🤖 World-first biological data center uses 16 million living human neurons to process data

Researchers in Singapore have just unveiled a new type of data center prototype that uses living human neurons to process information. The project was launched by the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the NUS Medicine. To develop the prototype, the university teamed up with data center developer DayOne and biological computing startup Cortical Labs.

Established at the NUS Life Sciences Institute, the Biological Data Centre is made up of 20 CL1 biological computing units. The CL1 is the world’s first commercial, code-deployable biological computer. It is powered by 800,000 lab-grown human brain cells. This is the world’s first independently operated biologically integrated server rack.

Biological computing uses wetware to process data. This consists of living neurons grown from stem cells. The neurons are connected to computing hardware via microelectrode arrays. These let electrical signals pass between the biological cells and digital systems.

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💻 Walk through a 3D cyberpunk city built purely from ASCII characters

Solo developer Grow Now! Games has put a playable browser build of its walkable ASCII cyberpunk city online, running on a 283KB Rust WebAssembly engine feeding a WebGL renderer.

"I wanted to build a city that feels alive, but is made entirely from ASCII characters. This is a small custom engine built with JavaScript and Canvas — no Unity, Unreal, 3D models, textures, or shaders. The world is a grid-based city with roads, buildings, trees, cars, and pedestrians," - developer said.

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📚 World's largest open library calls for volunteers to scan and preserve physical books as AI companies buy, scan, and destroy them

Members of the world's largest 'truly open library in human history' have issued a worldwide call to volunteers, begging them to scan and upload books online to prevent AI companies from obtaining and destroying huge quantities of books. The Anna's Archive appeal follows multiple reports that large AI companies are buying up books to train AI models, often resulting in the destruction of the works.

“This is a race against time,” — the author said in the Anna's Archive blog post. “Our ideal is to scan and upload all the world’s publications before publishers completely block knowledge, and before AI companies scan and destroy all the world’s books and papers.”

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⚡️🇸🇰 Slovakia to Scrap Financial Transaction Tax Blasted by Companies

Slovakia’s government plans to scrap a financial transaction tax introduced last year that drew sharp criticism from businesses and the opposition. Prime Minister Robert Fico said he’d asked the Finance Ministry to prepare legislation to abolish the tax as of January 1.

The measure was widely criticized by the opposition and business groups, which said it damaged Slovakia’s competitiveness as it was the only country in the eurozone with a comparable levy. It also brought in less revenue than the government had originally planned.

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⚡️🇺🇸🇨🇦 Trump says US to increase tariffs on Canadian cars to 50%

"On January First, 2027, Tariffs on all Cars, Trucks, both large and small, Automotive Parts, and Steel, will be increased to 50%," - Trump said.

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⚡️🤖 Porsche Inks $1.5 Billion AI Deal With India’s Tata Consultancy

Porsche AG partnered with Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. for deploying AI in a 1.25 billion euros ($1.5 billion) deal, while agreeing to sell its consulting unit to the Indian software services company.

The five-year partnership aims to enable AI across Porsche’s engineering, manufacturing, operations and customer experience functions. The Indian firm will also buy the sports carmaker’s Germany-based consulting unit MHP Management- und IT-Beratung GmbH for an enterprise value of 320 million euros under the broader deal.

#BRICS

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🇳🇿 New Zealand Joins Global Push to Ban Under-16s From Social Media

The government will introduce the Online Safety Bill on Monday that will require high-risk social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Facebook to take reasonable steps to check users are over the age of 16, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said.

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⚡️🇲🇽🇺🇸 Mexico ‘Optimistic’ on US Trade Deal After Canada Talks Fail

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum expressed optimism she can reach a trade deal with Donald Trump as her chief negotiator leads talks in Washington, just after negotiations between the US and Canada collapsed.

“As President Trump said, we hope to reach an agreement with the US,” — she said. “I’m optimistic an agreement can be reached.”

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⚡️🖥 SpaceX, in partnership with Nvidia, has designed a space-optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 system for launch to orbit in Q4 next year, with significant scale in 2028

"From gigawatt AI factories to orbit. One NVIDIA architecture, everywhere," — Nvidia said. 🚀

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Aug 24: 🇮🇳 India to test blockchain settlement with tokenized REC bonds

India is preparing to test blockchain-based bond settlement with the launch of tokenized corporate bonds next month, Reuters reported Monday, citing three people familiar with the plans.

The pilot will be led by state-owned power financier REC and is expected to involve less than 5 billion rupees ($57 million) in bonds.

The offering could be announced at an annual fintech event in Mumbai and will be restricted to a select group of investors at launch. The move would mark an early test of distributed ledger technology for bond issuance and settlement in India, bringing it closer to markets such as Europe and Hong Kong that have already explored tokenized securities.

According to the report, investors will use India’s central bank digital currency to purchase the bonds, with the central bank and market regulator working together on the framework. Tokenization puts bond ownership, issuance, trading and settlement onto a blockchain or distributed ledger, potentially allowing transactions to settle almost immediately.

The pilot will require participants to hold both a wholesale CBDC wallet and a digital securities wallet. Indian depositories are developing a new securities wallet, called DEMAT 2.0, which will track bond holdings on a distributed ledger. Future trades will only be possible between participants holding compatible CBDC and securities wallets.

🇪🇺 ECB Official Says Digital Euro Will Limit Transaction Data Access

European Central Bank Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said the digital euro’s design will limit the transaction information the central bank can access. The ECB system itself would not be able to identify the specific users sending or receiving payments, while only commercial banks handling the transactions could identify users for anti-money laundering purposes.

❗️If offline payments are used, only the payer and the recipient would be able to see the transaction details, and neither banks nor the central bank would have access.

The ECB has positioned the digital euro as a tool to reduce Europe’s dependence on non-European payment service providers. Digital euro legislation is now in negotiations in the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union, and if approved, the digital euro could be issued as early as 2029.

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🔥 USDC is expanding its role across tokenized capital markets

Available through Dinari's platform, investors can access dShares for 724 tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs, including the entire S&P 500. With this integration, Dinari is now live in the United States and across more than 85 jurisdictions worldwide, providing eligible investors with a new way to access U.S. equities using digital dollars.

“Tokenized securities represent an important evolution in how investors can access and interact with capital markets.

As more assets move onchain, we’re excited to see USDC helping connect traditional markets with open, internet-native financial infrastructure,” — Claire Ching, Vice President, Global Capital Markets, Circle

USDC can now support the purchase of tokenized U.S. equities, the settlement of transactions, and the distribution of cash dividends. Together, these capabilities create a more seamless connection between digital dollars and regulated capital markets. 🚀

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⚡️🇺🇸 DOE and SBA Launch Initiative to Unleash Private Capital for American Innovation & Small Businesses

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) signed a Memorandum of Agreement establishing the Small Business Investment Company-Energy (SBIC-E) Initiative,🔣a new strategic partnership advancing President Trump’s commitment to supporting America’s small businesses, strengthening domestic manufacturing and supply chains, and ensuring the U.S leads in the technologies critical to our national and economic security.🏆

Through DOE’s Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC), the Department will identify strategic technology priorities, provide technical and commercialization expertise, and help engage the investment community.

"President Trump is establishing American energy dominance, ending the Green New Scam, and putting our nations’ producers and innovators back in control at the dawn of a new era of energy reliability and abundance," — said SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler.

❗️Initial investment priorities for the SBIC-E Initiative include technologies supporting:

🟠American energy production and energy security
🟠Critical minerals, advanced manufacturing, and advanced materials
🟠Artificial intelligence, quantum information science, semiconductors, and future computing
🟠Advanced communications, biotechnology, and other critical and emerging technologies

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