Tech Brew Ride Home

When your AI bot breaks your operations, even when you’re AWS. More on OpenAI’s hardware plans. Hey, remember Perplexity? What’s up with them? Is Uber roadkill in the self-driving car horserace? And, of course, the Weekend Longreads Suggestions.


Amazon service was taken down by AI coding bot (FT)


Ex-Googlers Charged With Stealing Phone Processor Secrets (Bloomberg)


OpenAI Plans to Price Smart Speaker at $200 to $300, as AI Device Team Takes Shape (The Information)


Microsoft has a new plan to prove what’s real and what’s AI online (MIT Technology Review)


Perplexity’s Retreat From Ads Signals a Bigger Strategic Shift (Wired)


Uber, Latest Victim of Disruption Panic, Still Has Role in Robotaxis (WSJ)

Weekend Longreads Suggestion:


Who needs a laptop when you have a folding phone? (The Verge)

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Gemini is getting with the increased cadence of AI releases. Honestly, can we even keep up at this point? A dispatch from the social media trial as Zuck takes the stand. At long last, Amazon dethrones Walmart. Apple seems poised to unleash a slew of AI wearables. And the new storage system to preserve data, Canticle for Leibowitz-style.


Google announces Gemini 3.1 Pro for ‘complex problem-solving’ (9to5Google)


Mark Zuckerberg said he reached out to Apple CEO Tim Cook to discuss ‘wellbeing of teens and kids’ (CNBC)


Amazon Dethrones Walmart as World’s Biggest Company by Sales (Bloomberg)


Apple Ramps Up Work on Glasses, Pendant, and Camera AirPods for AI Era (Bloomberg)


Microsoft’s Glass Chip Holds Terabytes of Data for 10,000 Years (Bloomberg)

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New pixel phone. A bunch of new AI models including Gemini’s entry into the music AI space. Everybody is trying to make AI fetch happen in India. And Matthew Ball’s state of the gaming industry report doesn’t paint as gloomy a picture as our own headlines might have suggested this year.


The Pixel 10A is a little too much like last year’s phone (The Verge)


Anthropic releases Sonnet 4.6 (TechCrunch)


Google’s AI music maker is coming to the Gemini app (The Verge)


Adani bets $100 billion on data centres to power India’s AI ambitions (Reuters)


Nvidia secures multibillion-dollar Meta deal as it battles chip rivals (FT)


Global game content sales rose 5.3% to $195.6bn in 2025 (GamesIndustry.biz)

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The big regulatory guns are out for Grok. Memory chip shortage now hit the Steam Deck. Manus is already coming to your favorite messaging app. Turns out Buy Now Pay Later really works for vacations. And another lengthy AI essay, this time detailing what it’s doing, and has the potential to do to SaaS companies.


EU privacy watchdog opens probe into Elon Musk’s X over sexualised AI images (FT)


Valve’s Steam Deck OLED will be ‘intermittently’ out of stock because of the RAM crisis (The Verge)


Raspberry Pi soars 40% as CEO buys stock, AI chatter builds (Reuters)


Meta-owned Manus launches AI agents on Telegram (SiliconRepublic)


Airbnb expands its “Reserve Now, Pay Later” globally (TechCrunch)


10 Years Building Vertical Software: My Perspective on the Selloff (@nicbstme)

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OpenClaw’s creator is joining OpenAI, but the OpenClaw project lives on. The AI-caused memory shortage might delay the next Playstation. Is the Pentagon about to cut ties with Anthropic? And Vitalik Buterin is growing concerned with the prediction markets.


OpenClaw founder Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI (The Verge)


Peter Steinberger Chose OpenAI. The Code Was Never the Point. (Implicator.AI)


Rampant AI Demand for Memory Is Fueling a Growing Chip Crisis (Bloomberg)


ByteDance to curb AI video app after Disney legal threat (BBC)


Exclusive: Pentagon threatens to cut off Anthropic in AI safeguards dispute (Axios)


The hidden infrastructure crisis in mortgage and real estate finance that only tokenization can solve (Crypto.news)

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