The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

• Massachusetts formally recognizes the App Drivers Union, which says it represents ~70,000 workers and is the first state-certified rideshare union in the US (Bryan Hecht/The Boston Globe) [49d]
• The FTC settles with Cox, MindSift, and 1010 Digital Works for $930K over claims they falsely said they could use phone mics to spy on users for ad targeting (Adi Robertson/The Verge) [49d]
• X says it is cracking down on large accounts that have been gaming its revenue-sharing program by "programmatically reuploading content from smaller accounts" (Lakshmi Varanasi/Business Insider) [49d]
• Iranian state media reports that President Masoud Pezeshkian has issued an order to reopen international internet access after a near-90-day blackout (Reuters) [49d]
• Report: the EU plans to fine Google a high triple-digit million euro amount as part of a 2025 probe over concerns it favors its own services in search results (Reuters) [49d]
• A look at the UK's AI Safety Institute, whose researchers probe AI models for safety gaps, as its work becomes a blueprint for other governments' AI policies (New York Times) [49d]
• Study: rate of fabricated references in biomedical papers has grown 12x+ since 2023; in early 2026, one in 277 papers had at least one non-existent reference (Tristan Bove/Fortune) [49d]
• How Iranian threat actor Nimbus Manticore used techniques like AI-assisted malware development and SEO poisoning to target companies during the US-Iran war (Check Point Research) [49d]
• SoftBank stock jumped 4.6% to a record high on Monday, spurred by hopes of big returns from the company's stakes in OpenAI and SB Energy Corp if they go public (Bloomberg) [50d]
• Star Citizen, a video game in development since 2012, has reached $1B in lifetime funding; it remains in alpha and does not have a confirmed release date (Jennifer Maas/Variety) [50d]
• Tether plans to launch GELT, an "official" stablecoin representing the Georgian lari, with the support of Georgia's government in an unusual partnership (Reuters) [50d]
• Sources: Wix is expected to cut ~1,000 jobs in the coming months, or ~20% of its workforce, after weak Q1 earnings and a ~50% collapse of its stock in 2026 (Sophie Shulman/CTech) [50d]
• A section of the Pope's encyclical describing AI's unpredictability suggests influence from Anthropic, whose co-founder Christopher Olah attended the unveiling (Washington Post) [50d]
• In the ~43,000-word text, the Pope urged governments to slow down the development of AI systems and decried "new forms of slavery" of people tending AI systems (Joshua McElwee/Reuters) [50d]
• More than 5,500 GitHub repositories were infected with malware in a supply chain attack, dubbed Megalodon, on May 18 that relies on automated commits (Ionut Arghire/SecurityWeek) [50d]
• Pope Leo XIV presents his encyclical on AI, calling for regulation of AI companies, protection for children against hypersexualized AI images, and more (New York Times) [50d]
• Sources: execs from Meta, Google, and Amazon met with Vatican officials in April, as part of a quiet lobbying push ahead of Pope Leo XIV's first AI encyclical (Océane Herrero/Politico) [50d]
• A growing number of execs are creating AI digital twins to manage tasks; Reid Hoffman says "Reid AI" has delivered 75+ addresses and presentations since 2024 (Joann S. Lublin/Wall Street Journal) [50d]
• A look at Xiaomi's AI push to future-proof its hardware and EV ecosystem, as it recently committed ~$8.8B in AI investments over the next three years (Ben Jiang/South China Morning Post) [50d]
• A profile of Meta CTO Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, a top lieutenant of Mark Zuckerberg who is leading the gargantuan effort to transform Meta into an AI-first company (Meghan Bobrowsky/Wall Street Journal) [50d]
• A look at DeepSeek's model optimization to reduce HBM use, potentially enabling domestic memory, ASIC, and CPU makers to create a Chinese AI hardware ecosystem (@bookwormengr) [50d]
• The UK, outpaced by the US and China in AI, is turning to experimental technologies like neuromorphic computing in search of computing sovereignty (Charles Clover/Financial Times) [50d]
• At an IEEE conference, Huawei proposed a new chip scaling law and said it aims to design chips with transistor density equivalent to 1.4nm by 2031 (Nikkei Asia) [50d]
• Plenary Americas LP, La Caisse's infrastructure arm, agrees to acquire and take private Canadian database company ISC for $872M, expected to close in Q3 (Melissa Shin/Bloomberg) [50d]
• Quartermaster, which is building an analytics platform and a SmartMast, with sensors on a ship's mast to relay real-time maritime data, raised a $43M Series A (Sean O'Kane/TechCrunch) [50d]
• How the Trump admin gutted the CFTC, ousting enforcers and appointing industry-friendly officials, as Trump family got into crypto and prediction markets (New York Times) [50d]
• Demand for security engineers is surging, with job postings up 11% YoY in Q1, driven by threats from AI-generated code and models like Mythos and GPT-5.4-Cyber (Kate Conger/New York Times) [50d]