JUST IN: UK Government clarifies adults will still be able to use social media by verifying their identities with digital IDs, facial recognition, passports and credit cards.

I'm in Zhangjiajie, the forest park with the mountains from Avatar. Again, I'm walking instead of taking the bus or the cable car. It's slower. But I get to think, and the viewpoint means more when I get there tired. I put my phone in the bottom of my backpack, somewhere annoying to reach. Over the last years we all picked up the same habit. We fill every silent moment with cheap dopamine. Even when we're with people. Music to kill the quiet. Scrolling to avoid feeling alone, while standing next to other humans. So I walk. No phone and no music. After a while, ideas start showing up out of nowhere. I think the mind keeps working in the background while you stare at something beautiful. It makes new connections, but only when you stop overstimulating it. The good stuff arrives in the silence you've been killing. And I think this might be it. We're at the start of an era where machines can do more knowledge work than most people. They create at the speed of inference. But the new connections, the actual ideas, I think those don't show up one second before you give yourself the quiet to find them. So maybe the rarest skill left is the most boring one. Being able to be bored.

OpenAI is reportedly considering drastic token price cuts to pull customers away from Anthropic, per WSJ. This follows rising complaints from enterprise customers about AI costs, while Anthropic has been gaining traction with Claude Code. The message is clear: @OpenAI does not want Anthropic to own the developer market. A real AI price war may be starting.

A short thank you. Yesterday gave me a lot of hope for the future of Viktor Watch. I won't take any of it for granted.