A rare 2009 photo of Kate Courteau, the architect who designed Y Combinator's visual identity, was shared.
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Coinbase announced that US traders can now access global crypto perpetual futures and options markets, which previously excluded them from about 80% of the market. Coinbase is the first regulated platform to offer this access, including Deribit options. The company thanked the CFTC for enabling the regulatory approval.
Matthew Green discovered that ChatGPT and Claude provide "encrypted raw reasoning" blobs, prompting him to spend a weekend exploring potential security implications, which he documented in a detailed blog post.
Tucker Carlson interviews a British doctor who worked in Gaza. The doctor describes treating four teenage boys who had all been shot in the testicles.
Replit has launched a new feature called Replit Canvas, described as an agentic design tool for building websites, apps, and marketing assets. The tool provides a visual space to explore ideas, create variants, and iterate, moving beyond chat-based design workflows.
British surgeon Nick Maynard told Tucker Carlson that children in Gaza were shot in specific body parts at food distribution points, describing it as "a game of target practice." He also said quadcopters fired into tents and reported that six newborns died after Israeli forces evacuated Al-Nasr pediatric hospital, leaving them in incubators.
A Detroit News investigation found that AIPAC has changed how it channels money into Rep. Haley Stevens' campaign by routing donations through a third-party processor, Democracy Engine, to avoid appearing in campaign filings. A pro-Israel Super PAC also spent $5.3 million on ads backing Stevens in Michigan's Democratic Senate primary, giving her a financial edge over progressive challengers.
Y Combinator announces the launch of Apollo Atomics, a company building compact nuclear reactors based on pressurized water technology. By redesigning the steam generator, Apollo claims to achieve an order-of-magnitude size reduction without sacrificing power, with deployment times under 24 months.
Garry Tan says Jo uses GBrain under the hood, calling it one of the fastest ways to set up a personal or company AI. Kevin Li describes building an AI assistant that works proactively, completing tasks before the user wakes up, and shares a real-life example of his own family using it.
Replit and Visa are expanding their partnership to develop agentic payments, aiming to make it seamless for developers to integrate payments into coding and AI workflows. Visa, a large enterprise customer and strategic investor in Replit, will collaborate on R&D to advance programmable value and money movement through agents.
Paul Graham praises the startup Corgi's founders, calling them the most relentless people Jared Friedman has worked with, noting that they overcame slim odds with $500K to achieve hard-won success.
A tweet promotes a podcast episode with Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston discussing what has made Y Combinator resilient for over 20 years, using the analogy that biosphere trees grown without wind grow tall but fall over—no stress, no strength.
The Justice Department has reportedly opened an investigation into E. Jean Carroll, who accused Donald Trump of rape and won a civil case where a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
Leila Clark defends Jared Friedman's decision to give an AI agent full access to YC's production database, arguing that professional engineers with proper guardrails—backups, documented prohibitions, ORMs, and post-mortems—can safely unlock significantly greater productivity from AI agents, which are often smarter than average new developers.
Senator Chris Murphy criticizes the Trump administration's handling of an Ebola outbreak, claiming 900 cases now threaten the U.S. due to the dismantling of global health teams. The post references a CDC request for staff to screen passengers from Central Africa for Ebola symptoms.
A new episode of Hard Drugs features Katharine Collins, who co-invented the R21 malaria vaccine during her PhD at Oxford's Jenner Institute. By modifying the expired patent of the first malaria vaccine (RTS,S), she created a cheaper, more scalable vaccine with a higher proportion of malaria antigen, making it more accessible for children worldwide.
For the first year on record, wind and solar energy generated more electricity than coal in the United States.
John Burn-Murdoch guest-hosted BBC's Radical podcast, speaking with geneticist Sir John Bell about recent and upcoming medical breakthroughs.
A new paper by Thomas Bloom, Will Sawin, Carl Schildkraut and Dmitrii Zhelezov disproves a well-known conjecture in additive combinatorics. The result shows there exist arbitrarily large finite sets A of real numbers where max(|A+A|,|AA|) ≤ |A|^{2-c}. The solution was achieved by humans using methods related to an earlier AI solution to the unit distance conjecture.
A post references that critics were wrong about mRNA technology, highlighting that personalized mRNA vaccines are now producing complete remissions in previously deadly cancers such as pancreatic, glioblastoma, triple-negative breast, renal, and melanoma.
YC built internal AI agent infrastructure with over 350 tools and self-improving skill loops. Partner Pete Koomen explains how giving agents unrestricted SQL database access was key, and why he believes AI has reached its personal computer moment.
Eric Levitz argues that Trump could have overseen a strong economy by doing nothing, as inflation was already declining and the AI boom was boosting growth. Instead, Trump initiated a global trade war, created an energy shock, and reduced the US labor force.
Eric Topol highlights remarkable progress in cancer immunotherapy, noting that vaccines are now achieving cures or remissions in some of the most refractory cancers, including pancreatic, melanoma, glioblastoma, renal, and triple-negative breast cancer.
Paul Graham's post shows a photo of Gustaf (right) during his time at Y Combinator, noting that the startup's founders looked like a band, which inspired their nickname for the company.
A Twitter user reposts a post from Hiroo Onoda describing a chart as "bleak," accompanied by an image of the chart.
A tweet by Nicholas Kristof states that Sudan is the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with the UAE accused of supporting the RSF militia responsible for mass atrocities, while President Trump remains silent after receiving $500 million from the UAE. A Middle East Eye report and Human Rights Watch findings are cited documenting the UAE's role in Sudan's civil war.
A post from 17 years ago shares a personal favorite picture, accompanied by the original tweet and image.
A user on X (formerly Twitter) shares that after a 14-year-old asked how to prove the Pythagorean theorem, the user drew a visual proof for them.
University of California STEM professors are calling for the return of standardized tests, citing severe math deficiencies among students. They report that instructors must reteach middle school mathematics, and that the current admissions metric based on GPA and essays can no longer reliably assess readiness for STEM majors due to grade inflation and AI-assisted essays.
Paul Graham argues that modern design is dominated by a colorless aesthetic, with cars, buildings, and movies losing vibrant color. He predicts the trend will eventually reverse, making colorlessness appear dated.