Daily Reading List – July 30, 2026 (#836)

I’m on vacation tomorrow, so probably no reading list. Which isn’t good, since I still have a queue of dozens of items to filter though. Maybe you’ll get a bonus weekend edition.

[blog] Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole body intelligence to robots. Robotics is about to take the leap. This is a remarkable update that opens up all sorts of possibilities.

[article] What the Hell Is a Loop, Anyway? It’s not too late to ask. This author identifies four different “loops” that we’re talking about now. Maybe five?

[blog] 7 Times Faster and Cheaper? Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and Gemini 3.6 Flash in Google Cloud Databases. The time-to-first-token response is remarkable with these latest Gemini models. Gleb takes them for a spin in our databases.

[article] Demand outweighs supply for AI-skilled workers. Develop skills that others will pay for. And now’s a good time to have certain skills.

[article] Measuring the impact of AI coding tools: Capacity, not horsepower. “Innovation capacity” is an interesting metric category. Better than trying to land on a “developer horsepower” number?

[blog] Eval-driven development: Lessons from evaluating GenAI at scale. Something like this might become a way we build out high-quality AI systems.

[blog] Eval-Driven Design Systems (Part 1). This team made their design system “legible to AI” to see if AI could use it correctly.

[blog] Transform any place with Nano Banana in Google Earth. What in the world is this. Literally. It’s amazing to create custom images out of real locations. I just tried it myself.

[blog] CosmosEscape: Taking Over Every Database in Azure Cosmos DB. Yowza. This was a very serious security issue that has since been remediated.

[blog] GitHub is the wrong shape for this new world. Are we trying to fit solutions for humans onto AI-first workflows? Maybe, and this post calls out where that falls apart.

[article] The Orchestrator’s Tax. I enjoy reading things like because we’re all figuring out the new dynamics of how we work effectively.

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