Nvidia ban in China
China bans tech companies from buying Nvidia’s AI chips | FT – the Nvidia ban is an interesting move by the Chinese government. I don’t think it’s just about putting pressure on their semiconductor companies and foundries. I think it also steers the software industry and approach to AI as well looking for more computationally efficient models. China can do comparable computes, using more lower spec chips and more power.
At the moment the leading edge models in the west are taking a hardware led approach rather like putting larger capacity engine in a car a la an old school hotrod. China is forcing its technology sector to take a more holistic approach.
Having Nvidia lobbying the US for permission to sell Blackwell in China is a secondary benefit and not the hard block people think it is. Compute jobs are already done abroad to get around the ban anyway. Its easy to move SSDs from China to Malaysia to run it on local data centres.
China has extended the Nvidia ban on purchase to a customs ban as well China launches customs crackdown on Nvidia AI chips | FT
Business
Billionaire Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff praises AI while cutting jobs – The Washington Post
Pokémon And Magic Risk Losing An Entire Generation Of Players | Kotaku – are kids being priced out of hobbies?
China
Can China really make its consumers spend? | Jing Daily – After decades of export success, country’s bet on domestic consumption to propel growth bumps up against beliefs about money and security. – They’ve got more chance of increasing the number of children born, the beliefs are that engrained
TikTok, Pop Mart and the Conditional Logic of Success | Calling The Shots (Ivy Yang)
Consumer behaviour
Grave new world: Why young people are grieving a life they’ve never lived | shots Magazine
Economics
Why Gen X is the real loser generation | The Economist
Finance
Graphic Language: The Curse of the CEO Bloomberg – swearing linked with financial stress
Exclusive | How China Secretly Pays Iran for Oil and Avoids U.S. Sanctions – WSJ
Innovation
Why is AI struggling to discover new drugs? FT
Japan
Shirow Masamune and the Predictions of “Ghost in the Shell” | Nippon.com – still my favourite manga and anime franchise. It still feels fresh and forward looking four decades later.
If you only click through on one link on this post make it this one – Animated Spirituality – by Hiroko Yoda – Japan Happiness
I love some of the apparently random things that Toyota under Akio Toyoda do. From the GR Yaris to this documentary on a vintage Komatsu steel press that was instrumental in Toyota’s first car factory and still is doing sterling work.
The dialogue is in Japanese but English subtitles are available.
Luxury
Fashion retreats from diversity: ‘We are again being openly asked for Caucasian models’
The Art of Slowing Down: Another Moët F1 Blunder, Gaultier’s Runway Disaster & Trump’s Pasta Tariffs – A Weekend in Luxury Chaos – Intern Pierre – failure to execute
Materials
The “Critical Minerals” Crisis of 100 Years Ago | Chris Miller – great essay by the author of Chip War – and my review of Chip War here.
Marketing
Outside Perspective Y25W41 – Sisterhoods and Support – WARC future of strategy critiqued
Media
Meta manipulated child safety research, ex-employees tell US Senate panel | FT
Younger people and women in the EU read more books – News articles – Eurostat
Movember report – Young Men’s Media Landscaping
Mastodon has a new plan to make money: Hosting and support services for the open social web | TechCrunch – it reminds me of the service and support models that the Linux economy pivoted to in the late 1990s. We’ll see if it survives
Google expands AI Portraits globally with Scott Galloway mentor | The Tech Buzz – Galloway since took it down
Online
Meta manipulated child safety research, ex-employees tell US Senate panel | FT
Security
Hacking Cable — Technical Report – agentic script kiddies
UK’s MI6 Agency Sets Up New Dark Web Portal to Recruit Spies – Bloomberg – this is a tough one, especially given UKG’s stance on cryptography, would you trust the Silent Courier portal?
America First? Hegseth Announces Foreign Air Force Facility in U.S. | The New Republic – “will host a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots to enhance our combined training, increase lethality, interoperability”
Software
Deloitte issues refund for error-ridden Australian government report that used AI | FT
ADK Insider: ADK When It Was Born | by Bo Yang | Google Cloud – Community | Oct, 2025 | Medium
Technology
Apple’s executive reshuffling isn’t over | The Verge
Should the public sector build its own AI? FT
SAP to invest over 20 billion euros in sovereign cloud in Europe | CNBC
why-language-models-hallucinate | OpenAI & Why Chatbots Still Hallucinate – and How OpenAI Wants to Fix It – UC Today
101 real-world gen AI use cases with technical blueprints | Google Cloud Blog – this reminds me a lot of SAP’s industry templates back in the day. *Disclosure I am freelancing for an internal agency at Google.
OpenAI Raids Apple for Hardware Talent, Manufacturing Partners — The Information – hoovering talent out of Apple beyond the machine learning teams to include engineering, supply chain etc and OpenAI and Ive poach Apple designers, target suppliers for hardware push – 9to5Mac
The Mysterious “New Ideas” for AI Data Center Build Outs | Spyglass
UK is falling behind in the use of AI, says Google chief | The Times ying and yang of the same story: Small businesses could save a day a week if they use AI, Google claims | The Independent
Axios AI+ Government | States are making their own rules for AI
Web of no web
Global Drone Market to Hit $8 Billion by 2029: Precision Agriculture Takes Off | EE News
We’re all about to be in wearable hell | The Verge
GeoVector looks like where 2.0 type locative technology with applications for next generation ‘Mirrorworld‘-type services.
Wireless
The iPhone 17 Event: Less Awe, More Unsexy & That’s A Good Thing – On my Om