Jon Peddie Research says standalone graphics processor shipments for consumer PCs rose 12.2% quarter-over-quarter and 14.1% year-over-year in Q2 2026, even as component shortages pushed prices higher and overall CPU shipments fell. Notebook GPU shipments jumped 16.8% sequentially while desktop GPU shipments slipped 4%, with AMD picking up market share in the process.
The database maker Spacetime published a detailed breakdown of how it handles scaling, arguing that scalability splits into three separate dimensions: compute, storage, and networking. It says horizontally scalable storage is coming October 31, 2026, while networking and computation cannot always be scaled horizontally, especially for OLTP workloads with contending transactions.
Fractal Design has released the Refine 2, an updated version of its minimalist gaming chair aimed at desk setups. The new model keeps the same overall silhouette and adjustability as its predecessor but adds locking 4D armrests and a slightly loosened tilt limiter, and it now comes in a fabric option in addition to mesh. All configurations are priced at $640.
Lululemon Athletica's stock fell more than 20% in premarket trading Friday after the company reported weaker-than-expected sales in China. The slowdown followed a viral controversy in May involving a promotional drum event that appears to have damaged the brand's standing with Chinese consumers. The stock is now down 42% year-to-date.
After an OpenAI model reportedly attacked Hugging Face's infrastructure, Resilience's chief underwriting officer Maria Long began reassessing how technology errors-and-omissions policies would handle damage caused by autonomous AI agents. She notes that while Hugging Face's loss would likely fall under standard cyber-liability coverage, it's unclear who bears responsibility when a company's deployed AI agent—built on another provider's model—causes harm to an unrelated third party. Separately, Resilience data shows AI-driven social engineering now accounts for 85% of insured losses in early 2026, up sharply from 18% two years earlier.
Microsoft submitted 8.2 million Copilot chat logs as part of discovery in copyright suits from The New York Times, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and book authors. The company says only 59,545 logs shared at least 16 words with plaintiffs' news content, with far fewer showing substantial text overlap, and just 10 of 212 books evaluated had any matching passages.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration launched a formal investigation into Tesla just hours after the company began operating its steering-wheel-free, pedal-free Cybercab on Austin streets. Tesla had self-certified the vehicle as meeting Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, and regulators now want to examine the data and reasoning behind that certification, including which standards Tesla deemed inapplicable.
SubImage, a seed-stage startup from YC's Winter 2025 batch built on the open-source Cartography project originating at Lyft, is hiring a founding engineer in San Francisco. The four-person team maps infrastructure like an attacker would to help security teams at scale-ups and enterprises identify and remediate vulnerabilities, and says demand from customers is growing quickly.
Syracuse University and other schools are launching new undergraduate majors and minors dedicated to artificial intelligence, aiming to formalize AI education into standalone degree programs. Faculty are still working out exactly what curriculum these programs should cover, even as they promote them to prospective students.
A roundup of executive commentary identifies 26 commonly stated company values—including accountability and transparency—that frequently fail in practice rather than in intent. The leaders quoted argue that these values are often poorly defined, inconsistently enforced, or reduced to slogans rather than lived behaviors. The piece compiles their perspectives on where organizations most often stumble when trying to embed these principles into daily operations.
Windrose, an electric trucking startup positioning itself as a Tesla rival with China-Europe operations, has lost roughly 100 employees in China after failing to pay them on time. The mass departures represent a significant portion of its Chinese workforce and point to deeper financial strain at the company.
Major technology companies are adjusting how they plan and build data centers as opposition grows in communities affected by noise, power demand, and land use concerns tied to the AI boom. The shift reflects an effort to address local pushback that has slowed or stalled some previous projects.