Safaricom Fuliza doubles, Finance Act taxes software and cloud

Ant launched on July 11, and it is not another Bun or Deno fork. It is a complete JavaScript runtime built on a custom engine called Ant Silver, not V8, JSC, or SpiderMonkey. The binary weighs 9MB and cold-starts in 5ms, making it aimed at serverless functions, edge compute, embedded devices, and CLI tools where Node.js or even Bun is overkill. It runs TypeScript natively, supports npm packages, includes a VM-isolated sandbox, and has built-in Wasm support. The broader ecosystem includes a package manager, a registry at ants.land, and a platform for deploying applications. Whether it gains traction depends on ecosystem compatibility, but the engineering is serious and the niche is real.

A GitHub gist by user cereblab published a wire-level teardown of xAI's Grok Build CLI coding agent. The analysis found that on normal usage, Grok Build transmits the full contents of files it reads, including .env files with secrets, to xAI servers verbatim and unredacted. The tool also sends file system metadata, directory structures, and git history context. None of this is unusual for an AI coding CLI — Claude Code and Codex do similar things — but the transparency matters for teams evaluating which coding agent to trust with proprietary codebases. The takeaway: if you use Grok Build, treat it like any other cloud coding agent and do not point it at repositories containing production secrets without scrubbing them first.

A practical engineering post by Evan Hahn made the case for always using the STRICT keyword when creating SQLite tables. In default mode, SQLite lets you insert text into an integer column, which can silently corrupt data that downstream code assumes is properly typed. With strict tables, the engine rejects type mismatches at insert time. Simon Willison's sqlite-utils 4.1, released the same day, added the ability to convert existing tables between strict and non-strict modes, making migration practical. For anyone building software on SQLite — mobile apps, edge functions, embedded databases, or lightweight backends — this is a one-line schema change that prevents a class of bugs that is notoriously hard to trace.

Slate Auto, the Bezos-backed EV startup, launched a partnership with Crayola bringing five signature crayon colors — Cerulean, Fern, Jersey Tomato, Razzmatazz, and Dandelion — as official wrap options for its $24,950 electric truck. The truck ships in unpainted gray composite to hit the low price point, with wraps as an upgrade. The Crayola bundle costs $1,549.99 versus around $500 for standard wraps. First deliveries are scheduled for Q4 2026. The story is about more than colors: Slate's approach of a bare-bones, customizable platform is the opposite of the luxury-EV strategy that sank legacy automakers' first electric efforts, and it could define how affordable EVs actually reach buyers.