Greetings! Your latest quick tech update is here:
☀️ On this day: On June 15, 2010, the iPhone 4 went up for pre-order and the rush crashed both Apple's and AT&T's ordering systems, with some customers' personal data briefly exposed during the failure. Apple and AT&T still logged more than 600,000 orders in 24 hours, the most Apple had ever taken in a single day at that point. The phone shipped June 24 and sold 1.7 million units in three days, then drew the "antennagate" complaints over dropped calls when gripped a certain way.
What’s happening:
🪓 Tech layoffs hit highest level in 2 years
🚀 SpaceX tops $2 trillion in record IPO, +19%
📱 UK to ban social media for under-16s
🤖 Several cheap AIs can beat one expensive one
📺 Fox to buy Roku for $22 billion
+ 📊 Daily poll and results
+ 📈 Trending tools and resources
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Hand-picked news:
🪓 Tech layoffs hit highest level in 2 years ↗️LINK
Tech companies have cut nearly 150,000 jobs across roughly 363 rounds this year, about 974 people a day and 44% faster than last year, according to layoff tracker TrueUp.
Last month brought nearly 40,000 cuts, the worst single month in 2 years, and AI ranked as the most-cited reason for layoffs across every industry for the third straight month, per Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Skeptics call AI a convenient cover story. Meta cut 8,000 workers in May, about 10% of staff, 2 months after Zuckerberg set a Miami record with a $170 million mansion.
🚀 SpaceX tops $2 trillion in record IPO ↗️LINK
SpaceX shares jumped 19% on their Nasdaq debut Friday, closing at $160.95 and pushing the rocket company's market cap above $2 trillion after the largest IPO in Wall Street history.
The offering raised roughly $75 billion, more than doubling Saudi Aramco's 2019 record, and the gains officially crowned Musk as the first trillionaire on record, lifting his net worth past $1 trillion.
Other space stocks tanked as money chased SpaceX, with Rocket Lab and Redwire each dropping over 10%. Apparently the rising tide does not lift all rockets, only Musk's.
📱 UK to ban social media for under-16s ↗️LINK
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced Monday that his government will ban under-16s from social media platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook and X, though messaging apps like WhatsApp and Signal stay exempt.
A national consultation drove the move, with over 83% of participating parents saying social media's risks outweigh its benefits. Starmer wants the ban active by next spring and calls it tougher than any country's.
Australia, which passed the first such ban last year, offers a preview of the challenge. VPN downloads there spiked right before enforcement, suggesting determined teens already found their workaround.
🤖 Several cheap AIs can beat one expensive one ↗️LINK
OpenRouter launched Fusion, an API that sends a prompt to several models at once, has a judge model compare the answers, then merges them into one synthesized reply.
A budget trio of DeepSeek V4 Pro, Kimi K2.6, and Gemini 3 Flash came within about a point of Claude Fable 5 on a deep research benchmark, while costing roughly half as much.
CEO Alex Atallah frames Fusion as a bet against single-model dominance. The timing lands well, since Fable 5 now sits off the table for most users who suddenly need cheaper paths to frontier performance.
📺 Fox to buy Roku for $22 billion ↗️LINK
Fox agreed Monday to acquire Roku for $160 per share in cash and stock, valuing the streaming platform at roughly $22 billion and uniting Fox's news and sports with Roku's 100 million-plus households.
The deal makes the combined company the third-largest player in US television by viewing share and bundles Tubi with The Roku Channel. Fox shareholders will own 73%, with Roku holders keeping 27%.
There's a twist here: Fox dumped its Roku stake back in 2020 to help fund its Tubi purchase. Six years later it is buying the whole company, and investors sent Fox shares down sharply.
Today’s Poll:
Vote and find out about the result tomorrow.
Yesterday’s Poll Result:
Do you think it's smart for universities to cut majors based on what's hot in the job market right now?
A) Yes - 31%
B) No - 69% 🏆
Reader’s opinions:
“Universities are chronically behind industry by 5-10 years. Being more responsive but not necessary reactive is a smart move. Especially when there is a 5-6 year lead time on and program they offer creating workforce ready graduates.”
“What's hot now may not be hot tomorrow. On the other hand, some university degrees are so high in their ivory towers that students are ill equipped to enter the workfoce after graduation. That needs to change.”
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