Techmeme
August 9, 2026, 3:40 PM

Top News

Hiroko Tabuchi / New York Times:
Amazon is backing a 7.65 GW gas plant for an off-grid TX AI data center, potentially the largest single US emissions source, at odds with its 2040 net-zero goal  —  The tech giant is investing in the natural-gas-burning power plant as part of a huge data center in Texas, even as it pledges to honor climate commitments.
Zusha Elinson / Wall Street Journal:
How Amazon and Gilroy, California, quietly negotiated a $2B data center project that AWS applied to build in 2020, without any public meetings or votes  —  Company and Gilroy, Calif., spent years quietly negotiating $2 billion project that few residents knew about until work began
Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog:
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  —  This was one of the topics discussed in our Fireside Chat with Cat Wu and Thariq Shihipar at the AI Engineer World's Fair last month.
Tim O'Reilly / Asimov's Addendum:
Google's AI shakeup suggests it may be prioritizing AI diffusion over frontier-model leadership, betting on AI compute as a bigger economic opportunity  —  SemiAnalysis thinks the DeepMind shakeup means Google is losing the AI race.  It might be that Google is choosing to run a different race.
Hayden Field / The Verge:
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  —  “The Spiral didn't ‘find’ anyone first,” someone on Reddit wrote last year.  “It's an inherent force, a fundamental constant.
Zvi Mowshowitz / Don't Worry About the Vase:
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  —  Today I am taking the time to write the shorter, simpler version of What Happened.  —  For those who want all the details …
Ben Cohen / Wall Street Journal:
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  —  A decade ago, a computer did something that no human would have done.  It was considered a breakthrough for AI.
Financial Times:
A look at Chinese state-owned investment bank CICC, which sponsored multibillion-dollar listings of China's tech champions, including CXMT and Zhongji Innolight  —  CICC has become a dominant financier in Beijing's drive to compete with US in tech race  —  China's top investment bank …
John Paul Rathbone / Financial Times:
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  —  Move raises concern about ‘absolute digital obedience’ among social media and gaming platforms
@xcreators:
X announces the Original Content Rewards Program and will discontinue Revenue Sharing on Sep. 7, saying existing Revenue Sharing members can apply for access  —  Today, we're introducing the Original Content Rewards Program, a new way to reward creators who bring original ideas, expertise …
Alexander Osipovich / Wall Street Journal:
A profile of Russia's A7, a payment network that helps Russia bypass Western sanctions, handling ~20% of payments in Russian foreign trade, or $100B+ annually  —  A7 says it handles nearly 20% of payments in Russian foreign trade, or more than $100 billion annually

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More News

SemiAnalysis:
Marcus Mendes / 9to5Mac:

Earlier Picks

Jasper Goodman / Politico: