Technology

Airbnb co&founder Joe Gebbia, named by Trump as the first US chief design officer, says he wants to update federal websites to an "Apple Store&like experience" (Mike Allen/Axios)

Airbnb co&founder Joe Gebbia, named by Trump as the fir...

Mike Allen / Axios: Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, named by Trump as the first US...

A surge in AI company valuations is driving the popularity of special purpose vehicles, but some involve high fees, opaque structures, and layers of middlemen (Business Insider)

A surge in AI company valuations is driving the popular...

Business Insider: A surge in AI company valuations is driving the popularity of ...

FanDuel partners with CME Group to offer event&based contracts, letting users wager "yes" or "no" on financial events and benchmarks, starting later this year (Dean Seal/Wall Street Journal)

FanDuel partners with CME Group to offer event&based co...

Dean Seal / Wall Street Journal: FanDuel partners with CME Group to offer event-...

TSMC's financial statement shows the company booked its first profit from its four&year&old Arizona subsidiary in H1 2025, reporting $150.1M in net profit (Lisa Wang/Taipei Times)

TSMC's financial statement shows the company booked its...

Lisa Wang / Taipei Times: TSMC's financial statement shows the company booked it...

Bluesky blocks access to its service in Mississippi, saying it doesn't have the resources to comply with the state's broad new law requiring age verification (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

Bluesky blocks access to its service in Mississippi, sa...

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Bluesky blocks access to its service in Mississippi, s...

Ether surged 15% late Friday, rising as high as $4,885 and surpassing its November 2021 record of $4,866.01 after Fed Chair Jerome Powell hinted at rate cuts (Tanaya Macheel/CNBC)

Ether surged 15% late Friday, rising as high as $4,885 ...

Tanaya Macheel / CNBC: Ether surged 15% late Friday, rising as high as $4,885 an...

Apple sues ex&staffer Chen Shi for allegedly stealing trade secrets to benefit Oppo before leaving Apple in June, claims Oppo knew of and encouraged his actions (Newley Purnell/Bloomberg)

Apple sues ex&staffer Chen Shi for allegedly stealing t...

Newley Purnell / Bloomberg: Apple sues ex-staffer Chen Shi for allegedly stealin...

Sources: EU officials are fast&tracking digital euro plans, and considering Ethereum or Solana over a private blockchain after the US passed the Genius Act (Nikou Asgari/Financial Times)

Sources: EU officials are fast&tracking digital euro pl...

Nikou Asgari / Financial Times: Sources: EU officials are fast-tracking digital ...

OpenAI sets up a legal entity, and plans to open its first office in India after launching ChatGPT Go, its cheapest plan, in the country on August 19 (Munsif Vengattil/Reuters)

OpenAI sets up a legal entity, and plans to open its fi...

Munsif Vengattil / Reuters: OpenAI sets up a legal entity, and plans to open its...

Vivo demos Vivo Vision, its first MR headset, which looks like an Apple Vision Pro clone but is ~40% lighter with micro&OLED displays, and could cost ~$1,400 (David Heaney/UploadVR)

Vivo demos Vivo Vision, its first MR headset, which loo...

David Heaney / UploadVR: Vivo demos Vivo Vision, its first MR headset, which loo...

a16z hires Anne Neuberger, formerly a senior cybersecurity official in the Biden White House, as a senior adviser to work on "American Dynamism, AI, and cyber" (Patrick Howell O'Neill/Bloomberg)

a16z hires Anne Neuberger, formerly a senior cybersecur...

Patrick Howell O'Neill / Bloomberg: a16z hires Anne Neuberger, formerly a senior...

Russia orders that state&backed messenger app MAX, which critics say could be used to track users, must be pre&installed on phones and tablets from next month (Andrew Osborn/Reuters)

Russia orders that state&backed messenger app MAX, whic...

Andrew Osborn / Reuters: Russia orders that state-backed messenger app MAX, whic...

Trump signs an EO creating the National Design Studio to improve "websites and physical sites"; sources say he's tapping Airbnb co&founder Joe Gebbia to lead it (Gregory Korte/Bloomberg)

Trump signs an EO creating the National Design Studio t...

Gregory Korte / Bloomberg: Trump signs an EO creating the National Design Studio...

In a UK tribunal filing, ex&Meta employee Samujjal Purkayastha alleges Meta misled advertisers by inflating Shops ads' performance and bypassed Apple's ATT (Trishla Ostwal/Adweek)

In a UK tribunal filing, ex&Meta employee Samujjal Purk...

Trishla Ostwal / Adweek: In a UK tribunal filing, ex-Meta employee Samujjal Purk...

DeepSeek details V3.1 and says it surpasses R1 on key benchmarks and is customized to work with next&gen Chinese&made AI chips, after unveiling it on August 19 (Bloomberg)

DeepSeek details V3.1 and says it surpasses R1 on key b...

Bloomberg: DeepSeek details V3.1 and says it surpasses R1 on key benchmarks and ...

An interview with GM SVP of Software and Services Engineering David Richardson on GM's new AI team, developing "cobots", or collaborative robots, and more (Isabelle Bousquette/Wall Street Journal)

An interview with GM SVP of Software and Services Engin...

Isabelle Bousquette / Wall Street Journal: An interview with GM SVP of Software ...

Masimo sues US CBP, saying CBP exceeded its authority in an Aug. 1 internal advice ruling that enabled Apple to reactivate a Watch blood oxygen tracking feature (Christopher Yasiejko/Bloomberg Law)

Masimo sues US CBP, saying CBP exceeded its authority i...

Christopher Yasiejko / Bloomberg Law: Masimo sues US CBP, saying CBP exceeded it...

Microsoft and the NFL extend their partnership to bring real&time game data and analysis to coaches and players using Microsoft Copilot and Azure AI (Ali McCadden/CNBC)

Microsoft and the NFL extend their partnership to bring...

Ali McCadden / CNBC: Microsoft and the NFL extend their partnership to bring rea...

Google Photos will let users edit images using text or voice prompts, first on Pixel 10 devices in the US, and will add support for C2PA Content Credentials (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

Google Photos will let users edit images using text or ...

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: Google Photos will let users edit images using text or...

Baidu reports Q2 revenue down 4% YoY to ~$4.6B, slightly below est., and online ad revenue down 15% YoY to ~$2.3B, as China's ad market remains weak (Deborah Sophia/Reuters)

Baidu reports Q2 revenue down 4% YoY to ~$4.6B, slightl...

Deborah Sophia / Reuters: Baidu reports Q2 revenue down 4% YoY to ~$4.6B, slight...

Kick says it is "urgently reviewing" the circumstances of the death of a French livestreamer who was subjected to violence and sleep deprivation during streams (Tom McArthur/BBC)

Kick says it is "urgently reviewing" the circumstances ...

Tom McArthur / BBC: Kick says it is “urgently reviewing” the circumstances of th...

Analysis: Intel's stock, up 28% in August, is trading at a 53 forward P/E ratio, its highest since early 2002, reflecting its declining profits in recent years (Ryan Vlastelica/Bloomberg)

Analysis: Intel's stock, up 28% in August, is trading a...

Ryan Vlastelica / Bloomberg: Analysis: Intel's stock, up 28% in August, is tradi...

Austin&based Aalo Atomics, which is building a modular nuclear reactor and data center, set to finish construction in 2026, raised a $100M Series B led by Valor (Julia Hornstein/Business Insider)

Austin&based Aalo Atomics, which is building a modular ...

Julia Hornstein / Business Insider: Austin-based Aalo Atomics, which is building...

Federal prosecutors charge an Oregon man with operating the Rapper Bot, one of the most powerful DDoS botnets ever seen, which knocked X offline earlier in 2025 (Robert McMillan/Wall Street Journal)

Federal prosecutors charge an Oregon man with operating...

Robert McMillan / Wall Street Journal: Federal prosecutors charge an Oregon man ...

Alibaba releases Qwen&Image&Edit, the image editing version of Qwen&Image, supporting modifications of Chinese and English text while preserving font and style (Carl Franzen/VentureBeat)

Alibaba releases Qwen&Image&Edit, the image editing ver...

Carl Franzen / VentureBeat: Alibaba releases Qwen-Image-Edit, the image editing ...

Sources: Masayoshi Son met Lip&Bu Tan to discuss SoftBank acquiring Intel's faltering foundry business in the weeks before announcing SoftBank's $2B investment (Financial Times)

Sources: Masayoshi Son met Lip&Bu Tan to discuss SoftBa...

Financial Times: Sources: Masayoshi Son met Lip-Bu Tan to discuss SoftBank acqui...

Sources: Apple is making all four iPhone 17 models in India ahead of debut, a first, as it expands to five factories to cut reliance on China for US&bound units (Bloomberg)

Sources: Apple is making all four iPhone 17 models in I...

Bloomberg: Sources: Apple is making all four iPhone 17 models in India ahead of ...

Sources: Databricks is finalizing a funding round that would value it at $100B, up 61% from December 2024, co&led by Thrive Capital; a16z is set to participate (Angel Au&Yeung/Wall Street Journal)

Sources: Databricks is finalizing a funding round that ...

Angel Au-Yeung / Wall Street Journal: Sources: Databricks is finalizing a fundin...

Palo Alto Networks founder Nir Zuk retires and steps down as CTO and board member; Chief Product Officer Lee Klarich becomes CTO and joins the board (Dean Seal/Wall Street Journal)

Palo Alto Networks founder Nir Zuk retires and steps do...

Dean Seal / Wall Street Journal: Palo Alto Networks founder Nir Zuk retires and ...

Source: Arm has hired Amazon AI chip director Rami Sinno to help develop its own chips; he previously worked on Amazon's Trainium and Inferentia chips (Max A. Cherney/Reuters)

Source: Arm has hired Amazon AI chip director Rami Sinn...

Max A. Cherney / Reuters: Source: Arm has hired Amazon AI chip director Rami Sin...

Palo Alto Networks reports Q4 revenue up 16% YoY to $2.54B, vs. $2.5B est., and Q1 and FY 2026 guidance above estimates; PANW jumps 4%+ after hours (Samantha Subin/CNBC)

Palo Alto Networks reports Q4 revenue up 16% YoY to $2....

Samantha Subin / CNBC: Palo Alto Networks reports Q4 revenue up 16% YoY to $2.54...

Sources: the EU and US are delaying formalizing their trade deal over "non&tariff barriers", including relaxing the DSA, which the EU sees as a red line (Financial Times)

Sources: the EU and US are delaying formalizing their t...

Financial Times: Sources: the EU and US are delaying formalizing their trade dea...

SoftBank buys Foxconn's Ohio EV plant; Foxconn will produce AI servers at the plant as part of Softbank's $500B Stargate project with OpenAI and Oracle (Debby Wu/Bloomberg)

SoftBank buys Foxconn's Ohio EV plant; Foxconn will pro...

Debby Wu / Bloomberg: SoftBank buys Foxconn's Ohio EV plant; Foxconn will produc...

China's podcast audience is projected to reach 150M in 2025, up from ~700K five years ago, driven by grassroots hosts instinctively navigating China's red lines (Edward White/Financial Times)

China's podcast audience is projected to reach 150M in ...

Edward White / Financial Times: China's podcast audience is projected to reach 1...

Interview with Trent Brunson, R&D director at cybersecurity firm Trail of Bits, which won $3M and 2nd place in DARPA's AI Cyber Challenge, behind Team Atlanta (Patrick Howell O'Neill/Bloomberg)

Interview with Trent Brunson, R&D director at cyber...

Patrick Howell O'Neill / Bloomberg: Interview with Trent Brunson, R&D director a...

How Chinese streaming giants iQiyi and Tencent are gaining on Netflix in Southeast Asia through original productions and free, ad&supported services (Nikkei Asia)

How Chinese streaming giants iQiyi and Tencent are gain...

Nikkei Asia: How Chinese streaming giants iQiyi and Tencent are gaining on Netfl...

NYC&based Protege, which prepares and sells real&world datasets like lab results and sports footage for AI training, raised a $25M Series A led by Footwork (Natasha Mascarenhas/The Information)

NYC&based Protege, which prepares and sells real&world ...

Natasha Mascarenhas / The Information: NYC-based Protege, which prepares and sel...

Cognitive scientist Margaret Boden, whose books helped shape the philosophical conversation about human intelligence and AI, passed away on July 18 at age 88 (Michael S. Rosenwald/New York Times)

Cognitive scientist Margaret Boden, whose books helped ...

Michael S. Rosenwald / New York Times: Cognitive scientist Margaret Boden, whose...

Big Tech's reverse acquihires for AI talent are hollowing out startups and eroding the culture that has made Silicon Valley an unparalleled source of innovation (Asa Fitch/Wall Street Journal)

Big Tech's reverse acquihires for AI talent are hollowi...

Asa Fitch / Wall Street Journal: Big Tech's reverse acquihires for AI talent are...

Ex&Intel engineer Varun Gupta was sentenced to two years' probation and a $34K+ fine for stealing trade secrets and sharing them with his new employer Microsoft (Maxine Bernstein/Oregonian)

Ex&Intel engineer Varun Gupta was sentenced to two year...

Maxine Bernstein / Oregonian: Ex-Intel engineer Varun Gupta was sentenced to two...

A new Artificial Analysis benchmark, focusing on OpenAI's gpt&oss&120b, shows how open&weight LLMs exhibit inconsistent performance across hosting providers (Simon Willison/Simon Willison's Weblog)

A new Artificial Analysis benchmark, focusing on OpenAI...

Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog: A new Artificial Analysis benchmark, f...

GPT&5's underwhelming performance on benchmarks suggests that the current approach of scaling LLMs is starting to reach the limits of available resources (Financial Times)

GPT&5's underwhelming performance on benchmarks suggest...

Financial Times: GPT-5's underwhelming performance on benchmarks suggests that t...

How an editor uncovered the "largest self&promotion operation in Wikipedia's history" that promoted obscure composer David Woodard with entries in 335 languages (Nate Anderson/Ars Technica)

How an editor uncovered the "largest self&promotion ope...

Nate Anderson / Ars Technica: How an editor uncovered the “largest self-promotio...

The World Humanoid Robot Games kicked off in Beijing on August 15, with robots across 280 teams from 16 countries competing in track and field and other sports (Reuters)

The World Humanoid Robot Games kicked off in Beijing on...

Reuters: The World Humanoid Robot Games kicked off in Beijing on August 15, with...

Sources say Meta's chaotic culture and lack of vision have led to AI brain drain; Meta strongly denies it has had issues with talent and retention (Forbes)

Sources say Meta's chaotic culture and lack of vision h...

Forbes: Sources say Meta's chaotic culture and lack of vision have led to AI bra...

TikTok is updating its Community Guidelines, adding new rules for Live creators, including a requirement that commercial content must be disclosed (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

TikTok is updating its Community Guidelines, adding new...

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: TikTok is updating its Community Guidelines, adding ne...

Some developers say GPT&5 excels at technical reasoning and planning coding tasks and is cost&effective, but Claude Opus and Sonnet still produce better code (Lauren Goode/Wired)

Some developers say GPT&5 excels at technical reasoning...

Lauren Goode / Wired: Some developers say GPT-5 excels at technical reasoning an...

CoreWeave investors sold more than $1B in shares as the IPO lockup ended; the stock held steady on Friday after dropping about 35% over the previous two days (Financial Times)

CoreWeave investors sold more than $1B in shares as the...

Financial Times: CoreWeave investors sold more than $1B in shares as the IPO loc...

Sources: Meta plans its fourth AI restructuring in six months, dividing its superintelligence lab into TBD Lab, a product team, an infrastructure team, and FAIR (Kalley Huang/The Information)

Sources: Meta plans its fourth AI restructuring in six ...

Kalley Huang / The Information: Sources: Meta plans its fourth AI restructuring ...

Accenture plans to acquire Australian cybersecurity company CyberCX from private equity firm BGH Capital; the deal reportedly values CyberCX at more than AU$1B (Mark Anderson/Bloomberg Law)

Accenture plans to acquire Australian cybersecurity com...

Mark Anderson / Bloomberg Law: Accenture plans to acquire Australian cybersecuri...

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Weather, 25 August

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