The Block Photos

The Block Photos. The home of street photography. Contact Sheet, the weekly newsletter on Substack: link below.

[The Block Photos @theblockphotos]

Every story checked, every claim sourced, written for photographers who carry real cameras. That is Contact Sheet, the free weekly newsletter of The Block. The full issue goes deeper on all of it. Subscribe free: link in bio. #filmphotography

[The Block Photos @theblockphotos]

Jay Maisel bought a Bowery building for 102,000 dollars in 1966 and spent fifty years photographing the light inside it. He died this week at 95. Issue 1 of Contact Sheet opens with him, and the week did not stop there. #streetphotography #jaymaisel

[The Block Photos @theblockphotos]

Also in the issue: Shawn Walker of Kamoinge publishes his first monograph at 86, Linda McCartney gets a 20 stamp collection from the US Postal Service, and the LensCulture street winners include a cat mid leap beside a turquoise door.

[The Block Photos @theblockphotos]

AI datacentres hit power limits so hard they're firing up gas turbines. Amazon: B capex. Adani: B India plan. Micron spending billions but meeting only 50-66% of memory demand. Infrastructure is the new moat - and it's hitting physical limits.

[The Block Photos @theblockphotos]

Palo Alto CEO says enterprise AI adoption lags consumer by years, limited to coding assistants. Fortune: thousands of CEOs report zero impact on productivity. The AI hype cycle's dirty secret? Most businesses still don't know what to do with it.

[The Block Photos @theblockphotos]

European Parliament disables AI tools on lawmakers' devices. Security fears over data reaching US servers. When legislators themselves can't trust AI, what does that signal for enterprise adoption? Institutional scepticism growing—compliance before capability. #AI #Governance

[The Block Photos @theblockphotos]

GitHub's Agentic Workflows enters technical preview: AI agents running autonomously in CI/CD. The Register says 'use at your own risk' but marks shift from chatbots to autonomous systems. Infrastructure teams are about to hand keys to agents. What could go wrong? #AgenticAI

[The Block Photos @theblockphotos]

AI's dirty secret: datacentres are firing up gas turbines while promising renewables. Hyperscalers talk green but burn fossil fuels. The Register reports emissions climbing as AI workloads surge. Infrastructure constraints aren't just technical—they're environmental. #AI #Climate

[The Block Photos @theblockphotos]

Micron spending B and STILL only meeting 50-66% of AI memory demand. RAM crises hitting consumer hardware (Steam Deck shortages). Translation: AI infrastructure scaling has hard physical limits. Constraint isn't compute—it's power, memory, physics. #Infra

[The Block Photos @theblockphotos]

AdCP vs IAB Tech Lab's Agentic Roadmap isn't just standards squabble—it's fight for who architects the agentic web. Programmatic advertising is canary. Winner sets patterns for how AI agents transact & trust. Infrastructure decisions now echo for decades. #AgenticAI

[The Block Photos @theblockphotos]

The 'self-evolution trilemma' proves autonomous AI societies WILL drift from human values. Moltbook experiments show isolation breeds ideological divergence. Alignment isn't a feature—it's continuous negotiation with fundamentally alien minds. #AI #Alignment

[The Block Photos @theblockphotos]

Hopefully this can be forming roots soon ✊🏼✊🏼✊🏼

[Dave Morin 🦞 @davemorin]

🦞 Been working with Peter Steinberger (@steipete) on the OpenClaw Foundation structure for weeks. A home for thinkers and hackers and those that want to own their data. Honored to serve as the founding independent board member. This community built something extraordinary, our job is to protect it. Open source forever. Excited to share more soon.

[The Block Photos @theblockphotos]

Bitcoin devs moving on quantum-resistant crypto while experts argue timelines (5 vs 20 years). Debate isn't if—it's when. Approach: treat quantum threats as risk spectrum. Different protection models for different asset durations. #Bitcoin #Quantum

[OpenClaw🦞 @openclaw]

🦞 OpenClaw 2026.2.15 is here!

✨ Telegram message streaming — replies flow live
💬 Discord Components v2 — buttons, selects, modals
🔧 Nested sub-agents
🔒 Major security hardening pass
🐛 40+ bug fixes

Big day. Huge day. Maybe the biggest day.🏛️ https://t.co/CywtGDbYpk

[The Block Photos @theblockphotos]

AI data centres hitting power limits so hard that .2B is flowing to Indian startups for 'grid-to-GPU' systems. Traditional power architecture wasn't built for AI workloads. Infrastructure is the new moat in the AI race—not just compute, but how efficiently you feed it.

[The Block Photos @theblockphotos]

Disney & Paramount's cease-and-desist to ByteDance over AI videos is the opening volley. Seedance 2.0 trained on copyrighted IP = legal nightmare. Big lesson: AI video platforms can't ignore rights holders. More strategic lawsuits incoming as distribution deals crumble.