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August 17, 2025, 6:10 PM
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| 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: Appleosophy, MacRumors, Benzinga, iThinkDifferent, UploadVR, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, PhoneArena, AppleInsider, Digital Trends, iClarified, and Streaming Better
X: @markgurman, @heaney555, @lunayian, @markgurman, and @nathievr
Forums: r/VisionPro, r/RaybanMeta, and r/augmentedreality
| 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, Engadget, BleepingComputer, The Decoder, and Blockchain.News
Bluesky: @quinnypig.com, @paleofuture, @evijit.io, @mmasnick, @carnage4life, @mariadagloriaii, @pekka, and @timkellogg.me. Mastodon: @tommorris@mastodon.social
X: @anthropicai, @aisafetymemes, @elonmusk, @roguewpa, @elonmusk, @aisafetymemes, @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: @anita, @carnage4life, @endblock, @axellycan, @dominicervolina.com, and @thiagokrause. Mastodon: @colincornaby@mastodon.social
X: @jacksonatkinsx, @emollick, @apples_jimmy, @swyx, @petergostev, and @shashj
| 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| Patrick Howell O'Neill / Bloomberg: |
Interview with Trent Brunson, R&D director at cybersecurity firm Trail of Bits, which won $3M and 2nd place in DARPA's AI Cyber Challenge, behind Team Atlanta — Last week, the Pentagon's long AI Cyber Challenge, or AIxCC, came to a head onstage in Las Vegas.
| 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.
More: Artificial Analysis. Bluesky: @simonwillison.net. X: @dkundel, @emostaque, and @andrewlekashman
| Maxine Bernstein / Oregonian: |
Ex-Intel engineer Varun Gupta was sentenced to two years' probation and fined $34K+ 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 … | 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| 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: r/wikipedia 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.| Michael S. Rosenwald / New York Times: |
Cognitive scientist Margaret Boden, whose books helped shape the philosophical conversation about human intelligence and AI, died 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
| Nikkei Asia: |
How Chinese streaming giants iQiyi and Tencent are gaining on Netflix in Southeast Asia through original productions and free, ad-supported services — BANGKOK/SHANGHAI — Chinese streaming services are catching up with American rivals in the Southeast Asian market, with giants iQiyi …
More: South China Morning Post
| 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 …
More: Protege and FinSMEs
X: @ericnewcomer and @saarsaar
LinkedIn: Bobby Samuels and Nikhil Basu Trivedi
Sponsor Posts
Command Line:
Azure Content Understanding: Building on lessons from a decade of Document Intelligence — What a decade of teaching machines to read real-world documents taught us about what LLMs can and can't do.
Azure Content Understanding: Building on lessons from a decade of Document Intelligence — What a decade of teaching machines to read real-world documents taught us about what LLMs can and can't do.
Will Reed:
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting. Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach. — Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
The best sales leaders aren't job hunting. Here's how to reach them without months of cold outreach. — Our team came from Box, Square, and Brex, so we already know the GTM leaders worth meeting.
Zoho:
App Spotlight: TDS 26AS Reconciliation for Zoho Books — Automate 26AS/Form 168 reconciliation, ensuring that mismatches between your 26AS/Form 168 and books are flagged to make ITR filing seamless …
App Spotlight: TDS 26AS Reconciliation for Zoho Books — Automate 26AS/Form 168 reconciliation, ensuring that mismatches between your 26AS/Form 168 and books are flagged to make ITR filing seamless …
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.Featured Podcasts
Sources:
Robinhood's CEO on letting AI trade your money
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.
Training Data:
David Silver and Lasse Espeholt of Ineffable Intelligence: A Superlearner for the Age of Experience
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
Subscribe to Training Data.
Invest Like the Best:
David Vélez - Building Nubank and the Future of Global Banking
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
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Cheeky Pint:
Muse Wonder: Zuckerberg and Wang's $100B AI
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
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Lenny's Podcast:
Why every company now needs to think and operate like a lab team | Josh Woodward (Google Labs, Gemini, AI Studio)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
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Big Technology Podcast:
Meta & Microsoft's Claude Slowdown, His Agent Leaked His Banking Info, Don't Bully Your AI
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.
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