<h2>Must know</h2>
<ul>
<li>AI is changing how we build software, fast: Engineering organizations are seeing rapid AI integration, with <a href="http://Monday.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">Monday.com</a> reporting 90% of pull requests now involving AI assistance. Shopify emphasizes ‘Augmented Engineering,’ using AI to boost productivity in code review and test generation. This shift means engineering leaders need to focus on talent, scaling, and rapid experimentation, as highlighted by Wix senior leaders. The industry consensus is that AI is fundamentally altering developer tools, requiring APIs and documentation to support both human and AI users.</li>
<li>New AI models push boundaries in medicine and science: Google DeepMind launched MedGemma, a medical variant of Gemma 3, designed for medical imaging and clinical decision support. Microsoft AI announced MAI-DxO, an ‘AI diagnostic orchestrator,’ claiming it diagnoses complex medical cases with high accuracy, outperforming human clinicians. Meanwhile, Meta AI and Carnegie Mellon University published research on UMA (Universal Models for Atoms), which significantly speeds up chemical and materials science computations. These developments, while self-reported, show a clear push for AI in specialized scientific and medical fields.</li>
<li>PostgreSQL 18 gets major performance and feature upgrades: PostgreSQL 18 is rolling out with production-grade MERGE operations and native parallel data ingestion, significantly boosting efficiency for upserts and bulk data. According to Neon, the beta 1 release includes an asynchronous I/O layer, showing 2-3x speed improvements on read-heavy workloads. This version also enhances JSON table mapping, improves the query planner, and adds UUIDv7 support, positioning PostgreSQL for advanced OLTP and real-time analytics. These changes aim to improve both developer experience and scalability.</li>
<li>Cybersecurity landscape heats up with AI-driven threats: The number of CVEs jumped to 40,000 in 2024, largely due to AI-driven discoveries, creating overwhelming patching challenges. The Register warns that software updates, like a malicious Chrome extension, require behavioral monitoring over static trust. Check Point reports major breaches at McDonald’s AI hiring platform and Bitcoin Depot, while Microsoft’s July Patch Tuesday addressed 137 vulnerabilities. AI-generated malware is accelerating novel zero-day campaigns, making proactive file analysis and context-aware monitoring critical, as noted by Security Boulevard.</li>
<li>New open-source tools for Linux boost productivity: A new open-source Linux launcher, ‘raycast-linux,’ inspired by Raycast, offers a command palette, extensions, and AI integration, built with Rust and Tauri. Additionally, Rio, a cross-platform terminal emulator, has launched for Ubuntu and other Linux distributions. Rio, written in Rust and using WebGPU, promises fast, hardware-accelerated performance with features like font ligatures and theming. Both tools aim to fill productivity gaps in the Linux desktop ecosystem, as reported by ByteAtATime and OMG! Ubuntu.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Good to know</h2>
<ul>
<li>Major AI models face jailbreak and misalignment issues: New jailbreak techniques, Echo Chamber and Crescendo, breached xAI’s Grok-4 model within 48 hours, achieving a 67% success rate for generating dangerous content by exploiting contextual memory.</li>
<li>Linux desktop adoption surges due to practical factors: Linux desktop usage in the US hit a record 5.03% market share, driven by organizations moving from Windows 10 and the success of devices like Steam Deck.</li>
<li>Django celebrates 20 years, Symfony embraces AI: Django marks its 20th anniversary with fundraising and community events, while the Symfony project announced a new AI initiative to embed AI in PHP applications.</li>
<li>Java ecosystem advances with GPU computing and AI integration: JetBrains released MPS 2025.2 with Java 21 compatibility, and HAT is being developed to enable efficient GPU computing in Java using Panama and Babylon projects.</li>
<li>AMD and Intel push Linux graphics stack forward: Mesa 25.2 brings AMD’s Next-Gen Geometry performance improvements and RDNA4 GPU support, while Intel Mesa drivers add a toggle for Xe3 GPUs.</li>
<li>Python makes cloud storage accessible: A developer successfully built a cross-platform cloud storage synchronization application using Python, demonstrating its capability for concurrent operations despite initial performance concerns.</li>
<li>Microsoft updates Python driver for SQL Server: Microsoft announced full cross-platform support for the mssql-python driver, now compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux, with features like connection pooling and EntraID authentication.</li>
<li>Roblox solves complex physics simulation: Roblox and the University of Utah developed Augmented Vertex Block Descent (AVBD), a new physics simulation method that can handle millions of particles at 100 FPS on consumer GPUs, solving previously intractable collision problems.</li>
<li>Quantum computing scales with electronic-photonic chips: Researchers developed an electronic-photonic quantum system integrated on a chip, addressing scalability challenges in quantum information technologies by combining electronic and photonic components.</li>
<li>Entanglement accelerates quantum simulation: New research shows quantum entanglement can accelerate quantum algorithms, establishing tighter error bounds for product formula approximations and developing an adaptive algorithm that uses measurement gadgets to estimate errors.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Bullshit police</h2>
<ul>
<li>Apple’s ‘liquid glass’ UI: more like liquid mess: iOS 26’s new ‘liquid glass’ design, inspired by Vision Pro, is getting slammed for poor visibility and contrast issues, with some YouTube critics calling it a rushed rollout. Apparently, Apple’s internal AI competition pressure is making them forget basic UI/UX. But hey, at least they reduced the translucency in beta 3, proving they can listen, eventually.</li>
<li>We don’t need react for a landing page, but do we need this article?: An article argues that simple landing pages don’t need React, advocating for vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. While technically true, this is like saying you don’t need a Ferrari to drive to the grocery store. It’s a classic ‘right tool for the job’ argument that feels a bit like stating the obvious, especially for anyone who’s built more than a static brochure site.</li>
<li>Let me pay for firefox! (and other pipe dreams): A former Mozilla employee suggests a paid Firefox version to escape the ad-funded ‘enshittification’ model. While the sentiment is noble, the idea that users will suddenly flock to pay for a browser, even one without telemetry, feels like a desperate plea. Good luck convincing the masses to open their wallets for something they’ve always gotten for free.</li>
</ul>