D-Matrix announced its Raptor 3D DRAM, delivering 100 terabytes per second of bandwidth at 0.37 picojoules per bit with 32 gigabytes of capacity.

The solution stacks a TSMC 4 nm logic die on top of custom DRAM using 36 µm face‑to‑face bonding.

AI workloads require higher memory bandwidth and capacity as model sizes increase.

SRAM offers high speed but limited capacity and high cost, while HBM provides capacity but faces scaling challenges.

Raptor achieves 100 TB/s and 0.37 pJ/bit energy efficiency, supporting a junction temperature of 105 °C with refresh intervals of 4 ms.

Each chiplet contains 256 tensor engines and matches bank pitch to the tensor engines to reduce data movement.

The design avoids a physical layer and beachfront limit. It provides bandwidth and power characteristics similar to SRAM with higher capacity and lower power than HBM4, which delivers about 18 TB/s at 2–3 pJ/bit.

Compared with NVIDIA’s HBM4 in the Rubin R200 platform, Raptor shows 23.4 × higher bandwidth and 13.5 × better power efficiency.

Integration challenges include thermal management for DRAM‑on‑top stacks, power delivery via through‑silicon vias for logic‑on‑top stacks, and yield improvements through spare banks and error‑correcting codes.

The timing of other DRAM manufacturers’ 3D DRAM offerings remains uncertain.

Micron said that AI compute is increasing about threefold every two years while HBM bandwidth grows less than twofold, widening the memory wall that limits system performance.

HBM, used in AI accelerators, provides higher bandwidth and density than traditional DDR memory; in typical GPU designs, memory silicon accounts for roughly 90% of total silicon, and stacks have expanded from four to sixteen high‑density layers.

Micron’s HBM4 delivers up to 2800 GB/s bandwidth, double the I/O and channel count of HBM3E; Meta’s Llama 3 training attributed 17 % of interruptions to HBM bandwidth constraints, and Micron’s design fellow Raghu Sreeramaneni highlighted the issue at Hot Chips 2026, noting that thermal challenges become more pronounced as stack heights rise, prompting interest in liquid cooling, hybrid bonding, and advanced packaging techniques.

Continued progress in packaging, process technology, and high‑speed I/O is required to sustain bandwidth growth and manage thermal density as AI workloads evolve.

China's Manned Space program announced on Sunday that its Chang'e 7 lunar exploration mission will be postponed to 2027. The mission, which includes an orbiter, lander, rover and a mini‑hopper, was scheduled to launch from the Wenchang Space Launch Site on Hainan island using a Long March 5 rocket. Typhoon Narra, with sustained winds near 45 mph, has lingered over the South China Sea and is expected to keep inclement conditions at Wenchang for the next two to three days, likely preventing a launch during the current window. The agency said a comprehensive assessment determined the mission did not meet conditions for launch and offered no specific cause. Social media speculation suggests the delay may be linked to limited launch windows due to solar illumination constraints for polar landings and a required 90‑day orbital reconnaissance phase before landing. Officials indicated a recent technical issue with the Long March 5 rocket’s YF‑100 engine, which was also involved in the loss of a Long March 7A vehicle two weeks earlier, seemed unlikely to be the cause. The earliest viable launch window is now expected in February or March 2027, pending weather and system readiness.

Qwen 3.8 27B completed a reverse‑engineering task of a commercial app’s license verification in roughly 30 minutes on a Lenovo ThinkStation PGX equipped with an Nvidia GB10 Grace Blackwell chip. The model ran locally at about 50 tokens per second using speculative decoding and standard Bash tools. It statically analyzed the app’s binary, disassembled arm64 code, located a hidden public key, reconstructed the verification chain, and identified three weaknesses in the scheme. When an initial key reconstruction produced a hash mismatch, the model self‑corrected and refined the key until the hash matched byte for byte. The resulting proof‑of‑concept bypass was tested with a small script and functioned without executing the app. The demonstration shows that a 27‑billion‑parameter open model can perform complex security analysis entirely offline, highlighting both rapid progress in local AI capabilities and the associated security considerations.

Palantir co‑founder Joe Lonsdale, through his think tank Cicero Institute, has helped shape the Trump administration’s approach to homelessness. The administration’s executive order now treats homelessness as a public safety crisis and encourages cities to ban outdoor sleeping, directing people to temporary shelters or treatment facilities and threatening jail for non‑compliance.

Lonsdale, a former Silicon Valley venture capitalist, created Cicero in 2019 to promote market‑based solutions to social problems such as homelessness, criminal justice, and health care. The institute drafted model legislation that makes it a crime to sleep outside, a proposal that has become law in 15 states. Scott Centorino, a senior fellow at Cicero, said the group provided critical knowledge to the White House on homelessness policy.

The policy shift follows the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Grant’s Pass, which held that camping bans do not violate the Eighth Amendment. Since then, additional states and municipalities have adopted similar bans. Lonsdale’s organization has also influenced legislation in education, public safety, and artificial intelligence, having helped pass 214 bills across 29 states.

Critics argue that criminalizing homelessness and reducing funding for permanent housing do not address the root cause of the crisis. Margot Kushel, a physician at the University of California, San Francisco, notes that research shows forced treatment and incarceration are ineffective, while affordable housing is essential for stability. Advocacy groups such as the National Homelessness Law Center have sued the administration, claiming the policies are harmful and unjust.

Lonsdale maintains that his work reflects a commitment to classical Western values and meritocratic solutions, and he continues to advise the administration on a range of policy areas beyond homelessness.

NVIDIA announced a $7 billion investment in the AI startup Poolside. The company will allocate $6 billion to license Poolside’s technology and hire its engineers, and $1 billion for a stake at a $12 billion valuation. The funding is intended to speed development of open‑weight Nemotron AI models and to provide a hedge against potential GPU demand declines. NVIDIA plans to raise prices for its upcoming Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin GPUs and related systems by about 15 percent. The increase would add roughly $5 billion to the cost of a 1 GW data center, bringing the total to near $60 billion in the United States. Analysts report that NVIDIA has lowered its projected HBM demand for the Rubin Ultra platform from 31‑33 billion gigabytes to the high‑20 billion gigabyte range, indicating lower memory usage in future rack configurations. According to the Wall Street Journal, the investment aims to strengthen NVIDIA’s open‑source AI ecosystem and to counter competing offerings from Chinese AI companies. The Nemotron 3.5 Lightning model, released in early August, claims token generation speeds four times faster than comparable models, though prior testing showed only a 30 percent improvement in agentic task acceleration. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman recently said his earlier timeline predictions for AI adoption were incorrect, noting that economic and societal adaptation will be slower than previously thought.

Hernando County, Florida, voted unanimously last month to place a one-year moratorium on new data center construction, following protests by a grassroots group called Humans First.

Data centers have become a visible symbol of the artificial‑intelligence boom, prompting local opposition over water use, noise, land‑use changes and perceived threats to community character.

The moratorium was adopted after residents raised concerns that the facilities could strain groundwater and release per‑ and polyfluoroalkyl substances, while also generating significant noise and visual impact. Humans First, originally a bipartisan coalition, organized demonstrations in Hernando County and in other regions such as Arizona, where dry conditions raise similar water‑use questions.

Local officials in some counties have responded with moratoria or other restrictions, while others argue that data centers provide needed economic development. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed legislation requiring data centers to cover their own utility costs and to use reclaimed water, and also supported tax incentives for hyperscale facilities. Republican primary candidate Byron Donalds, who has received funding from AI‑industry interests, has defended data center development as part of a broader effort to position Florida as a financial hub, though he has adjusted his public remarks in response to community pushback.

In addition to environmental concerns, critics note that data centers create relatively few permanent jobs, with most employment limited to construction and HVAC maintenance, and that the facilities may increase housing costs and alter community landscapes.

Tech companies such as Amazon Web Services and OpenAI are planning large projects in Georgia and Florida, and the siting of these facilities has become a topic in upcoming state and federal elections. Some communities have begun to request greater input through zoning measures, such as limiting the size of parcels or mandating water‑recycling systems, as a way to balance development with local preferences.

The episode illustrates how data center siting can affect political alignments and local governance, and it remains unclear how the tension between development interests and community concerns will evolve ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

Elon Musk's SpaceX IPO could make him the world's richest person. His Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in early 2025, a move that researchers project could cause hundreds of thousands of deaths.

USAID administered global health programs, and Musk described the agency as a criminal organization in public remarks while saying he was feeding it into a wood chipper. Early 2025 cuts eliminated funding for disease prevention and treatment initiatives, including malaria, tuberculosis, HIV, and Ebola.

Boston University professor Brooke Nichols co‑created a tracker that estimated more than 780,000 deaths, primarily among children, from 2025 onward, according to a study published in Nature. Researchers in The Lancet projected potentially millions of additional deaths. Congressional testimony from USAID whistleblower Nicholas Enrich indicated that the administration was aware of the mortality impact and that corrective measures were not implemented.

At a White House cabinet meeting in 2025, Musk joked about an 'accidental' cancellation of Ebola prevention efforts and said the issue would be fixed, but Enrich testified that no fix was enacted. The reductions also affected HIV prevention for newborns, with officials noting that mother‑to‑child transmission rates had approached zero before the cuts.

During a SpaceX employee address on the day of the IPO, Musk said, 'There are always problems on Earth… we should solve them, but also have things that get you excited about the future,' a statement made amid reports of his administration’s reductions to immunization programs.

Susie Wiles, chief of staff to President Trump, told Vanity Fair that Musk acted as a 'complete solo actor' and that he likely understood the impact of his actions. The Cato Institute reported that DOGE reduced federal employment by about 9 percent over ten months but did not achieve significant spending savings.

SpaceX continues to rely on federal contracts, and Musk remains active in other ventures, including X and an AI project that has faced criticism for misinformation and the generation of illegal content.

The long‑term health impacts of the USAID cuts remain uncertain, and the extent to which Musk's government‑adjacent activities will influence future policy decisions is still under discussion.

Best Buy launched its 60th anniversary sale this week, offering site‑wide discounts on Apple devices, televisions, headphones, monitors and other merchandise. The promotion runs through the remainder of the week and does not require a My Best Buy Plus or Total membership.

Anker and Jackery announced discounts of up to $1,500 on select portable power stations. Anker’s offers were listed on Amazon, while Jackery’s promotions were available on its website.

Amazon reported price reductions on AirPods products, with the AirPods Max 2 listed at $429, down from $549, and the AirPods Pro 3 reduced by $59. These prices represent the lowest points tracked for the models in 2026.

The M4 iPad Air was discounted by $100 at Amazon and Best Buy, marking the best pricing observed since recent price adjustments.

The 4‑pack of AirTag 2 was sold for $89, down from $99, matching a record low price first seen during Prime Day.

Additional low prices were noted on Apple Watch Series 11 and a variety of accessories from Anker, Samsung, Sony and other brands, as reported in the weekly deals roundup.

A three‑judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed on August 10 that a claim by Xinuos that IBM and Red Hat owned Linux was invalid and that the case was time‑barred.

The dispute traces back to 1998, when IBM, the Santa Cruz Operation, Intel and Sequent launched Project Monterey to develop a UNIX version that could run on multiple processor architectures. Linux later provided a comparable multi‑architecture operating system, prompting SCO and its legal successors to assert that IBM’s contributions to Linux infringed their alleged ownership rights.

In 2021, an heir to SCO settled with IBM for $14.25 million after failing to produce evidence supporting its claim. Xinuos, a successor to SCO, filed a new lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, arguing that IBM breached a non‑exclusive license by contributing Project Monterey code to Linux. The district court dismissed the claim, and Xinuos appealed.

The Second Circuit panel agreed with the district court’s ruling, stating that the governing agreement for Project Monterey barred further litigation and that Xinuos’s characterization of the dispute as a licensing issue was inaccurate. The court also noted that Xinuos’s request for an en banc rehearing is uncommon, as the Second Circuit has granted such reviews in fewer than 0.03 percent of its decisions, according to law firm Kaplan.

Xinuos plans to petition the full bench of the Second Circuit for a rehearing, but the court has indicated that significant legal errors would be required for the case to proceed. The matter now appears close to final resolution.

The free AI model Ox Alpha was released on OpenRouter on August 23, 2026, and has sparked speculation about its developers. OpenRouter described Ox Alpha as a reasoning model designed for coding, sustained agentic work, and production workload. The listing noted that the model was developed and operated by an anonymous third‑party provider. Patrick Collison, chief executive of Stripe, commented on X that Ox Alpha was “very impressive.” The OpenRouter listing said the provider chose to remain anonymous during the preview. Analyst Andrew Curran observed that early speculation pointed to the GLM models from Chinese company Z.ai, but later commentary expressed uncertainty. A Wccftech article first linked Ox Alpha to GLM, then suggested it might be an unreleased version of Microsoft’s MAI model. Reddit users have posted conflicting views, with one claiming the model cannot be Chinese and another expressing high confidence that it is Chinese. The identity of Ox Alpha’s creator remains undisclosed, and the model’s capabilities continue to be evaluated.

Intel’s Core Ultra 7 270K Plus and Core i7 14700K have returned to Amazon’s top 10 best‑selling CPUs, ranking sixth and eighth respectively after more than a year out of the list.

The rankings represent a reversal from late 2024, when AMD’s Ryzen 5000, 7000 and 9000 series held every spot. Since then Intel had been absent from the top 10, though its processors had remained in the broader top 20.

The Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, a 24‑core processor from the Arrow Lake refresh, rose to sixth place after price reductions brought its cost to just over $250, according to the Amazon sales data. The Core i7 14700K, a 20‑core chip from the 14th‑generation Raptor Lake Refresh, reached eighth place, outperforming several Ryzen 5800XT and Ryzen 7 7700X models.

Other DDR5‑based CPUs, including Ryzen 7 9850X3D, Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X, fell in the rankings, while older Intel models such as the Core i9 14900K and Core i7 14700K have climbed higher than in recent months.

Analysts note that consumer preference for DDR4 platforms, driven by compatibility with existing motherboards, has contributed to the resurgence of Intel’s 14th‑generation and Core Ultra chips, though the durability of these shifts remains unclear.

The rankings are expected to change in the coming weeks as supply and pricing dynamics evolve, leaving the long‑term impact of Intel’s comeback uncertain.

Meta, Oracle, xAI and CoreWeave have formed separate entities to finance AI datacenter construction while keeping the associated debt off their primary balance sheets.

A December 2025 Financial Times report said tech companies had shifted more than $120 billion of AI datacenter spending into special‑purpose vehicles, and Goldman Sachs estimates that hyperscalers may invest $5.3 trillion in AI and datacenter assets through 2030, with private financing playing a growing role.

The structures allow the parent companies to secure exclusive use of the facilities under long‑term contracts while the financing entities raise capital from investors, banks and affiliated parties. Unlike the biotech partnerships of the 1980s and 1990s, current disclosures required by securities regulators detail the obligations, and the assets — physical data centers, networking equipment and computing infrastructure — remain tangible. Analysts note that the risks differ because datacenters can be repurposed or sold, whereas biotech drug pipelines often fail completely.

Some investors express concern that the hidden leverage could threaten financial stability, but the disclosed terms and the ongoing demand for computing capacity indicate the financing model remains viable, though its long‑term resilience will be tested as AI adoption proceeds.

Senator Jon Husted, a Republican from Ohio, has shifted his public stance on data centers, now backing legislation to limit taxpayer funding for new facilities, a change that aligns with his November reelection campaign. In the past two years data centers were widely praised for job creation and economic growth, but recent public concern over energy use and costs has prompted a political reassessment. A Washington Post analysis of 4,300 social media posts and newsletters from July 2024 to mid‑August 2026 found a marked increase in negative Republican commentary about data centers, with more than half citing rising electricity bills and subsidies. Representative Tom Tiffany has accused Democratic candidate David Crowley of being soft on data centers and pledged to end tax breaks for the facilities. Republican nominee for Pennsylvania governor Stacy Garrity called Governor Josh Shapiro a data center advocate, prompting Shapiro to announce new restrictions. A National Republican Senatorial Committee memo warned that data centers could become a liability for Husted. An Annenberg Public Policy Center poll showed that nearly half of Americans oppose constructing data centers in their communities. While Senator Bill Cassidy continues to praise the economic benefits of data centers, Representative Nancy Mace has opposed eminent domain actions that would displace homes for data center infrastructure. The debate continues as the 2028 election approaches, with politicians adjusting their positions in response to voter concerns.

A solo developer from Grow Now! Games launched a playable browser version of an ASCII cyberpunk city that runs on a 283KB Rust WebAssembly module and a WebGL renderer, making the demo accessible without Unity or Unreal engines. The build, released this week, follows a YouTube video posted previously that has amassed over one million views and 9,000 comments. The project demonstrates a text‑based metropolis generated in Rust and rendered via WebGL shaders.

The 283KB module reserves 1,152KB of linear memory at startup and reports an engine version of 0.1.0 when instantiated outside the browser. Its exports include initialise_native_game, step_native_game, and generate_native_local_map. The source modules behind these calls are city.rs, world.rs, population.rs, interiors.rs, and rendering.rs. World generation runs in Rust and hands JavaScript base64‑packed byte arrays covering building heights, tile kinds, surfaces, hues, saturations, window styles, lit flags, and floor plan IDs.

The renderer requests a WebGL context and compiles a vertex and fragment shader pair, the fragment stage consisting of a single texture2D lookup. Characters are drawn once each into an atlas canvas with fillText, cached per character‑and‑color combination, uploaded to the GPU with one texImage2D call, and then drawn as textured quads with six vertices apiece. Desktop sessions render 180 columns by 80 rows, or 14,400 character cells, in 10px Consolas at nine pixels per row. Touch devices drop to 48 rows and between 96 and 168 columns, and the Rust engine uses a separate 160 by 112 profile. The vertex buffer preallocates 2.76MB and doubles when a frame overruns it.

Grow Now! Games described the original demo to PC Gamer as having "no Unity, there's no Unreal, there's no 3D models, textures, or shaders." A first‑person Backrooms game for the 1994 Sega 32X runs on a raycasting engine written from scratch in C and SH-2 assembly. A multiplayer Doom tribute implements raycasting and sprite projection as a stack of SQL views, reaching roughly 30 FPS at 128 x 64. Thunder Lizard, an ASCII roguelike, has had its character grid redrawn by image models into full‑motion visuals at around 10 FPS.

The project illustrates how lightweight WebAssembly modules can enable complex graphics in a web browser, though the developer has not indicated plans for broader release.

Apple announced that it is eliminating more than 200 positions across teams working on Vision Pro, Siri and related software, according to a Bloomberg report. An Apple spokesperson said the changes were made "to evolve our business to deliver the best experiences for our users," and added that while new roles will be created, the reductions will affect a limited number of existing positions. The company said it is committed to supporting affected employees, including opportunities to apply for other roles at Apple.

The cuts include about 100 positions from the Vision Pro group, which is largely shutting down a team focused on gaming and scaling back its immersive video production effort. Approximately 100 positions were eliminated from Siri and software teams as part of a reallocation to support a revamped Siri AI platform built on new technical architecture, according to the report.

Apple said the Vision Pro and its visionOS operating system will continue, with plans to concentrate on forthcoming smart glasses that will not support immersive video or advanced gaming titles. The company also indicated that a next‑generation Vision Pro model may be released as early as the end of 2028.

Regarding Siri, the reorganisation reflects changes in required expertise for the new AI platform, leading to the elimination of some existing roles, reallocation of resources and the creation of new positions within the Intelligent Systems Experience team. Apple said the restructuring aims to align teams with AI priorities and accelerate development.

The announcement follows a prior report that Apple had cut about 60 jobs from the Vision Pro team, and it represents part of the company’s ongoing effort to reshape its workforce in response to evolving product priorities.

Logitech faces a class‑action lawsuit in the United States alleging that it has not returned $61 million in tariff refunds received after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump’s tariffs were illegal. The complaint states that the company raised prices on many products by up to 25% in April 2025 and that the higher prices remain in place. It alleges that Logitech extracted an estimated $73 million to $97 million from consumers during fiscal year 2026. The company said in its May 2026 earnings call that manufacturing diversification and the price increase in the United States offset the negative impact of the tariffs. The lawsuit contrasts Logitech’s position with that of other firms that have voluntarily returned the refunds, citing Arctic as an example that has begun lowering prices. Nintendo, which is also sued over similar claims, kept the price of the Switch 2 at its launch level of $449 while raising the price of its previous Switch model by $40 to $50 and increasing accessory prices, and it has refused to refund customers who bought at the higher prices. Nintendo’s lawyers said that consumers agreed to the prices at the time of purchase. The case seeks restitution for the class of consumers and may require Logitech to change its pricing practices. The litigation is ongoing, and Logitech has indicated it will not return any portion of the refund to customers. The court will determine whether the tariff refund must be passed on to consumers.

The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa in the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra caused more than 36,000 deaths, mainly from tsunamis, and marked the first global dissemination of eruption news via telegraph.

Sulfur emitted during the eruption formed stratospheric aerosols that reflected sunlight, producing a temporary global temperature drop of roughly 0.6°C in the Northern Hemisphere summer.

Subsequent research has connected other major eruptions to climatic and societal changes. Ice‑core records show a sulfur deposit dated to 536, indicating a significant eruption that coincided with a multi‑year haze, temperature decline, harvest failures and the onset of a pandemic, although the eruption’s source remains unidentified. Tree‑ring analyses link the 1257 Samalas eruption in Indonesia to several years of cooling across the Northern Hemisphere, which contributed to famines in England and adverse rice growing conditions in Japan; some scholars suggest these conditions may have weakened the Mongol Empire and facilitated the 1259 epidemic in China. A separate study using tree‑ring data identified a volcanic influence on the summers of 1345‑1347 in southern Europe, a period that coincided with grain imports that introduced rats carrying Yersinia pestis, a hypothesis proposed to explain the severity of the Black Death. In 1783, the Laki fissure eruption in Iceland released lava for eight months, resulting in the death of at least one‑fifth of the island’s population and widespread toxic fog across Europe; contemporary accounts first recognized the event through observations in France and England. The 1815 eruption of Tambora in Indonesia generated a volcanic winter that caused crop failures and the “year without a summer” in 1816, leading to famine in parts of Europe and increased emigration to North America, while regions with better agricultural conditions, such as eastern Russia, exported grain.

Modern observers will learn of a future major eruption instantly through satellite imagery and social media, but historical analyses of events such as Krakatoa and Tambora provide a framework for assessing potential climate and societal impacts.

Sydney Marathon organizers unveiled a 2026 participation medal that depicts Munich’s Allianz Arena instead of the Sydney landmark Allianz Stadium. The marathon, scheduled for 30 August, will attract about 40,000 runners after more than 120,000 ballot entries, and is part of the Abbott Majors series. The medal design was posted on the marathon’s official Instagram account, which described the artwork as capturing landmarks along the race route. The image shows the distinctive inflatable cushion façade of the Munich arena on the lower‑right side, while the opposite side features a pattern created by First Nations artist Ambrose Killian. Organizers explained that the circular edge includes 42 half‑round markings representing each kilometre of the course. Killian stated he was not responsible for the stadium illustration. The error echoes a similar mistake at last year’s Great North Run, where medals displayed the Wear River, which is not part of that event. Sydney Marathon has been contacted for comment and plans to correct the design before the race, though no timeline has been announced.