Chris Campbell:

Meet NEO, Your $20,000 Robot Roommate

1X Technologies just dropped what they’re calling the “world’s first consumer-ready robot designed to transform life at home.” For just $20,000, your new roommate arrives in 2026. 

His name? NEO.

On paper, NEO folds laundry, vacuums floors, and chats with you like your new best friend. In reality? It’s a lot closer to a puppet than a partner. Worse yet, the hype risks slowing the humanoid revolution it claims to lead.

Because here's the twist: Most of what NEO does is still remote-controlled. The folding, the tidying, the laundry? No AI magic there. A human pilot is behind every move, watching through a VR visor.

When you buy NEO, you’re basically buying access to a telepresence service. The “robotic revolution” is still being puppeteered through Wi-Fi. In other words, the near-future of humanoid robots is a guy in Dhaka, Bangladesh doing your dishes from a VR cubicle.

If this flops — and it might — it won’t just hurt 1X. It could set back the humanoid sector. Because 1X isn’t framing NEO as a prototype. It’s pushing it as a public debut of our humanoid future – priming consumers for massive disappointment.

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Davis Wilson:

China Says It’s Willing To Work With U.S. on TikTok — but Offers Few Details

Beijing will work with Washington to “properly resolve” issues around the divestiture of the U.S. operations of TikTok, China’s Commerce Ministry said in a statement Thursday.

The ministry did not provide a timeframe or any further details. The comment followed a high-stakes meeting earlier in the day between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the first in-person gathering of the leaders since Trump took office in January.

Trump did not mention TikTok in his remarks with reporters following his meeting with Xi. Instead, he outlined how the U.S. will roll back some tariffs on Chinese goods, while Beijing will postpone its latest rare earths restrictions.

“It’s the lack of specifics that will most certainly add to policy miscalculation risk,” Louise Loo, head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics, said in an email. “We don’t think there’s enough as yet to believe Beijing’s interests in the TikTok contention truly aligns with President Trump’s motivations to spin off the entity’s U.S. business.”

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James Altucher:

Bitcoin, Ethereum Bulls Get Rekt: Liquidations Top $1.1 Billion as Prices Fall After Trump Meets Xi

The price of Bitcoin slid on Thursday, bringing major coins and tokens with it, after President Trump wrapped up a highly anticipated meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. 

Bitcoin dropped below $108,000 and was recently trading 4% lower over a 24-hour period, according to CoinGecko. 

The leading digital coin broke a new record of $126,080 at the beginning of the month — dubbed "Uptober" by observers for the historically big crypto and stock market gains — but it's now nearly 15% below that level.

Meanwhile, Ethereum — the second-biggest digital coin — slid by 5% over a 24-hour period; the asset was recently priced at a little over $3,782. 

The sell-off comes after Fed Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday hinted that the U.S. central bank may not cut interest rates again this year. Bitcoin, crypto, and stocks have typically performed well in a low-interest rate environment, and the Fed has cut rates at the last two meetings.

Powell said that further cuts are not a 'foregone conclusion' and the Xi-Trump meeting did not produce any concrete results or certainty," Strahinja Savic, head of data and analytics at FRNT Financial said, adding, "The market [is] reacting to these short-term mixed signals."

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