😸 OpenAI and Claude's dueling launches

Last week, OpenAI (a small company few people have heard of) released GPT-6 Astra. It’s billed as “the world’s most intelligent and aligned model.” Not to have its intelligence insulted, Anthropic on Friday launched Claude Fable 5.1 and Claude Mythos 5.1, which it’s calling “the world’s most advanced models for coding and knowledge work.” (They’re actually the same model, but the former has more safeguards.)

Models get better so quickly that older ones can become all but obsolete within the year. So here’s a quick roundup of recent LLM launches:

• Google is releasing Flash models every few weeks even as a new Pro version of Gemini keeps getting delayed. The last Pro, 3.1, came out over half a year ago. Gemini 3.8 Flash, meanwhile, came out last week.
• xAI released Grok 4.6 on August 12 to win over workers who want to interact with agents.
• Meta updated its Muse Spark model to 1.3 last week, with an eye toward coding and agentic work.

Does it ever feel like everyone you know has a podcast? Your company is doing one. Your aunt Mary started one with her besties. Even your dog is in on it (pawcasting?).

This week’s launch of Parasocial, a new podcast player for people who really love the medium, reminded us there are some cool recent tools for making your own podcast for when you finally get around to it:

• Vois is a podcasting studio for people who don’t want to be on mic but have no problem writing things down. You do the script; it handles the audio—in your voice or someone else’s.
• PodcastorAI is similar to Vois but focused on video—it’ll make your AI twin the host. Just watch out when your twin becomes more famous than you.
• Clipwing takes your videos and creates clips to share on social media so you don’t have to do it manually.

by David Tereba, DevCleaner

When you launch a product as a solo maker, you mentally prepare for the usual challenges: crickets on launch day, low conversion rates, or fighting for early feedback. What you rarely prepare for is a scammer cloning your entire landing page, embedding malware, and trying to hijack your search traffic before you even reach scale.

Here is the story of how DevCleaner went from a tool built out of personal frustration on macOS to a paid utility with global customers — and the weird lessons learned along the way.

This week, a couple of creators took it retro. Vadym Capesh launched Retro Y2K Theme for people who want to surf like it’s 1999 again. Teenage Engineering put out the EP–2350 FX–MIC for folks who like the looks of older radio mics but with features only found in the 21st century.

We combed the archives for a few more projects that take you back to yesteryear:

NostalgicPod: “I built NostalgicPod because I missed the feeling of owning my music. Streaming apps are powerful, but they increasingly feel like feeds: subscriptions, recommendations, tracking, accounts, cloud libraries, and algorithms deciding what comes next. NostalgicPod goes in the opposite direction. It is an offline Android music player built around local files, a nostalgic wheel-based interface, haptic feedback, and the idea that your music should stay on your device.” - Jesus Curreri

RetroMac: “I built RetroMac because I missed how old computers felt. The glow of a CRT, the blur of a VHS tape, the chunky docks. But I did not miss crashes, fan noise and weird drivers. I wanted those vibes back on a fast, modern Mac.” - Maik Klotz

Vintage: “The other night as I sat on the couch, I wanted an iPad to play puzzle games, to help wind down. Then I thought about how expensive they are and how it would likely get used a few times and then sit idle for months... or years. Like the two iPads I purchased over a decade ago. So instead I decided to grab one of the old iPads and see if it'd scratch the itch. Turns out the majority of the apps you attempt to download have minimum iOS version requirements much higher than my iPad that won't upgrade past 9.2. So instead of mindlessly tapping download and canceling out of the ‘This game is not compatible with your device,’ I built a scraper that logs games that fit my criteria.”