#23 The Weekend Download – Catching Up on What Matters
Essential insights you need to stay ahead
📩 Issue #23 – 26/07/2025
⚡ Quick Hits – What You Need to Know
🔌 China plans to sell its surplus computing power
After a crackdown on data centers, China wants to create a national trading network for idle compute.
Read more (Reuters)
🧠 Meta names new chief scientist for its AI superintelligence unit
Shengjia Zhao will lead Meta’s efforts to develop next-generation generative AI.
Read more (TechCrunch)
👨💻 An exhausted man just beat AI in a world coding championship
A human developer outperformed top AI model in a global programming competition.
Read more (Ars Technica)
🔥 Top Insights
🧒 The age-verified internet is officially here
New legislation is forcing platforms to verify users’ ages, sparking privacy debates.
Read more (Wired)
🧭 AI agents are quietly haunting your browser
Automated software is now navigating the internet for you – sometimes without you even knowing.
Read more (Wired)
🗣️ Sam Altman says ChatGPT isn't your therapist — and your chats aren’t private
Using AI for emotional support? There’s no legal confidentiality — and that could get tricky.
Read more (TechCrunch)
📊 Numbers to Watch
🏢 Gen Z prefers hybrid work over fully remote
Only 23% of young workers say they want to work remotely full-time.
Read more (Gallup)
📈 AI referrals to websites are exploding
AI-driven traffic to top sites jumped 357% year-over-year in June, reaching 1.13 billion visits – a sign that bots are shaping how we browse.
Read more (TechCrunch)
🚬 Big Tobacco is targeting kids in the metaverse
Researchers found children’s avatars exposed to cigarette and vape promotions in virtual worlds, raising alarm about regulation in immersive environments.
Read more (The Guardian)
💡 Something to Think About
👨💻 He works at a tech startup — from inside prison
Serving his 11th year, this developer is building software behind bars.
Read more (TechCrunch)
🌍 Kiribati is planning to move its entire population due to climate change
The first-ever fully planned migration of a whole country is now underway.
Read more (Wired)
🐝 Amazon’s Bee records everything you say – even to yourself
The AI-powered wearable transcribes your daily conversations (including self-talk) and turns them into a searchable, organized history with highlights and to-do lists.
Read more (WSJ)
🌀 Offbeat & Unexpected
🍔 Tesla opens a retro-futuristic diner in LA
Elon Musk hints at turning the 1950s-style EV diner into a chain.
Read more (TechCrunch)
🎶 A Brazilian app turns music into vibrations for deaf users
By translating sound into touch, it’s making live music accessible to more people.
Read more (TrendWatching)
🎶 This K-pop boy band performs in sign language
Big Ocean, made up of deaf and hard-of-hearing members, is blending Korean Sign Language, choreography, and tech to create a whole new kind of performance.
Read more (NYT)
☕ The hottest new cafés are fake — and in people’s living rooms
Young creators are turning their homes into full-blown cafés for friends and family, complete with logos, merch, and a heavy dose of social media.
Read more (NYT)
✈️ People are buying strangers’ canceled vacations to travel cheap
A growing number of travelers are picking up non-refundable trips second-hand.
Read more (NY Post)
👑 Miss England is adding AI contestants for the first time
The beauty pageant is embracing synthetic humans.
Read more (The Modems)
🎾 That Wimbledon influencer everyone loved? She was AI
Thousands followed a woman who never existed.
Read more (Daily Mail)