The Brutalist Report

Techmeme

SK Hynix CEO Kwak Noh-Jung says the memory industry is heading for its worst-ever supply shortage in 2027 and demand will outstrip supply beyond 2030 (Reuters) [4d]
Meta says it will discontinue a feature that allowed users to generate images in Meta AI using public Instagram accounts, following days of criticism (Corbin Bolies/Variety) [4d]
In response to Apple's trade secret theft lawsuit, OpenAI says "we have no interest in other companies' trade secrets" (Marcus Mendes/9to5Mac) [4d]
CISA says weak security controls around the use of public GitHub repos allowed a contractor to accidentally leak private cloud access keys and other credentials (Eric Geller/Cybersecurity Dive) [4d]
Bluesky interim CEO Toni Schneider becomes the company's permanent CEO, four months after succeeding Jay Graber (Lucas Ropek/TechCrunch) [4d]
A US NLRB judge rules that Atlassian had illegally fired an employee in 2023 for pushing back against manager layoffs, and orders reinstatement and compensation (Noam Scheiber/New York Times) [4d]
Apple says OpenAI leadership "normalized" misconduct and OpenAI's hardware business is "rotten to its core by its illegal reliance" on stolen trade secrets (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) [4d]
In its lawsuit, Apple chronicles in vivid detail how its former employees that went to work for OpenAI allegedly violated their confidentiality agreements (Aaron Tilley/The Information) [4d]
Apple alleges that a former Apple engineer kept a work-issued Apple laptop and exploited a bug to access Apple's cloud file storage while employed by OpenAI (Megan Morrone/Axios) [4d]
Apple claims OpenAI recruited 400+ ex-Apple employees, including an iPhone engineer who allegedly downloaded confidential hardware files before joining OpenAI (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg) [4d]
Apple alleges that Tang Tan, OpenAI's chief hardware officer and a former Apple VP, has directed Apple staffers interviewing at OpenAI to share Apple secrets (CNBC) [4d]
Apple sues OpenAI, alleging that ex-Apple employees stole "Apple's trade secrets for the benefit of OpenAI", and says OpenAI never responded to its concerns (Chance Miller/9to5Mac) [4d]
Source: Greg Brockman will continue to oversee OpenAI's products as the company doesn't plan to hire anyone to replace Fidji Simo after she stepped down (CNBC) [4d]
The Department of Commerce loosens export controls to the UAE, letting G42 and US companies like Apple, Meta, and xAI export AI chips to UAE without a license (Karen Freifeld/Reuters) [4d]
China drops a numerical target for urban job creation in its five-year plan, the first such omission since the 1990s, amid volatility fueled by AI displacement (Bloomberg) [4d]
Filing: college social app Fizz accuses Maveron's Jerry Lu of giving confidential info to rival Sidechat after he met with Fizz as a potential investor in 2022 (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch) [4d]
Privacy advocates, CAA, and SAG-AFTRA slam Meta's Muse Image, which lets users create AI images using the likenesses of people with public Instagram accounts (Ina Fried/Axios) [4d]
Analysis: Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle, the top spenders on new US data centers, collectively added ~$350B in debt over the past five years (Bloomberg) [4d]
SK Hynix opens up 14% at $170 after raising $26.5B in the largest ever US market debut by a foreign company (Kif Leswing/CNBC) [4d]
Phia, a shopping app co-founded by Phoebe Gates that has raised $43.5M, appears to be using fake clicks or "cookie stuffing" to claim affiliate commissions (Bloomberg) [4d]
Munich-based QuantumDiamonds, which uses quantum sensors to detect chip defects, raised €91M, including €76M under the European Chips Act (Cristian Dina/The Next Web) [4d]
Like the Claude app it imitates, the new ChatGPT "Super App", which merges Codex with ChatGPT, is a tangle of toggles and strange UI decisions (M.G. Siegler/Spyglass) [4d]
An RIAA-led coalition representing labels and artists proposes two tags for AI content: one for entirely AI-generated songs and another for "AI-assisted" tracks (Katherine Sayre/Wall Street Journal) [4d]
Xreal launches $299 A01 Plus AR glasses, weighing just 62 grams and featuring 1080p micro OLED panels with a 120Hz refresh rate and a 50-degree field of view (Cameron Faulkner/The Verge) [4d]
The UK designates Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Oracle as critical third-party financial sector suppliers, bringing them under direct regulatory oversight (Muvija M/Reuters) [4d]
Malaysia Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim plans to debut an agentic AI avatar of himself in the coming days, which aims to help the public use government services (Saritha Rai/Bloomberg) [4d]
Circle says it received US regulator approval to start a national digital-currency trust bank, allowing it to offer institutional custody services (Vildana Hajric/Bloomberg) [4d]
A US court sentences a former ransomware negotiator to 70 months in prison for working with BlackCat to extort a combined $75.3M from his employer's clients (Matt Kapko/CyberScoop) [4d]
In preliminary findings, the EU Commission said Facebook and Instagram's addictive design violates the DSA, telling Meta to make changes or risk a hefty fine (Adam Satariano/New York Times) [4d]
Filing: Polymarket is seeking CFTC approval to offer margin trading in the US, a move that would let users bet on events with less capital upfront (Bloomberg) [4d]
Taiwan's leading DRAM maker Nanya Technology expects its capex to hit ~$6.2B in 2027, up 4x YoY, and reports unaudited Q2 revenue of ~$2.6B, up 684% YoY (Wen-Yee Lee/Reuters) [4d]
Memo: MiniMax CEO Junjie Yan tells employees he will forgo his salary until MiniMax achieves AGI and promises to allocate personal shares to employee incentives (Juro Osawa/The Information) [4d]
OpenAI and Google are providing advanced AI models to Singapore-based subsidiaries of Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent, exposing a gap in US AI controls (Madhumita Murgia/Financial Times) [4d]
Interviews with employees and insiders reveal how CXMT is amassing tech, funding, and state support to challenge top memory chipmakers and build local suppliers (Gao Yuan/Bloomberg) [4d]
A look at Meta Superintelligence Labs' growth in the past year, including a top-tier RL environment and compute ramp that could catch up to Anthropic and OpenAI (SemiAnalysis) [4d]
Sources: Manus investors and management are discussing unwinding Meta's $2B buyout at the same valuation, with Tencent in talks to become the largest investor (Zijing Wu/Financial Times) [4d]
Carlyle agrees to sell US data center power and infrastructure platform Copia to EQT; sources: the deal values Copia at $2.6B, a fivefold return for Carlyle (Financial Times) [5d]
Oxylabs, which develops web data scraping infrastructure, received a $130M investment at a $3.6B valuation from Warburg Pincus, its first outside investment (Mike Wheatley/SiliconANGLE) [5d]
MiniMax is looking to raise as much as $1.9B by selling 35.6M shares at ~$34 each and offering ~$830M in convertible bonds due 2027 (Bloomberg) [5d]
1X says its humanoid robot Neo's five-fingered hands have tendon-style actuators that give it 25 degrees of freedom of movement, nearly the same as a human hand (Boone Ashworth/Wired) [5d]
How the internet, smartphones, social media, and now generative AI are accelerating a drop in the reading of longer works like books (Rose Horowitch/The Atlantic) [5d]