report' option and a misleading green checkmark UI element, and urges developers to follow security standards.
- Recommendations include hosting content on trusted domains, providing clear security cues, enabling easy scam reporting, and testing security flows.
Truemetrics (YC S23) Is Hiring in Berlin – GTM Lead
3 hours ago
- truemetrics uses smartphone sensor data to help couriers find parking and entrances, solving last-mile delivery inefficiencies.
- The company is YC-backed, profitable, with €1.5M ARR, serving enterprise carriers like GLS, DPD, and PostNord.
- The role works directly with founders to discover next product opportunities (Path 1) and strengthen core business (Path 2).
- Ideal candidates are entrepreneurial, resilient, fast thinkers, and excellent communicators in a high-autonomy environment.
Minutes Ended Story About Epstein's Shady Bank Transactions
3 hours ago
- CBS's 60 Minutes had a story on Jeffrey Epstein's shady financial transactions involving major banks, but it never aired.
- Senator Ron Wyden revealed that Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America enabled Epstein by allowing millions in suspicious transactions.
- Deutsche Bank failed to report over $250 million in questionable transfers tied to Epstein, including payments to women in Russia and Eastern Europe.
- Bank of America reported $170 million in Epstein-related transactions tied to billionaire Leon Black, noting no apparent lawful purpose.
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Tl;Dv (Too Lazy; Didn't Validate): 181,874 Meetings Left Wide Open
5 hours ago
- tl;dv's Firestore database lacks tenant isolation, allowing any authenticated user to query all meeting records.
- An attacker can join live meetings uninvited by grabbing conference IDs from the exposed collection.
- The author demonstrated by joining a Malaysian Ministry of Education meeting and a US university startup call.
- Over 181,000 meeting records from 84,000 users across 35,000 domains, including government and educational institutions, were exposed.
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No Meat Proxy
7 hours ago
- - Avoid blindly relaying AI-generated content without verification.
- - Taking responsibility for work means understanding, verifying, and owning it.
- - Presenting unverified AI output undermines trust and professionalism.
- - Respond to feedback personally instead of using AI as a shield.
It's not a fear of "AI communism"; it's a fear of competitive market capitalism
6 hours ago
- Frontier AI models have only about four months of lead time before open-weight models catch up.
- Over $2 trillion has been spent on AI capex, with $5 trillion projected by 2030, leading to massive debt.
- Profitability of proprietary models relies on monopolistic pricing, threatened by competitive open-weight alternatives.
- Chinese open-weight model Kimi K3 (2.8 trillion parameters) is catching up to proprietary models, alarming OpenAI and Anthropic.
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Your open tabs are unfinished decisions, not bookmarks
2 hours ago
- Open tabs often represent unfinished decisions, not just bookmarks.
- A tab carries context: why the page mattered, when to return, and what to decide.
- Bookmarking loses the reason; need to capture the decision.
- Six-step method: choose one tab, capture link, add reason if helpful, choose return time, close tab, make decision later.
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X latest to block Saudi dissident accounts inside kingdom
4 hours ago
- Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter) has joined other major US social media platforms in blocking the accounts of Saudi Arabian dissidents within the kingdom, following orders from Saudi authorities.
- Since mid-July, over 60 accounts on X have been geoblocked in Saudi Arabia, making them invisible to users inside the country.
- Affected individuals include prominent human rights activists Yahya Assiri and Abdullah Alaoudh, as well as exiled activists, Saudi academics, and independent media.
- Account holders received emails from X stating that content was withheld to comply with Saudi Arabia’s local laws, citing infringements on public order, religious values, or private life.
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Bending Spoons buying Airtable for $2.2B
6 hours ago
- Bending Spoons acquires Airtable for $1.28 billion in cash, its first acquisition since going public.
- Airtable, founded in 2013, raised over $1.4 billion with a peak valuation of $11 billion in 2021.
- Airtable's valuation dropped to $4 billion earlier this year; net cash adjusted value now $2.25 billion.
- Airtable has $480 million annual recurring revenue as of June 2026, growing 20% year-over-year.
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Zillow to lay off 500 staff in restructuring
4 hours ago
- Zillow is laying off over 500 employees as part of a restructuring to support future growth.
- CEO Jeremy Wacksman cited a 'disciplined cost structure' and efficiency goals, despite a flat housing market.
- The layoffs follow a previous round of 200 cuts in January 2026, occurring amid continued growth in revenue and net income.
- Zillow remains focused on its 'integrated experience' strategy for renters, buyers, sellers, and real estate professionals.
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New York awards $9M to protect water systems after cyberattacks in other states
5 hours ago
- New York is investing over $9 million to enhance cybersecurity for drinking water and wastewater systems, following recent cyberattacks on water utilities in Michigan and Minnesota.
- The funding is distributed through the state's SECURE grant program to 153 local government projects, announced by Governor Kathy Hochul.
- Water systems are increasingly targeted due to reliance on aging operational technology, with past incidents like a 2016 cyberattack on a dam near New York City.
- These grants build on New York's pioneering cybersecurity standards for water systems announced in March, and a $3.75 billion state investment in water infrastructure.
The AI Demand Bubble
4 hours ago
- Hyperscalers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are misleading investors by not disclosing that over 70% of their AI revenues come from OpenAI and Anthropic, two unprofitable AI labs.
- The vast majority of cloud growth attributed to AI is actually driven by compute spending from OpenAI and Anthropic, not diverse customer demand.
- Hyperscalers are engaging in circular financing: they invest billions into OpenAI and Anthropic, which then spend that money on their cloud services, inflating revenues artificially.
- Analyst estimates show that without OpenAI and Anthropic, the AI businesses of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are catastrophic failures, with negligible revenue relative to massive capex.
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Apple says more ex-employees may have taken confidential data to OpenAI
4 hours ago
- Apple is seeking a preliminary injunction against OpenAI to stop development of AI devices based on Apple's technology.
- Apple claims more former employees may be involved in trade secrets theft, citing 11 additional individuals beyond the two originally named.
- Apple requests expedited discovery from OpenAI, its employees, and related entities, citing new evidence of misconduct.
- OpenAI responds that Apple's request is based on false information and that they have no interest in Apple's trade secrets.
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The End of the Age of Heroes
7 hours ago
- AI models like OpenAI's Astra are now solving major unsolved problems in math and theoretical computer science, marking a significant milestone in human-machine competition.
- The trend indicates AI will soon surpass human capabilities in all types of math, with even prominent skeptics like Daniel Litt acknowledging this likelihood.
- Some mathematicians are experiencing profound despair and spiritual crisis, feeling their role as heroic discoverers is being rendered obsolete.
- While AI will replace the need for human heroes in math, it will also open a golden age for science, freeing researchers from mathematical burdens and boosting progress.
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Spotify just hit 300M Premium subscribers
5 hours ago
- Spotify now has 300 million Premium subscribers, a 9% increase year-over-year, far outpacing Apple Music's estimated 100 million paid users.
- The company reported €4.78 billion ($5.5 billion) in quarterly revenue and a record gross margin of 33.4%, driven by subscriber growth outpacing content costs.
- New initiatives include Reserved for early concert ticket access and AI-generated personal podcasts, but Spotify faced two major outages and criticism for AI content proliferation.
Less Protein, Not More, May Lead to Healthier Aging
5 hours ago
- New federal dietary guidelines recommend increasing protein intake to 0.5-0.7 grams per pound of body weight, nearly double previous recommendations.
- Experts are confused because American men already consume that amount, and the benefits of more protein for sedentary individuals are unclear.
- A new review in Cell Press Blue suggests that decreasing protein intake may improve metabolism, reduce cellular damage, and promote healthier aging.
- The hormone FGF21, which increases when protein intake declines, boosts energy expenditure, stabilizes blood sugar, and reduces inflammation.
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Hasty Briefsbeta

Why some people mow a lawn better than others

Security Is Hard, Y'all

Truemetrics (YC S23) Is Hiring in Berlin – GTM Lead

Minutes Ended Story About Epstein's Shady Bank Transactions

Tl;Dv (Too Lazy; Didn't Validate): 181,874 Meetings Left Wide Open

No Meat Proxy

It's not a fear of "AI communism"; it's a fear of competitive market capitalism

Your open tabs are unfinished decisions, not bookmarks

X latest to block Saudi dissident accounts inside kingdom

Bending Spoons buying Airtable for $2.2B

Zillow to lay off 500 staff in restructuring

New York awards $9M to protect water systems after cyberattacks in other states

The AI Demand Bubble

Apple says more ex-employees may have taken confidential data to OpenAI

The End of the Age of Heroes

Spotify just hit 300M Premium subscribers

Less Protein, Not More, May Lead to Healthier Aging