Tootfinder

How an open-source approach helped DeepSeek and other Chinese AI companies; Hugging Face: Alibaba's Qwen is now the world's largest open-source AI ecosystem (South China Morning Post)
https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article

How open-source AI is helping China win hearts and market share
China’s free-for-all AI models, developed by firms like DeepSeek and Alibaba, present a viable alternative to US closed-source systems.

Reminds me of that episode of Silicon Valley (HBO) where a software load intended for phones leaked onto the screens of home refrigerators and started displaying "rude" content.

'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

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.

Still more reasons to hate Silicon Valley. And billionaires.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/21/silicon-valley-income-wealth-gap

In line with my longtime pet issue of cascading #SystemicFailure in complex systems which we've created and come to depend upon, yet have seemingly forgotten how to maintain.
We saw a hint of what's possible in the early years of Covid when shortages rolled across the economy in unpredictable ways. I fear what might happen as the Fash keep dismantling all forms of systemic in…

https://apnews.com/article/chinese-surveillance-silicon-valley-uyghurs-tech-xinjiang-8e000601dadb6aea230f18170ed54e88
“Over the past quarter century, American tech companies to a large degree designed and built …

How Silicon Valley enabled China's digital police state
An AP investigation reveals that U.S. technology companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state, playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known. Firms including IBM, Dell, and Cisco sold billions in technology to Chinese police and government agencies, despite repeated warnings that such tools were being used to quash dissent, persecute religious sects and target minorities. Critically, American surveillance technologies allowed a b…

Silicon valley e-waste invisibility trick.
#ewaste #pollution
https://gerrymcgovern.com/silic…

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.

Bundeswirtschaftsministerin Katherina Reiche (CDU) richtet eine Expertenkommission für Künstliche Intelligenz (KI) und Wettbewerb ein. Das Gremium soll offenbar helfen, die Wettbewerbspolitik und die strategischen Herausforderungen im Digitalbereich besser zusammenzubringen. Wie das Handelsblatt von mit der Sache vertrauten Personen erfuhr, soll die voraussichtlich 14-köpfige Kommission im Herbst mit der Arbeit beginnen.
Eine Liste der designierten Mitglieder liegt der Reda…

In his new investigative series "Military AI Watch", award-winning science reporter Peter Byrne explores
“how Silicon Valley, corporate media, the Department of Defense, the banking industry, and scientific institutions all intersect in the effort to militarize AI.”
https://thereal…

Trump and Silicon Valley’s plan to rule the world with AI weapons
“We're talking about millions of devices all over the world that are supposedly sending information into some kind of centralized point in the military-industrial apparatus from which they can control everything,” Peter Byrne of Project Censored tells us. “That is their plan.”

Big Tech's reverse acquihires for AI talent are hollowing out startups and eroding the culture that has made Silicon Valley an unparalleled source of innovation (Asa Fitch/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-researchers

good piece. be warned there's a Garry Tan jump scare. #sfPol
https://jacobin.com/2025/08/san-francisco-zohran-democratic-socialism

San Francisco’s Ultrarich Are Blocking a Zohran-Style Agenda
For years, democratic socialists in San Francisco have been passing Zohran Mamdani–style policies in the city legislature and through ballot measures, only to see them blocked by Silicon Valley billionaires and powerful real estate interests.

Tech executives say the Trump administration's stake in Intel and its intervention into other private businesses have had a chilling effect on decision-making (Yasmin Khorram/Politico)
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/16/silicon-valley-ceo-trump-b…

[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

"His uncle urged companies to be more mindful of staff who frequently come into the office at odd hours, suggesting that awareness alone could save lives" - Updated story reflects he had a heart attack. Had someone else been there, or had he not been working late to begin with, someone could have been around to act
Telling remark, "practice originated in China and was eventually banned there after being linked to burnout and deaths"

Fuck Trump, fuck Silicon Valley, and fuck Big Tech.
Look at the state of these slimy sycophants.
🤮
#Trump

Keine Redaktion, kaum Kontrolle, dafür prozentuale Beteiligung an allem – auch an Propaganda. Romantische Erzählung vom freien Netz trifft auf die Realität: Wer alles zulässt, verkauft auch das, was der Demokratie schadet.
Michael Hanfeld in der #FAZ (€) über #Substack -

Newsletter: Wer steckt hinter der Plattform Substack?
Die Newsletter-Plattform Substack hat zahlreiche prominente Autoren abgeworben und gilt als das nächste große Ding der Medienszene. Dahinter stecken Investoren aus dem Silicon Valley. Was ist ihr Interesse?

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…

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.

Silicon Valley AI Startups Are Embracing China's Controversial '996' Work Schedule (Kate Knibbs/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/silicon-valley-china-996-work-schedule/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250723/p24#a250723p24

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.

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.

peak user experience implies the existence of (silicon) valley user experience

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

Across China, tens of thousands of people tagged as troublemakers are trapped in a digital cage,
barred from leaving their province and sometimes even their homes
by the world’s largest digital surveillance apparatus.
Most of this technology came from companies in a country that has long claimed to support freedoms worldwide -- the United States.
⚠️ Over the past quarter century, American tech companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state,…

How Silicon Valley enabled China's digital police state
An AP investigation reveals that U.S. technology companies to a large degree designed and built China’s surveillance state, playing a far greater role in enabling human rights abuses than previously known. Firms including IBM, Dell, and Cisco sold billions in technology to Chinese police and government agencies, despite repeated warnings that such tools were being used to quash dissent, persecute religious sects and target minorities. Critically, American surveillance technologies allowed a b…

Wide Electrical Tunability of the Valley Splitting in a Doubly gated Silicon-on-Insulator Quantum Well
Nathan Aubergier, Vincent T. Renard, Sylvain Barraud, Kei Takashina, Benjamin A. Piot
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.02094

Wide Electrical Tunability of the Valley Splitting in a Doubly gated Silicon-on-Insulator Quantum Well
The valley splitting of 2D electrons in doubly-gated silicon-on-insulator quantum wells is studied by low temperature transport measurements under magnetic fields. At the buried thermal-oxide SiO$_{2}$ interface, the valley splitting increases as a function of the electrostatic bias $δn = n_{B}-n_{F}$ (where $n_{B}$ and $n_{F}$ are electron densities contributed by back and front gates, respectively) and reaches values as high as $6.3$~meV, independent of the total carrier concentration of the…

@… @… Absolutely! I am convinced that Silicon Valley, in particular, has transcended “products” or “customers”, and is now simply the business of funnelling money around in the guise of “investment”. It works because the …

I'm so glad I never took up any of those Silicon Valley companies or VC-backed startups on their offers.
Probably I'd be rich, I guess.
But I prefer to have my conscience not flushed down the toilet.

If #AI is allegedly so good for worker productivity and improving efficiency across organizations, why are the AI companies making their own employees work 72 hour workweeks?
If the tech actually helped them get more done faster, wouldn’t they have SHORTER workweeks? Why aren’t they using their own tools to help their employees?
Context: #Anthropic earlier this year, and they told me that this is a job with far longer work hours than any other place they’ve worked at.
They are also pulling 60 hour weeks there, they have zero tolerance for remote work, because the culture is “you don’t want to be left behind”. This person basically disappeared from social life once they took this job. I had never seen them so tired before.

Surely the NCF should be doing this work?
https://www.publictechnology.net/2025/10/09/news/dsit-tests-ability-of-ai-models-to-coordinate-cyberattacks/

DSIT tests ability of AI models to coordinate cyberattacks
Science and innovation agency has this year worked with a Silicon Valley policy and research outfit as part of an initiative designed to assess automated tools’ success in finding vulnerabilities Government’s tech department has recently conducted specialised tests designed to determine the e

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 (Mike Isaac/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/technology/ai-silicon-valle…

A.I. Has Ushered in Silicon Valley’s ‘Hard Tech’ Era
Goodbye to the age of consumer websites and mobile apps. Artificial intelligence has ushered in an era of what insiders in the nation’s innovation capital call “hard tech.”

«at this point, AT Proto has become essentially a sort of ideological vaporware; a way for Jay Graber et al to run a social media platform while claiming they don't run a social media platform. This is, of course, just another iteration of the Silicon Valley monoproduct: power without accountability.»
Delusions of a Protocol | Azhdarchid
#bluesky

Economic inequality has reached a staggering milestone in Silicon Valley:
just nine households hold 15% of the region’s wealth, according to new research from San Jose State University.
🔥A mere 0.1% of residents hold 71% of the tech hub’s wealth.
The findings come from the 2025 “Silicon Valley Pain Index”,
a report published by SJSU’s Human Rights Institute each year since 2020. The report aims to quantify “structured inequalities” in Silicon Valley, and measures “pai…

THE LESSER-KNOWN PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES #8: LAIDBACK
This language was developed at the Marin County Center for T'ai Chi,
Mellowness and Computer Programming (now defunct), as an alternative to
the more intense atmosphere in nearby Silicon Valley.
The center was ideal for programmers who liked to soak in hot tubs while
they worked. Unfortunately few programmers could survive there because the
center outlawed Pizza and Coca-Cola in favor of Tofu and Perrier…

love to see this, surprised it hadn't been on my radar.
Protesters Against AI Militarization Rally at Scale AI in San Francisco
https://www.kqed.org/news/12051183/protesters-against-ai-militarization-rally-at-sca…

Bounds on Atomistic Disorder for Scalable Electron Shuttling
Rapha\"el J. Prentki, Pericles Philippopoulos, Mohammad Reza Mostaan, F\'elix Beaudoin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.03113

Bounds on Atomistic Disorder for Scalable Electron Shuttling
Electron shuttling is emerging as a key enabler of scalable silicon spin-qubit quantum computing, but fidelities are limited by atomistic disorder. We introduce a multiscale simulation framework combining time-dependent finite-element electrostatics and atomistic tight-binding to capture the impact of random alloying and interface roughness on the valley splitting and phase of shuttled electrons. We find that shuttling fidelities are strongly suppressed by interface roughness, with a sharp anom…

Not a good day for news about digital tech jobs.
Coding bootcamps have been a mainstay in Silicon Valley for more than a decade. Now, as AI eliminates the kind of entry-level roles for which they trained people, they’re disappearing.
https://www.reuters.com…

A New Digital Divide? Coder Worldviews, the Slop Economy, and Democracy in the Age of AI
Jason Miklian, Kristian Hoelscher
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.04755 https://

A New Digital Divide? Coder Worldviews, the Slop Economy, and Democracy in the Age of AI
Digital technologies are transforming democratic life in conflicting ways. This article bridges two perspectives to unpack these tensions. First, we present an original survey of software developers in Silicon Valley, interrogating how coder worldviews, ethics, and workplace cultures shape the democratic potential and social impact of the technologies they build. Results indicate that while most developers recognize the power of their products to influence civil liberties and political discours…

I can't imagine OpenAI is going to Trumpify GPT. I'm pretty sure they've spent more on instruction tuning data than they have on model training.
Even if they wanted to throw all that out and start again, you'd need to build a coherent image of what the bot should do in any given situation. The MAGA worldview simply doesn't have the required coherence.

Tech elites are turning AI into ChatGPTrump
The administration's new AI plan gives Silicon Valley everything it wants — for a price.

While Silicon Valley is training their models on everybody’s copyrighted content and seems to get away with it, UMG is obviously using AI to flood YouTubers with automated copyright claims. Including people like Rick Beato who is doing interviews with the musicians who wrote those songs and talk about them. What does UMG think happens after people watch those videos? Exactly. They open Spotify and listen to the artist. It’s free advertising to >5 million subscribers.

California weighs lawsuit over Trump’s new $100K visa fee rattling Silicon Valley - POLITICO
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/24/california-lawsuit-trump-100k-visa-fee-00579812

Nearly all funding for AI safety research comes from Silicon Valley companies racing to develop AI, as the voices of AI "doomers" fade in prominence (Peter Guest/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-12/the-ai-doomers-a…

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 …

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.

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.

Wall St and Silicon Valley ride high as tariffs hit Main Street (George Steer/Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/aefad7d1-e809-4a16-8acd-6e2ef9f28ebe
http://www.memeorandum.com/250803/p30#a250803p30

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.

NYC tech-scene sanguine about Mamdani
https://www.wired.com/story/tech…

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.

https://www.arretsurimages.net/chroniques/clic-gauche/ia-le-futur-sera-stupide

IA : le futur sera stupide - Par Thibault Prévost | Arrêt sur images
Dans la mythologie publicitaire des "agents", des logiciels en théorie capables d'effectuer des tâches à notre place, l'oligopole de la Silicon Valley dessine en creux un monde peuplé d'individus sans autonomie, inspiration ou créativité, entièrement dépendants de la machine.

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.

[Ctrl F "fairness doctrine" ... "Phrase not found."]
https://www.thedissident.news/the-oligarchs-coup-against-the-free-press-is-happening-now/

The Oligarchs' Coup Against the Free Press Is Happening Now
The American information space is not merely changing; it is undergoing a hostile takeover. It is a deliberate, coordinated campaign by a new class of oligarchs out of Silicon Valley that includes Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, and Mark Zuckerberg acting in concert with a Trump-led authoritarian political project.

Palo Alto Networks to acquire identity security provider CyberArk in $25 billion deal https://therecord.media/palo-alto-networks-cyberark-acquisition

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.

It's just one crazy day after another in cybersecurity lately, so check out today's Metacurity for the most critical infosec developments you should know, including
--SharePoint attacks hit 400 organizations, campaign now includes ransomware.
--French cops bust xss.is admin and shutter the platform,
--Trump's AI action plan boosts Silicon Valley powerhouses,
--AZ state hackers likely behind other breach efforts,
--Hacker installed wiper software in Am…

SharePoint attacks hit 400 organizations, campaign now includes ransomware
French cops bust xss.is admin and shutter the platform, Trump's AI action plan boosts Silicon Valley powerhouses, AZ state hackers likely behind other breach efforts, Hacker installed wiper software in Amazon's AI Q assistant, Old Ivanti flaws plague Japan, much more

Q&A with Wired's global editorial director Katie Drummond on how it is impossible to disambiguate tech from politics as the US turns toward authoritarianism (Oliver Darcy/Status)
https://www.status.news/p/wired-katie-drummond-interview

WIRED for the Moment
In a conversation with Status, WIRED’s Katie Drummond argues that Silicon Valley is no longer just innovating new technology—it’s actively shaping American democracy.

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.

An interview with Nick Clegg about Zuckerberg's "masculine energy", Silicon Valley's "cloying conformity" and "combination of machismo and self-pity", and more (Gaby Hinsliff/The Guardian)
https://www.theguardian.com/politics…

Chinese open-source AI models from DeepSeek, Alibaba's Qwen, and others gaining global traction spurs US policymakers and companies to respond (Raffaele Huang/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chinas-l…

Dame Stella Rimington, the first woman to head MI5,
has passed away.
The Daily Express obituary highlights her trailblazing career.
Appointed director general in 1992, she was globally recognized as the first female head of an intelligence agency.
Rimington joined MI5 in 1967 as a part-time typist at the British High Commission in New Delhi,
transitioning from what she described as a “bored housewife”.
Throughout her career, she confronted Russian spie…

Press Review - Serious mood and fewer perks: Silicon Valley enters its 'hard tech' era
PRESS REVIEW – Tuesday, August 5: As the plastic pollution summit begins in Geneva, Libération highlights the little-known but devastating scourge of plastic pellets ravaging the planet. Also, Silicon Valley’s shift into a new “hard tech” era reflects a changing political climate; former CNN journalist Jim Acosta sparks controversy after interviewing an AI avatar of a school massacre victim. And, the press pays tribute to Stella Rimington, the first woman chief of MI5.

How Google, Meta, and Apple's pledges to spend billions on new Silicon Valley housing failed to meet expectations; Apple spent $1.6B by July 2024, the most (Nicole Friedman/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/tech-compa…

Silicon Valley's bet on Trump starts to pay off (Washington Post)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/07/23/trump-ai-action-plan-big-tech/
http://www.memeorandum.com/250723/p32#a250723p32

Coding bootcamps, a Silicon Valley mainstay for over a decade, are facing decline as AI eliminates the kind of entry-level roles for which they trained people (Anna Tong/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/bootcamp-bust-how-…

Fast charge noise sensing using a spectator valley state in a singlet-triplet qubit
David W. Kanaar, Yasuo Oda, Mark F. Gyure, J. P. Kestner
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.14108

Fast charge noise sensing using a spectator valley state in a singlet-triplet qubit
Semiconductor spin qubits are a promising platform for quantum computing but remain vulnerable to charge noise. Accurate, in situ measurement of charge noise could enable closed-loop control and improve qubit performance. Here, we propose a method for real-time detection of charge noise using a silicon singlet-triplet qubit with one electron initialized in an excited valley state. This valley excitation acts as a spectator degree of freedom, coupled to a high-quality resonator via the exchange …

Sources: Sequoia stands to gain about $2.65B in Klarna's IPO, a six-fold return on its total investment of ~$500M; it is selling ~2% of its stake in the IPO (Katie Roof/The Information)
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/sequoia-poised-nearly-…

Sequoia Poised for Nearly $3 Billion Gain From Klarna IPO
Klarna’s two-decade journey to a public listing means a lucrative return for its biggest backer—Sequoia Capital. The Silicon Valley firm stands to make about $2.65 billion on paper from its investment in the buy now, pay later lender, which endured boardroom drama and tumbling valuations on its ...

Arizona woman sentenced to 8.5 years for running North Korean laptop farm https://therecord.media/arizona-woman-sentenced-north-korean-laptop-farm

Tech execs are paying tens of thousands to find brilliant dates
or select high-IQ embryos.
‘They want to raise high-performing children.’
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/silicon-valley-high-iq-children-764234f8

How Mode to Code, a nonprofit founded by a teenager, is teaching Bay Area seniors to use AI and avoid scams through free coding and tech literacy classes (CNN)
http://www.cnn.com/2025/09/27/tech/sillicon-valley-seniors-ai-course

Silicon Valley’s seniors get a crash course in AI
From tech lessons to tech support, the Mode to Code program offers a positive space for the curious seniors who might be intrigued by the possible applications of AI in their daily lives or simply looking to set up their emails on their phones.

Investigation: IBM, Dell, Cisco, Oracle, Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia, and other US tech companies helped design and build China's vast digital surveillance state (Associated Press)
https://apnews.com/article/chinese-surve…

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.

Balaji revealed his shocking ideas for a tech-governed city
where citizens loyal to tech companies would form a new political tribe clad in
gray t-shirts.
“And if you see another Gray on the street … you do the nod,” he said, during a four-hour talk on the Moment of Zen podcast. “You’re a fellow Gray.”
“Grays should embrace the police, okay? All-in on the police,”
said Balaji Srinivasan.
“What does that mean? That’s, as I said, banquets.
That means …

The Tech Baron Seeking to Purge San Francisco of “Blues”
If Balaji Srinivasan is any guide, then the Silicon Valley plutocrats are definitely not OK.

Anthropic becomes the first major AI company to back SB 53, a California bill that requires large AI companies to disclose safety testing protocols (Maxwell Zeff/TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/08/anthropic-endorses-californias-ai-safety-bill…

Anthropic endorses California's AI safety bill, SB 53 | TechCrunch
As Anthropic endorses SB 53, much of Silicon Valley and the federal government are pushing back on AI safety efforts.

A look at Allen Control Systems, maker of AI-powered gun turrets designed to shoot down drones, co-founded by Steven Simoni, who sold Bbot to DoorDash for $125M (David Jeans/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/technology/how-silicon-valley-warlo…

In 2022 Larry Ellison gave Elon Musk $1 billion to help fund his purchase of Twitter (now X).
And last year Skydance Media merged with Paramount creating a conglomerate with almost unmatched reach.
While Larry’s son David runs Paramount on paper, it’s the father who actually owns the company.
This means that Larry Ellison owns a controlling stake in a broadcast network (CBS),
a major streaming platform (Paramount ),
multiple movie studios,
CBS News,

Larry Ellison’s quest to run the world
TikTok is the latest prize in the Silicon Valley billionaire’s second act as a media mogul.

E-ID 2: «Für mich ist diese Abstimmung wirklich eine Herzensangelegenheit. Es geht bei der Vorlage um einiges», so der Freiburger Grünen-Nationalrat. Das E-ID-Gesetz würde die Schaffung einer digitalen Infrastruktur für die Schweiz ermöglichen, «einen Service public fürs 21. Jahr­hundert, der nicht von einer Handvoll Verwaltungsräte von ganz weit weg geprägt wird», so Andrey. Eine Antwort auf die Bigtech-Fantasien aus dem Silicon Valley.
https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/e-id-wie-aus-den-ehemaligen-gegnern-befuerworter-wurden-824887461083

Google, OpenAI, Meta, and VCs are increasingly embracing the US military industrial complex, a major Silicon Valley cultural shift supported by President Trump (Sheera Frenkel/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/technology/google-meta-openai-…

How Tech Firms Like Google and Meta Are Embracing the Military
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.

Dave Vater, 55, an Uber driver from Pittsburgh, who is in the first generation of men in his family to not work in a steel mill since the 1890s,
is among the many yet to be convinced by the AI data centre investments from companies including Google, Meta and Anthropic.
“That doesn’t help a person like me,” he said.
“There’s going to be work for the unions to build the facilities and things like that, -- but I mean that job comes and that goes.
So it’s great they’re inv…

America’s ‘Steel City’ taking on Silicon Valley as AI powerhouse
Political and business leaders hope traditionally blue-collar Pittsburgh can embrace an AI-powered future as it plays a key role in Trump’s ‘America First’ policy

Xi Jinping is pushing the country's tech industry to be oriented toward applications for AI, charting a pragmatic alternative to Silicon Valley's pursuit of AGI (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/china-has-a…

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.

Bengaluru, home to about 33% of India's 1,800 GCCs and key to the $300B tech industry, struggles as its infrastructure lags behind rapid tech sector growth (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/c3ff0433-1736-4146-ab6b-cf9344108d54

The unsustainable boom in India’s Silicon Valley
Over the past two decades, Bengaluru has seen explosive growth in its tech sector. But the city’s infrastructure is not keeping up with the expansion

A US judge sentences an Arizona woman to 8.5 years in prison for running a "laptop farm" that enabled North Korean workers to secure IT jobs at 309 US companies (Jonathan Greig/The Record)
https://therecord.media/arizona-woman-sentenced-north-korean-laptop-…

Arizona woman sentenced to 8.5 years for running North Korean laptop farm
Prosecutors said Chapman helped the North Korean IT workers obtain jobs at 309 companies, including a major television network, a car maker, a media company, a Silicon Valley technology company and more.

a16z, OpenAI's Greg Brockman, and others launch Leading the Future, a pro-AI super PAC network with $100M in funding, hoping to emulate crypto PAC Fairshake (Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/polit…

C3.ai founder and CEO Thomas Siebel steps down due to health issues related to an autoimmune disease that resulted in visual impairment in early 2025 (Hanh Truong/Silicon Valley Business Journal)
https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2025/07…

An interview with GM SVP of Software and Services Engineering David Richardson on GM's new AI team, developing "cobots", or collaborative robots, and more (Isabelle Bousquette/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.