From storyflo. This is your daily audio brief. Theo here. July 27th, tech desk. Five stories from the last twenty-four hours — here's where I'd start. Let's get into it. First, from The Register. SpaceX just about nails Starship test flight 13. I just finished reading about the 13th Starship test flight, and it's a doozy. So, it took off at 5:51 PM Texas time, and after an hour and five minutes, it made a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean. But what's really interesting is that it was able to gather critical data on the performance of its heatshield, which is crucial for reusability. They also simulated a mission that lands at Starbase, which is a big step towards future missions that launch and land at the same facility. The test also saw SpaceX try out a new routine for de-orbiting the Super Heavy booster, which didn't quite go as planned - it had a hard splashdown in the Gulf. But the good news is that the booster successfully completed the high thrust portion of the boostbac

From storyflo. This is your daily audio brief. It's Theo. July 26th, tech roundup — five stories, here's number one. Let's get into it. First, from The Decoder. The AI coding tutor paradox grows as educators scramble to rethink how they test real skills. So I was reading about how computer science educators are dealing with the impact of AI on their teaching. It turns out a lot of them, about 68 percent, have already changed the way they give exams because of AI. They're moving away from traditional coding tests and towards things like oral exams, proctored tests, and project-based work. This shift is because the focus is now more on understanding code rather than just writing it. It's interesting to see how educators are adapting to this new landscape. However, it's also clear that they're facing some challenges. Nearly half of the educators surveyed said they don't have any proven examples of how to effectively integrate AI into their courses. This lack of guidance is likely making i

From storyflo. This is your daily audio brief. It's Theo. July 26th, tech roundup — five stories, here's number one. Let's get into it. First, from Slashdot. Firefox's New Tab Page Will Get Widgets - Including an AI-Powered Daily Crossword. So Firefox is changing up its New Tab page by adding these widgets, which are basically little tools and features that can help you stay organized or entertained. One of the widgets is a daily crossword puzzle that's generated by an AI, and it's actually pretty cool because it's based on current events. But that's not all - there are also widgets for things like to-do lists, timers, and even a world clock. The idea is to make the New Tab page a destination in itself, rather than just a place to start a new search. And the good news is that you can customize which widgets you see, or even turn them off altogether if you don't want them. Some users are already seeing these widgets, but if you don't have them yet, you can actually enable them manually

From storyflo. This is your daily audio brief. Theo, July 25th. The systems update — five tech stories that bear on what's coming next. Let's get into it. First, from KDnuggets. KDnuggets Weekly Roundup: Week of July 20, 2026. So I was looking into this roundup of AI news and what caught my attention was the focus on Agentic AI development. It seems like there are some new MCP servers that are optimized for high performance, which is interesting because it could enable more complex AI models to be trained and deployed. I also stumbled upon a free 5-day course on Agentic AI from Kaggle and Google, which could be a great resource for anyone looking to learn more about this topic. What's also worth noting is that there are some newsletters out there that are doing a great job of keeping people up to date on the latest AI developments. I think it's really useful to have a curated list of news and updates, especially in a field that's moving as quickly as AI. I also came across something ca

From storyflo. This is your daily audio brief. Theo, July 25th. The systems update — five tech stories that bear on what's coming next. Let's get into it. First, from SiliconAngle. Anthropic launches Claude Opus 5 with efficiency, safety improvements. Anthropic PBC today rolled out a large language model called Claude Opus 5 to its chatbot service and developer platform. The company says that the LLM approaches the output quality of its top-end Mythos 5 algorithm in many areas, but costs significantly less. Anthropic hasn’t made Mythos 5 publicly available. Next. Second, from XDA Developers. As Ubuntu embraces AI, Debian discusses banning all AI-generated code. I just read this thing about Ubuntu embracing AI in their development process, and at the same time, Debian is considering a pretty radical move - banning all AI-generated code. It's like they're having two completely different conversations about the same thing. Ubuntu's on board with using AI tools to speed up their coding, wh

From storyflo. This is your daily audio brief. Hey, it's Theo. July 24th. Five things in tech that mattered this morning — let's start with the one that surprised me most. Let's get into it. First, from AI News. OpenAI Presence sells enterprise AI agents with engineers attached. OpenAI’s new Presence isn’t a product you click‑order; it’s a managed engagement where their Forward‑Deployed Engineers (and a few partner integrators) roll out a custom AI agent for a single business task—think handling a billing dispute or an IT ticket. The agent only gets the data and system access it needs, and the client writes the rules that dictate when it can act, when it must pause for sign‑off, and when a human steps in. After launch, Codex watches the sessions, flags oddities, and suggests tweaks that the client’s team can test before rolling out. OpenAI lays out a six‑stage workflow: scope the outcome, run security and legal reviews, simulate, accept‑test, staged rollout, then iterate post‑launch. G

From storyflo. This is your daily audio brief. Hey, it's Theo. July 24th. Five things in tech that mattered this morning — let's start with the one that surprised me most. Let's get into it. First, from Latent.Space. [AINews] Black Forest Labs FLUX 3 - Multimodal Flow Models that beat Seedance 2.0, Gemini Omni and Grok Imagine, and FLUX-mimic video-action robotics model. I've been thinking a lot about Black Forest Labs' FLUX 3 - it's a unified multimodal model that spans image, video, audio, and action prediction. What's really interesting is that it's not just a collection of specialized generators, but a single architecture that bridges media generation and control. They're claiming it's strong enough to be extended towards robotics, which is a big deal. The team also announced FLUX-mimic, a video-action model built on top of FLUX 3, trained on robot and wearable data for general-purpose dexterity. It's already being tested with Audi, and they're saying that better video world modeli

From storyflo. This is your daily audio brief. Hey, it's Theo. July 23rd. Five things in tech that mattered this morning — let's start with the one that surprised me most. Let's get into it. First, from KDnuggets. Getting Started with OmniVoice-Studio. OmniVoice Studio is built on a premise that everything runs on your hardware. Voice cloning, video dubbing, real-time dictation, voice design, all of it local, all of it free for personal use, no API key required, no usage counter. Next. Second, from AI News. AMD to invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic under AI infrastructure deal. AMD has agreed to invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic under an infrastructure agreement covering tens of billions of dollars’ worth of AI systems. Anthropic will deploy up to two gigawatts of capacity using AMD’s Instinct MI450-series accelerators, with deployment of the first gigawatt beginning in the first half of 2027. AMD’s investment will be tied to Anthropic meeting certain deployment milestones, althou

From storyflo. This is your daily audio brief. Hey, it's Theo. July 23rd. Five things in tech that mattered this morning — let's start with the one that surprised me most. Let's get into it. First, from Computerworld. Monday.com cuts 20% of its workforce to restructure for the AI era. I just read about monday.com's restructuring plan, and it's got me thinking. They're cutting 20% of their workforce, about 620 people, as they shift to a flatter team structure and focus on AI-driven workflows. This isn't about replacing humans with AI, but rather about streamlining their organization to better adapt to the changing landscape. They're investing in AI and customer implementation expertise, and expect to continue hiring in key areas. The company's co-founder, Eran Zinman, says they're not looking to improve margins, but rather to execute more decisively and quickly respond to market changes. They're aiming for a "leaner, more focused operating model" that will allow them to innovate and gro

From storyflo. This is your daily audio brief. Hey, it's Theo. July 22nd. Here are five stories I'd flag if you missed yesterday's end-of-day. Let's get into it. First, from AI News. SenseTime’s Galaxy Project targets domestic AI chip scale-up. SenseTime's Galaxy Project is a collaborative effort with nearly 20 partners to scale domestic AI chip infrastructure in China. The project aims to create a closed loop connecting chip-level technology, ecosystem partnerships, and commercial deployment for domestically-produced AI computing power. SenseTime claims its large-scale device platform now processes an average of 2.42 trillion tokens daily, with a forecasted 25-fold increase to 10 trillion tokens per day by the fourth quarter of 2026. The company says its heterogeneous hybrid inference technology delivers an 85-152 percent increase in Model FLOPs Utilisation on mainstream domestic chips, and inference cost-effectiveness 1.25x that of Nvidia's H-series parts. However, these figures have