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August 18, 2026, 8:50 PM
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Top News

Ina Fried / Axios:
OpenAI changed safety practices and paused RL training for two weeks after the Hugging Face breach and evidence Astra may have met a critical cyber threshold  —  OpenAI said Tuesday that it has made several changes to its safety practices following its determination that an upcoming system …
Apple:
Apple unveils new EU business terms from October 1, resolving disputes with the EU, including a new 5% Core Technology Commission and App Store commission tiers  —  Apple today announced changes to its business terms for apps in the European Union, following close collaboration with the European Commission.
Reuters:
In opening arguments, US state AGs said Meta intentionally sought to addict children to Facebook and Instagram in pursuit of profit; Meta rejected the claims  —  Meta Platforms (META.O) rejected accusations by U.S. states that it intentionally sought to addict children to its Facebook …
Diana Novak Jones / Reuters:
How a bipartisan coalition of US states fought to present a united case against Meta; District Judge Rogers adopted a hybrid structure for the multiweek trial
Cecilia Kang / New York Times:
OpenAI debuts ChatGPT for Teens, a mode that limits high-risk chats about self-harm, eating disorders, violence, and more, and has studying tools and guardrails  —  The artificial intelligence start-up announced a chatbot mode that will automatically limit some conversations to better protect young users.
Bloomberg:
The US SEC proposes exempting certain digital asset offerings from securities registration statements, with exemptions for offerings up to $5M and $75M  —  The Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled a proposal to exempt certain digital asset offerings from securities registration statements …
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: OpenAI's Q2 revenue grew 18% QoQ to $6.7B, while its losses deepened; Anthropic's Q2 revenue more than doubled to $11.6B, with a small operating profit  —  The ChatGPT-maker's revenue disappointed some investors, although the company told them its growth accelerated in the third quarter
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
A short video found in Apple's macOS Tahoe 26.7 RC appears to show a man demoing camera-equipped AirPods using Visual Intelligence and Siri to answer questions  —  Apple is working on camera-equipped AirPods that appear to be nearly ready to launch, based on a video MacRumors found in the macOS Tahoe 26.7 release candidate.
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple's macOS Tahoe 26.7 RC references unreleased products: a Home Hub, home accessories, two new Beats, AirPods Pro 4, Apple Intelligence in China, and more
Robbie Whelan / Wall Street Journal:
AI inference chip startup Etched raised $700M led by its new server rack customer Jane Street at a $21B valuation, up from $10.3B after raising $300M in July  —  Etched, founded by Harvard dropouts, has its own in-office data center and has signed quant-trading firm Jane Street as its first customer.
Anthropic:
Anthropic details two experiments showing how Claude can accelerate protein design and analytical chemistry, and says it plans an access program for scientists  —  Summary: In this post, we share two results that show how Claude can help life scientists increase the pace of their research.
@artificialanlys:
Z.ai's GLM-5.3 with max reasoning scores 60 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, on par with Kimi K3 but below Opus 5 at 63 and Fable 5 at 62  —  GLM-5.3 achieves 60 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, on par with Kimi K3 and up 7 points from GLM-5.2. Once the weights are released it will be tied as the leading open weights model @Zai_org has just launched GLM-5.3, which ties Kimi K3 (60) for the most
Wired:
Meta ran ads for a nudify app; one ad showed a porn video with a deepfake closely resembling a prominent US politician; Apple removed the app from the App Store  —  One advertisement featured a pornographic video with a deepfake closely resembling a prominent US politician.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Comcast is rolling out Wi-Fi motion sensing to its Xfinity XB7 and newer gateways, a free opt-in feature that enables its routers to detect movement at home  —  Comcast is activating free Wi-Fi motion sensing on Xfinity gateways, allowing its routers to detect movement at home.
Pew Research Center:
Survey: 52% of Americans say they are more concerned than excited about increased AI use in daily life, up from 37% in 2021, including 55% of those under 30  —  Americans have become increasingly worried about artificial intelligence over the years, and young adults' concern has continued to climb.
Julian Chokkattu / Wired:
Dutch company Fairphone launches its $650 flagship repairable Fairphone (Gen. 6+) in the US and plans to keep launching new phone generations every two years  —  More than a decade after launching in Europe, the Netherlands company is now selling its repairable phones in the US, starting with the Fairphone (Gen 6+).
Madeleine Cuff / New Scientist:
Google unveils Operation Blue Skies, a £5M trial to re-route North Atlantic aircraft using Google's AI atmospheric forecasts to reduce warming due to contrails  —  Operation Blue Skies is the world's first trial to deploy contrail avoidance measures across an entire airspace …

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 8:50 PM ET, August 18, 2026.

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From Mediagazer

Ted Johnson / Deadline:
ABC sues the FCC, claiming the agency's investigations and regulatory actions are part of a Trump administration “retaliatory campaign” to curb its free speech

Rebecca Rubin / Variety:
Cinemark joins AMC Theatres and Regal in supporting Paramount's acquisition of WBD; lobbying group Cinema United remains opposed to a WBD sale for now

Svetlana Shkolnikova / Stars & Stripes:
Longtime Stars and Stripes publisher Max Lederer announces his retirement, saying his understanding of the outlet's “value and mission” differs from DOD plans

More News

Allan Smith / NBC News:
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signs an executive order imposing new requirements on data center projects, including getting approval from local officials
Prathik Jayaprakash / Reuters:
Velaura AI, which makes low-power chips and software for data centers and physical AI applications, like robotics, raised a $110M Series A at a $1B+ valuation

Earlier Picks

Owen Dahlkamp / Politico:
Sources: AI-drafted bills are swamping the US House's Legislative Counsel, which now spends more time fixing them than it would spend to draft them from scratch
Associated Press:
Discord suspends livestreams in Brazil, after the country's data protection authority ordered it last week, saying Discord failed to protect children and teens
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