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August 21, 2026, 8:55 PM
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WeSmirchTop News
| Ashley Gold / Axios: |
The US DOJ and TikTok reach a $400M settlement to resolve allegations TikTok violated COPPA; the DOJ filed the lawsuit in 2024 — The Justice Department and TikTok, along with parent company ByteDance, have reached a $400 million settlement to resolve allegations of violating children's online privacy laws …
More: New York Times, US Department of Justice, TechCrunch, Associated Press, CNN, The Verge, Fox Business, Reuters, Engadget, The Hill, Wall Street Journal, MLex, Sweden Herald, Forbes, Bloomberg, Courthouse News Service, Washington Examiner, Al Jazeera, Deadline, ABC, Hindustan Times, CBS News, BBC, Political.org, Mediaite, Variety, South China Morning Post, Law360, and Anadolu Ajansı …
X: @bymaddiehughes, @dojcivil, @asgwoodward, @thejusticedept, @ashleyrgold, @ashleyrgold, @zephyrteachout, and @douglaslfarrar. Bluesky: @robpegoraro.com
| Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: |
Sources: Apple is cutting 200+ jobs, including ~100 positions from the Vision Pro unit and another 100 from the Siri team, as it focuses on new devices and AI — Apple Inc. is cutting jobs across teams responsible for the Siri digital assistant and the Vision Pro headset …
More: AppleInsider, PYMNTS, TechCrunch, Macworld, The Verge, Seeking Alpha, MacRumors, iClarified, Mashable, Digital Trends, Newsmax, MacTech.com, iThinkDifferent, iPhone in Canada, The Mac Observer, and 9to5Mac
X: @markgurman, @markgurman, @tom_krikorian, @markgurman, @markgurman, @barrsm, and @jasondiamond. LinkedIn: Jeffrey Pearson
Forums: r/VisionPro, r/apple, and MacRumors Forums
| New York Times: |
Sources: Anthropic's bankers said the company could raise $100B+ in its IPO, which could value it at $2T, in recent discussions with potential investors — The offering could value the five-year-old A.I. start-up at $2 trillion, its bankers have told potential investors, which would exceed Elon Musk's SpaceX.
X: @scottmstedman and @srimuppidi
| Bloomberg: |
DeepSeek unveils an experimental multimodal version of its V4 Flash model, saying it nears the performance of Anthropic's Opus 4.8 on multimodal agentic tests — DeepSeek unveiled an experimental AI model that can understand visual prompts, saying the tool nears the performance of an advanced model by US rival Anthropic PBC.
More: SiliconANGLE, The Decoder, Techstrong.ai, CoinGape, Proactive, Caixin Global, and TechNode
| Diana Olick / CNBC: |
CBRE: NYC becomes the top tech talent market for the first time with 394,300 jobs, beating the Bay Area's 375,730, amid SF job cuts and NYC finance sector hires — It should come as no surprise that the number of artificial intelligence-specific tech workers is growing rapidly …
More: CBRE, SFGATE, Quartz, International Business Times, Implicator.ai, NewsMax.com, New York Post, San Francisco Business Times, Portland Oregon startups …, Techstrong.ai, Deadline, GeekWire, Global News, Commercial Observer, Gizmodo, and Los Angeles Times
X: @xennygrimmato_. LinkedIn: Andrew Yeung, Gaurav Misra, Brian Biege, Nate Glubish, Lukas Ault, and Matt Walters. Bluesky: @counternotions. Threads: @anildash. Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to
Forums: Hacker News and r/nyc
| Anzar Mehraj / Reuters: |
OpenAI cuts GPT-5.6 Sol's API and credit prices by over 20% for the next three months, to $4/1M input tokens and $20/1M output tokens — OpenAI said on Friday it is cutting the prices of its frontier GPT-5.6 Sol model for developers by more than 20% for the next three months …
More: RuntimeWire and The Decoder
| Claude: |
Anthropic says Mythos 5 is now in public beta in Claude Security for Enterprise users, and it is working with providers to embed Mythos 5 in defensive tools — We're sharing an update on our efforts to help more teams use frontier capabilities for cyber defense.
More: The New Stack, Cyber Security News, MarkTechPost, RuntimeWire, Unite.AI, and The Decoder
X: @claudeai, @claudeai, @illscience, @martin_casado, @lukeyoungblood, @_simonsmith, @claudeai, @dani_avila7, @andrewcurran_, and @claudeai. LinkedIn: Mike Wilkes. Bluesky: @sungkim. Forums: Hacker News
| Financial Times: |
A Dutch regulator fines Uber €825M for deactivating driver accounts through automated systems without informing them, in the second largest fine under GDPR — Regulator says ride-hailing group deactivated driver accounts through automated systems without adequately informing them
More: Reuters, DutchNews.nl, Forbes Middle East, Insurance Business, Quartz, Nairametrics, Associated Press, Bloomberg, and RTÉ
Forums: r/worldnews, r/technology, r/news, r/uberdrivers, and r/europe
| Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: |
Walmart, which has long resisted contactless Tap to Pay payments, says its stores will get the tech, which supports Apple Pay and Google Pay, by the end of 2026 — Apparently, hell has frozen over. Walmart on Friday said it will finally accept payments via both Apple Pay and Google Pay at its stores …
More: Walmart Inc., Google, 9to5Mac, ZDNET, CNET, MacRumors, 9to5Mac, Mashable, Business Insider, AppleInsider, Android Central, Neowin, Inc.com, Modern Retail, 9to5Google, Android Authority, Chrome Unboxed, BGR, MakeUseOf, Axios, How-To Geek, Spokesman.com, iClarified, PCMag, Appleosophy, WeRSM, Dexerto, SammyGuru, The Mac Observer, Pocket-lint, Hindustan Times, Fast Company, iDrop News, Quartz, Phandroid, PYMNTS, KTLA, The Verge, CBS News, Daring Fireball, MacTech.com, and Droid Life
Forums: r/AppleWallet, r/googlenews, and Slashdot
| Dina Bass / Bloomberg: |
Anthropic hires Amir Salek, who ran Google's TPU business until 2022, to join its compute team as part of a push to develop its own chips — Anthropic PBC has hired Amir Salek, a founder of the custom chip program at Alphabet Inc.'s Google, as the AI lab lays the groundwork for a push into making its own semiconductors.| Rashika Singh / Reuters: |
Nvidia makes a minority investment in Cloverleaf, which works with utilities and energy providers to secure infrastructure for data center sites — Nvidia (NVDA.O) has made a minority investment in privately held Cloverleaf Infrastructure to develop infrastructure to power AI data center projects across … | Terry Chen / NVIDIA Technical Blog: |
Nvidia says its general-purpose coding agent system AVO scored 100% across all 25 environments in the ARC-AGI-3 public set, completing all 183 levels — The research project elevates Claude Opus 5 from a 30% model baseline to 100% as part of the complete AVO agent system, showing that system design …
More: TechCrunch, RuntimeWire, Wccftech, and The New Stack
X: @nvidiaai, @fakepsyho, @nvidiaai, @deryatr_, @jfpuget, @angaisb_, @alexocheema, and @lyalindotcom. LinkedIn: Bing Xu. Bluesky: @timkellogg.me
Forums: Hacker News and r/accelerate
| Laura Bratton / The Information: |
Source: OpenAI's VP of sales in the Americas, Kaylin Voss, resigned a week after Denise Dresser left, prompting others on the sales team to consider resigning — Kaylin Voss, OpenAI's vice president of sales in the Americas, has resigned a week after her former boss, Denise Dresser …
| Sebastian Herrera / Fortune: |
Amazon raises prices for its Echo smart speakers, Fire TV line, Kindle devices, and eero mesh networking systems to offset increases in memory and storage costs — Amazon has raised prices for several of its first-party devices, including its Echo smart speakers and Fire TV line … | Omarchy News: |
DHH launches Omacom Foundation, a non-profit supporting his Omarchy Linux distro, with $8M in funding from Michael Dell, Jack Dorsey, Patrick Collison, others — It's time to dream big. Omarchy Quattro has given people a chance to experience what the malleable computer of the future looks like, and they like it (a lot!).
X: @dhh, @dhh, @jasonfried, @dhh, @dwr, @jasonfried, @jason, @jack, @dhh, @jaredpalmer, @eastdakota, @dhh, and @dhh. LinkedIn: Kevin Evans
Forums: Hacker News and r/linux
IDrive:
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| Jenny Lee / CNBC: |
Samsung unveils a $65.1B-$79.5B shareholder return package for 2026, combining dividends and share buybacks, calling it “the largest ever by a Korean company” — Samsung Electronics has announced a shareholder return package, marking a blockbuster week for shareholder returns …
More: Samsung Newsroom, The Korea Times, Bloomberg, Oman Observer, Forbes Middle East, Barron's Online, Nikkei Asia, Blockonomi, SamMobile, Dow Jones Newswires, ZeroHedge News, Reuters, Bitcoin Insider, Finimize, The Asia Business Daily, Financial Times, Seoul Economic Daily, Wall Street Journal, The Korea Herald, Investopedia, and International Business Times
| Chase DiFeliciantonio / Politico: |
OpenAI says California should amend SB 53 to expand safeguards, including requiring monitoring of frontier models under training, following AI agent hacks — SAN FRANCISCO — OpenAI urged its home state of California on Friday to “strengthen” its landmark AI law following recent autonomous hacks …
More: The Guardian, The Prompt, Business Insider, and WinCentral
| Madison McLauchlan / BetaKit: |
Helcim, a payments processor for SMBs, raised a CA$53M Series C led by Business Development Bank of Canada's Growth Venture Fund at a CA$250M valuation — Calgary company reaches $250-million valuation, hopes to grow after Moneris sells to US private equity.
More: Helcim and Globe and Mail
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IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data — Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.
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Newest
New York Times:
Sources: Anthropic's bankers said the company could raise $100B+ in its IPO, which could value it at $2T, in recent discussions with potential investorsFind
19 minutes ago
Sebastian Herrera / Fortune:
Amazon raises prices for its Echo smart speakers, Fire TV line, Kindle devices, and eero mesh networking systems to offset increases in memory and storage costsFind
40 minutes ago
Madison McLauchlan / BetaKit:
Helcim, a payments processor for SMBs, raised a CA$53M Series C led by Business Development Bank of Canada's Growth Venture Fund at a CA$250M valuationFind
60 minutes ago
Chase DiFeliciantonio / Politico:
OpenAI says California should amend SB 53 to expand safeguards, including requiring monitoring of frontier models under training, following AI agent hacksFind
2 hours ago
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Gurman: as part of Vision Pro cuts, Apple is largely shutting down a team focused on gaming and reducing the size of a unit producing immersive video contentFind
2 hours ago
Rashika Singh / Reuters:
Nvidia makes a minority investment in Cloverleaf, which works with utilities and energy providers to secure infrastructure for data center sitesFind
2½ hours ago
Anzar Mehraj / Reuters:
OpenAI cuts GPT-5.6 Sol's API and credit prices by over 20% for the next three months, to $4/1M input tokens and $20/1M output tokensFind
2½ hours ago
From Mediagazer
Jennifer Jacobs / CBS News:Matt Sledge / The Intercept:
Katie Robertson / New York Times:
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| Jamie John / Financial Times: |
More: MacRumors, Reuters, 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, iClarified, MacTech.com, iPhone in Canada, Irish Independent, The Irish Times, and Irish Examiner
Forums: r/apple and MacRumors Forums
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X: @tculpan. LinkedIn: Mark Murphy, Sanjay Mehrotra, Scott DeBoer, Jeff Janukowicz, Cristen, Angie Wood, and Ari Levy
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