Supabase nabs $5B valuation, four months after hitting $2B. Supabase announced a $100 million Series E round at a $5 billion valuation—just four months after raising $200 million at a $2 billion valuation—marking over a 500 percent step-up in less than a year. Founded in 2020 as an open-source Postgres alternative to Google’s Firebase, Supabase simplifies backend setup for developers building “vibe-coding” apps with natural-language prompts. Its platform integrates authentication, auto-generated APIs, file storage, and vector tools, and it now counts 4 million developers, including users at Figma, Replit, Cursor, and Claude Code. Uniquely, Supabase extended its community ethos by allowing users to participate in its Series E equity offering, marrying open-source culture with venture capital dynamics.
“It’s been a whirlwind year for the vibe-coding world’s database of choice: Supabase.” (techcrunch.com)
‘Openness’ is the new magic word in politics – but should governments really be run like Wikipedia?. This essay traces how the ethos of open-source software—championing transparency, participation, and collaboration—jumped from hacker culture into government policy. Beginning with Obama’s 2009 Open Government Initiative, the ideals popularized by Eric S. Raymond’s bazaar metaphor and Tim O’Reilly’s Web 2.0 rhetoric rapidly became political dogma. Yet when translated to governance, “open politics” often prioritizes innovation over fairness, modeling statecraft on a “great babbling bazaar of differing agendas” rather than a market’s price signals or a polity’s normative aims. The piece critiques how computational metaphors have reshaped our political imagination, cautioning that openness itself, divorced from substantive goals, risks becoming an empty signifier that perpetuates the status quo.
“The open source method ‘seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches …’”
“Open will win. … The future of government is transparency. The future of culture is freedom.” (aeon.co)Surprising things happen when you put 25 AI agents together in an RPG town. Researchers created “Smallville,” a simulated 16-bit RPG village, and seeded each of its 25 pixel-avatar residents with a paragraph of natural-language memory describing their background, goals, and social ties. As the agents interacted—visiting the café, gossiping, forgetting errands, and even recovering from emotional upsets—a rich tapestry of emergent behavior unfolded, demonstrating that generative agents can simulate coherent, lifelike social ecosystems. The experiment suggests a paradigm shift: instead of one-off chatbots, future AI may operate as autonomous, memory-driven entities capable of dynamic planning and social reasoning. This opens philosophical questions about agency, identity, and the ethics of creating digital “persons.” (arstechnica.com)
The New Medium Format. Once the realm of high-end pros, medium-format digital systems are shrinking in size and price, making 44 × 33 mm sensors viable for enthusiasts and studio shooters alike. Pentax’s 645D and 645Z pioneered a user-friendly, contained design, while Hasselblad’s CFV-50c digital back and X1D-50c mirrorless body blend legacy craftsmanship with modern ergonomics. Fujifilm’s upcoming GFX 50S mirrorless model extends flexibility with modular viewfinders and multi-format shooting. With 50 megapixel sensors offering smoother tonality and unprecedented resolution, these cameras promise to democratize the signature aesthetic of medium format. Yet the article cautions that speed and video features still lag, suggesting a future where medium-format finds its sweet spot in landscape, portrait, and fine-art photography.
“Just as full-frame DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have become the norm … medium format is finally coming into view as a potential option for even the non-professional photographer.” (bhphotovideo.com)
I Am Not a Machine. Yes You Are.. In a dialogue with physicist-turned-philosopher Arthur I. Miller, the author explores whether art produced by algorithms can ever evoke the human depths of intention and emotion. Miller argues that both humans and machines are “biological machines” governed by computation, and that AI-generated artworks will one day carry genuine creative agency and “evolve emotions.” The conversation probes the moral and aesthetic stakes of our reluctance to accept machine art, suggesting that new forms of appreciation may emerge—just as painting liberated itself from literalism with the advent of photography. This essay wrestles with the essence of creativity, consciousness, and what it means to connect with another mind, human or otherwise.
“Machines in art can have intent, and they can have a bit of free will, too.”
“We are machines, just like computers are machines.” (nautil.us)