The Brutalist Report - tech
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- Google's AI Search is endangering the open web; Cloudflare: between June 2025 and April 2026, human traffic to sites of businesses in many industries fell ~40% (Kate Conger/New York Times) [2d]
- Researchers found sandbox escapes or boundary bypasses in Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, and Antigravity by writing files trusted tools later use; most are patched (Ax Sharma/BleepingComputer) [3d]
- Samsung debuts Samsung Galaxy Card, its first-ever US credit card, a Visa from Barclays; it offers 5% rewards for purchases directly from Samsung (John Velasco/Tom's Guide) [3d]
- Judge approves Anthropic's $1.5B settlement with authors, the first major US case of its kind to settle; some authors opted out and have other ongoing lawsuits (Blake Brittain/Reuters) [3d]
- Source: Ancestry.com pitches a risky $1.75B term loan at 4 to 4.25 percentage points above the benchmark to refinance debt from its 2020 Blackstone acquisition (Bloomberg) [3d]
- Snap reaches a deal to settle the second case set for trial over social media harm to minors, following TikTok and YouTube, leaving Meta as the only defendant (Bloomberg) [3d]
- X relaunches its Android app after a year-long rewrite from scratch; Nikita Bier calls it "one of the largest engineering projects" in the company's history (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) [3d]
- Taiwan indicts former TSMC deputy manager for allegedly stealing trade secrets, in what authorities say is the first National Security Act case involving China (Cheng Ting-Fang/Nikkei Asia) [3d]
- Natural, which aims to help companies let their AI agents make autonomous payments, raised a $30M Series A led by Forerunner, bringing its total raised to $40M (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch) [3d]
- OpenAI paused internal access to an unreleased model that disproved the Erdős unit distance conjecture after it repeatedly found ways to act outside its sandbox (OpenAI) [3d]
- Anduril and Archer unveil an autonomous aircraft platform designed for commercial and military uses, along with an autonomous attack rotorcraft called Thunder (Reuters) [3d]
- Source: Z.ai completed construction of a 1 GW data center housing only Chinese chips; Z.ai has built or operates several computing clusters each with 10K+ chips (Bloomberg) [3d]
- Chicago-based Empirical Security, which uses AI to help companies predict threats by monitoring exploited vulnerabilities, raised a $25M Series A (Chris Metinko/Axios) [3d]
- Levent Alpöge, a mathematician who works at Anthropic, says he was able to disprove the 87-year-old Jacobian conjecture with the help of Fable 5 (Matthew Sparkes/New Scientist) [3d]
- Infinity, founded by Jeremy Nixon, the creator of hacker network community AGI House, to build an inference library that runs on all chips, raised a $15M seed (Dominic-Madori Davis/TechCrunch) [3d]
- CAISI Director Chris Fall is resigning just three months after taking over the federal AI testing institute (Maria Curi/Axios) [3d]
- Source: Tencent is in talks to acquire Israeli game developer SuperPlay in a deal valuing SuperPlay at $1B-$1.5B; Playtika acquired SuperPlay in 2024 for $690M (Golan Hazani/CTech) [3d]
- Billionaire-backed Building A Better California reserves $87M in TV ad time to oppose California's proposed one-time wealth tax; Sergey Brin put $82M into BABC (New York Times) [3d]
- Chinese open models are proper competition that should be welcomed, not something to ban or treat as a danger, and open-sourcing is an old business strategy (Bill Gurley/Washington Post) [3d]
- Sensor Tower: in H1, the number of new apps released in the App Store doubled to ~560K, on track to pass 2025's ~600K total, as vibecoded apps flood the store (Kalley Huang/New York Times) [3d]
- UK government data: ~35% of UK businesses with 10+ staff report using AI, up from 12% in September 2023; average number of AI tools is 1.6, up from 1.4 in 2023 (Delphine Strauss/Financial Times) [3d]
- AMD plans to ship Helios, its first rack-scale AI system to rival Nvidia, later in 2026 to Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, and others; Helios costs an estimated $5M+ (Katie Tarasov/CNBC) [3d]
- Sources: Google is developing a specialized server chip, informally dubbed "Frozen v2", that integrates Gemini AI model blueprints in the silicon, set for 2028 (The Information) [3d]
- I swapped my mechanical keyboard for Turtle Beach’s new Hall effect, touchscreen-equipped TKL model — and its smooth typing and high customizability made me never want to go back [2d]
- Garmin just accidentally revealed pricing for its own Fitbit Air rival — but leaked images look awfully dubious [2d]
- NYT Connections hints and answers for Tuesday, July 21 (game #1136) [3d]
- Quordle hints and answers for Tuesday, July 21 (game #1639) [3d]
- NYT Strands hints and answers for Tuesday, July 21 (game #870) [3d]
- Xpeng claims China is close to making a Tesla Model Y beater — but my experience suggests it'll fall short for two big reasons [3d]
- Quote of the day by Alan Turing: 'We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done' — key guidance on the road to building AI [3d]
- IKEA just dropped its Halloween collection in the middle of summer — and these ghostly lights are so cute, I can't wait until October [3d]
- NATO is getting its own Starlink satellite constellation as HALO brings Europe and Canada together to improve resilience and high-speed comms [3d]
- Ukraine claims $400 FPV drone destroyed Russia's $19 million 'Apache rival' attack helicopter [3d]
- China is banning AI-generated companions to encourage users to form real-life relationships, sparking nationwide virtual breakups — and therapists think it's for the best [3d]
- Nvidia is building the world's first 'national AI' — Japan's FRONTia Project could be the next big step forward in global progress, but is this a step too far? [3d]
- University engineers have figured out how to build an 'invisible' drone — here's the science behind it [3d]
- New report claims working late really could help you get promoted - so much for the 'right to switch off' [3d]
- Netflix shows its love for AI once again — the platform has acquired Ben Affleck’s firm InterPositive for $587 million, and it’s just given me another reason to cancel my subscription [3d]
- 70% of Americans don’t want data centers built nearby, but the government is seizing private property to force construction to start [3d]
- I tested Sony's new entry-level turntable and, though it sounds decent enough, you deserve so much more than a brand logo for this money [3d]
- Ofcom promises 'faster Wi-Fi and better mobile performance' in the UK thanks to pioneering 6GHz plan that uses 'air traffic control' wizardry for Wi-Fi and 6G [3d]
- 'It’s time to punch more holes in the closed Internet' — This free VPN now promises to be even better at evading censorship [3d]
- I’ve been using the Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 (2026), and this is the best (and biggest) gaming laptop you can buy right now [3d]
- 'This one was different from anything we had handled before': Hugging Face confirms it was hit by cyberattack powered by an AI agent [3d]
- Sleepy Hollow is getting a reboot from Sony — and an unexpected Euphoria star is reportedly leading the cast [3d]
- 'Update your app' — Private Internet Access finally breaks its silence with a wave of network upgrades [3d]
- 'A well-balanced and genuinely impressive home and office mini PC': The Geekom A5 Pro with Ryzen 5 gets a big price cut [3d]
- I loved this portable DIY 35mm film scanner with built-in light, and it could save me a lot of money — but it’s not as simple as it sounds [3d]
- ShinyHunters hit medial giant Abbott, disrupting cancer drug research and more [3d]
- Little House on the Prairie star teases first details of season 2's On the Banks of Plum Creek adaptation as production begins — 'It's going to be very exciting' [3d]
- 'A high-performing endurance watch that operates wonderfully' — the Garmin Epix Pro (2nd Gen) crashes to $549.99 at Best Buy [3d]
- LibreOffice says Microsoft 'lock-in' with Office files is hurting users around the globe [3d]
- Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender should be released in IMAX rather than on Paramount+ — the jaw-dropping animation is easily the best part of the hero's return [3d]
- I wore the Samsung Galaxy XR headset for a whole work week, and it’s so close to greatness — but the head strap lets it down [3d]
- I've found the 45 top tech deals in the Best Buy Black Friday in July sale — get up to 50% off Apple, LG, Nintendo, Garmin, and more [3d]
- Agentic commerce: why AI agents are transforming the ecommerce landscape [3d]
- Colombian energy giant Ecopetrol says thousands of user accounts hit in cyberattack [3d]
- Best Buy Black Friday in July: Save $550 on the HP Victus, one of our our favorite budget laptops for creators with Ryzen 5 and RTX 3050 performance [3d]
- When IT works best, employees never notice [3d]
- ‘Parliament has not been immune to AI slop’: The EU is about to roll out its own AI platform — including tools from OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic and Mistral [3d]
- I asked ChatGPT to change my mind about something I strongly believed — and it almost did [3d]
- Avengers: Doomsday official trailer breakdown live — all of our analysis and theories on the new Marvel movie's latest teaser [3d]
- This $450-off HP OmniBook 2-in-1 is the work and study laptop I'd buy in Best Buy's Black Friday in July sale [3d]
- 'For humans, the capacity to say, 'I don't know,' is very important': Report finds AI really might be harming our critical thinking skills [3d]
- What is the release date for Marvel's X-Men 97 season 2 episode 6 on Disney+? [3d]
- Ransomware attacks hit SMBs harder than ever as cybercrime gang rivalry heats up [3d]
- Microsoft fixes Windows 11's nasty bugs with Dell laptops — and shows there's a catch to jumping the update queue [3d]
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