9:45 PM
Today in brief.
AI buildout is printing electrician and HVAC jobs
Goldman via a16z: 300k+ construction jobs tied to the AI buildout since 2022, ~75k in the past year, with electrician/HVAC trades growing ~2%/yr (about double construction overall).
1 source
🏛️ Policy
Authors fight publishers and agents over Anthropic settlement cash
Anthropic's $1.5B copyright settlement is paying ~$3k per pirated title across ~500k works, and authors say publishers and even agents are grabbing shares they should not get.
🏛️ Policy
87% of exploited bugs now get hit on day zero
a16z Charts of the Week: of bugs hackers actually exploit, ~87% are attacked on or before the day the bug goes public, up from 23% in 2020.
1 source 5:25 PM
🤖 AI
Astra Max one-shots a wedding site and an S-1 banker deck
Two concrete Astra Max workflows landed in the same window: a full wedding website, and an interactive DCF / sum-of-parts / comps pack from an S-1 (tested on Oura's IPO docs).
2 sources 4:45 PM
🔬 Science
Kalanick's Atoms looks like a robotaxi play
FT via TechCrunch: after a $1.7B a16z-led round, Atoms is prepping hiring and acquisitions aimed at AVs, with talks about Uber using its robotaxi tech (Uber already in for $100M).
🔬 Science
OpenAI says it hit automated research intern
First-party numbers: OpenAI claims coding agents now handle multi-day research tasks under human direction, with a March 2028 target for a supervised automated AI researcher.
One engineer maps every feeling about AI at once
A short HN essay walks surprise, fear, disgust, sadness, anger, and happiness about AI in one page, and lands on: positive technologically, bleak societally.
🤖 AI
Recreating Minecraft is a demo, not a benchmark
A sharp post names the launch-cycle trick: fixed viral demos (Minecraft, pelican SVG, bouncing balls) get overfit on a schedule, so they measure prep more than capability.
No stories in this category for this edition.