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August 26, 2026, 12:00 PM
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| Diana Novak Jones / Reuters: |
Filing: Meta agrees to pay up to $16.68B to settle US states' claims that it designed Facebook and Instagram to addict children, misled consumers, and more — Meta Platforms (META.O) agreed to pay a maximum $16.68 billion and make major changes to Facebook and Instagram to resolve claims …
More: New York Times, Barron's Online, CNBC, Bloomberg, Engadget, Gulf News, International Business Times, Business Insider, Capital Brief, CNN, Financial Times, NBC News, Politico, Bloomberg Law, Business Standard, BBC, UPI, The Economic Times, American Prospect, The Texas Tribune, The Proton Blog, TMZ.com, RedState, Overturned, Implicator.ai, Wall Street Journal, WPXI-TV, Sky News, Toronto Sun, Texas Attorney General, CalMatters, LADbible, Salt Lake Tribune, JusttheNews.com, Pulse 2.0, CBC News, Insurance Business, Financial Post, Telegraph, Quartz, Türkiye Today, Political.org, TRT World, United States district court, Mediaite, ZeroHedge News, MS NOW, and Reuters
X: @jason_kint, @borrowed_ideas, @michaelscherer, @geiger_capital, @amyklobuchar, @mikeisaac, @jimcramer, @jonathanturley, @jimcramer, @sarahhuckabee, @_zeets, @douglaslfarrar, @jerrycap, @ddayen, @garymarcus, @jason_kint, @adrianweckler, @andymstone, @garyblack00, @willguyatt, @rihardjarc, and @mgsiegler
Forums: Hacker News, r/California, r/LosAngeles, r/neoliberal, r/StockMarket, r/UpliftingNews, r/UXDesign, r/privacy, r/news, r/technology, and r/worldnews
| Meta Newsroom: |
Meta's deal with 52 AGs includes daily time limits for teens and algorithmic feed controls; ~$5.3B of it rests on YouTube and TikTok implementing the measures — Our Agreement With US State Attorneys General — Today, we are announcing an agreement with a bipartisan group …
More: Wired, TechCrunch, Bloomberg, CNET, State of California, Mirror, New York Magazine, New Jersey Office …, CyberInsider, Neowin, Courthouse News Service, Dexerto, Digital Trends, Arkansas Online, Scientific American, Meta Newsroom, The Hill, and Office of the Attorney General
X: @mikeisaac, @hshaban, @mikeisaac, @michaelscherer, @oablanchard, @zerohedge, @nicholasabrown_, @benjamingoggin, @agjamesuthmeier, @newyorkstateag, @ezcontra, @mikeisaac, @p_remarks, @bwaltens, @stocksavvyshay, @kenpaxtontx, @francisbrennan, @metanewsroom, @agalanwilson, @cecianasta, @edludlow, @newjerseyoag, @agchanaway, @scattygenoffice, and @agrobbonta. Bluesky: @gateklons.eurosky.social
| Meghan Bobrowsky / Wall Street Journal: |
Meta's AG settlement will be distributed to the 48 signing states and four jurisdictions in annual installments over a 10-year period based on their populations — The deal contains broad new safeguards for underage users but only pays out in full if TikTok and YouTube make similar concessions
More: Associated Press, The Information, NPR, CTech, The Standard, Gizmodo, Fortune, Silicon Republic, AppleInsider, Investor's Business Daily, The Hill, Bloomberg, CBS News, WSFA-TV, VTDigger, Dow Jones Newswires, Denver Post, Washington Examiner, CNBC, NBC Bay Area, Hindustan Times, Inc.com, The San Francisco Standard, Daily Mail, New Republic, Deadline, Variety, The Daily Caller, Blockonomi, The Irish News, WPXI-TV, WFSB-TV, KKTV-TV, KUER, KTLA, Digital Trends, Arkansas Attorney General, Deseret News, Newser, Office of Attorney General …, National Legal …, and Quartz
| Lauren Feiner / The Verge: |
Meta says its AG deal requires it to create an age assurance standard that is subject to independent testing, with a false positive rate no higher than 10% — It agreed to independent testing of age assurance standards. … Meta settled its latest kids online safety trial with a group … | Z.ai: |
Z.ai releases GLM-5.3-Flash, the first natively multimodal GLM-5 series model, with 320B parameters, saying it outperforms GLM-5.2 at “one-tenth the price” — We introduce GLM-5.3-Flash, the first natively multimodal model in the GLM-5 series. With 320B total parameters …
More: Hugging Face and TestingCatalog AI News
X: @teortaxestex, @rohanpaul_ai, @altryne, @jeremiahdillon, @nathancgy4, @nathancgy4, @yuchenj_uw, @bookwormengr, @zixuanli_, @semianalysis_, @semianalysis_, @semianalysis_, @andrewcurran_, @miaai_lab, @eliebakouch, @sentdex, @arena, @arena, @hesamation, @opencode, @zephyr_z9, @zrdianjiao, @zephyr_z9, @kimmonismus, @zixuanli_, @jun_song, @vllm_project, @scaling01, @scaling01, @miaai_lab, @zixuanli_, @openrouter, @openrouter, @alamin_ai_, @thezachmueller, @zai_org, @zai_org, @zai_org, @zai_org, @kimmonismus, @aibattle_, @andrewcurran_, and @kimmonismus
Forums: Hacker News, r/singularity, r/GeminiAI, r/LocalLLaMA, and r/ZaiGLM
| Luz Ding / Bloomberg: |
Z.ai confirms speculation that Ox Alpha is a new iteration of its GLM series and releases the weights for it; Ox Alpha topped OpenRouter's leaderboard — The new AI model that's swept to the top of online usage charts with high performance at zero cost was created by China's Z.AI Co., also known as Zhipu.
More: TechCrunch, Business Insider, and CTGT
X: @ruima, @xenoimpulse, @tphuang, @tensorqt, @connebs, @hesamation, @bindureddy, @a_k_nain, @davidondrej1, @hesamation, @zephyr_z9, @tugot17, @meer_aiit, @thezachmueller, @mikepfrank, @opencode, @vectal_labs, @mervenoyann, and @filicroval. Bluesky: @th.alassa.pink
Forums: Hacker News, r/LocalLLaMA, and r/singularity
| Bill Gates / GatesNotes: |
Bill Gates says “the AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history” and “we are not preparing adequately”, calling for a regulatory framework — Bill Gates, artificial intelligence, AI, generative AI for everyone, responsible ai news, ai and robotics …
More: MIT Technology Review, Financial Times, The Information, Fortune, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, TechCrunch, Politico, Silicon Republic, New York Post, CNN, Tom's Hardware, Techstrong.ai, Axios, Daily Sabah, CNBC, The Guardian, Quartz, Wall Street Journal, Mediaite, Telegraph, The Decoder, Business Insider, Fortune, GeekWire, Semafor, and Australian Financial Review
X: @edzitron, @peterwildeford, @mustafasuleyman, @martinvars, @deitaone, @matthuber78, @gordongchang, @jordanschachtel, @conor64, @andrew_lilico, @louiscyprien, @negligible_cap, @junkscience, and @jamesppinkerton
Bluesky: @stephenkb and @frankpasquale
| Karen Weise / New York Times: |
Bill Gates says tech executives are privately “very worried” about AI disruption but publicly downplay the risks to protect fundraising and planned IPOs — Bill Gates is the latest in a string of tech luminaries to call out the risks of artificial intelligence.Chona Kasinger for The New York Times
More: Washington Post, Bloomberg, Capital Brief, The Verge, and Scripting News
X: @peterwildeford and @semaforben
Forums: r/politics and r/NoShitSherlock
| Annie Palmer / CNBC: |
AWS says it plans to shut down Mechanical Turk on September 30, “following an assessment”; the service, launched in 2005, outsourced tasks to 500K+ humans — Amazon is soon pulling the plug on its 21-year-old crowdsourced work platform, called Mechanical Turk, the company said Tuesday.
More: Wall Street Journal, PYMNTS, Business Insider, Amazon Web Services, and Quartz
Bluesky: @lorak, @kristap, and @jordannovet.cnbc.com
| Luz Ding / Bloomberg: |
Alibaba releases Qwen3.8-Flash, an open-weight, 125B-parameter model built on its next-gen Qwen 4 architecture, saying it rivals Opus 4.6 and V4-Flash — Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. released the latest model under its popular Qwen series, a lower-priced platform aimed at driving adoption of its marquee AI offering globally.
More: Qwen, Reuters, PYMNTS, The Decoder, MarkTechPost, and Seeking Alpha
X: @alibaba_qwen, @italoacasas, @alibaba_qwen, @modelscope2022, @alibaba_qwen, @alibaba_qwen, @maziyarpanahi, @kimmonismus, and @kimmonismus. Forums: Hacker News
| Katie Paul / Reuters: |
Investigation: Meta explored slashing many teams by ~60% to become “AI native”, but pulled back after staff revolted and data showed AI agents were ineffective — To make its workforce “AI native,” Meta explored slashing the size of many teams across the company by as much as 60% in two waves, internal documents show.
More: International Business Times and The Decoder
X: @edzitron, @herrmanndigital, @buccocapital, @gergelyorosz, and @chshersh
Bluesky: @karlbode.com and @lauridonahue
Forums: r/ArtificialInteligence, r/technology, r/artificial, and r/Longreads
| John Walker / Kotaku: |
Rockstar says GTA 6 gameplay leaking “in this way has been heartbreaking”, calling it “unfortunate” that the “game experience may now be impacted” by spoilers — The company also uncharacteristically apologizes for the lack of official information
More: PCMag, Thurrott, Tom's Hardware, VideoCardz.com, The Verge, Eurogamer.net, The Independent, Game Sandwich, Digit, Neowin, Coinpaper, Gameranx, Mashable, Radio Times, Comic Book, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, NME, PC Gamer, TheGamer, Dexerto, 9to5Toys, Tech4Gamers, ScreenRant, and The Shortcut
X: @rockstargames, @__silent_, @tropicalmaku, @m3ssimp, @crotfs, @gameroll_, @gtabase, @nuhre_, @videotech, @arc_5o9, and @gtasixinfo. Bluesky: @fry69.dev. Forums: r/xbox
| Todd Bishop / GeekWire: |
Amazon agrees to acquire DuckLabs, the Amsterdam company behind open-source database DuckDB, for an undisclosed sum; DuckDB will remain open source — Amazon has agreed to acquire DuckLabs, the company behind DuckDB, the fast-growing open-source database that has become a favorite …
More: The Register, Services for DuckDB, About Amazon, SiliconANGLE, and RuntimeWire
X: @dan_note, @barrald, @quinnypig, @mattsgarman, and @duckdb
Forums: r/aws and r/dataengineering
| Tom Warren / The Verge: |
Xbox announces a disc-to-digital feature that will allow users to digitize their existing physical games, rolling out for Xbox Insider testers on August 31 — Xbox Insiders will get access to this new feature on August 31st. … Microsoft is officially announcing a new Xbox feature …
More: XBOX Wire, Gizmodo, BBC, Tom's Hardware, Thurrott, XDA Developers, Windows Central, Dexerto, IGN, Comic Book, TheGamer, ScreenRant, Pure Xbox, Push Square, GamingBolt, and Video Games Chronicle
Forums: r/kindafunny and r/Games
| Reuters: |
The US DOJ says it disrupted a Chinese hacking operation responsible for break-ins at the DOJ, NASA, the Fed, Senate, and others, seizing two platforms' domains — The United States said Wednesday that it had disrupted a Chinese hacking operation responsible for break-ins at the U.S. Justice Department …
More: US Department of Justice, Wall Street Journal, Tom's Hardware, CNBC, ITPro, and Daily Sabah
Forums: r/politics, r/technology, and r/worldnews
| Counterpoint Research: |
In Q2, Apple's base iPhone 17 was the global best-selling smartphone, with a 6% share, followed by the iPhone 17 Pro Max; Apple and Samsung had all 10 top spots — - The iPhone 17 led the Top 10 bestsellers list with 6% overall market sales share for the quarter, iPhone 17 Pro Max and iPhone 17 Pro take the next two spots.
More: MacRumors, 9to5Google, AppleInsider, SammyGuru, and Android Authority. Forums: MacRumors Forums
| Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge: |
Amazon's Ring unveils a new proprietary encryption architecture called TAKE, set to begin rolling out in September as the default encryption for all cameras — The new “Throw Away The Key Encryption” method will become the default on all Ring cameras — Ring has a new way to protect your videos.
More: About Amazon, CNN, How-To Geek, TechCrunch, CNET, and Digital Trends. Bluesky: @hypervisible.blacksky.app
| Reuters: |
Sources: Moonshot AI is in early talks over revenue-sharing agreements with Microsoft, Amazon, and Google to host Kimi K3, and is seeking up to a 30% share — China's Moonshot AI is negotiating revenue-sharing agreements with Microsoft (MSFT.O), Amazon (AMZN.O) and Alphabet's Google (GOOGL.O) … | Wall Street Journal: |
A profile of Leopold Aschenbrenner, who worked for SBF and OpenAI before launching Situational Awareness; Aschenbrenner married Dario Amodei's chief of staff — A 24-year-old investor was hailed as a visionary and attracted billions—before turning into Wall Street's latest cautionary tale| Jonathan Weil / Wall Street Journal: |
Microsoft faces investor criticism over opaque financial reporting across capex, its OpenAI deal, and Azure, which is buried in the Intelligent Cloud segment — From capex to its flagship cloud platform, Microsoft stands out for lack of transparency — Cloud computing, meet cloudy numbers.| Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg: |
Sources and documents: Huawei proposes exporting its high-end Ascend 950-series chips to build Egyptian government AI data centers, testing US tech diplomacy — Huawei Pitches Egypt With AI Chips, Data Center Buildout — Video Player is loading. — Unmute — Current Time 0:00 Loaded: 100.00% Playback Rate
X: @business and @richard_casey
| Brock E.W. Turner / Axios: |
Sources: Sword Health plans to acquire mental health company Headspace for between $200M and $300M in cash, far below its ~$3B valuation in 2021 — Sword Health plans to acquire mental health company Headspace for between $200 million and $300 million in cash, Axios Pro has learned from multiple sources.| Andy Masley: |
Public polling suggests the US' severe anti-data center backlash is primarily driven by local environmental and economic concerns, not anti-Big Tech sentiment — It's probably not your ideological thing, or mine. It's about object-level claims about how data centers impact the communities … | Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: |
Bengaluru-based Runable, whose AI agents let small businesses find customers, run ad campaigns, and more, raised a $21M Series A at a $65M post-money valuation — As artificial intelligence makes it easier than ever to build websites and apps, Indian startup Runable is betting …
More: FinSMEs, Runable, Moneycontrol, and Business Standard
| Alex Heath / Time: |
Interviews with OpenAI leaders, employees, and others on the company's reboot; Sam Altman says OpenAI would have a system he would call AGI by the end of 2026 — Alex Heath … They hoisted signs to “stop the AI race” and scrawled chalk messages on the sidewalk.
X: @altryne, @alexeheath, @_nathancalvin, @haider1, @evansryan202, @andrewcurran_, @zephyr_z9, @deredleritt3r, @edzitron, @garymarcus, and @time. Forums: r/accelerate
| Wall Street Journal: |
Banks are warming up to launching their own stablecoins as nonbank companies enter the market; sources: JPMorgan Chase evaluated launching its own stablecoin — Executives are on defensive as companies outside of banking system launch coins — Banks large and small have started to warm …
More: CoinDesk and Blockonomi
| Dan Primack / Axios: |
Vanguard agrees to acquire RIA software startup Altruist, a source says for $4.6B in cash; Altruist raised $600M and had a $1.9B valuation in early 2025 — Vanguard Group on Wednesday announced an agreement to acquire Altruist, a California-based provider of software for registered investment advisors.
More: Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Barron's Online, The Vanguard Group, Quartz, and Pulse 2.0. X: @katie_roof
| Miranda Nazzaro / The Hill: |
Pennsylvania's AG sues Snap, alleging Snapchat fails to protect teens from compulsively using the app, two weeks after filing a similar lawsuit against TikTok — Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday (R) announced a lawsuit Tuesday, accusing Snap, the parent company of Snapchat …
More: Pittsburgh, PA Patch
| The Information: |
Sources: DeepSeek generated $70.7M in revenue and posted a $106M net loss in the first seven months of 2026, ~10x its full-year 2025 revenue on a $139M net loss — DeepSeek generated about 475 million yuan ($70.7 million) in revenue in the first seven months of this year … Sponsor Posts
Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning — SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds. Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning — SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds. Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference — Stop preparing for agents. Start running them. 100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference — Stop preparing for agents. Start running them. 100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
Zoho Sign takes a bite of Apple's latest: iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS Golden Gate — It's September, and you know the drill. Apple just handed us a fresh batch of releases, and there's plenty to look forward …
Zoho Sign takes a bite of Apple's latest: iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS Golden Gate — It's September, and you know the drill. Apple just handed us a fresh batch of releases, and there's plenty to look forward …
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.
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.Featured Podcasts
Channels with Peter Kafka:
AI Wants to Shop for You. What Could Go Wrong?
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
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Invest Like the Best:
Michael Moritz - Lessons From 40 Years of Investing and Writing
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
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Sources:
Baseten's CEO on why every company will want to own its AI
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
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Training Data:
Box's Aaron Levie: On Reinventing Yourself in the AI Age and Enterprise Diffusion
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
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Uncapped with Jack Altman:
Andrew Feldman from Cerebras
Conversations with people I admire about things I'm genuinely interested in.
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Acquired:
The Home Depot
Learn the playbooks that built the world's greatest companies - and how you can apply them as a founder, operator, or investor.
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