OpenAI’s Physical Gaming Move
OpenAI announced a Codex plugin that lets you write games to physical cartridges compatible with ModRetro Chromatic, a retro-style game console. This means you can build the game of your dreams, write it to a physical cartridge over USB, then plug the cartridge into the console and play. To us it felt a bit like playing to the crowd. Even if they are targeting the retro and physical interaction trend that is in fashion right now, when it’s OpenAI doing it, some skepticism is in order. We can’t see Codex writing to a cartridge as a wow move; anything that can write a playable game can already do that, and a computer is a far more complex product than those retro consoles. We won’t praise compatibility with 80s technology as technological progress. It’s fun at best, an amusement for hobbyists.
Apple Invests in Türkiye
Former Apple CEO Tim Cook, who handed the CEO role to John Ternus this year, visited the Grand Bazaar and the Bağdat Avenue Apple Store in Istanbul on November 8. On November 9 in Ankara, he met Eda Erdem and visited Anıtkabir, then announced Apple’s investments in Türkiye in a meeting with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Here are the announced investments:
• 5 Developer Academies will open within 3 years, starting in 2027. The 6th center in the world will open first in Istanbul in 2027.
• In 2028, Apple’s first manufacturing academy outside the US will open in Ankara.
Türkiye-specific job openings for these investments already seem to be appearing. If you’re interested, keep an eye on the updates.
Read of the Week
More than 90% of Claude Code was written by Claude models, and today the software has millions of users. In our view, the Claude Code team is also one of the best places to learn the new methods that are replacing the software development practices we know. You can add their latest post on how they do code review to your reading list.
⚡️ Quick Bits
• The New York Times is reportedly planning to buy Letterboxd. techcrunch.com →
• Nvidia shares lost 9.5% in two days after its CEO admitted to a relationship with a Chinese spy. theweek.in →
• A new business feature on ChatGPT lets you open a dedicated profile page for your business, see business-specific stats, and engage with relevant customers. openai.com →
• Mercor, a platform that matches human experts with tech companies to train AI models, raised 750 million dollars in a Series D round. @mercor →
📩 Liked this newsletter? You can forward it to your friends
if you are feeling nostalgic, though it’s always better if
they just subscribe on their own.
