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Techmeme
August 19, 2026, 3:20 AM
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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.
Wall Street Journal:
Sources: OpenAI's Q2 sales grew 18% QoQ to $6.7B as its losses widened from $9.3B to $12.3B; Anthropic's sales grew 2x+ 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
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
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 …
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  —  Shapiro, a potential Democratic 2028 contender, earlier welcomed data center developments.  His new executive order takes a starkly different tone toward the industry.
@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
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Block releases Berd, a desktop app it built to give its employees a single environment for working with AI agents across different models, under Apache 2.0  —  Block, the technology company founded by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey that owns Square, Cash App and the music streaming service Tidal …
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.
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.
Bloomberg:
Chinese humanoid robot maker Unitree's stock surged 629% in early trading in its Shanghai debut on Wednesday, after raising ~$904M in its IPO  —  Unitree Robotics shares rose 629% in its Shanghai trading debut after raising 6.1 billion yuan ($904 million) in an initial public offering …
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.
Carl Franzen / VentureBeat:
Z.ai prices GLM-5.3 API access at $1.40 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens, unchanged from GLM-5.2  —  After a stunning debut last week with cyber capabilities so advanced they reportedly found a previously undetected vulnerability in Cursor, GLM-5.3 …
New York Times:
Internal memo: ICE bars its employees from wearing Meta's AI glasses, saying they “could unintentionally capture, record, or transmit sensitive information”  —  The agency joins a growing number of workplaces and groups to ban Meta's devices, which have spurred privacy concerns.
Kieran Smith / Financial Times:
FDM CCS Insight: ~134M travel eSIMs will be used in 2026, up from 101.8M in 2025, challenging established carriers that generate 3%-5% of revenue from roaming  —  Usage set to rise by a third this year as travellers opt for cheaper alternatives to data roaming charges

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:20 AM ET, August 19, 2026.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

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

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

Emma Joyce / The Guardian:
Report: changing viewing habits and reduced commissioning by commercial networks have led to significant drops in TV dramas and children's shows in Australia

More News

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
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
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

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
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
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
More: Google, BBC, and SiliconANGLE
LinkedIn: Didi Denham, Sundar Pichai, and Paul Hodgson.  Bluesky: @tinymaddie.  Mastodon: @stshank@mstdn.social
Forums: r/climatechange and r/climate
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