Apple Mini Apps 📱, Blue Origin lands rocket 🚀, GPT-5.1 for devs 👨‍💻

Apple's new Mini Apps Partner program gives Apple a 15% cut of in-app purchases for mini apps and games within larger 'super apps' ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ 

Sign Up |Advertise|View Online TLDR Together With TLDR 2025-11-14 Stability or and innovation in payments technology (Sponsor) Why pick one? With Marqeta, launch payments experiences without choosing between innovation and scale. Marqeta combines the scale and reliability of proven payments infrastructure with the flexibility and innovation of a modern platform—so you can move faster, reduce risk, and grow with confidence. From optimizing spend and cash flow to building seamless, rewards-driven customer experiences, Marqeta's solutions have you covered. When it comes to issuing and processing payments, don't sacrifice. Choose a payments provider who delivers more.  See what's possible with Marqeta > Learn more > 📱 Big Tech & Startups Apple Aims to Capitalize on Mini App Trend With New Program (4 minute read) Apple's new Mini Apps Partner program gives Apple a 15% cut of in-app purchases for mini apps and games within larger 'super apps'. Mini app creators have been using loopholes to avoid Apple's in-app payments framework. The new program should help lock those software creators into Apple's preferred approach and guarantee more revenue for the company. Mini apps or games must be released by a party not directly or indirectly controlled by the developer of the dominant app to qualify for the new program. Blue Origin Lands Booster After Rocket Launch and Matches SpaceX's Feat (7 minute read) Blue Origin nailed the landing of its New Glenn rocket booster yesterday. It is the second company to successfully accomplish the feat. New Glenn's two successful launches in a row could win it a sizable slice of the business of sending stuff to space. The New Glenn booster is considerably bigger and heavier than SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster. 🚀 Science & Futuristic Technology Android Dreams (43 minute read) Trying to predict the future is an excellent feedback mechanism for developing a world model in areas you care about. You can review your predictions to see what you got wrong and why. This site presents a timeline for AI development that predicts that a continuously improving AI that learns from interactions in the real world, with the potential to become more expert at most tasks than even humans with 40 years of experience, won't be developed until after 2045. Winning robotics is a national security issue - technology that gives its owner access to users and resources at scale is a threat. There will be a diversity of robot form factors in the future. Biohub for Non-Biologists: Behind Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg's plan to cure all diseases (68 minute read) The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative's Biohub has a billion dollars a year to make several long-horizon bets on basic science. Its aim is to change our understanding of immunological science and open up the door to engineering human health, simulating immune therapies, reprogramming dysfunctional cells, and preventing diseases before they arise. It has opened up three models on its virtual cells platform: VariantFormer, a model that directly translates personal genetic variations into tissue-specific gene activity patterns; CryoLens, a large-scale model for cryoET that provides unsupervised structural similarity analysis; and scLDM, a model that can generate realistic single-cell data in silico at unprecedented fidelity. A transcript of an interview with Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, where they discuss the Biohub secret master plan, is available in the article. 💻 Programming, Design & Data Science The 5-Step Playbook for Finding AI's Value (Sponsor) We love this practical guide from You.com that walks through a proven framework to identify, prioritize, and document high-value AI opportunities. Explore where AI can drive the most impact in your organization, both internally and externally. Learn more with this AI Use Case Discovery Guide. Introducing GPT-5.1 for developers (11 minute read) OpenAI has released GPT-5.1 on its API platform. The model can dynamically adapt how much time it spends thinking based on the complexity of tasks, making it significantly faster and more token-efficient on simpler everyday tasks. It features a 'no reasoning' mode to respond faster on tasks that don't require deep thinking. OpenAI has extended prompt caching for up to 24 hours to drive faster responses for follow-up questions at a lower cost. Priority Processing customers will experience notably faster performance with GPT-5.1 over GPT-5. Generative UI SDK for Flutter (GitHub Repo) GenUI (Generative UI SDK for Flutter) is a Flutter library that lets developers easily add interactive generative UI to their applications. It is designed to help developers replace static walls of text from large language models with dynamic and interactive graphical UIs. It can turn conversations and agent interactions into rich, intuitive experiences. State changes in the UI are fed back to the agent, creating a high-bandwidth interaction loop. 🎁 Miscellaneous The advice I would give on a mentorship call (8 minute read) The most helpful mentors are usually folks who are only a few years ahead of you. A person who is a decade ahead may be in an objectively more impressive place, but someone nearer to your stage will have experienced an environment that is much closer to your own. This post contains advice for college freshmen seeking mentorship on managing their time and looking for their first job. Tesla AI department told to prepare for 'hardest year' of their lives (3 minute read) The Tesla engineers behind Autopilot, robotaxis, and the Optimus robot have been told to brace for the 'hardest year of their lives' in 2026. The company aims next year to turn a decade of autonomy promises into something commercial, scalable, and visible to investors. Tesla's next era is tied to two products that are nowhere near mass deployment. Elon Musk has previously claimed that Tesla's Optimus robot could become the largest product in history. ⚡ Quick Links Atlassian named a Leader in Gartner's 2025 Magic Quadrant for Collaborative Work Management (Sponsor) Discover how Atlassian's Teamwork Collection is helping teams connect work, knowledge, and goals in one intelligent platform. Read the full story to see what this means for teams everywhere. Big Tech's Soaring Profits Have an Ugly Underside: OpenAI's Losses (6 minute read) It's becoming clear that AI startups are a sinkhole for losses. Unlocking high software engineering pace: Ruthlessly eliminate drag in your processes and technologies (8 minute read) Treat drag like the threat it is: make it visible and ruthlessly eliminate it. How To Build A Smartwatch: Software - Setting Expectations & Roadmap (25 minute read) A look at what it took to bring the Pebble 2 Duo to production and what is coming next at Pebble Tech Co. Craving more AI in your inbox? (Sponsor) TLDR AI is your daily fix of LLMs, GenAI, and deep learning goodness. Same TLDR format. Still free. Subscribe now. After years of saying no, Tesla reportedly adding Apple CarPlay to its cars (2 minute read) Elon Musk hasn't previously opined on the omission of CarPlay from Tesla's vehicles, but he has frequently criticized Apple. Why agents DO NOT write most of our code - a reality check (11 minute read) AI agents aren't there yet, and more people are starting to admit it. Perfecting Baseline (10 minute read) Baseline adoption has grown - it is now time to improve it based on real user feedback to have an even greater impact. Love TLDR? Tell your friends and get rewards! Share your referral link below with friends to get free TLDR swag! https://refer.tldr.tech/c4b06755/ Track your referrals here. Want to advertise in TLDR? 📰 If your company is interested in reaching an audience of tech executives, decision-makers and engineers, you may want to advertise with us. Want to work at TLDR? 💼 Apply here or send a friend's resume to jobs@tldr.tech and get $1k if we hire them! If you have any comments or feedback, just respond to this email! Thanks for reading, Dan Ni & Stephen Flanders Manage your subscriptions to our other newsletters on tech, startups, and programming. Or if TLDR isn't for you, please unsubscribe.