Meta Closed a $2B Deal in Ten Days
Meta looked at Manus—a Singapore AI agent startup—and closed the deal over the weekend. Ten days, $2+ billion. Third-largest acquisition in Meta history, behind WhatsApp and Scale AI. Manus hit $100M ARR eight months after launching their first general AI agent. They've processed 147 trillion tokens, supported 80+ million virtual computers. Meta's integrating these agents into Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—that's 3+ billion users getting agent capabilities. Normal M&A takes months of due diligence. This took less time than planning a wedding. The speed reveals everything about where we are in the AI wars.
Meta Closed a $2B Deal in Ten Days
by Nora Kaplan — December 30, 2025
Meta looked at Manus—a Singapore AI agent startup—and closed the deal over the weekend. Ten days, $2+ billion. Third-largest acquisition in Meta history, behind WhatsApp and Scale AI. Manus hit $100M ARR eight months after launching their first general AI agent. They've processed 147 trillion tokens, supported 80+ million virtual computers. Meta's integrating these agents into Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp—that's 3+ billion users getting agent capabilities. Normal M&A takes months of due diligence. This took less time than planning a wedding. The speed reveals everything about where we are in the AI wars.
Platform Shifts & Infrastructure
The internet's infrastructure keeps evolving, but year-end brings particularly fascinating moves. Platforms recalibrate algorithms, developers reimagine operating systems, security researchers patch vulnerabilities affecting tens of thousands of instances.
Worth noting:
- Core updates from search engines typically take 2-3 weeks to fully roll out, but volatility patterns tell you more than the timeline
- Linux has spent decades trying to solve its "application gap"—every few years, someone proposes a radical new approach
- Typography decisions in government agencies might seem trivial until you realize they affect millions of documents and accessibility standards
- Game theory concepts are having a moment as AI alignment discussions heat up
What's generating conversation spans from search algorithm changes to font politics to interactive educational tools.
The internet's infrastructure keeps evolving, but year-end brings particularly fascinating moves. Platforms recalibrate algorithms, developers reimagine operating systems, security researchers patch vulnerabilities affecting tens of thousands of instances.
Worth noting:
- Core updates from search engines typically take 2-3 weeks to fully roll out, but volatility patterns tell you more than the timeline
- Linux has spent decades trying to solve its "application gap"—every few years, someone proposes a radical new approach
- Typography decisions in government agencies might seem trivial until you realize they affect millions of documents and accessibility standards
- Game theory concepts are having a moment as AI alignment discussions heat up
What's generating conversation spans from search algorithm changes to font politics to interactive educational tools.
Wrapped up yesterday afternoon after 18 days—longer than the typical two-week rollout. The volatility patterns were weird: massive spikes on two Saturdays, then everything calmed down. Third core update of 2025, probably the last. If your traffic tanked, Google's advice remains unhelpfully zen: make helpful content.
Announced yesterday at the 39C3 conference: a proposed Linux distro where the entire desktop runs Windows software under WINE. Think ReactOS vibes but built on Linux kernel. The provocative pitch? Embrace Win32 as "the world's stable ABI" instead of fighting the application gap. Seeking contributors who know Wayland compositors and WINE internals.
The platform offering 4K HDR test footage under Creative Commons licensing is having a moment—292 points and climbing. While it's been around since 2016-2018, developers keep rediscovering it. ProTools sessions, Atmos audio, TIFF sequences, the works. Turns out professional-grade test content with permissive licensing is catnip for codec developers.
A detailed analysis dropped examining Marco Rubio's memo requiring State Department documents to ditch Calibri for Times New Roman. The technical breakdown is fascinating: TNR was designed in 1931 for cheap newspaper paper, optimized for space conservation, not the "professional, solemn, and authoritative" qualities Rubio claims. The accessibility discussion in the comments is worth reading.
An educational site exploring non-zero-sum games through hands-on simulations is trending on HN. Includes a Shapley Value Calculator and accessible explanations of complex concepts. The timing aligns perfectly with broader tech community interest in AI alignment and cooperation mechanisms. Sometimes the best educational tools are the ones that let you play with the concepts.
CVE-2025-14847, nicknamed "MongoBleed," is being actively exploited. Over 87,000 potentially vulnerable instances worldwide. The flaw lets unauthenticated attackers remotely leak sensitive data from server memory through malformed packets. Affects default configurations with zlib compression enabled. Patches are out—if you're running MongoDB, update now. CVSS score: 8.7.
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