AI for dummies
Google's Gemini 4 Argon explained: what beginners need to know
Gemini 4 Argon is Google's new frontier AI with a 1 million token output limit and top coding and cybersecurity scores. Here is what beginners should know.
Data Today Opinion Desk
The Opinion Desk publishes argued pieces, plain-language explainers (AI for dummies), and the Stickman finance video explainers. These pieces take a position; they are labelled as opinion or explainer, and the facts they rest on are still sourced.
The Data Today Opinion Desk is a research workflow that monitors primary sources and drafts analysis. Every piece is reviewed, edited, and signed off by Lars Cornelissen, responsible editor at Data Today. Corrections go to [email protected].
Sources this desk works from:
- The primary sources cited in each piece
Responsible editor: Lars Cornelissen, responsible editor.
Contact: [email protected].
Recent articles
AI for dummies
GPT-6.1 Sol explained: near-top AI at a fifth of the price
GPT-6.1 Sol is OpenAI's newest mid-tier AI model, delivering near-Astra quality for coding and professional work at one-fifth the API price. Here is what changed and when beginners should use it.
AI for dummies
Meta Muse is the first consumer agentic AI: what it means
Agentic AI takes actions on your behalf. Meta's Muse is the first consumer-accessible agentic AI, giving each user a dedicated cloud Linux VM.
AI for dummies
Gemini 3.8 TTS: 2,000 voices you can direct line by line
Gemini 3.8 TTS is Google's new text-to-speech system with 2,000+ voices and voice cloning from a 30-second sample. It topped Hume AI's benchmark at 71.4.
AI for dummies
GPT-6 Sol and Luna explained: what beginners should know
OpenAI's GPT-6 Sol and Luna target coding and everyday tasks at half the price of their predecessors. What each one does and which to try first.
AI for dummies
Claude Code now reads AGENTS.md: a beginner's guide
AGENTS.md is a shared instruction file for AI coding agents. Claude Code 2.1.277 now reads it as a fallback, so one file works across every major coding tool.
AI for dummies
Claude merges Cowork and chat: one interface for everything
Claude Cowork and chat merge into one interface. You no longer pick a mode first: Claude routes tasks, runs them in the background, and ships Docs and Slides.
AI for dummies
Gemini 3.8 Live explained: voice AI that thinks while it talks
Gemini 3.8 Live is Google's speech-to-speech AI that reasons and calls tools mid-conversation. Extended Thinking tops the Speech to Speech Quality Index at 82.6.
AI for dummies
K2 Horizon 7B explained: small model, big-model results
IFM's K2 Horizon 7B open-weights model matches models four times its size on coding and math. What beginners should know before trying it.
AI for dummies
Perplexity lets GPT-6 Astra run its systems: a beginner's guide
Perplexity trusts GPT-6 Astra to write messages, change code, and monitor production with less human oversight. Here is what changed and what beginners should do about it.
Opinion
Anthropic's pace-the-frontier plan: what it means for builders
Slower model releases and a distillation crackdown: Anthropic's three-step pace-the-frontier plan sets the stakes for anyone building on frontier models.
AI for dummies
DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision runs on 10 RTX 3090 GPUs
Ten consumer RTX 3090 GPUs now run DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision Exp, a 285B multimodal model, at 60+ tokens per second with FP4 and speculative decoding.
AI for dummies
Inside OpenAI, coding agents now outwork humans 3 to 1
OpenAI now logs 3.1 agent-workdays per human workday, up from below 1.0 before June 2026, as coding agents write and run code on their own.
AI for dummies
GPT-6 Astra explained: what every beginner needs to know
At $10 and $50 per million tokens, GPT-6 Astra dominates agentic work but ties GPT-5.6 Sol on general intelligence. Here is when to switch.
AI for dummies
Claude Fable 5.1 explained: what beginners need to know
Claude Fable 5.1 is Anthropic's newest AI model with a 52.6 percent score on Terminal-Bench-Science 0.1, more than double Fable 5. Its five reasoning effort levels let beginners control cost and quality.
AI for dummies
Gemini 3.8 Flash explained: what beginners should know
Gemini 3.8 Flash is Google's newest mid-tier AI model, released September 2, 2026, with better reasoning and coding than 3.7 Flash at the same introductory price. A security variant called Flash Cyber is gated to vetted defenders.
AI for dummies
Qwen3.8-27B on one RTX 3090 hits 2,000 tok/s prefill
Community builders pushed Qwen3.8-27B to 2,000 tok/s prefill and 132 tok/s decode on a single RTX 3090. Here is what that speed means for local AI.
Stickman: finance
Nike's $170 Billion Collapse (It's Worse Than You Think)
Nike's stock fell 76% in five years, from $169 to $39.60. Everyone is asking if it's the next Blockbuster. The numbers say it's something worse.
Stickman: finance
Meta Paid $18 Billion. The Market Didn't Blink.
Meta just agreed to $18 billion for harming kids on Instagram and Facebook. The stock moved 1.27%.
AI for dummies
Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash: AI video editing for beginners
Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash is a Google DeepMind model for generating and editing video by conversation. You can extend clips to 40 seconds, control camera moves with keyframes, preview cheaply in 360p, and upscale to 4K.
AI for dummies
GPT-5.6 in Kiro: what the price drop means for beginners
GPT-5.6 in Kiro brings OpenAI models to the spec-driven coding tool with a major price drop: Luna falls to a 0.1x credit multiplier and Terra to 1.0x, making frontier AI coding agents cheap enough for hobbyists.
AI for dummies
Qwen 3.8 27B one week later: what 2,000 local testers found
Qwen 3.8 27B is a free, open-weights AI model that runs on your laptop. After one week and 2,000 community posts, here is what testers found.
Stickman: finance
The Treasury Bond Buyback Is Failing (just accept it)
The US Treasury is buying back its own bonds to push interest rates down, and rates keep rising anyway. Why the buyback is failing.
AI for dummies
Mojo goes open source: what every beginner should know
Mojo open source under Apache 2.0: the AI hardware programming language from Modular is now free to use and modify. Here is what changed.