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August 17, 2025, 12:45 PM
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| Anthropic: |
Anthropic enables Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 to end conversations in “cases of persistently harmful or abusive user interactions”; users can still start new chats — We recently gave Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 the ability to end conversations in our consumer chat interfaces.
More: TechCrunch, BleepingComputer, The Decoder, and Blockchain.News
Bluesky: @paleofuture, @carnage4life, @mariadagloriaii, @pekka, @mmasnick, and @timkellogg.me. Mastodon: @tommorris@mastodon.social
X: @elonmusk, @anthropicai, @rough__sea, @jmbollenbacher, and @caleb_cassell. LinkedIn: Sergio Marrero
Forums: Hacker News, r/Futurology, r/technews, r/technology, r/ClaudeAI, r/artificial, r/ArtificialSentience, and r/singularity
| Financial Times: |
GPT-5's underwhelming performance on benchmarks suggests that the current approach of scaling LLMs is starting to reach the limits of available resources — OpenAI's underwhelming new GPT-5 model suggests progress is slowing — and competition in the space is changing
More: The Future, Now and Then, Washington Post, Fortune India, and CNET
Bluesky: @carnage4life, @anita, @endblock, @axellycan, @dominicervolina.com, and @thiagokrause. Mastodon: @colincornaby@mastodon.social. X: @shashj
| Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: |
Sources: Apple slow-walks immersive content it shot around the launch of Vision Pro; Meta may launch “Hypernova” smart glasses with display for ~$800 next month — Apple has slow-walked the release of immersive video, creating a conundrum for the Vision Pro.
More: MacRumors, AppleInsider, iClarified, PhoneArena, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, and Streaming Better
X: @markgurman, @lunayian, and @markgurman
Forums: r/augmentedreality and r/VisionPro
| Asa Fitch / Wall Street Journal: |
Big Tech's reverse acquihires for AI talent are hollowing out startups and eroding the culture that has made Silicon Valley an unparalleled source of innovation — Tech companies' scramble for AI talent uses unorthodox methods that imperil Silicon Valley's startup culture| Angel Au-Yeung / Wall Street Journal: |
A look at the “Palantir Mafia”, a group of Palantir alumni who have started or are leading 350+ tech companies, including at least a dozen valued at $1B+ — The network connects founders and venture capitalists with ‘Palantir Pals’ and a Russian River camping trip| Allie Garfinkle / Fortune: |
PitchBook: 15.9% of VC-backed deals in 2025 so far have been down rounds, a 10-year high, with AI and ML startups accounting for 29.3% of the down rounds — Chime executives, along with family, celebrating the company's IPO at the Nasdaq. — The soaring valuations of the early 2020s are, finally, coming back to earth.| Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog: |
A new Artificial Analysis benchmark, focusing on OpenAI's gpt-oss-120b, shows how open-weight LLMs exhibit inconsistent performance across hosting providers — Artificial Analysis published a new benchmark the other day, this time focusing on how an individual model - OpenAI's gpt-oss-120b - performs across different hosted providers.| Maxine Bernstein / Oregonian: |
Ex-Intel engineer Varun Gupta was sentenced to two years' probation and a $34K+ fine for stealing trade secrets and sharing them with his new employer Microsoft — An engineer who stole trade secrets from Intel and shared them with his new bosses at Microsoft was sentenced Tuesday to two years … | Michael S. Rosenwald / New York Times: |
Cognitive scientist Margaret Boden, whose books helped shape the philosophical conversation about human intelligence and AI, passed away on July 18 at age 88 — A cognitive scientist, she used the language of computers to explore the nature of human thought and creativity, offering prescient insights about A.I.
More: Royal Institution, The Guardian, Nature, The University of Sussex, The Times, and Telegraph
Bluesky: @goodbinary. Mastodon: @ianb@mastodon.well.com. X: @anilkseth, @nytobits, @kenneth0stanley, and @mikerosenwald. LinkedIn: Stephanie Krishnan. Forums: Slashdot
| Natasha Mascarenhas / The Information: |
NYC-based Protege, which prepares and sells real-world datasets like lab results and sports footage for AI training, raised a $25M Series A led by Footwork — Companies like Scale AI and Surge have proven there's a market for human-labeled data, like professionals' answers to complex math or law questions … | Nate Anderson / Ars Technica: |
How an editor uncovered the “largest self-promotion operation in Wikipedia's history” that promoted obscure composer David Woodard with entries in 335 languages — Quick—what are the top entries in the category “Wikipedia articles written in the greatest number of languages”?
More: The Signpost. Mastodon: @Khrys@mamot.fr. X: @egavactip and @wikisignpost
Forums: news.ycombinator.com and r/classicalmusic
| Thomas Black / Bloomberg: |
A look at the problems at Uber Freight, which has posted operating losses every year since it was founded in 2017, except for 2022, and just appointed a new CEO — The unprofitable unit doesn't fit the company's model and has little to no synergies with its main ride-hailing and delivery businesses.| New York Times: |
A look at AI-powered stuffed animals like Grem, Grok, and Gabbo, which are being promoted as an alternative to screen time for children as young as 3 — Curio is a company that describes itself as “a magical workshop where toys come to life.” When I recently visited its cheery headquarters …
More: Livemint and TechCrunch
| Manish Singh / India Dispatch: |
India's blueprint to displace China as the world's electronics workshop relies heavily on Chinese companies' technical expertise and manufacturing know-how — India's electronics manufacturing self-reliance strategy requires reliance on its biggest rival — India's blueprint for displacing China …
More: SammyGuru, Financial Express, American Thinker, Press Trust of India, and iDrop News. X: @sajithpai
| David Heaney / UploadVR: |
Hands-on with Tiramisu, Meta's “hyperrealistic” VR research prototype with beyond-retinal resolution, high brightness and contrast, and a narrow field of view — At SIGGRAPH 2025, I went hands-on with Tiramisu, Meta's research prototype that combines beyond-retinal resolution … Sponsor Posts
Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work — Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work — Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
How WCAG compliance makes modern workplaces more accessible — A workplace's approach to inclusivity starts with its everyday tools. Some of them can create barriers that inadvertently shut people out.
How WCAG compliance makes modern workplaces more accessible — A workplace's approach to inclusivity starts with its everyday tools. Some of them can create barriers that inadvertently shut people out.
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.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser — Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox. Use local models or your preferred AI provider. Get started free.
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser — Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox. Use local models or your preferred AI provider. Get started free.Featured Podcasts
Sources:
AWS CEO Matt Garman on building a $1 trillion business
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.
Subscribe to Sources.
Cheeky Pint:
Nik Storonsky: The most uncompromising banking CEO
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
Big Technology Podcast:
Jensen and The Honeypot
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Lenny's Podcast:
Why PMs are suddenly valuable again | Tulsee Doshi (Head of Product, Gemini)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Machine Gods:
The Purple Tsunami Against Data Centers
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
Invest Like the Best:
Ramtin Naimi - The State of Venture
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
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| Counterpoint Research: |
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Bluesky: @om.co, @lovecircle, @glinden, and @davidinsf
| Martina Di Licosa / Forbes: |
More: EECS at UC Berkeley. X: @forbes, @williamwangnlp, @ashugarg, @humphrey_shi, @mohapatrahemant, and @robertnishihara
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