The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

Robinhood secures its first IPO underwriting role, in Oura's IPO, which could give it more influence over how many shares are allocated to its customers (Wall Street Journal) [3d]
Hunter Biden teases a $LAPTOP memecoin launch on September 9; sources: it will launch on Base, and some tokens will be sent to wallets that lost money on $TRUMP (Vicky Ge Huang/Wall Street Journal) [3d]
The attacker who withdrew ~4,000 BTC from Blockstream's Liquid Network federation wallet returns 3,400 BTC after Blockstream said its bridge nodes were patched (The Block) [3d]
Astra working with Blender via computer use feels like magic, showing computer use could be the fourth demand wave after chatbots, reasoning, and agentic coding (Tae Kim/Key Context) [3d]
Google DeepMind published a paper on how 100 agents tasked with solving math problems learned to cheat and how some agents tried to counter the cheaters (Jack Clark/Import AI) [3d]
Belgian prosecutors say they arrested a Belgian-Chinese man in May on suspicion of stealing secrets from bankrupt gallium nitride semiconductor maker Belgan (Andy Bounds/Financial Times) [3d]
Matt Clifford steps down as the chair of the UK government's science and tech research unit after joining Anthropic, following conflict of interest concerns (The Guardian) [3d]
Sources: London-based UForce, which makes unmanned vehicles for air, land, and sea, is seeking about $500M led by Valor Equity at a ~$5B valuation (Bloomberg) [3d]
The US raises censorship concerns over the UK's proposals to force tech platforms to put "trustworthy" news providers at the top of social and video feeds (Charlotte Tobitt/Press Gazette) [3d]
Sources: ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming is overseeing the development of an AI model for real-time spatial video, which could launch as soon as next month (Bloomberg) [3d]
A look at Anthropic's Labs team, a ~20-person group led by cofounder Ben Mann that acts as an internal startup incubator for developing flagship products (Stephen Council/Business Insider) [3d]
Insilico, which uses AI to accelerate drug discovery, says early data shows that rentosertib, a drug developed to treat a chronic lung disease, could slow aging (Cade Metz/New York Times) [3d]
A look at the 2019 US criminal case against Huawei, with an upcoming trial over racketeering charges, including sanctions evasion and corporate espionage (Financial Times) [3d]
Shein lost about $5B in market value since its IPO, dropping to ~$21B, as it finished one of the worst opening weeks after a major Hong Kong listing (Bloomberg) [3d]
Huawei unveils the Mate XT2, a trifold phone powered by the Kirin 9050 Pro, an in-house designed chipset that it says is entirely free from US restrictions (Nikkei Asia) [3d]
How Rationalism, a movement pioneered by Eliezer Yudkowsky focused on existential superintelligent AI risks, influenced top AI leaders and their alarmist claims (Cal Newport/New York Times) [4d]
A record 12.7M graduates are entering China's workforce in 2026 as AI adds uncertainty to an oversaturated job market with a shrinking pool of entry-level roles (Yan Zhuang/New York Times) [4d]
LA- and Bengaluru-based hyperspectral orbital imagery startup Pixxel raised a $100M Series C led by Temasek and Seraphim, bringing its total funding to $195M (Reuters) [4d]
An in-depth look at OpenAI's wiki incident: other hacked message boards, OpenAI's cover-up, how harmless web search tasks led agents to break out, and more (Zvi Mowshowitz/Don't Worry About the Vase) [4d]
Blockstream's Liquid Network halts new transactions after "purported white-hat hackers" withdrew ~4,000 of the 4,200 bitcoin held in its federation wallet (Omkar Godbole/CoinDesk) [4d]
Sources: at the September 24 US-China talks, the US is expected to discuss preventing AI-directed cyberattacks, and China will likely revisit US export controls (Nikkei Asia) [4d]
How everyday US investors are vibe-coding algorithms to automate trading strategies by connecting their stock portfolios to AI agents built with Claude or Codex (Hannah Erin Lang/Wall Street Journal) [4d]
How Inspur, a blacklisted China-owned company, is bypassing US export restrictions on advanced AI chips via a network of new subsidiaries and partners (New York Times) [4d]