Welcome to The Compiler, a daily curation of tech news.

Huawei's Improbable Comeback: The tech giant is thriving despite crushing US sanctions. How? By pivoting hard into AI chips and doubling down on the Chinese market. The kicker? Their homegrown 7nm process node is way more advanced than anyone expected. Looks like those export controls might've backfired spectacularly.

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• The UK's competition watchdog is unleashing AI on bid-riggers. They're testing an ML model to sniff out collusion in public contract bids. Clever move, but I can already hear the "but what about false positives?!" crowd warming up their keyboards.

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• China just greenlit the world's largest hydroelectric dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo river. 60GW capacity, absolutely bonkers engineering feat. But also: massive geopolitical implications for India downstream. Water wars, anyone?

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• Apple's embracing Nvidia GPUs for LLM inference with their open-source ReDrafter tech. Hell froze over, pigs are flying, etc.
• CrowdStrike's stock fully recovered from last year's global IT meltdown. Turns out breaking everyone's systems is great for business.
• United Airlines is fast-tracking Starlink Wi-Fi on planes. Finally, in-flight Twitter will be tolerable.

If Waymo's robotaxis always stop for pedestrians in crosswalks, how long until humans start abusing that to create traffic chaos? The "Pedestrian's Dilemma" might be the new "Trolley Problem" for autonomous vehicles.

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Welcome to The Compiler, a daily curation of tech news.

SpaceX's next Starship test will deploy an actual payload for the first time, releasing 10 Starlink satellite simulators. This is a massive step towards operational flights. The real kicker? These "simulator" satellites might actually be functional enough to join the Starlink constellation. Elon's playing 4D chess while the competition's still setting up the board.

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Samsung and Google just dropped Eclipsa Audio, a new open 3D audio standard. It's a free Dolby Atmos alternative coming to Samsung's 2025 TVs and select YouTube videos. This isn't just about better sound – it's a strategic move to wrestle control of the audio ecosystem from Dolby. Expect a messy format war that'll make the Blu-ray vs HD-DVD battle look like a pillow fight.

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Generative AI startups gobbled up $56B in VC funding in 2024, a 192% jump from 2023. The catch? Only $6.2B went to startups outside the US. This isn't just FOMO – it's financial manifest destiny. We're witnessing the birth of an AI oligopoly, with a handful of US giants poised to dominate the global AI landscape. Time to brush up on your antitrust law, folks.

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• A DIY enthusiast retrofitted a 1993 Volvo with open-source self-driving tech. Somewhere, a Tesla engineer is sweating. Read more
• YouTube paid out $70B to creators in 3 years. That's a lot of unboxing videos. Read more
• Ford extends free EV charger promo. Because nothing says "future of transportation" like a complimentary wall plug. Read more

If AI can write sermons and religious texts, does that make GPT the new prophet? Asking for a friend (and possibly starting a cult).

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Welcome to The Compiler, a daily curation of tech news.

SpaceX's Starlink is rapidly expanding, now serving over 4.6 million users across 118 countries with 7,000+ active satellites. While Elon gets the headlines, the real story is how this could reshape global internet infrastructure. Think about it: Starlink might become the de facto ISP for entire regions, potentially outmaneuvering traditional telcos. The technical challenges of managing this massive, dynamic network are mind-boggling. I'd love to see a deep dive into their custom routing algorithms and how they handle orbital traffic management at scale.

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Scientists have created "anthrobots" – synthetic biological entities made from human cells. Before you panic about grey goo scenarios, these are more like organized clumps of cells than full organisms. The potential applications in medicine are fascinating, but let's be real: the ethics committees are going to have a field day with this one. How do we define the line between "useful bio-tool" and "accidental new lifeform"? Prepare for some wild bioethics debates.

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DeepSeek just dropped a 607B parameter model that uses only 37B active parameters at a time. It's supposedly outperforming GPT-4 on reasoning and math tasks. This Mixture-of-Experts approach is fascinating – it's like having hundreds of specialized sub-models that get activated as needed. The efficiency gains are impressive, but I'm curious about the tradeoffs. Does this architecture introduce new failure modes or bias risks we haven't considered?

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• Rivian tripled EV deliveries in 2024 but missed production targets. Growing pains or deeper issues? Read more
• Apple and Strava deepen integration. Fitness tech arms race intensifies. Read more
• Samsung fridges can now add items to your Instacart. Your appliances are becoming personal shoppers. Read more

If AI models keep growing exponentially, at what point do we need to start worrying about their carbon footprint? Will "green AI" become the next big tech trend?

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