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Techmeme
August 16, 2025, 3:40 PM
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Top News

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.
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°
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 …
Forbes:
Sources say Meta's chaotic culture and lack of vision have led to AI brain drain; Meta strongly denies it has had issues with talent and retention  —  At Meta, a chaotic culture and lack of vision have led to brain drain, with rivals saying its AI talent is lackluster.
Martina Di Licosa / Forbes:
A profile of UCB CS professor Ion Stoica, a billionaire who has helped launch four startups out of his privately-funded research lab, including Databricks  —  This computer science professor became a billionaire launching four startups out of his privately-funded research lab, including unicorns Databricks and Anyscale.
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.
Reuters:
The World Humanoid Robot Games kicked off in Beijing on August 15, with robots across 280 teams from 16 countries competing in track and field and other sports  —  China kicked off the three-day long World Humanoid Robot Games on Friday, looking to showcase its advances in artificial intelligence …

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 3:40 PM ET, August 16, 2025.

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

CBS News:
A US federal judge allows the Pentagon to fire three Stars and Stripes journalists, ruling the government likely did not violate their First Amendment rights

Abbie VanSickle / New York Times:
SCOTUS rules via an emergency order that political parties are entitled to the same low-cost TV ad rates as candidates, giving an advantage to Republicans

New York Times:
Sources: the Pentagon has subjected roughly 50 military officers and civilian employees on the Joint Staff to polygraph tests over leaks to journalists

More News

Kelly Cloonan / Wall Street Journal:
Applied Materials Q3: revenue up 8% YoY to $7.3B, vs. $7.22B est., profit up 4% YoY to $1.78B, and projects Q4 revenue and profit below est. on China challenges

Earlier Picks

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
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
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