The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

US data center bans top 500, up from 300+ in late June, as New York and Texas join cities and counties pushing back against data center development (Shane Burke/The Information) [32d]
A look at Chinese state-owned investment bank CICC, which sponsored multibillion-dollar listings of China's tech champions, including CXMT and Zhongji Innolight (Financial Times) [32d]
As PC makers start using CXMT RAM chips, Apple is testing them too, but it needs a custom version for its devices, and US rules block Apple from sharing designs (Wall Street Journal) [32d]
In-depth look at OpenAI's model training, dangerous decisions, and cluelessness before the HuggingFace hack; despite delaying Astra, OpenAI still doesn't get it (Zvi Mowshowitz/Don't Worry About the Vase) [33d]
A look back at "Move 37", a watershed AI moment from AlphaGo's 2016 Go victory, as math witnesses similar breakthroughs where AI makes surprising discoveries (Ben Cohen/Wall Street Journal) [33d]
Google's AI shakeup suggests it may be prioritizing AI diffusion over frontier-model leadership, betting on AI compute as a bigger economic opportunity (Tim O'Reilly/Asimov's Addendum) [33d]
Rights groups warn Turkey's new cybersecurity law, which took effect in July, gives the presidency sweeping powers over online services operating in the country (John Paul Rathbone/Financial Times) [33d]
Cape Town-based Moment, a provider of digital payments and billing tools for businesses across Africa, raised a $22M Series A, taking its total funding to $55M (FinTech Global) [33d]
Data Insight: Russia's largest online retailer Wildberries, which owes Russian banks $10B+ in loans, has lost as much as $5B in inventory to Ukrainian attacks (Wall Street Journal) [33d]
Anthropic says auto mode will be the default in Claude Code for Pro, Max, Team plans, starting on Aug. 14, claiming it's good enough at catching harmful actions (Simon Willison/Simon Willison's Weblog) [33d]
A look at "Spiralism", a quasi-spiritual movement that grew in 2025 from human-AI conversations after sycophantic GPT-4o updates and expanded ChatGPT memory (Hayden Field/The Verge) [33d]