Damian Pickett · No. 51
Saturday 24 October 2026
Apple’s foldable iPhone Duo went on sale on Friday, and queues formed outside stores for the first time in years. Early buyers also found hinge cracks and a same-day jailbreak, alongside reviews calling it an expensive, messy good time.
OpenAI says it will cut future frontier models off from live internet access during training, citing significant risks, weeks after an engineer said the idea would not work.
Tatum scored 36 points, including two clutch baskets late, as the Celtics outscored the Knicks 33-24 in the third quarter to win their home opener 107-103.
Read · Lenny's Newsletter
Stories from the founders of Netflix, Uber, Airbnb, Substack, Stripe, Datadog, GitHub, Segment, Dropbox, Superhuman, Instacart, Nextdoor, and many more
Launch day for the iPhone Duo and today’s product-market-fit debate in the tech section make this a fitting reminder of what it actually feels like when a product clicks.
Listen · Founders
On the day queues returned to Apple Stores, Sam Walton’s obsession with the customer in-store feels apt.
Listen · David Senra
A founder building frontier defence technology makes a fitting companion to today’s AI safety story.
Listen · Acquired
A study of one of the world’s most enduring consumer products, a nice companion to iPhone Duo launch day.
Simon Willison shares a prompt that has Claude Opus 5.5 build an artifact which repaints an uploaded photo in real time using a canvas and simulated brush strokes, a neat demo of what a few lines of AI-written code can do.
Nvidia’s chief executive demonstrated tiny Microduck robots that sit, nap and somersault on voice command, with 20,000 already sold ahead of Christmas.
Moonshot’s Kimi K3.1 Pro landed on the Kimi API today, not yet open weights, with full model weights promised by 4 November.
OpenAI says it has strengthened containment for frontier model training and evaluation, including offline environments and high-compute red-teaming, as it tightens safety ahead of future releases.
At TechCrunch Disrupt, two founders and a VC discussed how to build an early following and keep it, arguing durable growth beats one viral moment.
Investors from Iconiq and Sapphire Ventures, plus Superhuman Mail founder Rahul Vohra, set out the do’s and don’ts of building a product people actually want.
The top-funded fusion startup received an $85 million federal award to develop conductors that can withstand the conditions inside a fusion power plant.
Engadget tests the ProArt P16 and finds Nvidia’s new RTX Spark platform off to a good start, though the laptop is really built for AI enthusiasts rather than everyone.
Developers are already stretching the iPhone Duo’s new foldable form factor, building apps that turn it into a miniature Mac, a toaster animation and a Nintendo DS-style console.
Photos shared on Reddit and the MacRumors forums show a small number of new iPhone Duo units developing display cracks right along the hinge.
Joanna Stern’s 16-minute video review commissioned a custom robot to fold the Duo 32,000 times in a week to test whether the hinge would loosen.
Hacker team Calif jailbroke an iPhone Duo running iOS 27.1 within hours of release, showing off bouncing icons, widgets and an animated extra on the outer display.
Apple’s Jen Simmons says the company is exploring ways to let websites make better use of the iPhone Duo’s smaller outer screen, detailed in a new WebKit blog post on Safari 27.1.
Marking 20 years since Marie Antoinette, Sofia Coppola tells IndieWire what she learned about the film’s critical backlash, and about her late mother, while finishing Eleanor Coppola’s own documentary.
Variety reports Zendaya will push for a lead actress Oscar campaign as Chani in Dune: Part Three, the final instalment of Denis Villeneuve’s trilogy, a shift from the supporting category.
Pedro Pascal describes more than a year of cello lessons for Behemoth!, taken before the film was greenlit, alongside reflections on breaking into Hollywood.
Deadline rounds up reviews for the week’s new theatrical releases, led by DC Studios’ Clayface, as a busy weekend begins at the box office.
Pritchard received a contract extension before the season, but his role has not expanded to match it, Boston.com notes early in the Celtics’ title defence.
Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla says he does not see a clear path through a much-improved Eastern Conference this season.
New England lost 30-24 to the Bears in Chicago on Thursday night in their Week 7 game.
Drake Maye’s second-quarter interception loomed large as the Patriots lost to the Bears, with the quarterback visibly frustrated at the postgame podium.
Charles Leclerc led both Friday practice sessions for the US Grand Prix in Austin, narrowly ahead of Kimi Antonelli, as McLaren struggled for grip.
Horner says he is in no hurry to return to the paddock and could live with never working in Formula 1 again, having been sacked as Red Bull’s team principal.
Lewis Hamilton says he wants to remain in Formula 1 into the 2030s so he can fulfil his ambition of racing at the sport’s first African Grand Prix.
Over the Monster looks back on the 2026 Red Sox season, starting with the 7 September sweep of the Dodgers that let fans dream of a Hollywood ending.
An academic institute has been created in honour of longtime Red Sox executive Larry Lucchino, recognising his decades of work in baseball.
A Scottish studio has transformed a two-bed, red-brick bungalow in Prestwich, near Manchester, into a four-bedroom family home, fitting a quart into a pint pot.
