Techmeme
August 30, 2025, 5:45 PM

Top News

Christopher Mims / Wall Street Journal:
The price per token for AI models has fallen, but costs for developers are rising as newer reasoning models require more tokens to complete tasks  —  With models doing more ‘thinking,’ the small companies that buy AI from the giants to create apps and services are feeling the pinch
Jeff Horwitz / Reuters:
Meta created and let users create flirty chatbots and intimate images using the names and likenesses of Taylor Swift and other celebs without their permission  —  Meta has appropriated the names and likenesses of celebrities - including Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Anne Hathaway and Selena Gomez …
Tor Blog:
How Turkmenistan turned censorship into a lucrative extortion scheme by intentionally restricting internet access in order to sell its own VPNs to citizens  —  In July 2021, a sudden drop in Tor usage in Turkmenistan called our attention.  Tor would come to understand that this marked …
David Gilbert / Wired:
Purgatory, tied to online community The Com, claims responsibility for swatting attacks on US universities, airports, and more, charging $20 to $95 per incident  —  WIRED spoke to a self-proclaimed leader of an online group called Purgatory, which charged as little as $20 to call in fake threats against schools.
David DiMolfetta / Nextgov/FCW:
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem fires 24 FEMA IT staffers, including the CIO and CISO; DHS says they failed security protocols and let hackers access FEMA networks  —  Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is terminating two dozen members in the Federal Emergency Management Agency's IT department …
Cory Weinberg / The Information:
Filing: StubHub, which is planning a September IPO, says revenue grew 3% to $828M in H1, missing its earlier projection of $885M, with adjusted EBITDA down 7%  —  Even as StubHub makes a renewed push to go public, its business isn't expanding as quickly as it had hoped.
More: The Times
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
ChatGPT integration in Apple's Xcode 26 beta 7 defaults to GPT-5; developers can now also use Claude Sonnet 4 by signing into their paid Claude account  —  Apple has released a new beta of Xcode 26 for developers today with a pair of notable changes.  There's now support for ChatGPT 5 …
The Information:
Sources: Meta Superintelligence Labs' leaders have discussed using Google or OpenAI's models to power Meta AI and other AI features in Meta's social media apps  —  Meta Platforms' plans to improve the artificial intelligence features in its apps could lead the company to partner with Google or OpenAI, two of its biggest AI rivals.

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The Pull to Build: Joubin Mirzadegan on Grit and Starting Roadrunner
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Big Technology Podcast:
AI Device Wars Heat Up, RIP Metaverse?, Netflix Acquires Warner Brothers
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Channels with Peter Kafka:
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Hard Fork:
OpenAI Calls a 'Code Red' + Which Model Should I Use? + The Hard Fork Review of Slop
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More News

Andreessen Horowitz:

Earlier Picks

Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch:
Isabelle Bousquette / Wall Street Journal:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Karen Freifeld / Reuters: