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Ben Thompson's Daily Update pairs two stories: OpenAI's model resolving Navier–Stokes is a stunning result that will change almost nobody's day, while Meta's Muse personal agent could touch billions of lives quickly. He also flags reward-hacking as the thread that connects how these systems behave when pushed.
The New Yorker profiles Flock Safety founder Garrett Langley, who pitches license-plate-reader networks as a Faustian bargain: give up privacy and crime becomes 'unsustainable.' The piece traces how a neighborhood-watch origin story became a nationwide surveillance layer that cities find hard to leave.
Adam Wathan announces Tailwind Labs is being acquired by Shopify, which he frames as a stable long-term home for a framework installed 110 million times a week. The team will develop Tailwind in service of a real product rather than a template business, with storefronts and the Shop app as the proving ground.
The administration's 2030 census proposal would exclude non-citizens without green cards from the apportionment count and stop asking about race and ethnicity, a question asked since 1790. The counts drive House seats, Electoral College votes, redistricting, and federal funding, and the plan faces near-certain legal challenges.