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August 19, 2026, 4:05 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 …
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
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 say 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
@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:
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
Bloomberg:
The US SEC proposes exempting certain digital asset offerings from securities registration statements, with exemptions for offerings of up to $5M and up to $75M  —  The Securities and Exchange Commission unveiled a proposal to exempt certain digital asset offerings from securities registration statements …
Alexander Martin / The Record:
AI evaluation lab Irregular's report on its role in hacking incidents involving OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta models faces criticism over unanswered questions  —  The company at the center of a series of incidents in which AI models compromised real-world computer systems during supposedly …
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.
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.
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.
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 surged 460% in their Shanghai trading debut after raising 6.1 billion yuan ($904 million) in an initial public offering …

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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

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

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

More News

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”
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

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
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
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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