Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
Figure’s IPO filing marks Mike Cagney’s return to public markets
Figure Technology, a seven-year-old blockchain-based lending company, has filed for an IPO of its Class A common stock on Nasdaq, with Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and BofA Securities serving as its lead bookrunners. The number of shares on offer and price range have not yet been determined. Figure says in its IPO paperwork that its revenue…
Eight Sleep raises $100M to expand its AI-powered sleep tech
Roughly one in three adults in the U.S. regularly gets insufficient sleep, driving demand for tools that can monitor, analyze, and enhance rest. Eight Sleep, founded in 2014, offers AI-powered sleep tech products that promise to transform your bed into a preventive health device. The New York-based startup announced Tuesday that it raised a fresh…
X’s declining Android app installs are hurting subscription revenue
Elon Musk’s X is struggling on Android devices in terms of new installs, even while App Store downloads grow, according to new data from app intelligence provider Appfigures. In July 2025, X downloads on Google Play saw a significant decline, as new installs dropped by 44% year-over-year worldwide, even as iOS downloads grew by 15%.…
Allianz Life data breach affects 1.1 million customers
The July data breach at U.S. insurance giant Allianz Life allowed hackers to steal the personal information of 1.1 million customers, according to data breach notification site Have I Been Pwned. Allianz Life disclosed the data breach in late July, confirming that hackers stole the personal information of the “majority” of its 1.4 million customers…
TikTok’s new guidelines add subtle changes for LIVE creators, AI content, and more
TikTok is preparing an update to its Community Guidelines, which dictate the rules for participating on the social video platform as well as what standards the company uses to determine the videos that make it onto its For You feed. While the update largely rewrites the original text for simplicity’s sake, there are a few…
Duolingo CEO says controversial AI memo was misunderstood
While Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn was loudly criticized this year after declaring that Duolingo would become an “AI-first company,” he suggested in a new interview the real issue was that he “did not give enough context.” “Internally, this was not controversial,” von Ahn told The New York Times. “Externally, as a publicly traded company…
‘Stranger Things’ creators may be leaving Netflix
Netflix could soon lose the creative team behind one of its biggest hits. Earlier this week, Variety and other Hollywood publications reported that Matt and Ross Duffer, the brothers who created “Stranger Things” (and wrote and directed many episodes), were in talks to sign an exclusive deal with Paramount (now under the ownership of David…
GPT-5 is supposed to be nicer now
OpenAI announced late Friday that it’s updating its latest model to be “warmer and friendlier.” The company recently launched the much-anticipated GPT-5 in a process that CEO Sam Altman admitted was “a little more bumpy than we’d hoped for,” with some users complaining that they preferred the previous model, GPT-4o. OpenAI is trying to address…
Les Amis, the European app helping women form friendships, launches in New York
Making friends as an adult can be tough, especially after moving to a new city. Luckily, modern technology exists, and more people are turning to apps like Bumble For Friends, Flox, and Timeleft to form new friendships quickly. One app called Les Amis aims to stand out by targeting women, transgender, and LGBTQ+ individuals, primarily…
Anthropic says some Claude models can now end ‘harmful or abusive’ conversations
Anthropic has announced new capabilities that will allow some of its newest, largest models to end conversations in what the company describes as “rare, extreme cases of persistently harmful or abusive user interactions.” Strikingly, Anthropic says it’s doing this not to protect the human user, but rather the AI model itself. To be clear, the…
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