Vibe hacking, contract munching, Microsoft's very cool magazine

Good morning, Braun & Brains readers! Rachel here, reporting from my comfortable couch that is far too big for my living room, but it was free, so I am keeping it. Today, we are bringing in some new terms: vibe hacking and munching contracts. We’re also going over some big deals, crypto news, and a lot (and I mean a lot) of stories that are government-related.

I have to start this newsletter a juicy tech rumor…. the alleged Scale AI news. If you somehow avoided the internet over the past few years and haven’t heard of this company, Scale AI trains models by hiring contractors to label data, powering tools used by OpenAI, Microsoft and the US government. It has had major legal drama and co-founder drama in the past and is now back in the news cycle. Now, Bloomberg is saying that Meta is reportedly in talks to invest over $10 billion (!!!) in Scale AI, the largest outside AI investment in the company’s history and one of the biggest ever for a private tech firm. Meta already backed Scale’s $1 billion Series F round last year at a $13.8 billion valuation. This potential deal follows the startup’s revenue rising from $870 million to an expected $2 billion and the launch of Defense Llama, a military-focused LLM based on Meta’s Llama 3.

• Previous Legal Drama: The Department of Labor had been probing whether Scale AI misclassified its data labelers as independent contractors and underpaid them in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. It recently closed that investigation with no enforcement action, but Scale AI still faces lawsuits from former contractors demanding employee status.

• Previous Cofounder Drama: Cofounded by Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo in 2016, the company saw a dramatic falling out in 2018 when Guo left yet kept a 5% stake now worth over $1.2B, making her the youngest self made woman billionaire, surpassing Taylor Swift. Guo then sued Wang for defamation and in 2022 founded Passes, a creator monetization platform similar to OnlyFans that soon faced a class action suit over alleged illicit minor content.

• On a lighter note I once went to a Miami party during Hack Week hosted by Lucy that had a lemur in attendance.

Let’s get into some news….

BIG TECH

• X is partnering with Polymarket to show real-time predictions based on user and market data. Last year, Polymarket partnered with Perplexity and Substack. (TechCrunch)

• United Airlines now streams Spotify music, podcasts, and audiobooks on 130,000 seat back screens. (United)

  • Related: A few years ago, I saw that Diary Of A CEO had its own channel on British Airways Flights that had a screen. I would love more info on the subscriber conversion rate from this. (LinkedIn)

• Developers made $1.3 trillion through the App Store last year, mostly without paying Apple commission. (TechRepublic)

• X is testing a pilot that labels posts liked by users with differing viewpoints to highlight where opinions align. A small group of Community Notes contributors will see these callouts, add context, and rate feedback to help X build an open-source algorithm it plans to roll out more widely. (Ad Week)

• I had no idea that Microsoft launched a print magazine called Signal! Microsoft’s chief communication officer, Frank Shaw, said this is the company’s answer to a timely question: how do we earn trust and hold attention in an age of scrolling and skimming? (The Verge)

  

GOVERNMENT

• President Trump signed an executive order rolling back Obama- and Biden-era AI and cybersecurity programs. Those initiatives would have required software vendors to prove compliance with security standards, prioritized AI research and testing for defense, and explored encryption that can withstand quantum computing attacks. (Cybersecurity Dive)

• New apps are rolling out to assist immigrant in avoiding the deportation crackdown by sending real-time alerts of ICE sightings and offering “Know Your Rights” guides. (Rest of the World)

• Elon's DOGE team used an AI script to “munch” VA contracts by marking over 2,000 as “munchable” for cancellation. (I know it sounds weird. I know. I get it. But in this case, to "munch" means the AI flagged contracts it judged non-essential and ready to be cut). The script was built overnight by an engineer with no healthcare experience and relied on flawed prompts and outdated models that misread contract values and misclassified vital services. People are saying this automated munching process is super problematic for decisions that affect veterans’ care. (ProPublica)

• Anduril won the US Army’s $22B AR/VR headset contract, formerly held by Microsoft, and is teaming up with Meta on the project. It also closed a $2.5B Series G round led by Founders Fund, doubling its valuation to $30.5B after reaching $1B in revenue in 2024. Palmer Luckey, the founder, began building VR headsets at 16, launched Oculus VR, sold it to Facebook for about $2B in 2014, and led product design in Facebook’s AR/VR division until 2017. Fun fact: In a previous role I sat with Palmer and his wife in a green room before escorting them to the stage at an event, where he promptly dunked on my boss in front of the entire crowd. Rough day at work. (TechCrunch)

RUMORS FROM INSIDE THE WHITE HOUSE

• Source: Before Starlink was installed at the White House, Trump officials might have brushed off security concerns. The network reportedly used a weak “Starlink Guest” WiFi that lacked basic protections like two-factor authentication. (Washington Post)

• Source: Trump’s team is reportedly working on a deal that could require Meta to pay restitution to conservatives. The move stems from claims that right-leaning users and businesses were unfairly targeted by the platform’s content moderation, especially during COVID. If finalized, it would mark a major escalation in efforts to hold Big Tech accountable for alleged political bias. (New York Post)

• Source: According to a person familiar with the matter, Trump’s company sent a cease-and-desist to stop the $TRUMP Wallet and token from launching. This whole thing is confusing to me. (Bloomberg)

BIG CRYPTO MOVES

• Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, went public on the NYSE and rose 168% on its first day, raising nearly $1.1B. It’s one of the few crypto firms trading publicly and is known for being highly regulated. Circle launched USDC with Coinbase in 2018. USDC is now the second-biggest stablecoin after Tether, and stablecoins overall are expected to grow as new laws and political support boost the market. (CNBC)

• Gemini, the crypto exchange founded by the Winklevoss twins, has confidentially filed for a US IPO. The move comes after the SEC closed its investigation into the company and following a $5M settlement with regulators. (Reuters)

  • Background on founders: After suing their Harvard classmate Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing their Facebook idea and settling for a boatload of cash in 2004, the Winklevoss twins used part of their payout to buy about 1% of all Bitcoin in circulation at the time. A few years later, they competed as Olympic rowers in the men’s pair event at the 2008 Beijing Games. Wild!

AI

• Asteria is a new AI film studio that uses only licensed footage to avoid legal trouble. Will more AI usage in Hollywood lead to more and better indie films, or will it cheapen content from the big players? Probably both. (Vulture)

• AI-powered “vibe hacking” could let skilled attackers unleash dozens of zero-day exploits at once with self-modifying malware. It is called vibe hacking because you give the AI a general idea of what you want and it turns that into working code and exploits. This is a big deal because a single AI-driven strike could compromise critical systems worldwide before defenders know it happened. Not good vibes :/ (Wired)

• A bunch of mathematicians met in Berkeley for a weekend to try to stump ChatGPT’s o4-mini with their hardest questions. Each problem the bot couldn’t solve would earn its creator a $7,500 reward. The bot proved much faster than a professional mathematician, being compared to a “very, very good graduate student.” Eventually, the group found ten questions the bot couldn’t crack, but it took some time. (Scientific American)

  • Check out this 2023 article on how AI is coming for mathematics… Wild. (New York Times)

    

Thanks for reading Braun & Brains! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

SCROLL STOPPING

Just stuff I found interesting…

• The Tiktok start turned pop artist Addison Rae has never used ChatGPT. Nice. (X)

• Thanks to Tony Hawk's nonprofit and advocates from the skate community, the mecca of skateboarding has reopened under the Brooklyn Bridge after being closed for 15 years. Officially called the Brooklyn Banks, the skateboarding landmark is now part of a public space called The Arches. Since the 1980s, it was a famous spot for skaters from around the world thanks to its brick slopes and open layout. It shut down in 2010 for bridge repairs and became a construction site, and its return is a pretty big deal for New York’s skate culture. (NY1)

  

• One of the first “canceled” men of the internet era is back with a new book! James Frey, once publicly shamed on Oprah’s Book Club for fabricating his bestselling memoir, returns at 55 with Next to Heaven, a dark satire of sex, wealth and murder among the ultra-rich. He has plenty of experience with that world, considering he lives in the beautiful town of New Canaan (home to one of my favorite coffee shop called Zumbach’s) , drives a vintage Porsche and collects fine art. He maintains that his earlier memoir was “autofiction before that word existed” and about 85% true. (New York Times)