Techmeme: An essay on the history, theory, progress, and potential of world models, a prominent theme at Nvidia GTC 2026, co-written by General Intuition CEO Pim de Witte (Not Boring by Packy McCormick)

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A look at “tokenmaxxing”, a status game where employees at a number of companies compete on leaderboards to show how much AI they're using — An engineer at OpenAI processed 210 billion “tokens” — enough text to fill Wikipedia 33 times — through the company's artificial intelligence models …

More: Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, and The Indian Express

X: @kevinroose and @kevinroose. LinkedIn: Kevin Roose

Bluesky: @krisarmstrong1 and @davidhiggins. Forums: r/bayarea

Aaron Tilley / The Information:

CEO of Halide-maker Lux Optics, Ben Sandofsky, sues his co-founder Sebastiaan de With, now on Apple's design team, alleging improper use of funds and stolen IP — Last summer, Apple held talks to acquire Lux Optics, a tiny startup that makes Halide, one of the most popular and critically acclaimed camera apps in the App Store.

More: AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, Digital Trends, GSMArena.com, Engadget, The Mac Observer, The Verge, and MacRumors. Forums: MacRumors Forums

Shubham Agarwal / The Guardian:

How gig apps like Kled AI, Silencio, Neon Mobile, and Luel AI pay users for data that AI companies can use to train models, from phone calls to videos of places — Gig AI trainers worldwide are selling moments of their lives, including calls and texts, to AI companies for quick cash

More: Wired. Bluesky: @iamjenmcg. Mastodon: @[email protected]. Forums: r/technology

Bloomberg:

Speaking at a Beijing forum, Tim Cook praised Apple's partners and developers in China, a week after Chinese state media labeled the App Store “monopolistic” — Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook commended Chinese developers and the company's partners in the country …

More: Tech in Asia, iLounge, and CNBC

Steven Levy / Wired:

Inside Palantir's recent developer conference, where it doubled down on a vision of AI built for battlefield advantage as its commercial business soars — As business soars, Palantir is doubling down on a vision of AI built for battlefield advantage—and attracting customers who agree.

More: Motley Fool. X: @wired. Forums: r/technology

Catherine Perloff / The Information:

Sources: advertisers that bought ChatGPT's first ad campaigns say the process was low tech and that they haven't received much data showing if their ads worked — As OpenAI prepares to open up ad sales to more marketers next month, it is trying to address what some advertisers say was lacking in the initial ad sales offering.

More: Reuters and Tech in Asia

LinkedIn: Wes N.. Bluesky: @carnage4life, @rejectionking, @edzitron.com, @marypcbuk, and @paularmstrongtbd

Drew Harwell / Washington Post:

Social media accounts showing AI-generated women as pro-Trump soldiers, truckers, and cops have gone viral, with thousands appearing to believe they are real — The beautiful Army blonde Jessica Foster has posed with an F-22 Raptor fighter jet, donned camouflage in the desert and walked …

More: Digby's Hullabaloo, NextDraft, and The Independent

Bluesky: @donmcgahan, @nndroid, @willoremus.com, and @drewharwell.com

Forums: r/ArtificialInteligence, r/politics, and r/NewsOfTheStupid

Bloomberg:

Elon Musk announces Terafab, an Austin-based project run by Tesla and SpaceX to manufacture robotics, AI, and space data center chips for Tesla, xAI, and SpaceX — Elon Musk said his Terafab project — a grand plan to eventually manufacture his own chips for robotics, artificial intelligence …

More: Livemint, The Economic Times, Digit, Business Insider, Crypto Briefing, Tech in Asia, TechEBlog, and Sherwood News

X: @tesla, @xai, @elonmusk, @futurejurvetson, @elonmusk, and @katiemiller

Not Boring by Packy McCormick:

An essay on the history, theory, progress, and potential of world models, a prominent theme at Nvidia GTC 2026, co-written by General Intuition CEO Pim de Witte — Welcome to the 458 newly Not Boring people who have joined us since our last essay! Join 260,170 smart, curious folks by subscribing here:

X: @gen_intuition, @notboringco, @packym, @pimdewitte, @pimdewitte, @max_rimpel, and @pmarca

Financial Times:

Sources: OpenAI aims to grow to about 8,000 employees by the end of 2026, from ~4,500 today, as it seeks to stop Anthropic's momentum with business customers — OpenAI plans to almost double its headcount by the end of the year as it accelerates a push to sell to businesses and gain ground …

More: Crypto Briefing, Engadget, The Decoder, and Wall Street Journal. Bluesky: @carnage4life

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:

Cloaked, which offers security and privacy services such as VPNs, raised a $375M Series B in a mix of equity and growth funding, for enterprise expansion — Consumer-facing security tools often focus on one kind of modality, such as password protection, VPNs, or identity management.

More: Crunchbase News, Pulse 2.0, Ubergizmo, Ventureburn, Business Standard, Tech Funding News, and FinTech Global

Allison Johnson / The Verge:

Hands-on with Gemini task automation on mobile: it's super impressive despite being very slow and failing at some tasks; it can order food, book Ubers, and more — It took nine minutes to order my dinner, but it still feels like the future. … I've been testing out Gemini's new task automation …

Richard Nieva / Forbes:

Vercel, which helps developers host web apps and AI agents, says its run-rate GAAP revenue hit $340M at the end of February, up 86% YoY, amid the AI coding boom — One of the most popular ways to view the Epstein Files, an interface called Jmail that mimics a Gmail inbox, is hosted on Guillermo Rauch's $9.3 billion unicorn Vercel.

Chang Che / The Guardian:

A look at China's rapidly expanding robotics sector, which now has roughly 140 companies hoping to build humanoids, fueled by massive state-backed investments — How close are we to the sci-fi vision of autonomous humanoid robots? I visited 11 companies in five Chinese cities to find out

More: TechRadar, South China Morning Post, Tech in Asia, and ZeroHedge News

X: @changxche, @scott_r_singer, @kyleichan, and @chris_j_paxton

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'A.I.-Washing' Layoffs? + Why L.L.M.s Can't Write Well + Tokenmaxxing

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