Tootfinder

Meta's win over the US FTC may mean Meta, Google, Microsoft, and others can resume buying startups to stay ahead of the pack, after a slowdown under Lina Khan (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/technology/meta-ruling-silicon-valley…

Meta’s Victory Opens the Way for Silicon Valley to Go Deal Shopping
To avoid regulatory scrutiny, big tech companies had steered clear of buying start-ups outright. Meta’s antitrust win may change that thinking.

from my link log —
Infra-red in-situ (IRIS) inspection of silicon.
https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=6712
saved 2023-03-15 https://dotat.…

A profile of Pure Storage co-founder John Colgrove, as AI-driven demand for data storage pushes the company's stock to record highs, reaching a $30B market cap (Alicia Park/Forbes)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/aliciapark/…

After Four Decades In Silicon Valley, This Engineer Is A New Billionaire Thanks To The AI Boom
Pure Storage’s low-key cofounder John Colgrove joins the three-comma club after signing a flashy deal with Meta amid increasing data storage demand.

Yet it comes with a big risk. That is, the incredible dependence of US stock market growth on the performance of a handful of tech giants. The Magnificent 7 - Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla - collectively comprise one third of the valuation of America's entire S&P 500.
BBC News - The Silicon Valley 'AI factory' at the heart of the tech race - BBC News

US tech enabled China's surveillance empire. Now Tibetan refugees in Nepal are paying the price (Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/china-tibet-nepal-surveillance-technology-silicon-valley-eadac8211c5d0ca88374afecfbba00d5
http://www.memeorandum.com/251220/p35#a251220p35

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but magic doesn’t exist.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a strip mall psychic or a Silicon Valley bro trying to sell it to you.

As usual, STMicro makes silicon I mostly like, but I don't like their packages.
Here's the STM32MP257 TFBGA436 package with balls color coded (somewhat roughly) by power domain/function. I grouped some similar rails together e.g. all low voltage digital core balls are the same color (orange) even though there's multiple 0.8 / 0.82 / 0.9V domains there. All IO power (except dedicated PHY rails) is magenta regardless of which bank(s) it's for.
Things of note:
…

Trump unveils $100K yearly fee on H-1B visas in clampdown on high tech
Trump on Friday announced an annual $100,000 fee on successful applicants for a high-skilled worker visa program that is widely used in Silicon Valley.

Trump also signed an executive order that would allow wealthy foreigners to pay $1 million for a “gold card” for U.S. residency
and companies to pay $2 million for a “corporate gold card” that would permit them to sponsor one or more employees.

Trump unveils $100k yearly fee on H-1B visas in clampdown on legal immigration
The Trump administration also plans to launch a $1 million gold card visa for wealthy foreigners in a dramatic overhaul of the nation’s paths to legal immigration.

A look at Rupert Murdoch's California Post, which will focus on LA, Silicon Valley, and Sacramento when it launches in 2026; Ian Mohr will lead CA Page Six (Lachlan Cartwright/Vanity Fair)
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/story/rupert-murdoc…

Rupert Murdoch’s Last Hurrah: Conquering Hollywood With the 'California Post'
California is a veritable news feast—politicians with national ambitions, climate disasters, the twin industries of Hollywood and tech. And News Corp sees a media weakness to exploit.

Look what an old #macOS SDK in the “Command Line Tools" tree causes on Apple Silicon:
$ clang -o ghba geh.c
In file included from geh.c:14:
In file included from /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk/usr/include/stdlib.h:62:
/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk/usr/include/sys/cdefs.h:784:2: error: Unsupported architecture
784 | <…

'Kyiv could be Silicon Valley' — New 50-million-euro startup fund will develop Ukraine’s tech-ecosystem: https://benborges.xyz/2025/10/14/kyiv-could-be-silicon-valley.html

"The [resonant computing] Manifesto promises to fix everything that’s wrong on the internet right now. But you look at the authors and the signers, you’ll see the same guys who caused the present problems. These guys made it rich on the Torment Nexus and they’re now claiming they can fix it."
(Original title: The Resonant Computing Manifesto: same AI slop, same AI guys)

The Resonant Computing Manifesto: same AI slop, same AI guys
Back in the 1990s, in the first flowering of the World Wide Web, the Silicon Valley guys were way into their manifestos. “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace”! The “Cluetrain Manifesto!…

Max #Schrems von @… zu #DSGVO und dem #Omnibus:
"Und das ist …

Epic #semiconductors. I am part of a German-Taiwanese research collab: “Exploring Silicon Urbanism: Bilateral Workshops and Fieldtrips in Dresden and Hsinchu.” With trips to clean rooms and affected communities.
Photo-documentation upcoming! #sts

"Das schlechte Image der DSGVO ist ganz stark ein deutsches Phänomen, im Blick auf den Datenschutz ist Deutschland dem Silicon Valley näher als dem Rest der EU. Ich reise für Vorträge durch ganz Europa und dass man fast mit Tomaten beworfen wird, wenn man „Datenschutz“ sagt, das gibts nur in Deutschland," so Max Schrems #Datenschutz

A profile of Katherine Boyle, an a16z partner and a friend to JD Vance, as Silicon Valley increasingly adopts her views, including embracing defense tech (Julia Black/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/business/katherine-b…

The Tech Right Gets Its Own Phyllis Schlafly
Katherine Boyle, an influential venture capitalist who is a friend of the vice president, thinks the country’s path forward involves cultural conservatism and more weapons production.

When you are a MacOS developer or a Frank Krueger fan, every day is Xmas!
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cleanroom/id6753881178?mt=12

‎CleanRoom
‎Spin up real macOS virtual machines on your Apple silicon Mac in minutes. CleanRoom makes creating a clean, disposable Mac as easy as picking a version, clicking Create, and pressing Run. No complex setup, no command line, and no risky hacks. Just fast, reliable virtualization built on Apple’s Virtu…

How TBPN's daily livestream became the preferred news show of tech insiders, as it taps into the "who's up, who's down" part of Silicon Valley culture (Mike Isaac/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/technology/tbpn-silicon-valley.ht…

How ‘TBPN’ Became Silicon Valley’s Newest Obsession
Silicon Valley is obsessed with “TBPN,” a streaming show on which no career move is too trivial to document.

FTC v. Meta: TikTok's rise undermined the FTC's antitrust case and helped Meta avoid a breakup; Judge Boasberg said the tech landscape has "changed markedly" (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/technology/meta-google-antitrust-t…

Technology Is Fast and the Courts Are Slow
Silicon Valley has increasingly pointed at rapid digital changes to blunt government efforts to rein in its power.

Much lower energy fast chips:
"Scientists from the University of Warwick and the National Research Council of Canada have reported the highest "hole mobility" ever measured in a material that works within today's silicon-based semiconductor manufacturing...
This achievement also represents a significant accomplishment for Warwick's Semiconductors Research Group and highlights the UK's growing influence in advanced semiconductor materials research."…

A 1950s material just set a modern record for lightning-fast chips
Researchers engineered a strained germanium layer on silicon that allows charge to move faster than in any silicon-compatible material to date. This record mobility could lead to chips that run cooler, faster, and with dramatically lower energy consumption. The discovery also enhances the prospects for silicon-based quantum devices.

China's biggest oil company just hit a major solar breakthrough.
CNPC developed a perovskite solar cell with 25.05% efficiency—impressive on its own, but here's the bigger story: they're planning to pair it with silicon cells to slash energy costs. Pilot production starts 2026, mass production 2028.
Their goal? Match their oil output with renewables by 2035.

China National Petroleum Corporation achieves 25.05% efficiency for inverted perovskite solar cell
The Chinese energy and oil company said the cell can be used as a top device in perovksite-silicon tandem configurations. The result was confirmed by the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT).

CEIP study: 87 of the top 100 Chinese AI researchers who were working in the US in 2019 are still doing research at US universities or companies in 2025 (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/technology/ai-research-chinese-talent.html

In the A.I. Race, Chinese Talent Still Drives American Research
Although some Silicon Valley executives paint China as the enemy, Chinese brains continue to play a major role in U.S. research.

For some reason the combination of 160K and my Mitutoyo 100x/0.90 objective means that as the last bits of ILD begin to etch away, substrate features become *less* visible.
I expected to see strong contrast at edges of substrate features when the ILD was etched away despite poly, STI trenches, and diffusion areas all being the same material (silicon).
But that's not what I'm seeing.
Going back to my archives, though, most of my good full die 100x shots are with the …

heise | Der Siegezug von Apple Silicon: Fünf Jahre Macs mit Apple-Prozessoren
Im November 2020 kamen Macs erstmals mit Apples eigenem M-Chip heraus. Es wurde eine echte Erfolgsgeschichte. Ein Rückblick auf Technik und Hintergründe.

I Thought I Knew Silicon Valley. I Was Wrong
Tech got what it wanted by electing Trump. A year later, it looks more like a suicide pact.
https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valley-politics-shift/

I Thought I Knew Silicon Valley. I Was Wrong
Tech got what it wanted by electing Trump. A year later, it looks more like a suicide pact.

heise | Auswandern nach Polen: Was ITler verdienen, Lebenshaltungskosten und Steuern
Das "Silicon Valley Europas" lockt mit Jobs in der Techbranche und niedrigen Preisen. Wir erklären, ob die Rechnung für IT-Experten wirklich aufgeht.

Willkommen USA (und allen anderen & Co. etc.) in der veralteten Realität, sprich in der 20ern Technokratie:
»Renaissance einer politischen Bewegung:
Wenn Krisen Demokratie und Markt erschüttern, feiern Technokratie-Visionen ihr Comeback. Zwischen TechBros, Elon Musk und Silicon-Valley-Utopien zeigt sich - Die Sehnsucht nach Expertenherrschaft ist so aktuell wie gefährlich.«
🔊

Technokratie - Renaissance einer politischen Bewegung
Wenn Krisen Demokratie und Markt erschüttern, feiern Technokratie-Visionen ihr Comeback. Zwischen TechBros, Elon Musk und Silicon-Valley-Utopien zeigt sich: Die Sehnsucht nach Expertenherrschaft ist so aktuell wie gefährlich.

In-situ Radiation Damage Study of Silicon Carbide Detectors Subjected to Clinical Proton Beams
Daniel Radmanovac, Andreas Gsponer, Simon Waid, Sebastian Onder, Matthias Knopf, J\"urgen Burin, Stefan Gundacker, Thomas Bergauer
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.11304

In-situ Radiation Damage Study of Silicon Carbide Detectors Subjected to Clinical Proton Beams
Silicon carbide (SiC) planar PiN diodes from two different manufacturers were irradiated with 252.7 MeV protons from a medical synchrotron. Over the course of two 8h irradiation shifts, the samples were exposed to increasing fluences ranging from 1.4e+11 to 3.5e+13 p+/cm^2. Electrical characterizations, including IV and CV measurements, were performed both before and after irradiation using probe stations, and for selected samples even in-situ between fluence steps directly at the irradiation f…

I had never seen this episode 😲 Noo, Big Headdd 😔
Silicon Valley | Ten Years Later: The Extended Pied Piper Documentary | HBO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ab1H602yc_Y

🚴 Benchmarking On-Device Machine Learning on Apple Silicon with MLX
#apple #hardware

Benchmarking On-Device Machine Learning on Apple Silicon with MLX
The recent widespread adoption of Large Language Models (LLMs) and machine learning in general has sparked research interest in exploring the possibilities of deploying these models on smaller devices such as laptops and mobile phones. This creates a need for frameworks and approaches that are capable of taking advantage of on-device hardware. The MLX framework was created to address this need. It is a framework optimized for machine learning (ML) computations on Apple silicon devices, facilita…

K-shell ionization and characteristic x-ray radiation by high-energy electrons and positrons in oriented silicon crystals
S. V. Trofymenko, I. V. Kyryllin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.13407

Sequencing on Silicon: AI SoC Design for Mobile Genomics at the Edge
Sebastian Magierowski, Zhongpan Wu, Abel Beyene, Karim Hammad
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.09339 https://

Sequencing on Silicon: AI SoC Design for Mobile Genomics at the Edge
Miniature DNA sequencing hardware has begun to succeed in mobile contexts, driving demand for efficient machine learning at the edge. This domain leverages deep learning techniques familiar from speech and time-series analysis for both low-level signal processing and high-level genomic interpretation. Unlike audio, however, nanopore sequencing presents raw data rates over 100X higher, requiring more aggressive compute and memory handling. In this paper, we present a CMOS system-on-chip (SoC) de…

How TBPN's daily livestream became the preferred news show of tech insiders, as it taps into the "who's up, who's down" part of Silicon Valley culture (Mike Isaac/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/technology/tbpn-silicon-valley.ht…

How ‘TBPN’ Became Silicon Valley’s Newest Obsession
Silicon Valley is obsessed with “TBPN,” a streaming show on which no career move is too trivial to document.

Another Christofascist out to destroy Silicon Valley and the World after destroying Intel.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/28/patrick-gelsinger-christian-ai-gloo-silicon-valley

Origin of Enhanced Thermal Resistance Near Nanoscale Hotspots: Insights from Full-Dispersion-Resolved Phonon Transport in Silicon
Jae Sik Jin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.12530 ht…

Origin of Enhanced Thermal Resistance Near Nanoscale Hotspots: Insights from Full-Dispersion-Resolved Phonon Transport in Silicon
Phonon transport near nanoscale hotspots (NHs) critically determines heat dissipation in advanced electronic devices. The prevailing understanding is that the enhanced thermal resistance (TR) observed in NHs originates from long mean free path (MFP) phonons, whose MFPs are much larger than the hotspot size, thereby limiting their ability to recognize hotspots and transport heat effectively. In this study, we revisit this problem by employing the Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) with a full ph…

#NorthAmerica's largest #semiconductor #convention skipped its traditional #MosconeCenter setup in

I've seen and lived this pitch before and it is unsustainable for a life worth living: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/10/21/why-silicon-valley-tech-workers-are-embracing-996/
How to convince young people to be…

Analysis | Why Silicon Valley tech workers are embracing ‘996’
The Washington Post’s essential guide to tech policy news.

David Sacks,
the Trump administration’s A.I. and crypto czar,
has helped formulate policies that aid his Silicon Valley friends
and many of his own tech investments.
Since January, Mr. Sacks, 53, has occupied one of the most advantageous moonlighting roles in the federal government,
influencing policy for Silicon Valley in Washington while simultaneously working in Silicon Valley as an investor.
Among his actions as the White House’s artificial intelligen…

Silicon Valley’s Man in the White House Is Benefiting Himself and His Friends
David Sacks, the Trump administration’s A.I. and crypto czar, has helped formulate policies that aid his Silicon Valley friends and many of his own tech investments.

A Quantum Computer Based on Donor-Cluster Arrays in Silicon
Shihang Zhang, Chunhui Zhang, Guanyong Wang, Tao Xin, Guangchong Hu, Yu He, Peihao Huang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.24749

A Quantum Computer Based on Donor-Cluster Arrays in Silicon
Significant advances in silicon spin qubits highlight the potential of silicon quantum dots for scalable quantum computing, given their compatibility with industrial fabrication and long coherence times. In particular, phosphorus (P)-doped spin qubits possess excellent coherence and have demonstrated high-fidelity two-qubit gates exceeding 99.9%. However, scaling P-donor systems is challenging due to crosstalk caused by the uniformity of individual P donors and the low tolerance for imprecise a…

Light coupling to photonic integrated circuits using optimized lensed fibers
Dengke Chen, Zeying Zhong, Sanli Huang, Jiahao Sun, Sicheng Zeng, Baoqi Shi, Yi-Han Luo, Junqiu Liu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10635

Light coupling to photonic integrated circuits using optimized lensed fibers
Efficient and reliable light coupling between optical fibers and photonic integrated circuits has arguably been the most essential issue in integrated photonics for optical interconnects, nonlinear signal conversion, neuromorphic computing, and quantum information processing. A commonly employed approach is to use inverse tapers interfacing with lensed fibers, particularly for waveguides of relatively low refractive index such as silicon nitride (Si3N4), silicon oxynitride and lithium niobate. …

If we design it to return the results we want to see, is it really #AI? And if someone is determining what it returns, is that someone liable for damages arising from use of the product as intended?

If we design it to return the results we want to see, is it really #AI? And if someone is determining what it returns, is that someone liable for damages arising from use of the product as intended?

Considering how often Windows updates break things and the silicon valley mantra 'break things and fix later' I wonder if that is a safe way of thinking tech. This pod goes through how Volvo unintentionally diaabled the cars breaks by an update.
https://podcasts.apple.com/se/podcast/…

#BBC Do we have our heads up the arse of Silicon Valley’s hype machine? https://c.im/@BBC/115501813135148073

i think we learned the wrong lessons from left-pad. maybe it would create a better world if any npm user could pull a "stop cord" for the entire silicon valley corporate environment

https://www.thetimes.com/us/american-politics/article/silicon-valley-spy-china-russia-2v03676kl
Female spies are waging ‘sex warfare’ to steal Silicon Valley secrets

Female spies are waging ‘sex warfare’ to steal Silicon Valley secrets
China and Russia are sending attractive women to seduce tech workers — even marrying and having children with their targets. ‘It’s the Wild West out there,’ says insider

"There was no choice, there is no choice: either submit to capital or watch your ideas wither and die. There are no other practical ways to raise significant capital. Real Angels don’t exist"
On the Feudal-like structures in Silicon Valley. Written in 2018, but not much has changed.
https://<…

Apple's N1 chipset in the iPhone 17 lineup delivers up to 40% higher median Wi-Fi download and upload speeds globally vs. the Broadcom-based iPhone 16 lineup (Luke Kehoe/Ookla)
https://www.ookla.com/articles/apple-n1-2025

New Silicon, New Speeds: How Apple's N1 compares with Android Flagships for Wi-Fi Performance | Ookla®
Explore how Apple’s new N1 wireless chip stacks up against Android flagships for Wi-Fi performance using global Speedtest Intelligence® data.

Hâte (non) de ne lire que du bien de cette tendance sur LinkedIn.
https://www.courrierinternational.com/article/travail-sans-alcool-sans-sommeil-sans-plaisir-le-rythme-996-gagne-la-silicon-valley_235673…

“Sans alcool, sans sommeil, sans plaisir” : le rythme “996” gagne la Silicon Valley
Dans l’industrie de la tech en Californie, de plus en plus de jeunes entrepreneurs ambitieux adoptent des horaires de travail qui s’étalent de 9 heures à 21 heures sur six jours par semaine. Explications.

How Epstein Channelled Race Science and 'Climate Culling' Into Silicon Valley's AI Elite (Nafeez Ahmed/Byline Times)
https://bylinetimes.com/2025/12/05/how-epstein-channelled-race-science-and-climate-culling-into-silicon-valleys-ai-elite/
http://www.memeorandum.com/251205/p131#a251205p131

Electride behavior at high pressure in silicon and other elements in solid and liquid phases
Salma Ahmed, Felipe Gonz\'alez-Cataldo, Victor Naden Robinson, Burkhard Militzer
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01583

Electride behavior at high pressure in silicon and other elements in solid and liquid phases
Electrides are materials in which some of the electrons are localized at the interstitial sites rather than around the atoms or along atomic bonds. Most elemental electrides are either alkali metals or alkaline-earth metals because of their low ionization potential. In this work, we report that elemental silicon becomes an electride at pressures exceeding 400 GPa. With {\it ab initio} molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, we study this behavior for silicon, sodium, potassium, and magnesium at hi…

Accelerating Sparse Ternary GEMM for Quantized LLM inference on Apple Silicon
Baraq Lipshitz (ETH Zurich), Alessio Melone (ETH Zurich), Charalampos Maraziaris (ETH Zurich), Muhammed Bilal (ETH Zurich)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.06957

Accelerating Sparse Ternary GEMM for Quantized LLM inference on Apple Silicon
Sparse Ternary General Matrix-Matrix Multiplication (GEMM) remains under-optimized in existing libraries for Apple Silicon CPUs. We present a Sparse Ternary GEMM kernel optimized specifically for Apple's M-series processors. We propose a set of architecture-aware optimizations, including a novel blocked and interleaved sparse data format to improve memory locality, strategies to increase Instruction-Level Parallelism (ILP), and NEON-based Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) vectorization to…

Bericht: Apples Chip-Chef Johny Srouji erwägt den Absprung
Von M-Prozessoren bis Funkchips: Apple Silicon beeindruckt seit Jahren konstant. Der zuständige Top-Manager zieht angeblich in Betracht, die Firma zu wechseln.

may contain traces of Silicon Valley refs
Meta is now pivoting toward a compression conpany.
https://github.com/facebook/openzl

GitHub - facebook/openzl: A novel data compression framework
A novel data compression framework. Contribute to facebook/openzl development by creating an account on GitHub.

Solar breakthrough alert: Fraunhofer ISE just hit 30.6% efficiency with a perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell.
What makes this special? They used an industry-standard TOPCon bottom cell—meaning this tech could actually scale to mass production, not just stay in the lab.
This could be a game-changer for making solar panels significantly more powerful.

Fraunhofer ISE achieves 30.6% efficiency for perovskite-silicon tandem based on industry-standard bottom TOPCon cell
Researchers at Fraunhofer ISE have developed a perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell using a TOPCon bottom cell with standard textured front surfaces. Their results show that TOPCon bottom cells can perform comparably to heterojunction cells in tandem devices in terms of shunt resistivity, supporting scalable, cost-effective industrial production.

Billionaire tech advisers overcame a MAGA rebellion over AI in the Trump Whitehouse
A power struggle over the future of technology is playing out inside the administration,
as officials confront high-stakes decisions that touch everything
from national security and jobs
to online safety for children.

How Trump’s tech advisers overcame a MAGA rebellion over AI
President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting states’ power to regulate AI split his supporters and highlighted Silicon Valley’s growing influence over his agenda.

OK fedi hivemind... I'm looking for a flat square of material about 1cm on a side and maybe 1mm thick that is going to survive being boiled in hot nitric/sulfuric acid for a couple of minutes, then rinsed in acetone and water.
I'm thinking a glass or ceramic, but don't have a source for ready made chunks of the right size (microscope coverglasses are too fragile).
You can get pre-diced silicon wafers with chunks the right size (e.g. Ted Pella 16006) but that's ann…

Demonstration of quantum error detection in a silicon quantum processor
Chunhui Zhang, Chunhui Li, Zhen Tian, Yan Jiang, Feng Xu, Shihang Zhang, Hao Wang, Yu-Ning Zhang, Xuesong Bai, Baolong Zhao, Yi-Fei Zhang, Huan Shu, Jiaze Liu, Kunrong Wu, Chao Huang, Keji Shi, Mingchao Duan, Tao Xin, Peihao Huang, Tianluo Pan, Song Liu, Guanyong Wang, Guangchong Hu, Yu He, Dapeng Yu

Demonstration of quantum error detection in a silicon quantum processor
Quantum error detection is essential in realizing large-scale universal quantum computation, especially for quantum error correction (QEC). However, key elements for FTQC have yet to be realized in silicon qubits. Here, we demonstrate quantum error detection on a donor-based silicon quantum processor comprising four-nuclear spin qubits and one electron spin as an auxiliary qubit. The entanglement capability of this system is validated through the establishment of two-qubit Bell state entangleme…

Hybrid Quantum Systems: Coupling Single-Molecule Magnet Qudits with Industrial Silicon Spin Qubits
Daniel Schroller, Daniel Sitter, Thomas Koch, Viktor Adam, Noah Glaeser, Clement Godfrin, Stefan Kubicek, Julien Jussot, Roger Loo, Yosuke Shimura, Danny Wan, Yaorong Chen, Mario Ruben, Kristiaan De Greve, Wolfgang Wernsdorfer
https://arxiv.o…

Hybrid Quantum Systems: Coupling Single-Molecule Magnet Qudits with Industrial Silicon Spin Qubits
Molecular spin qudits offer an attractive platform for quantum memory, combining long coherence times with rich multi-level spin structures. Terbium bis(phthalocyaninato) (TbPc$_2$) exemplifies such systems, with demonstrated quantum control and chemical reproducibility. In hybrid quantum architectures, TbPc$_2$ can act as the primary memory element, with semiconductor qubits providing scalable readout and coupling. Here we present a step toward such a hybrid system: using an industrially manuf…

TFW you combine two cults together in some sort of mega-cult
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/28/patrick-gelsinger-christian-ai-gloo-silicon-valley

Chinese silicon wafer manufacturers like Eswin have rapidly gained market share by undercutting global leaders, such as Japan's Shin-Etsu Chemical, on price (Nikkei Asia)
https://asia.nikkei.com/business/technology…

In silicon wafers, China's emerging local stars rattle global giants
Japan has long led in key chip material, but Chinese rivals like Eswin catch up

Lernumgebungen, um KI-Agenten zu trainieren
Socken kaufen neu gelernt: KI-Agenten brauchen andere Trainings als statische Datensets. Im Silicon Valley wird daran gearbeitet.
https://www.heise.de/new…

[Excerpt:] Tech billionaire Peter Thiel recently warned that Swedish activist
Greta Thunberg & critics of tech or AI are
“legionnaires of the Antichrist”
in private lectures on Christianity that linked government oversight of Silicon Valley to an apocalyptic future.
https://bsky.app/prof…

Wilson Dizard III (@wpd3.bsky.social)
[Excerpt:] Tech billionaire Peter Thiel recently warned that Swedish activist Greta Thunberg & critics of tech or AI are “legionnaires of the Antichrist” in private lectures on Christianity that linked government oversight of Silicon Valley to an apocalyptic future. https://wapo.st/4q5wR6S

not on my list of expected developments: Ex-Intel boss Gelsinger now leads a #Christian #AI company
"We’re not trying to take a theological position: we’re building a technology platform. 🧐"

Amazon's AGI team lead Rohit Prasad is leaving at the end of 2025; AWS SVP Peter DeSantis will lead a group combining AI, silicon, and quantum computing teams (Todd Bishop/GeekWire)
https://www.geekwire.com/2025/amazon-ai-ch

Broadband spectral mapping of photo-induced second-harmonic generation in silicon nitride microresonators
Ji Zhou, Marco Clementi, Samantha Sbarra, Ozan Yakar, Camille-Sophie Br\`es
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.05636

Broadband spectral mapping of photo-induced second-harmonic generation in silicon nitride microresonators
By employing a pump-probe technique for enhanced spectral mapping of the dynamics in nonlinear frequency conversion, we demonstrate that photo-induced second-harmonic generation (SHG) in silicon nitride (Si3N4) microresonators can persist when transitioning from the preferred doubly resonant condition--where the resonances of the optical harmonics are required to be matched--to a highly detuned state where the generated second harmonic is significantly shifted away from its corresponding resona…

A look at outlets in Belgium and France that are prioritizing independence from Big Tech and opting for open source or in-house software (Owen Huchon/Columbia Journalism Review)
https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/editorial-independence-means-technologic…

Editorial independence means technological independence.
From Google to Microsoft, European newsrooms often rely on tools built in Silicon Valley. Some are trying to break free, turning to open-source alternatives or home-grown solutions.

🍪 Scientists create world's first chip that combines 2D materials with conventional silicon circuitry
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-10-scientists-world-chip-combines-2d.html

Scientists create world's first chip that combines 2D materials with conventional silicon circuitry
For the first time, scientists have created a fully functional memory chip only a few atoms thick and integrated it into conventional chips. This advance could pave the way for more powerful and energy-efficient electronic devices.

The Writer Who Dared Criticize Silicon Valley (David Streitfeld/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/27/technology/writer-silicon-valley-criticism.html?unlocked_article_code=1.4U8.fsxY.9ndmBHqClmfa&smid=bs-share
http://www.memeorandum.com/251127/p38#a251127p38

Sources and docs: after Marc Andreessen donated $5M to Trump's 2024 campaign, most CFPB probes have stalled, including three into Andreessen-backed companies (Jake Pearson/ProPublica)
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-cfpb-marc-andreessen-silicon-vall…

Tech Billionaire Marc Andreessen Bet Big on Trump. It’s Paying Off for Silicon Valley.
The Trump administration’s gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been good for venture capitalists like Andreessen, who previously accused the agency of “terrorizing” fintech startups and crypto companies.

Three-Dimensional Electrostatic and Quantum-Confinement Modeling of Silicon Nanowire Double Quantum Dots
Nilesh Pandey, Dipanjan Basu, Leonard F Register, Sanjay K Banerjee
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.07831

Three-Dimensional Electrostatic and Quantum-Confinement Modeling of Silicon Nanowire Double Quantum Dots
We present a three-dimensional simulation study of silicon nanowire double quantum dots with leads, which extends beyond traditional effective-mass or quasi-1D and quasi-2D approaches typically applied to bulk or planar geometries. Using the Sentaurus QTX, we self-consistently couple a 3-D Poisson solver with two-dimensional Schrödinger solutions along the strongly confined width * thickness cross-sections normal to the transport direction, yielding bound-state energies and wavefunctions acros…

At a time when the majority of Americans distrust big tech
and believe artificial intelligence will harm society,
Silicon Valley has built its own network of alternative media
where CEOs, founders and investors
are the unchallenged and beloved stars.
What was once the province of a few fawning podcasters
has grown into a fully fledged ecosystem of publications and shows
supported by some of the tech industry’s most powerful.

Q&A with journalist Jacob Silverman on his new book Gilded Rage, the radical politics of certain tech elites, AI's impact on Silicon Valley politics, and more (Calder McHugh/Politico)
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/202

Tech Billionaire investor Marc Andreessen has long criticized the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)
— calling it an impediment to fintech and crypto companies. 
Andreessen’s investment firm (Andreessen Horowitz aka A16Z) backed many fintech/crypto players that were under CFPB scrutiny,
Under the Trump administration, the CFPB’s enforcement efforts were sharply scaled back:
investigations suspended,
consumer-protection rule-makings shelved,
and …

Tech Billionaire Marc Andreessen Bet Big on Trump. It’s Paying Off for Silicon Valley.
The Trump administration’s gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been good for venture capitalists like Andreessen, who previously accused the agency of “terrorizing” fintech startups and crypto companies.

Dominant scattering mechanisms and mobility peak in cryogenic 2D electron transport in Silicon (110) confinement by high-k oxides
Hsin-Wen Huang, Xi-Jun Fang, Edward Chen, Yuh-Renn Wu
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.08220

Dominant scattering mechanisms and mobility peak in cryogenic 2D electron transport in Silicon (110) confinement by high-k oxides
The performance of silicon nano-devices at cryogenic temperatures is critical for quantum computing technologies. Through multi-valley Monte Carlo simulations of Si (110) systems, we reveal a fundamental shift in electron transport physics at low temperatures. Phonon scattering becomes negligible, and mobility is instead dictated by a competition between remote Coulomb scattering (RCS) at low carrier densities and surface roughness scattering (SRS) at high densities. This competition creates a …

Marc Andreessen is one of America’s most well-known investors and an outsize figure in the so-called fintech industry.
His firm seeded eight companies since 2016 that landed in the crosshairs of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
-- the small watchdog agency that Congress created after the 2008 financial crisis to protect vulnerable consumers from exploitation.
Some of those inquiries have resulted in consent orders, fines and, for one company, a lifetime industry ba…

Tech Billionaire Marc Andreessen Bet Big on Trump. It’s Paying Off for Silicon Valley.
The Trump administration’s gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has been good for venture capitalists like Andreessen, who previously accused the agency of “terrorizing” fintech startups and crypto companies.

It's funny how you spend a bit of time looking at silicon and quickly develop a sixth sense for recognizing processes and nodes.
Besides the obvious tells for specific foundries (like TSMC and Samsung fiducials) I can recognize TSMC 350 nm, Microchip 160K, Atmel's 350nm node, and UMC 180 at a glance.
Probably more, but those are some of the most distinctive looking ones that i've seen a *lot* of chips made on. Especially UMC 180.

An interview with Pluribus creator Vince Gilligan on why he choose Apple TV for his show, the AI disclaimer in the credits, Tilly Norwood, and more (Ethan Shanfeld/Variety)
https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/pluribus-explained-vince-gilligan-rhea-see…

‘Pluribus’ Explained by Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seehorn
Vince Gilligan and Rhea Seehorn unpack the first two episodes of 'Pluribus' and slam AI: 'Silicon Valley' has 'f---ed up the world.

Lightspeed raised a record $9B across six funds to invest in AI, with $3.3B to back breakout companies like Anthropic; Lightspeed has backed 165 AI startups (Erin Griffith/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/15/technology/ai-venture-capital-big-fun…

In A.I. Boom, Venture Capital Firms Are Raising Loads More Money
Lightspeed Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley venture firm, has amassed more than $9 billion to invest in artificial intelligence. That is its biggest haul.

A profile of Paulina Borsook, as her 2000 book Cyberselfish, warning about Silicon Valley's love for "techno-libertarianism", finds a resurgence in interest (David Streitfeld/New York Times)
https://www.

The Writer Who Dared Criticize Silicon Valley
Paulina Borsook’s “Cyberselfish,” which offered dire predictions about the tech world’s love for libertarianism, is finding fans. It only took 25 years.

While China’s older tech pioneers tend to idolize Silicon Valley,
younger founders find their role models in people such as
DeepSeek’s Liang Wenfeng and
Unitree’s Wang Xingxing
— both of whom studied exclusively at Chinese universities and are known to predominantly hire domestic talent.

A December analysis from Citi GPS projected that the world would be populated by 648 million humanlike bots by 2050,
unlocking an enduring production advantage and immen…

The Chinese robots are coming
China is miles ahead in the race to dominate a technology that could define the 21st century.

Tech whistleblowers like Yaël Eisenstat say coming forward has unexpectedly derailed their lives and careers; Meta is in litigation with Sarah Wynn-Williams (Naomi Nix/Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/12/15/big-tech-whist…

Tech whistleblowers face million-dollar debts, job loss and isolation
After exposing the harms of Big Tech, many whistleblowers say they faced poor job prospects and isolation in Silicon Valley. They have no regrets.

Sources: at a November meeting in the Oval Office, Jensen Huang told President Trump that a flurry of state AI laws could cause the US to lose the AI race (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/the-silicon-va

Tech leaders embracing Trump for short-term gain may ultimately imperil their companies and is counter to Silicon Valley's idealistic roots (Steven Levy/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valley-politics-shift/

I Thought I Knew Silicon Valley. I Was Wrong
Tech got what it wanted by electing Trump. A year later, it looks more like a suicide pact.

A shadow has fallen over Silicon Valley.
The community still overwhelmingly leans left -- But with few exceptions, its leaders are responding to Donald Trump by either keeping quiet or actively courting the government.
One indelible image of this capture is from Trump’s second inauguration,
where a decisive quorum of tech’s elite, after dutifully kicking in million-dollar checks, occupied front-row seats.
“Everyone in the business world fears repercussions, because …

I Thought I Knew Silicon Valley. I Was Wrong
Tech got what it wanted by electing Trump. A year later, it looks more like a suicide pact.

Inside Pangyo Techno Valley, South Korea's "Silicon Valley" that is home to 1,800 startups, R&D centers, and global tech firms, as it strives for global impact (Kate Park/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/24/sout

South Korea's 'Silicon Valley' struggles to live up to its global ambitions | TechCrunch
South Korea’s Pangyo continues to anchor the nation’s tech economy, though accessibility and competition test its edge.

As the Pentagon, particularly the Army, cozies up to Silicon Valley
four big tech executives with no military background, were directly commissioned to be lieutenant colonels, in the Army
-- and they will not recuse themselves from business dealings with the Department of Defense.
Earlier this month, the Army announced Detachment 201,
the name being a reference to HTTP code,
for the newly commissioned executives
from Palantir, Meta and OpenAI.
The ne…

Tech Executives Commissioned as Senior Army Officers Won't Recuse Themselves from DoD Business Dealings
The new formation is set to recruit tech executives to work on major Army challenges, but the service has not articulated exactly what those individuals would do -- instead focusing on recruiting talent and creating jobs around them.

How David Sacks and AI adviser Sriram Krishnan overcame the opposition to Trump's AI EO, reaching out to lawmakers and finally modifying the text of the order (Washington Post)

How Trump’s tech advisers overcame a MAGA rebellion over AI
President Donald Trump’s executive order limiting states’ power to regulate AI split his supporters and highlighted Silicon Valley’s growing influence over his agenda.

A look at an "etiquette camp" for young founders in San Francisco, which teaches them how to dress, act, and talk, amid shifting expectations for tech founders (Lisa Bonos/Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/12/07/te…

Tech bros head to etiquette camp as Silicon Valley levels up its style
As Silicon Valley grows in power and prominence, some insiders say it’s time for the tech industry to remake its slobby image. An etiquette camp for founders showed how.

US startups are increasingly adopting Chinese open source AI models, as some capabilities of Chinese models start to catch up with those of frontier US labs (NBC News)
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/silicon-valley-building-free-chinese-ai-r…

More of Silicon Valley is building on free Chinese AI
Surveying the state of America’s artificial intelligence landscape earlier this year, Misha Laskin was concerned

Q&A with Marc Andreessen and investor Charlie Songhurst on Silicon Valley's past, present, and future, AI, productivity, Stripe, crypto, Musk, media, and more (Cheeky Pint)
https://cheekypint.substack.com/p/marc-andreessen-and-charlie-songhurst

Marc Andreessen and Charlie Songhurst on the past, present, and future of Silicon Valley
Marc Andreessen, cofounder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz, sits down for a Cheeky Pint with John Collison and Charlie Songhurst to discuss the history of Silicon Valley, spotting bubbles in real time, the “Elon method” of management, and why the mistakes that haunt you are the companies you don’t invest in.

A look at how David Sacks' work on AI and crypto in Trump's WH benefits his investments, those of Silicon Valley friends, and the All-In podcast he co-hosts (New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/3…

Silicon Valley’s Man in the White House Is Benefiting Himself and His Friends
David Sacks, the Trump administration’s A.I. and crypto czar, has helped formulate policies that aid his Silicon Valley friends and many of his own tech investments.

How a semiconductor investment boom is turning Arizona into "America's Semiconductor HQ", attracting more than $200B in investments in the last five years (Justine Calma/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/features/825207/semiconduct…

The new silicon valley (literally)
The US wants to make its own chips again. Will it bring back manufacturing jobs? Or guzzle up too much water in the desert? Can the semiconductor industry avoid repeating the same mistakes it made in Silicon Valley?  

Investigation: the US government allowed and even helped US companies sell tech used for China's surveillance across five GOP and Democratic administrations (Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/chinese-sur

US government helps Silicon Valley firms sell surveillance technology to China
Even while warning about national security and human rights abuse, the U.S. government across five Republican and Democratic administrations has repeatedly allowed and even actively helped American firms to sell technology to Chinese police, government and surveillance companies, an Associated Press investigation has found. And time after time, despite bipartisan attempts, Congress has turned a blind eye to loopholes that allow China to work around its own rules, such as cloud services, third-p…

A look at some California tech regulation bills, including one banning AI use in firing or disciplining workers, that await Gov. Newsom's signature or his veto (Brian Merchant/Blood in the Machine)
https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/were-about-to-find-out-if-silico…

We're about to find out if Silicon Valley owns Gavin Newsom
A guide to the AI and tech bills that have passed the California legislature, and await the governor's signature — or veto.

How US startups like Oakland-based Brimstone are racing to develop sources of raw materials that the US needs for tech, an industry China has long dominated (Heather Somerville/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.

Singapore-based banking and payments startup Airwallex raised $330M at an $8B valuation, after raising $300M at a $6.2B valuation in May, and plans a US HQ (Laith Al-Khalaf/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/925815f6-d1d7-46c4-862d-da39acc712a2

Airwallex plots Silicon Valley expansion after securing $8bn valuation
Payments company opens San Francisco base and reduces Tencent’s holding in US pivot

A technical deep dive into Amazon's Trainium3 accelerator, including its server SKUs' specifications, silicon design, power budget, and bill of materials (SemiAnalysis)
https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/aws-trainium3-deep-dive-a-potential

AWS Trainium3 Deep Dive | A Potential Challenger Approaching
NL72x2/NL32x2 Scale Up Rack Architecture, Step-Function Software & System Improvements, Optimized Perf per TCO, “Amazon Basics” GB200 NVL36x2, Astera Labs, Trainium4

Google says Ironwood, its seventh-gen TPU, will launch in the coming weeks and is more than 4x faster than its sixth-gen TPU; it comes in a 9,216-chip config (CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/06/google-unveils-ironwood-seventh-gener…

Google's rolling out its most powerful AI chip, taking aim at Nvidia with custom silicon
Google says Ironwood, the seventh generation of its Tensor Processing Unit, is more than four times faster than its predecessor chip.

A look at Bret Taylor's AI agent startup Sierra as it launches new products; source: Sierra is on track to exceed $100M in annualized revenue by January 2026 (Richard Nieva/Forbes)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardnieva/2025/11/05/sierra-bret-taylor-c…

How Two Silicon Valley A-Listers Became Billionaires By Remaking Customer Service With AI
Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor had leadership roles at the world's biggest tech companies. Now they’re in the startup trenches, using AI agents to help companies interact with their customers.