Damian Pickett · No. 36
Friday 9 October 2026
Apple has confirmed a product launch for Tuesday 13 October, expected to focus on new smart home hardware rather than a traditional keynote event.
Google is turning Gemini into an agent that can plan and execute tasks across business apps, delegating work to subagents and drawing on multiple AI models.
Ben Affleck directs and stars opposite Kerry Washington in ‘Animals’, a Netflix kidnapping thriller echoing Kurosawa’s ‘High and Low’, out now to mixed reviews.
Read · Lenny's Newsletter
A guide to AI agents for product managers
With Google turning Gemini into an agentic coworker today, Lenny’s guide to folding AI agents into product management lands right on time.
Listen · Founders
A timely refresher on writing ads that sell, straight from Damian’s own trade of product marketing and persuasion.
Listen · David Senra
As Apple reshuffles its leadership around John Ternus, Doug Leone’s take on great founders starting over late in their careers feels timely.
Listen · Acquired
A deep dive into the NFL’s business empire, good background for a Patriots fan ahead of Sunday’s game against the Raiders.
Natura has launched a $99 Interface smart ring that summons AI agents with a press of the finger to complete tasks, capture notes or control devices, while also tracking health.
Ben Affleck has gone viral for his detailed knowledge of neural networks and open-weight models, surprising viewers given he sold his AI filmmaking startup to Netflix last year.
The company behind the LMArena leaderboard has raised $200 million led by Lightspeed and Khosla, and is now also measuring AI models on alignment issues such as lying.
Goodfire has launched monitors that peek inside a model as it works, rather than paying a second AI to review everything it does, to catch rogue agents more cheaply.
Simon Willison has updated ttok, his command-line tool for counting tokens with OpenAI’s tiktoken library, fixing a warning and refreshing it after a few years untouched.
A revived Atari 800XL connects via HDMI and ships with 25 built-in games, bringing the 1980s hybrid computer-console back decades after it fell out of production.
Forza Horizon 6 is heading to PS5 on 26 January, with the racing game’s first expansion also due early next year.
Richard Bronson, a former Stratton Oakmont partner who served federal prison time for securities violations, has launched Commissary Club, using AI to help people leaving prison find jobs.
Amazon’s latest high-end tablet shares several design similarities with Apple’s iPad Pro, though the two differ in the detail, according to a hands-on comparison.
Spotify has launched technology.spotify.com, a new site making its internal engineering tools available for other companies to buy and use.
Bloomberg reports Apple will introduce touchscreen OLED MacBook Pro models and an OLED iPad mini around 27 October, alongside a new M6 14-inch MacBook Pro.
iOS 27 brings two new features to Apple’s Home app, arriving ahead of a run of smart home product launches expected next week.
Tim Cook told The Independent’s David Phelan, in an interview at Apple’s UK headquarters, why he chose to step back from the CEO role before the iPhone Duo’s launch.
Keyboard shortcut utility TextExpander now offers a free plan, giving users its core Snippets feature across Mac, iPhone, iPad, Windows and Chrome.
At a Busan Film Festival masterclass, Alfonso Cuarón reflected on lessons from ‘Children of Men’ and learning to put life before cinema.
HBO has ordered an hour-long ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ drama series, with co-writer Adele Lim as showrunner and executive producer and the 2018 film’s original cast returning.
Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein will oversee TCM going forward, after Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy previously led the classic film channel at Warner Bros.
Matthew Lillard said he expected ‘Scooby-Doo’ to launch a bigger career, and had to sell his house and downsize after the franchise’s sequel underperformed.
Boston opened its preseason with a 124-113 win over Cleveland, with Luka Garza leading the way while the Celtics rested their top players.
George Russell will race Mercedes’ older-specification car in Singapore while Kimi Antonelli runs the upgraded package, as the team tries to work out why the updates have underperformed.
Oscar Piastri now rates Red Bull alongside Mercedes as Formula 1’s strongest team, as McLaren loses ground after Red Bull’s significant upgrade to the RB22.
The FIA will introduce further changes to wet-weather engine software from the United States Grand Prix, after a review into the bug that delayed last week’s race start.
Nick Offerman praised Red Sox pitcher Payton Tolle, who has embraced comparisons to Offerman’s Ron Swanson character, for his moustache and on-field personality.
Margaret Hamilton, who led the 100-person team that wrote the onboard software guiding Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the Moon, has died aged 90.