Techmeme
August 4, 2025, 6:35 AM

Top News

Noah Smith / Noahpinion:
A look at why the AI data center building boom could spark a financial crisis akin to 2008, including the rising use of debt financing via private credit funds  —  This time let's think about a financial crisis before it happens.  —  The U.S. economic data for the last few months is looking decidedly meh.
Paul Kedrosky:
As a percentage of US GDP, AI datacenter capex is already larger than peak telecom spending during the dot-com era and is approaching the railroad spending boom  —  AI capex is so big that it's affecting economic statistics, boosting the economy, and beginning to approach the railroad boom
Dan Milmo / The Guardian:
The UK Online Safety Act's approach to keeping children safe online has become a rallying point for the right in the UK and the US over alleged censorship  —  Farage accuses government of being ‘so below the belt’ as right wing doubles down on censorship claims  —  The UK's Online Safety Act has been greatly anticipated.
Lu Wang / Bloomberg:
A study finds that AI trading bots can collude and fix prices in simulated markets without explicit instruction, posing challenges to regulators  —  It's a regulator's nightmare: Hedge funds unleash AI bots on stock and bond exchanges — but they don't just compete, they collude.
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple formed an Answers, Knowledge, and Information team to work on ChatGPT-like search experiences; iPhone 17 Pro may have been seen in live testing  —  Apple has a new “Answers” team developing a stripped-down rival to ChatGPT to help users access world knowledge.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
A profile of Figma CEO Dylan Field, a former Thiel fellow whose Figma stake is worth ~$6.6B after the company ended its NYSE debut week with a $71B+ market cap  —  Mark Zuckerberg may be the most famous college-dropout-turned-tech- billionaire.  Dylan Field is the latest …
Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge:
Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 6 review: a unique $3,300 laptop with a rollable 120Hz OLED display that can grow from 14" to 16.7", but it is heavy and expensive  —  Part of me still can't believe it, but Lenovo did the thing: it took a bonkers concept for a laptop with a rollable screen and built …
More: TechCityForums: Hacker News
Sheera Frenkel / New York Times:
Google, OpenAI, Meta, and VCs are increasingly embracing the US military industrial complex, a major Silicon Valley cultural shift supported by President Trump  —  In a major shift, Google, OpenAI, Meta and venture capitalists — many of whom had once forsworn involvement in war — have embraced the military industrial complex.
Natallie Rocha / New York Times:
How 20-something CEOs like Cognition AI's Scott Wu, Cursor's Michael Truell, Cluely's Roy Lee, and Scale AI's Alexandr Wang are swarming San Francisco's AI boom  —  Some dropped out of M.I.T., Georgetown and Stanford.  Others decided not to go to college.  They all say they could not afford …
Asa Fitch / Wall Street Journal:
Wall Street Journal:
How Disney is grappling with integrating AI into its filmmaking process while safeguarding IP and addressing legal uncertainty, fan backlash, and union concerns  —  The stakes are especially high for the studio, caught between how to use artificial intelligence in the filmmaking process …

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Featured Podcasts

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Hard Fork:
We Met NEO, the Viral Humanoid Robot + HatGPT
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Decoder with Nilay Patel:
How AI is fueling an existential crisis in education
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Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
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Jessica Roy / The Information:
Clément Delangue / VentureBeat:
David DiMolfetta / Nextgov/FCW: