John Ternus takes over as Apple CEO, GPT-5.5 ships with agentic planning, and quantum teleportation runs over standard broadband cables. Also: cows using tools, why marathoners cluster just under four hours, and how a lingerie company made the Apollo spacesuits. [DVYio Newsletter](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/BrGKrUXH) Tech [John Ternus and Tim Cook walk and smile together along a paved outdoor path surrounded by greenery at Apple Park.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ZkBxuyYq) [John Ternus is replacing Tim Cook as Apple's CEO](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ZkBxuyYq) John Ternus has been at Apple for 25 years and from September 1st, he'll be running it. Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO to become executive chairman, with Ternus taking the top job. Cook stays through the summer to hand things over properly, then shifts to a board role focused partly on policy work with governments. Ternus, currently head of Hardware Engineering, joins the board on the same date. Cook's tenure reshaped Apple from a computer company into one of the most valuable businesses in history. Ternus is a hardware person through and through, which will be interesting to watch as Apple pushes further into services and AI. [The text GPT-5.5 in white sans-serif font centered over a soft, blurred floral background in shades of pink, orange, and blue.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/crxLFUhm) [OpenAI released GPT-5.5 this week](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/crxLFUhm) Give it a vague, multi-part task and it's designed to plan its own approach, pick up the right tools, check its progress, and keep going when things get messy, rather than stopping to ask for instructions at every turn. OpenAI are specifically calling out coding, data analysis, document creation, and early-stage scientific research as the strongest areas. Larger models usually trade latency for capability, but OpenAI claim GPT-5.5 matches GPT-5.4 on per-token response time in real-world conditions. [A glowing filament shaped like a human brain illuminates the inside of a clear light bulb on a stone base.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/Jq8q2kjH) [OpenAI's image model can now think before it renders](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/Jq8q2kjH) Along with GPT-5.5, image generation in ChatGPT has had an update. The new version handles complex prompts more accurately, places objects correctly within scenes, and renders text legibly inside images (something most image models still struggle with badly). It also works across different aspect ratios and feels, according to OpenAI, less like something a machine made and more like something someone designed. The more interesting bit is the reasoning layer. When you use a thinking or Pro model, Images 2.0 can check its own outputs, pull in real-time web information, and generate multiple distinct images from a single prompt. That's a different class of behaviour than "describe it and hope". It's closer to having a back-and-forth with something that's actively trying to get the result right rather than just completing the request. [A white bidet toilet and a semiconductor lithography machine linked by a precision ceramic component in the center.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/phJjRkVP) [The Japanese toilet company accidentally becoming an AI chip supplier](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/phJjRkVP) Toto is a Japanese company best known for its high-tech bidet toilets. To make those toilets, it spent decades mastering advanced ceramics, the kind that stay dimensionally stable even at extreme temperatures. Useful for bathroom fixtures, and also useful for something completely unrelated. Modern AI chips are built by etching incredibly fine patterns onto silicon wafers. To do that, you need to hold the wafer perfectly still during a process called cryogenic etching (basically, carving at very low temperatures). The tool that grips the wafer is called a chuck, and it needs to be made from ceramics that won't expand, contract, or shift even slightly in the cold. Toto has been making exactly that kind of ceramic for years, just for an entirely different industry. An activist investor noticed the overlap and wrote to Toto's board pointing it out. The ceramics division is already responsible for 40% of the company's operating profit despite being less than 10% of its revenue, which suggests it's either very efficient or very underpriced. The investor's case is that Toto has a five-year head start on competitors in this niche, and the market for memory chips is worth around $60 billion. This Week I Learnt [Soldiers in a small boat wave at a warship firing cannonballs over their heads toward a coastal fort.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/v5FP4Ppm) [When America attacked Guam in 1898, the Spanish thought the cannon balls and explosions were a friendly greeting salute](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/v5FP4Ppm) [Twelve cannonballs hit Fort Santa Cruz on 20 June 1898, and the Spanish garrison's first thought was that an American warship had arrived to pay its respects. Guam had been a Spanish colony since 1668, but by 1898 it was a forgotten outpost. The last communication from Spain arrived in April, a full month before war was declared. When USS Charleston opened fire, the island's officials had no idea a conflict was on. They interpreted the shelling as a ceremonial salute, rowed out to the ship, and apologised for not returning the fire (their gunpowder was too degraded, apparently). Captain Henry Glass then had the awkward job of explaining that the shells were not a greeting. The greeting party became prisoners of war on the spot. It's a surreal bit of history: a surrender with zero casualties because one side didn't know the game had started.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/v5FP4Ppm) Poll Could you climb Mount Everest if you had a year to train? Yes, 100% Maybe with serious preparation No, but I'd attempt it Not a chance Last Week's Poll When a website asks for your privacy/cookie preferences, what do you actually do? Click "Accept All" and move on 28% Click "Reject All" if it's easy 59% Dig into the settings 12% Use a browser that decides for me 1% Science [A silhouette of a gamer aiming at a target, with lung icons and wave charts showing synchronized breathing cycles.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/hSGnKdEx) [Why competitive gamers should hold their breath before shooting](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/hSGnKdEx) Your body is already doing something clever during cognitively demanding tasks, and you probably haven't noticed. When people are asked to detect sounds, tell stimuli apart, or hold information in short-term memory, they unconsciously coordinate their breathing with the task. They tend to inhale around the moment a stimulus appears, and exhale when they submit their response. Nobody tells them to do this. It just happens. The part that matters practically: your reaction speed varies depending on where you are in your breathing cycle. You're measurably faster during inhalation, slower during exhalation. Accuracy is less affected, but speed isn't trivial in tasks where timing matters. The researchers ran six separate experiments and found this pattern consistently. The effect sizes are roughly comparable to other standard experimental manipulations, which is researcher-speak for "this is not a small or negligible thing". Breathing isn't just keeping you alive in the background. It's actively shaping how quickly your senses and brain are operating, moment to moment. The mechanism isn't fully understood yet, but the likely explanation involves the brain regions that control breathing being tightly connected to the limbic system and sensory cortex, so respiratory state leaks into perceptual processing whether you're aware of it or not. The gaming angle in the title is a bit of fun, but the implication is real. If you're doing anything where split-second reaction time matters, the phase of your breathing cycle when you act is not irrelevant. [A light brown cow stands outdoors, holding a long thin stick in its mouth to scratch its own back.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/VKsZzWuD) [A cow just used a tool. Scientists had no idea they could do that.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/VKsZzWuD) Most animals that use tools are the ones you'd expect: chimpanzees, crows, octopuses. Creatures with a reputation for being clever. Cows don't usually make that list. This is what makes Veronika interesting. This Austrian cow figured out, entirely on her own, how to pick up sticks, rakes, and brooms and use them to scratch herself. Not just grabbing whatever's nearest, either. She uses the bristle end of a broom on tough spots like her back, and switches to the smooth handle end for her more sensitive underbelly. Two ends, two purposes, one cow. Researchers from the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna say that kind of deliberate, multipurpose tool use has only ever been reliably documented in chimpanzees. Not in any other livestock. Not in cattle across 10,000 years of living alongside humans. Just Veronika, in a mountain village in rural Austria, quietly working it out herself. The findings were published in Current Biology. The scientists are now asking whether other cows could do the same given the opportunity, or whether we've just never thought to look. [Diagram showing how stretching a polymer aligns its internal strands to let heat pass through easily instead of being blocked.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/iFzqq6Fi) [Stretching this polymer makes it conduct heat. Releasing it makes it stop.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/iFzqq6Fi) Most materials are either good at conducting heat or they aren't. That's a fixed property, like density or colour. MIT engineers have made a polymer that breaks that rule: stretch it, and it conducts heat much better; let go, and it reverts. The reason comes down to the material's internal structure. Think of it like a bowl of cooked spaghetti. At rest, the strands are tangled randomly, and heat has to find its way through the mess. Pull the bowl apart lengthwise and the strands line up, giving heat a clearer path to travel. The polymer contains chaotic, tangled regions alongside more ordered crystalline ones. Stretching aligns the tangled parts, heat flows more easily, and when you release the tension, the tangles bunch back up and conductivity drops again. The practical uses are interesting to think about. A phone case that conducts heat away from the processor when it's under load, but insulates when it isn't. Clothing that vents heat during exercise. Building materials that adapt to temperature without any electronics involved. On-demand thermal management, controlled by mechanical force rather than power. [A cream-coloured sofa sits before floor-to-ceiling dark wood panelling with inset shelving containing stone vessels and art books.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/sipetPaq) [Sunlight filters through sheer curtains into a minimalist living room with two dark wooden chairs and a neutral sofa.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/sipetPaq) [A dark hallway leads to an open wooden door, revealing a bedroom with vertical wood wall panelling and a small wall lamp.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/sipetPaq) [Minimalist kitchen with dark marble counters, leather bar stools, and matte grey cabinetry under soft, moody lighting.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/sipetPaq) [A dimly lit dining room with dark wood panelling, a stone-topped console table, and two abstract paintings on the wall.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/sipetPaq) [A beige bedroom with a dark wood headboard, a botanical print on a fabric wall panel, and a tall cylindrical lamp.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/sipetPaq) [An apartment balcony with a stone table and modern chairs, framed by brown curtains looking out over a city at sunset.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/sipetPaq) [Apartamento West](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/sipetPaq) [Guadalajara, Mexico](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/sipetPaq) History [An intricate Astro Compass assembly with exposed metal gears, bundled wiring looms, and mechanical sensors on a metal base.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/aYSYDuL9) [How the B-52 navigated by starlight before GPS, using gears instead of code](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/aYSYDuL9) [Before GPS, a B-52 navigator had one reliable option for knowing exactly where the plane was heading: look at the stars. Not manually (though that's how it started) but through a system called the Astro Compass, which could lock a telescope onto a single star and hold it there, rock-steady, even as the aircraft banked and bumped through turbulence. The clever bit is what happened next. Once the telescope had the star, something needed to turn that sighting into a usable compass heading. Digital computers weren't up to the job in the early 1960s, so engineers built a mechanical one instead. The Angle Computer is a palm-sized tangle of gears, shafts, and electrical pickups that physically models the celestial sphere, the imaginary dome of sky that navigators have been plotting against for centuries. A pointer inside the device moves to represent a star's position; the angles it reaches are read off electrically and fed to the navigation system. No software, no microchips. Just metal moving in a way that solves trigonometry. The result was accurate to a tenth of a degree, and crucially, completely unjammable. If you could see a star, you knew where you were going.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/aYSYDuL9) [A weathered bronze spiral staircase section with industrial rivets and thin metal railings on a cross-shaped base.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ZmapxkHi) [An original staircase from the Eiffel Tower up for auction](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ZmapxkHi) Fourteen steps. In 1889, they were part of how you climbed from the second floor to the top of the Eiffel Tower. By 1983, new lifts made them redundant, so the spiral staircase was dismantled and sold off in twenty sections at auction, directly from the tower itself. One of those sections, lot no. 1 from that original 1983 sale, is coming up for auction again on 21 May 2026, through Artcurial. It's 2.75 metres tall, 1.75 metres in diameter, steel and riveted sheet metal, and has spent the last forty years in the same private collection. The estimate is €120,000–€150,000. Other sections from the same 1983 sale ended up scattered across the world: one is in the gardens of the Yoshii Foundation in Japan, another sits near the Statue of Liberty, and one made it to Disneyland. This is lot no. 1, the first piece sold that day, restored by the same workshops that maintain the tower. [A technical line drawing of three Apollo spacesuits showing the exterior layers and the complex inner structure.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ugeA4Dae) [How a lingerie company ended up making Apollo spacesuits](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/ugeA4Dae) Playtex, the lingerie company, made the Apollo spacesuits. The firm that sold girdles through mail-order magazine ads. It won the NASA contract partly because of that background. Building a bra requires stitching elastic materials under tension so they hold their shape and move with a body without failing. A spacesuit has the same problem, just with a vacuum on one side and a human life on the other. The seamstresses at ILC's Delaware factory had to be retrained from scratch, because the tolerances NASA demanded were tighter than anything in ordinary garment work. A misaligned stitch on a dress is a quality issue but the same mistake on a suit joint and the astronaut dies. The lesson here: skills needed to solve a hard problem often live somewhere you wouldn't think to look. The engineers at the aerospace giants had the technical credentials. The women running sewing machines in Delaware had the hands. Data [A histogram of marathon finish times showing sharp spikes in volume just before round numbers like 3:00, 3:30, and 4:00.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/BFxMBrHE) [Why do so many marathoners finish just under four hours?](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/BFxMBrHE) [Nearly 10 million marathon finish times, plotted on a chart, and one thing jumps out immediately: sharp spikes at banner times, especially at exactly 4 hours. Not 3:58, not 4:03, but four hours on the dot. This isn't runners coincidentally finishing at the same time. It's human psychology, made visible in race data. When people set a goal like "break four hours", finishing in 4:01 doesn't feel like "almost" — it feels like failure. So in the final miles, something kicks in. Runners who are close to the cutoff push harder, find reserves they didn't know they had, and drag themselves over the line just in time. The round number acts like a psychological cliff edge: every second before it feels like a win, every second after feels like a loss. Behavioural economists call this reference-dependent preferences. It's the idea that we don't evaluate outcomes in isolation, but relative to a target we've anchored ourselves to. The same finish time can feel completely different depending on which side of that target it lands on. Notice here that the effect shows up even without any external reward. Breaking four hours doesn't qualify you for anything or unlock a prize. The only thing at stake is how you feel about the number. That alone is enough to visibly bend the performance of millions of people.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/BFxMBrHE) [Extreme close-up of a silver watch face featuring gold leaf-shaped hands and a moon phase subdial.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/9vxUXaqh) [Patek Philippe 3940](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/9vxUXaqh) Random [A grey digital schematic of New York City subway lines with coloured dots indicating 734 active trains.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/s5Jg2DN2) [749 New York subway trains, playing jazz in real time](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/s5Jg2DN2) [Every active New York subway train mapped in real time and their positions into notes. The further along its route a train is, the higher the pitch. Eight hundred trains, give or take, arranged across five instrument voices: walking bass, piano, sax, vibes, brushes. Rush hour is dense and droning. 3am opens into long silences. Whatever the piece sounds like right now has never sounded like that before and never will again. Share your location and the trains nearest you get louder. The city is playing you a portrait of exactly where you're standing.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/s5Jg2DN2) Tip [An iPhone screen shows the Background Sounds menu with a volume slider set to 50 and Train selected as the active sound.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/QkpULsD3) [Try using Background Sounds (especially "Train") on iOS to help you fall asleep](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/QkpULsD3) [- Open Control Centre (swipe down at the top right of the screen). - Tap and hold the Background Sounds button. (If you can’t see it, find out how to [add the Background Sounds button to Control Centre](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/w2VtXPfv).) - Tap on Train. - Go back to Control Centre and tap Background Sounds to start playing it.](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/QkpULsD3) [Web](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/92rxpLuw) · [Twitter](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/oRf8n5vQ) · [LinkedIn](https://newsletter.dvy.io/visit/MtSfk8zG)