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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”?
More: The Signpost.  Mastodon: @Khrys@mamot.fr.  X: @egavactip and @wikisignpost.  Forums: news.ycombinator.com
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: @pernillet@mastodon.online
LinkedIn: Alexandra Marvar and Ehteshamul Haque.  Forums: r/technology

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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

Michael Savage / The Guardian:
Tim Davie says the UK Foreign Office's deal with the BBC World Service ends in seven weeks; the office contributed £137M to the service's £400M funding in 2025

Lillian Rizzo / CNBC:
Paramount sweetens its WBD bid with a “ticking fee” worth ~$650M/quarter if the deal isn't closed by year-end and offers to fund WBD's $2.8B Netflix breakup fee

John Kelly / @johnkelly:
The Washington Post's February 10 print edition featured two full pages of AP stories in the A section and a total of eight stories from the wire service

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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