Techmeme
August 4, 2025, 10:01 AM

Top News

Mike Isaac / New York Times:
Silicon Valley has shifted from Web 2.0 to a new “hard tech”, AI-dominated era with fewer perks and a more serious mood, as startups use San Francisco as a base  —  In a scene in HBO's “Silicon Valley” in 2014, a character who had just sold his idea to a fictional tech company …
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 …
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.
Bloomberg:
Amazon says it is closing its Wondery podcast studio and will break up its operations as part of a broad reorganization; a source says ~110 jobs will be cut  —  As podcasting becomes video-oriented, Amazon is shuffling Wondery into Audible and a new “creator services” team while cutting approximately 110 staff members
Noah Smith / Noahpinion:
How the AI data center building boom could cause a financial crisis akin to 2008, including the rising use of short-term 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:
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 expand from 14" to 16.7", but is heavy and has few ports  —  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 …
More: TechCityForums: Hacker News
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.
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.

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Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
OpenAI Calls a 'Code Red' + Which Model Should I Use? + The Hard Fork Review of Slop
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
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Access:
Is Roblox making the internet better or worse? We asked the CEO
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
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Lenny's Podcast:
Why LinkedIn is turning PMs into AI-powered "full stack builders" | Tomer Cohen (LinkedIn CPO)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
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Great Chat:
Code red: our favorite tech rivalries
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
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Big Technology Podcast:
How An AI Model Learned To Be Bad — With Evan Hubinger And Monte MacDiarmid
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
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More News

George Osborne / Financial Times:

Earlier Picks

Jessica Roy / The Information:
Clément Delangue / VentureBeat: