Tootfinder

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.

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.

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.

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…

This was really interesting. It's about Topaz AI, which was a denoising/upscaling solution I looked at about nine months ago, and rejected because I wasn't really prepared to make the investment at that stage ($300/yr) https://mstdn.social/@Onmyom/114779996030982643…

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.

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…

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.

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…

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.

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.

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…

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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…

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

🤑 San Francisco’s Ultrarich Are Blocking a Zohran-Style Agenda
#california

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.

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.

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…

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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.

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…

"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

Dieser ganze Mythos von Computer-Hackern und Silicon Valley etc stammt aus einer Zeit, in der in den USA kleine Garagenfirmen¹ sich² mit neuen Ideen gegen diese Computerriesen³ und damit auch die Übermacht der staatlichen Bürokratie und ihrer grauen, phantasielosen Kästen stellten, in Deutschland eher der CCC, der sich gegen die staatliche Post mit all diesen Regularien auflehnte.
Computer für alle hieß auch Demokratisierung gegen übermächtige Spaßbremsen.
Und all das hat mit heu…

Why Bell Labs Worked.
Or, how MBA culture killed Bell Labs

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…

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.

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

«Fed up with ChatGPT, Latin America is building its own»
Please folks, the torment nexus isn't any better just because it's home-made… I hate how the intellectually bankrupt narratives of Silicon Valley are just copied over, as if that solved anything.
https://restofworld.org/2025/chatgpt-latin-america-alternative-latamgpt/

[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.

Rainer Mühlhoff kritisiert den KI-Hype als gefällige Mischung aus Techno-Optimismus und unternehmerischem Heilsversprechen. Die „Gläubigen“ im Silicon Valley preisen #KI als automatischen Fortschrittsmotor und ignorieren dabei hartnäckig Macht-, Verteilungs- und Umweltfragen. KI als neue Ersatzreligion? Nachlesen und urteilen!
Neues Buch! Künstliche Intelligenz: Tech-Ideologien und der neue

Künstliche Intelligenz: Tech-Ideologien und der neue Faschismus
Was sind die ideologischen Ursprünge des neuen digitalen Faschismus? Was treibt den populären KI-Diskurs, was steht hinter der KI-Hype-Dynamik? Ein Auszug aus Rainer Mühlhoffs Buch „Künstliche Intelligenz und der neue Faschismus“, das am Mittwoch bei Reclam erscheint.

@… How weird is it to imagine there is someone out there who looks at this, and not only goes "Eh okay whatever" but actually thinks "YES! This is it! This will work! They will looooove this!".
Silicon Valley needs some serious group therapy sessions. Maybe we can all pitch in to cover the costs.

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.

Ich habe diese Doku eben zum dritten Mal gesehen. Jedes Mal habe ich etwas Neues gelernt. Lasst euch nicht von dem T-Wort im Titel abschrecken.
Hauptsächlich geht es um die Sponsoren und Einflüsterer des Trampels. Das ZDF hat das journalistische Schwergewicht Claus Kleber losgeschickt, und er hat Interviews mit Leuten bekommen, die sonst nicht oft mit Journalist:innen reden. Manche von ihnen entlarven sich selbst als extreme Menschenfeinde.
Laut Wikipedia ist »Paypal-Mafia« eine…

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

How funny would it be if this turned in to a second Silicon Valley industry-wide wage fixing scandal https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-07/apple-loses-its-top-ai-models-executive-to-meta-s-hiring-spree

@… @… 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 …

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

Big Tech acquihiring AI startups, like Meta's Scale AI deal, gives VCs only modest returns compared to traditional exits and may entrench Big Tech's dominance (Parmy Olson/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles

Meta, Google AI Talent Grab May Spur a Silicon Valley Rethink
Meta and Google’s AI talent grab may lead to more sustainable tech companies.

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

“The modern-day system of colonialism and sharecropping being constructed by the new East India Company that is Silicon Valley isn’t uncouth or stupid enough to put people in physical shackles. It doesn’t want to own your body, it is content with owning your simulation. And yet, as we have already seen, the more data they have about you – the higher the fidelity of your simulation – the closer they are to owning you.
…
If this doesn’t sound like democracy, it is because it is not…

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

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…

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?

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…

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.

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.”

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.”

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

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…

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 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.

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…

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…

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

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.

How Benchmark's investment in Chinese startup Manus has highlighted a philosophical divide in Silicon Valley over China, patriotism, and the pursuit of profit (Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-1…

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…

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.

The Pentagon's Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO)
today announced contracts with
Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and xAI
to help it use artificial intelligence for a multitude of military purposes
- each with a $200 million ceiling. 
https://www.

Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI get $800M to hop in bed with Pentagon
: Looks like DoD FOMO struck Silicon Valley

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

Sources: in a Trump meeting, Jensen Huang argued US chips should be the global standard and leveraged support from David Sacks, who disliked Biden's chip rules (Tripp Mickle/New York Times)
https://www.

How Nvidia’s Jensen Huang Persuaded Trump to Sell A.I. Chips to China
With help from a longtime Silicon Valley investor turned White House insider, Mr. Huang got the administration to reverse course on restrictions.

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…

In May 2025, a high-profile lunch in Riyadh brought together Donald Trump,
the Crown Prince,
and a group of Silicon Valley billionaires and executives.
The guest list assembled by Elon Musk (Tesla, xAI, SpaceX) and arriving by their own jets:
Sam Altman (OpenAI), Jensen Huang (Nvidia), Alex Karp (Palantir), Dara Khosrowshahi (Uber), Ruth Porat (Alphabet/Google), Alexandr Wang (Scale AI), Travis Kalanick (Cloud Kitchens, former Uber CEO), Stephen Schwarzman (Blackstone…

Mad Kings and Saudi Princes
Award winning author and futurist Albert Bates writes about ecovillages, permaculture, negative emission technology, drawdown, and climate solutions.

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…

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…

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-…

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…

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 ...

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.

Sources: some AI researchers rejected Meta's offers to stay at jobs that align with their values; far fewer defected from Anthropic and DeepMind than OpenAI (Hayden Field/The Verge)
https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-int

Meta is trying to win the AI race with money — but not everyone can be bought
The AI industry is full of people motivated by a true belief in what they’re doing, but Meta is betting that at a certain price, anyone can be bought — it’s casting its net across Silicon Valley to do it. And what’s the best weapon OpenAI, its biggest target, has to fight it? That’s money, too.

Hangzhou, home to DeepSeek and Alibaba, has become a hub for Chinese AI startups, with the suburb Liangzhu emerging as a hotspot for coders in their 20s and 30s (Meaghan Tobin/New York Times)
https://www.n…

The Coder ‘Village’ at the Heart of China’s A.I. Frenzy
As China vies with Silicon Valley for primacy, Hangzhou, home to DeepSeek and Alibaba, is where its aspiring tech titans mingle and share ideas.

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.