Perplexity Gets in Legal Trouble with Amazon

Hello!

You’ve probably already heard about Amazon’s $38B deal with OpenAI, which comes right after their massive job cuts. But did you know they’re also planning to sue Perplexity over its AI browser?

This week, we also look into tackling engineering productivity and a discussion on how AI is evolving from the ‘conductor’ to the ‘orchestrator’ of code. If you still want more, I’ve got a story on Palanthir’s newest experiment: hiring people straight from high school, no degree needed.

Also, it turns out we might not be living in a computer simulation after all. Sorry, Matrix fans.

Sounds interesting? Then grab your coffee, relax, and enjoy Frictionless!

In the Queue

• How to Use SSG with Next.js

• The Future of React and Remix

• Leading Engineering Teams

• Q3 2025 Online Outages Summary

• Building More Efficient Agents

Reduce Friction

Amazon CEO Says Massive Corporate Layoffs Were About Agility — Not AI or Cost-Cutting

Is Amazon’s massive corporate overhaul really about agility, or just a convenient excuse? After announcing 14,000 layoffs, Amazon’s CEO said the move wasn’t about cost-cutting or AI, but improving work culture. Andy Jassy’s goal is to bring Amazon back to a start-up operating style, where the people closest to the work make the calls and extra layers don’t get in the way.

My Mistakes and Advice Leading Engineering Teams

The best way to learn is to mess up and learn from it. Gregor’s biggest leadership mistakes and the lessons learned could be exactly what you need to get your team performing at its best. See what changes and what to avoid when your job becomes less about solving problems yourself and more about helping others solve them well.

Measuring Engineering Productivity

Forget ranking engineers by lines of code or PRs. Instead, this article goes into lightweight routines that give your team shared visibility and real value. No more micromanaging engineers and blocking them from delivering.

Palantir Thinks College Might Be a Waste. So It’s Hiring High-School Grads.

Is college overrated? Palantir might think so. In a bold move, the company is skipping the degree requirement and offering high-school grads a chance to jump straight into real product work. In a time when many fear AI is shrinking opportunities, Palantir is giving young talent responsibility from day one.

Deepen Your Expertise

React and Remix Choose Different Futures

Two frameworks that once shared a path are now betting on very different ideas of developer experience. React is doubling down on powerful tooling that hides complexity, while Remix is embracing a Web-API-first, explicit model, even if it breaks compatibility along the way. Which one of them will win?

How to Use Next.js for Static Site Generation

Trying to pick the right rendering strategy for your Next.js project? Tomasz from our team prepared a guide on setting up a fully static build, exporting pages, and handling dynamic routes at build time. He also explains when it makes sense to switch to ISR once your content updates more often than your deploys.

Online Outages: Q3 2025 Internet Disruption Summary

A thorough rundown of last quarter’s outages, ranging from earthquakes to government shutdowns. It reminded me that these days, fallback paths and graceful failure modes can’t be nice-to-haves. If a provider or a region goes dark, can your product survive?

How I Use Every Claude Code Feature

I’m always curious how other builders use AI day-to-day, and this breakdown from Shrivu Shankar is a fun peek into a real workflow. He walks through what parts of Claude Code he uses and shares a few useful tips. If you’re experimenting with AI-assisted development, there are plenty of ideas here worth borrowing.

AI Corner

Perplexity AI Accuses Amazon of Bullying with Legal Threat Over Comet Browser

Perplexity is facing another legal threat, this time over its AI browsing assistant, Comet. Amazon claims the browser agents are accessing its site without permission, disrupting the shopping experience. Perplexity fired back, accusing Amazon of trying to prevent users from bypassing ads and sponsored listings, calling the lawsuit a bullying tactic.

Conductors to Orchestrators: The Future of Agentic Coding

According to Addy Osmani, AI is turning every engineer into a team lead. Today, we “conduct” one model in the IDE. Soon, we’ll “orchestrate” fleets of autonomous agents shipping features, opening PRs, and fixing tests. If he’s right, then the best skill we can learn is how to give clear specs and reviews for our future AI dev teams.

Code Execution with MCP: Building More Efficient Agents

Anthropic’s latest post explains how code execution with MCP improves AI agent efficiency. By using code to call tools instead of direct calls, agents can handle more tasks with fewer tokens, saving both time and cost.

Amazon Closes at Record After $38 Billion OpenAI Deal with AWS

OpenAI has secured a monumental $38 billion deal with Amazon Web Services (AWS), in a major shift away from its exclusive reliance on Microsoft for cloud infrastructure. This agreement will give OpenAI access to AWS's vast computing power, including Nvidia’s GPUs, for scaling its AI workloads.

Just Cool

UBCO Study Debunks the Idea That the Universe is a Computer Simulation

Looks like we’re not all living in the Matrix after all. The latest research from UBC Okanagan debunks the simulation theory, showing that our universe operates on a level that no computer could replicate. Time to take the red pill and face the truth.

Let’s Stay in Touch! 📨 

Do you have any comments about this newsletter issue or questions you want to ask? Drop me a message or book a meeting.