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August 16, 2025, 12:55 AM
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| Cecilia D'Anastasio / Bloomberg: |
Roblox shares closed down 6.34% on Friday after the company was accused in two lawsuits of failing to sufficiently protect youngsters on its platform — Roblox Corp. shares fell more than 6% Friday after the company, which operates an online video-game service popular with children …
More: The Economic Times, The Verge, MarketWatch, TechCrunch, Roblox Corporate, Forbes, Breitbart, Washington Examiner, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Gameranx, Distractify, PYMNTS.com, PCMag, Developer Forum, The US Sun, Polygon, Los Angeles Times, Gizmodo, Destructoid, WAFB-TV, ZeroHedge News, Screen Rant, Mashable, Kotaku, Telegraph, Dexerto, Associated Press, PC Gamer, Barron's Online, The Gateway Pundit, Fox News, KYTX-TV, and Variety
X: @aglizmurrill, @aglizmurrill, @realschlep, @kreekcraft, @realschlep, @roblox_rtc, @aglizmurrill, @simon_hypixel, @hedgeyecommor, @aglizmurrill, @chrishansen, @kreekcraft, @hedgeyecomm, @aglizmurrill, @kreekcraft, @stockjabber, @realschlep, @kreekcraft, @steak834, @kreekcraft, @blox, @roblox_rtc, @realschlep, @stockjabber, @realschlep, @kreekcraft, @repschlegel, and @stockjabber
| Matt Kaufman / Roblox Corporate: |
Roblox plans to restrict unrated experiences to devs, automatically remove servers with violative content, and limit some social hangouts to verified 17+ users — Expanding Policies to Help Younger Users Have Better Experiences on Roblox — Today we're making several important updates … | Jonathan Vanian / CNBC: |
Senator Josh Hawley says he will investigate Meta after a report on its AI policy allowing sensual chats with kids, tells Meta to produce docs by September 19 — Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said Friday that he will investigate Meta following a report that the company approved rules allowing …
More: The Guardian, The Economic Times, TechCrunch, Josh Hawley, Associated Press, Simon Willison's Weblog, Euractiv, San Francisco Chronicle, Townhall, MLex, Baltimore Sun, Engadget, Reuters, 1819 News, Fox News, New York Times, MobileSyrup, Jamaica Observer, PCWorld, Ars Technica, Washington Examiner, PC Gamer, The Hill, and Mashable
Bluesky: @dimitridrekonja, @wyden.senate.gov, and @wyden.senate.gov
X: @hawleymo, @benbrodydc, @senkatiebritt, @jason_kint, @jason_kint, @realdcochrane, @hawleymo, @bedoyausa, @saalevine, @sayssimonson, @senkatiebritt, and @emrwilkins
Forums: r/technology and r/technology
| Bobby Allyn / NPR: |
A proposed class action lawsuit accuses Otter.ai of “deceptively and surreptitiously” recording private conversations to train its AI without user consent — A federal lawsuit seeking class-action status accuses Otter.ai of “deceptively and surreptitiously” … | Monique Mulima / Bloomberg: |
Winklevoss twins' Gemini files for a US IPO and reports a $282.5M net loss on $67.9M revenue in H1 2025, vs. a $41.4M net loss on $73.5M revenue a year earlier — Gemini Space Station Inc., led by the billionaire Winklevoss twins, filed for an IPO as the cohort of crypto businesses seeking to list on public markets continues to swell.
More: TechCrunch, Reuters, The Crypto Times, Reuters, Gemini, Wall Street Journal, and Reuters
| Kate Clark / Bloomberg: |
Sources: current and former OpenAI employees plan to sell ~$6B in stock to Thrive Capital, SoftBank, and others in a secondary sale that values OpenAI at ~$500B — SoftBank, Dragoneer and Thrive Capital are set to buy OpenAI shares from current and former employees at a $500 billion valuation.| Bloomberg: |
A US district court judge temporarily blocks an FTC probe into Media Matters, part of an antitrust investigation into ad boycotts, calling the probe retaliatory — Nonprofit Media Matters for America won a court order blocking a Federal Trade Commission information demand for documents …
More: New York Times, Washington Post, MLex, and Raw Story
X: @adamsteinbaugh, @mmfa, and @bedoyausa
| Kalley Huang / The Information: |
Sources: Meta plans its fourth AI restructuring in six months, dividing its superintelligence lab into TBD Lab, a product team, an infrastructure team, and FAIR — Meta Platforms is planning the fourth restructuring of its artificial intelligence efforts in six months, according to three people familiar with the matter.| Helen Reid / Reuters: |
Filing: Shein reports 2024 UK sales up 32.3% YoY to £2.05B, making the UK its third largest market after the US and Germany, as it works toward a Hong Kong IPO — Shein's British business made 2.05 billion pounds ($2.77 billion) in sales in 2024, a 32.3% increase from the previous year … | David Heaney / UploadVR: |
Hands-on with Boba 3, Meta's prototype PC VR headset with a form factor similar to the Quest 3, featuring an ultrawide field of view of 180° by 120° — At SIGGRAPH 2025 this week, I went hands-on with Boba 3, Meta's prototype of ultra-wide field of view PC VR in a form factor similar to Quest 3.| Lauren Goode / Wired: |
Some developers say GPT-5 excels at technical reasoning and planning coding tasks and is cost-effective, but Claude Opus and Sonnet still produce better code — Software engineers are finding that OpenAI's new GPT-5 model is helping them think through coding problems—but isn't much better at actual coding.
More: Yahoo Finance, The Verge, Tom's Guide, and The New Stack
| Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk: |
The Federal Reserve continues its relaxation of crypto oversight by ending a program created in 2023 to scrutinize fintech and crypto activities by banks — The Federal Reserve has shuttered the Novel Activities Supervision Program it built in 2023 that was — in part — meant to focus on banks' crypto activity.| Norah Mulinda / Bloomberg: |
Opendoor CEO Carrie Wheeler steps down, with Shrisha Radhakrishna named president and interim CEO; OPEN closed up 4.28% — Opendoor Technologies Inc., a real estate company that became a meme stock in recent months, said Chief Executive Officer Carrie Wheeler is stepping down immediately as the board searches for a replacement.| Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: |
Appfigures: ChatGPT's app for iOS and Android hit $2B in global consumer spending, including $1.35B so far in 2025, up 673% YoY; Grok made ~$25.6M this year — ChatGPT's mobile app is raking in the revenue. — Since launching in May 2023, ChatGPT's app for iOS and Android devices …
More: Moneycontrol, PYMNTS.com, 9to5Mac, Thurrott, iPhone in Canada, TestingCatalog, and GreenBot
| Alex Heath / The Verge: |
Sam Altman says OpenAI “totally screwed up some things” on the GPT-5 rollout and confirms plans to fund a brain-computer interface startup to rival Neuralink — Over dinner, OpenAI CEO's addressed criticism of GPT-5's rollout, the AI bubble, brain-computer interfaces, buying Google Chrome, and more.
More: Wired, Bloomberg, CNBC, The Register, The Verge, iPhone in Canada, Gizmodo, The Crypto Times, Mashable, Futurism, The Decoder, Crypto Briefing, Business Insider, Livemint, Tech in Asia, and Breitbart
Bluesky: @warnercrocker, @davidcrespo, @jake—k.bsky.social, @adeincambodia, and @alexeheath.com
X: @laurengoode and @shakeelhashim
Forums: r/OpenAI, r/aiwars, r/singularity, and Slashdot
| Ina Fried / Axios: |
More: The Verge, Platformer, Bloomberg, Livemint, Cautious Optimism, Mind Matters, Sherwood News, Tech in Asia, and Implicator.ai
Bluesky: @tamigraph. Threads: @camwilsonreporter. X: @openai, @stshank, @shiringhaffary, @verge, @alexeheath, and @inafried
Forums: r/technology, r/artificial, and r/singularity
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