The complete field record · 2024—2026
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issues
110 weekly reports on the systems moving from experiment to infrastructure.
Every issue covers four developments, preserves its research trail, and calculates reading time at 150 words per minute for dense technical prose.
Field reports
Newest first · Filter by time- 10Frontier Mechanics Week 10: Atlas learns, diamond chips endure, wildfire satellites watch, and quantum raisesBoston Dynamics added a learning partner, Fukushima found a job for diamond semiconductors, orbit got a fire alarm, and SandboxAQ priced the hybrid stack.
- 09Frontier Mechanics Week 9: the Starship catch, Cybercab, orbital power, and small modelsA tower caught a booster, Tesla removed a steering wheel, a billionaire aimed sunlight at Earth, and an insurer preferred a smaller brain.
- 08Frontier Mechanics Week 8: OpenAI’s mega-round, Poolside’s code bet, a ladder robot, and Moon-water tugs$6.6 billion went looking for intelligence, $500 million went looking for code, a quadruped looked up, and a spacecraft startup looked for propellant on the Moon.
- 07Frontier Mechanics Week 7: Orion glasses, visual Llama, OpenAI exits, and a detachable robot handMeta showed an expensive path beyond phones, open models learned to see, OpenAI’s structure strained, and one robot took reach literally.
- 06Frontier Mechanics Week 6: the Fed’s half-point, a knee exoskeleton, Jony Ive’s AI object, and Cruise’s returnCapital became slightly cheaper, assistance became wearable, a mysterious device attracted famous designers, and robotaxis came back under supervision.
- 05Frontier Mechanics Week 5: a commercial spacewalk, o1 reasoning, self-repairing robots, and Waymo on UberPrivate astronauts opened the hatch, models bought more time to think, robots practiced maintenance, and autonomy found distribution.
- 04Frontier Mechanics Week 4: Claude at work, iSpace funding, stair-climbing wheels, and a salty batteryEnterprise AI met permissions, launch capital met attrition, and two hardware designs found useful tricks in ordinary geometry and chemistry.
- 03Frontier Mechanics Week 3: Covariant inside Amazon, $100B OpenAI, Gaudi 3, and lunar 4GTalent crossed corporate borders, model valuations outran revenue, an accelerator sought a second life, and the Moon got a cell plan.
- 02Frontier Mechanics Week 2: roof robots, agent wallets, heavy rockets, and missing ledgersAutomation reached the roof and checkout, while launch companies and fintech middleware showed why the boring layer matters.
- 01Frontier Mechanics Week 1: quantum locks, cheap Mars, autonomous factories, and live AIThe future arrived as three encryption standards, two tiny Mars probes, one factory acquisition, and a talking phone.
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