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August 17, 2025, 6:20 AM
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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.
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
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”?
Amanda Hess / 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 …
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.
Counterpoint Research:
Global smart glasses shipments grew 110% YoY in H1; Meta's share of the market rose to 73%; AI smart glasses accounted for 78% of shipments, up from 46% YoY  —  - The global smart glasses market grew by 110% YoY in H1 2025, fueled by robust demand for Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses and the entry …
BBC:
Barbour ABI: the UK's data center count, currently 477, is set to jump by ~100 over the next five years, with more than half in London and neighboring counties  —  The number of data centres in the UK is set to increase by almost a fifth, according to figures shared with BBC News.
More: The Times and TelecomTV
Bluesky: @tom, @ecowarriorss, and @mgb5000.  Forums: r/ukpolitics
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” …
More: PCMag and Mashable
Bluesky: @nealiosaurus and @ashleybraun.  Mastodon: @[email protected]
LinkedIn: Alexandra Marvar and Ehteshamul Haque.  Forums: r/technology

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Featured Podcasts

Hard Fork:
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The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 6:20 AM ET, August 17, 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

Isabella Simonetti / Wall Street Journal:
A profile of Fortune editor Nick Lichtenberg, who uses AI to research and write articles; AI-assisted stories made up ~20% of Fortune's web traffic in H2 2025

New York Times:
Sources: Versant is one of multiple suitors in talks to buy Vox Media's podcast network as it seeks to diversify its revenue; NBCU invested $200M in Vox in 2015

Indiegraf:
Indiegraf acquires Hearken, which was founded in 2015 by Jennifer Brandel to help newsrooms build trust by involving the public in the reporting process

More News

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
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
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

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
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