Morning Digest, May 25, 2026

May 25, 2026 · 5 newsletters · 2 overlapping stories

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Top Stories

SpaceX Starship V3 Launches: Most Powerful Rocket Ever Built Reaches Space

(2 newsletters)

SpaceX launched its third-generation Starship from Starbase, Texas on Friday in the program’s 12th test flight. The 407-foot vehicle is the design NASA is counting on to land astronauts on the moon, and that SpaceX hopes will eventually carry crew to Mars. The booster separated successfully but could not complete its engine maneuver and splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico; the spacecraft itself made it to orbit despite losing one engine, deployed 20 mock Starlink satellites and two real imaging satellites that photographed the vehicle in flight, then exploded after an attempted landing in the Indian Ocean. Both stages were lost, but key milestones were confirmed on the new platform’s maiden flight.

Anthropic’s Claude Mythos Finds 10,000+ Critical Vulnerabilities in One Month

(2 newsletters)

Anthropic revealed Project Glasswing results showing that Claude Mythos Preview, working with about 50 partner organizations, surfaced more than 10,000 high- or critical-severity security vulnerabilities in its first month of operation. Cloudflare found 2,000 bugs with a false-positive rate better than human testers; Mozilla used Mythos to find and fix 271 vulnerabilities before shipping Firefox 150; and one partner bank used the model to detect and block a $1.5 million fraudulent wire transfer. Of 1,000+ open-source projects scanned, 62% of Mythos-flagged issues were independently confirmed as genuine. Anthropic says the model stays gated because no organization, including Anthropic itself, yet has safeguards sufficient to prevent misuse at general availability, but it plans to expand access to U.S. and allied government partners next.

Also Worth Knowing

• Google’s AlphaProof Nexus solves 9 unsolved Erdős problems. Just one day after OpenAI claimed its own Erdős breakthrough (one conjecture disproved), Google DeepMind’s AlphaProof Nexus autonomously solved nine open Erdős problems, two of them unsolved for 56 years, at a cost of just a few hundred dollars each. The system pairs an LLM with the Lean proof assistant to generate machine-verified proofs and repeat until one passes. (The Rundown)

• TeamPCP is poisoning open source at unprecedented scale. The hacker group has corrupted hundreds of open-source tools, turning supply-chain attacks from an occasional incident into a near-weekly event. The group breached GitHub itself via a poisoned VSCode extension and appears financially motivated, regularly deploying ransomware and selling stolen data to buyers. (TLDR)

• Eli Lilly’s Retatrutide delivers 28% average body weight loss. New 80-week trial results rival gastric bypass surgery and outperform both Wegovy and Zepbound. Pending regulatory approval, it could help 24 million Americans with severe obesity drop significant weight without surgery. (Superhuman)

• Colossal Biosciences hatches chicks from a 3D-printed artificial egg. The de-extinction startup hatched 26 healthy chicks using an artificial egg platform designed to replicate the environment of a real egg. It is a major step in the company’s quest to revive the South Island Giant Moa, a 12-foot bird extinct for 500 years whose eggs are too large for any living surrogate. (Superhuman)

• White House approves $9 billion for spy-agency AI chips. The authorization addresses growing concern that U.S. intelligence agencies are falling behind in deploying frontier AI models. The funding covers advanced chip acquisition for classified AI workloads. (The Rundown)

• McKinsey is rethinking its billing model as AI compresses billable hours. Clients are demanding fees tied to business outcomes rather than time, and AI is reducing the work that previously justified hourly billing, according to an FT report. Other professional services firms face the same pressure. (The Rundown)

• Starbucks scrapped its AI inventory system after nine months. The company cited persistent miscounts and mislabeled products across North American stores. It is a cautionary data point as retailers rush to deploy AI in operations. (The Rundown)

• auth.md introduces agent-native authentication. A Markdown-based spec that tells AI agents how to register on behalf of users, which OAuth flows are supported, which scopes exist, and how to authenticate without requiring human interaction. Positioned as a standard any app can implement. (TLDR)

Quick Hits

• DeepSeek permanently cuts V4-Pro pricing 75%, bringing input tokens to $0.435 per million, far below closed-source rivals. (The Rundown)

• Snap Specs AR glasses are reportedly launching this fall for around $2,500. They are described as the first relatively normal-looking glasses that can place virtual objects into physical space without significantly dimming the user’s view. (TLDR)

• A lab-grown sinoatrial node built from human stem cells generates real electrical impulses and responds to heart rate medications, according to researchers. It could eventually replace electronic pacemakers with biological ones. (Superhuman)

• ITER, the $22 billion fusion project, is profiled in depth. The donut-shaped reactor aims to reach temperatures 10 times hotter than the sun’s core, with longtime geopolitical rivals collaborating on its construction. (TLDR)

• Ben Evans argues it is impossible to predict AI job exposure. Past technology waves saw industries expected to suffer grow larger, and others expected to be immune get hurt. Too many variables are at play right now. (TLDR)

• DuckDB 1.5.3 ships what is labeled a patch release but includes major extension features, DuckLake support, and new AWS and Iceberg capabilities. v2.0 expected fall 2026. (TLDR Data)

• Travel is splitting sharply by income. Delta’s premium ticket sales surpassed economy for the first time ever in 2025, Spirit Airlines shut down citing fuel costs, and Las Vegas posted record casino revenue of $8.8 billion last year even as total visits dropped 7.5%. (Morning Brew)

• China’s Shenzhou-23 mission launched three astronauts to Tiangong. One crew member may remain in orbit for a full year, which would be China’s longest human space mission. (TLDR)

• OpenTelemetry graduates from the CNCF, signaling production maturity for the vendor-neutral observability standard. (TLDR Data)