Daily Digest — 2026-01-12

Must Read

1. [AI] Apple picks Google's Gemini to power Siri — Major partnership shift. Apple outsourcing AI to Google signals they're behind on foundational models.

   • https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/12/apple-google-ai-siri-gemini.html

2. [AI] The next two years of software engineering — Addy Osmani on how AI changes the craft. 238 points on HN.

   • https://addyosmani.com

3. [AI] Simon Willison's LLMs in 2025 year-end review — Comprehensive 26-section roundup. Covers agents, Claude Code, Chinese models, OpenAI losing their lead. Reposted by Karpathy.

   • https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/31/th...

4. [AI] Google launches Universal Commerce Protocol for AI agents — Infrastructure for AI agents to transact. This is the rails for agent economy.

   • https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/11/google-announces-a-new-protocol-to-facilitate-commerce-using-ai-agents/

Worth Reading

5. [AI] Karpathy on LLM mental model — "The correct way to think about LLMs is that you are not optimizing for a single specific model but for a family of models controlled by a single dial — the compute you wish to spend."

   • https://x.com/karpathy (Jan 7)

6. [AI] Nvidia and Eli Lilly invest $1B in AI drug laboratory — AI + pharma convergence accelerating.

   • https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-12/nvidia-to-invest-1-billion-in-ai-drug-laboratory-with-eli-lilly

7. [AI] Anthropic launches Claude for Healthcare — Vertical AI play in healthcare.

   • https://www.businessinsider.com/anthropic-chases-openai-ai-heath-claude-2026-1

8. [AI] OpenAI Codex agent updates — gpt-5.2-codex shown, skill invocation with $. "A ton of new things coming in Jan." Sam Altman repost.

   • https://x.com/thsottiaux (Jan 2)

9. [AI] FUSE is All You Need — Giving agents access to anything via filesystems. 188 points on HN.

   • https://jakobemmerling.de

10. [STARTUPS] Alphabet reaches $4 trillion market valuation — First company to hit this milestone.

    • https://www.ft.com/content/02d44794-815f-40dc-9b49-0e10432147a9

Monitor

11. [AI] Chinese AI leaders warn of widening US gap — Geopolitical AI dynamics.

    • https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-10/china-ai-leaders-warn-of-widening-gap-with-us-after-1b-ipo-week

12. [AI] Google removes AI Overviews for medical queries — AI liability in health context.

    • https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/11/google-ai-overviews-health-guardian-investigation

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From X/Twitter

@karpathy

• Jan 7: nanochat miniseries v1 — LLMs as family of models on compute dial
• Jan 6: "The majority of the ruff ruff is people who look at the current point and people who look at the current slope"

@sama

• Reposted ChatGPT Health launch (Fidji Simo)
• Reposted Codex agent updates (gpt-5.2-codex)

@naval

• Reposted Mastering Zcash guide — crypto/privacy focused

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Technical Deep Dives

• Reproducing DeepSeek's MHC: When Residual Connections Explode — https://taylorkolasinski.com
• LLVM: The Bad Parts — https://npopov.com
• Zen-C: Write like a high-level language, run like C — https://github.com/z-libs

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Sources: Hacker News, Techmeme, X/Twitter