Overview
Today spans hard maths turned practical, AI’s sprint in ads and images, a quiet debate about going public, and a tour through space that meets the earthbound reality of ground stations. On the ground, geopolitics gets a boost in Addis, while builders and designers show what small teams can ship, from real-time homes to a satire about car parks. Privacy and foldables round out a day of choices about how we compute, create, and consume.
The big picture
Arcads 2.0 raises $16M and puts AI-made ads on fast forward
Romain Torres unveils Arcads 2.0 with fresh funding, a claim of beating human-made ads, and demos that swap creators, localise language, and tune emotion in minutes at about $10 per video. The team says it bootstrapped to $13M ARR in 18 months, and is now courting big media buyers. 🔗 Post link
An operator rides the Arcads wave with 1,000 AI actors on tap
Jacob Rodri piggybacks the funding news with an n8n workflow that auto-generates 100+ days of TikTok clips using a roster of 1,000 AI faces in roughly 30 seconds, pitched as a plug-and-go playbook for app promos. 🔗 Post link
OpenAI ties growth to more compute, and hints at what is next
OpenAI says expanding compute unlocked its first image launch and a 32% jump in weekly active users, then yesterday’s ChatGPT Images rollout built on GPT Image 1.5 with faster output, better instruction-following, and sharper edits. The subtext is simple, more compute, more features. 🔗 Post link
Measuring progress to AGI, not memory
YC spotlights ARC-AGI, a benchmark that tests reasoning and generalisation on novel tasks. Top models that ace memorisation-heavy exams stumble here, and the ARC Prize pushes open approaches that improve sample efficiency rather than brute scale. 🔗 Post link
Steering randomness without touching the noise
Mathelirium’s explainer on Girsanov’s theorem shows how reweighting histories can make random paths look like they have drift, a core idea behind risk-neutral pricing and rare-event simulation. The post tips a hat to Igor Girsanov’s brief life and long shadow in probability. 🔗 Post link
Why going public can build discipline
Patrick O’Shaughnessy clips Henry Ellenbogen arguing that public markets can impose healthy pressure during pivots, citing Netflix’s 2011 move from DVDs to streaming, a painful stock fall that set up a century-maker. Replies note there are cases where staying private works too. 🔗 Post link
A Strategic Partnership in Addis
Narendra Modi’s Ethiopia visit upgrades ties to a Strategic Partnership. The video shows ceremony and speeches, while the fine print covers MoUs on trade, doubled scholarships, AI training programmes, and maternal healthcare support. He departs with Ethiopia’s highest honour. 🔗 Post link
Inside the ISS, with a reminder from the ground
NASA’s quick teaser points to a POV tour through Destiny, Kibo and more, noting 4,000-plus experiments since 2000 and a water system that recycles 98%. Meanwhile, a space fan reminds everyone that crisp onboard rocket views come from ground stations too, not just satellite links. 🔗 Post link 🔗 Post link
Tri-fold phones get a careful look
Marques Brownlee reviews Samsung’s Galaxy TriFold, a device that opens to 10 inches, runs a Snapdragon 8 Elite, and could land in the US in 2026 at about $2,999. The excitement is real, and so are questions about purpose and durability. 🔗 Post link
A quieter browser bets on privacy and polish
Helium Browser shows a Chromium-based build with uBlock Origin by default, no telemetry, and configurable tracker rules. Fans like the speed and clean look, sceptics flag the dependency on ungoogled-Chromium and update support. 🔗 Post link
Designing a home inside a real-time 3D world
Arcway debuts a tool where buyers can explore and change homes while light, physics, rules, and product data update together. The demo targets builders who want fewer drop-offs and faster decisions, and the team is hiring a founding ML engineer. 🔗 Post link
Skip the million-dollar trailer, post the game
Hilko Janssen shares a tongue-in-cheek trailer for Car Park Capital, a retro-styled tycoon that pokes fun at car-first cities. It leans into Theme Park vibes, modding talk, and a jab at pricey Game Awards slots. 🔗 Post link
What is a $20k landing page really buying
Designer Marcel Kargul shows a sleek site for Sideshift.app with smooth motion, crisp stats, and brand work that likely goes beyond a simple build. Praise and price debates arrive on cue. 🔗 Post link
Why it matters
AI is compressing the cost and time to create ads, while the infrastructure that enables these leaps is becoming the story in its own right. Better benchmarks that reward reasoning could re-rate what progress means, which matters if you care that models help with unseen problems, not just test prep.
Girsanov’s old insight still pays rent, from finance to simulation. It is a reminder that deep theory often becomes everyday tooling years later. The debate about public listings sits in the same vein, trading short-term scrutiny for long-term compounding, and asking teams to pick their constraint.
In geopolitics, concrete steps, like scholarships and hospital support, outlive the photo ops and structure the next decade of ties. In space, high-fidelity tours and plain facts about ground stations keep the wonder grounded. Back on earth, consumer tech, privacy tools, and small-team craft show a market that rewards both polish and point of view.
