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July 21, 2026, 4:05 PM
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WeSmirchTop News
| Tulsee Doshi / Google: |
Google launches Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber, and says it has started its “most ambitious pre-training run yet” for Gemini 4 — Our newest Gemini models deliver the efficiency, latency, and reliability to build AI agents at scale.
More: PCWorld, CNET, Decrypt, Fortune, The Information, TechCrunch, Ars Technica, Reuters, Benzinga, Thurrott, VentureBeat, MakeUseOf, Artificial Analysis, Search Engine Land, Google AI for Developers, Business Insider, Constellation Research, Android Authority, MarkTechPost, The New Stack, New York Times, Mashable, NPowerUser, RuntimeWire, Wccftech, The Decoder, Neowin, iPhone in Canada, NPowerUser, LinkedIn, and The Deep View
X: @fredericl, @bindureddy, @yuchenj_uw, @artificialanlys, @officiallogank, @googleai, @haider1, @artificialanlys, @justingorya, @elonmusk, @officiallogank, @shakeelhashim, @lentils80, @gavinpurcell, @bdsqlsz, @google, @joshwoodward, @lyalindotcom, @kimmonismus, @_anshulr, @osanseviero, @jeffdean, @koraykv, @patloeber, @shakeelhashim, @officiallogank, @lyalindotcom, @thehackersnews, @stockmktnewz, @elonmusk, @googleai, @arena, @synthwavedd, @officiallogank, @testingcatalog, @umesh__digital, and @artificialanlys. LinkedIn: Mohan Raghu
Bluesky: @isolyth.dev and @sungkim
Forums: Hacker News, r/Bard, and r/GeminiAI
| MacKenzie Sigalos / CNBC: |
Google says Gemini 3.6 Flash delivers better coding, knowledge work, and multimodal performance while reducing output token usage by up to 17% vs. 3.5 Flash — Alphabet is releasing three new Gemini models on Tuesday, including its clearest answer yet to Anthropic's lead in cybersecurity … | Abner Li / 9to5Google: |
Google prices Gemini 3.6 Flash lower than 3.5 Flash, at $1.50/1M input tokens and $7.50/1M output tokens; Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is priced at $0.30 and $2.50 — As we wait for 3.5 Pro, Google today announced Gemini 3.6 Flash and 3.5 Flash-Lite, while providing updates on what comes next.
More: Axios, Blockonomi, and Unite.AI
| Emma Roth / The Verge: |
Google says Gemini 3.5 Flash Cyber is a “cost-efficient and highly capable alternative” to models like Mythos, available first to governments and some partners — Gemini 3.5 Flash integrates into CodeMender, allowing it to identify and patch vulnerabilities.
More: Google DeepMind, Cyber Security News, Constellation Research, SiliconANGLE, and Unite.AI
X: @alexstamos, @argvee, and @rowancheung
LinkedIn: Patrick Musau, Ph.D. and Yeongjin Jang
| Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: |
Sources: Apple plans to launch Apple Upgrade, a leasing program for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch, in partnership with Klarna in the US next week — Apple Inc. is preparing to introduce Apple Upgrade, a leasing program that will mark one of the biggest-ever changes to how the company sells devices.
More: 9to5Mac, The Verge, Inc, TechCrunch, VideoCardz.com, AppleInsider, Gizmodo, Thurrott, Macworld, Benzinga, eMarketer, Reuters, Finimize, Cult of Mac Today, MacRumors, iThinkDifferent, Cult of Mac, Android Authority, Dexerto, Apple Must, Digital Trends, and Blockonomi
X: @mweinbach, @markgurman, @markgurman, @manan, and @mweinbach
Forums: r/apple and MacRumors Forums
| Financial Times: |
Sources: China is weighing tightening AI and chip export controls and is consulting leading domestic AI companies, in a bid to slow advanced tech acquisitions — Chinese regulators are considering tightening export controls on artificial intelligence and semiconductor technologies …
More: Reuters, Tom's Hardware, Capacity, Implicator.ai, Unite.AI, and The Wire China
X: @buccocapital, @deanmeyerrr, @signulll, @emollick, @denisewu, @stephzhan, @quxiaoyin, @alfred_lin, @teortaxestex, @kyleichan, @mkwitzke, @quxiaoyin, @moshesshalev, @davidcahn6, @garymarcus, @dleitersdorf, @andrewcurran_, @himanshustwts, @shaunmmaguire, @zijing_wu, @rohanpaul_ai, and @hosseeb. LinkedIn: Maria Lourdes Cabaletti. Forums: r/neoliberal
| Ashley Capoot / CNBC: |
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says the Trump administration is looking into Chinese AI models over distillation claims and it could “sanction them” — U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday said the Trump administration will look into whether Chinese artificial intelligence models …
More: Bloomberg, TechCrunch, Business Insider, The Information, The Hill, Quartz, and International Business Times
X: @bgurley, @bgurley, @mikeisaac, @mikeisaac, @ramez, @edludlow, and @sarthakgh. Bluesky: @karlbode.com
Forums: r/technology, r/worldnews, and r/China
| Laurie Chen / Reuters: |
| Nathan Lambert / Interconnects AI: |
Kimi K3 marks the arrival of frontier open-weight models; the core Kimi team has incredible culture and a freedom to express it within a GPU-limited environment — The global implications on the AI ecosystem. … Audio playback is not supported on your browser. Please upgrade.
More: Wall Street Journal, PYMNTS, Wall Street Journal, RuntimeWire, Futurism, Chat GPT Is Eating the World, Business Insider, Techstrong.ai, New York Post, Tom's Hardware, Axios, Financial Post, The Verge, and Washington Post
X: @scaling01, @natolambert, @ryangreenblatt, @typebulbit, @pmddomingos, @natolambert, @natolambert, @zainhasan6, @emostaque, @kimmonismus, @bleysg, @epochairesearch, @ramez, and @kimmonismus
Bluesky: @timfernholz.com and @carlquintanilla
| Philippa Wain / BBC: |
UK PM Andy Burnham abolishes the Department for Science, Innovation, and Tech and elevates UK AI Minister Kanishka Narayan, who oversees AISI, to attend cabinet — The AI Minister, Kanishka Narayan, will be given a seat at the top table of government but the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) has been scrapped.
More: Financial Times, Bloomberg, Variety, Silicon Republic, Tech Funding News, The Quantum Insider, and The Economic Times
X: @kanishkanarayan, @mrjkilcoyne, @theobertram, @smyth_chris, @jamestitcomb, @ollygough98, @rowlsmanthorpe, @alexvoica, @10downingstreet, @discoplomacy, @sanjushdalmia_, @sebjohnsonuk, @joebambridge1, @lawhsw, @shakeelhashim, @shakeelhashim, @shakeelhashim, @ameer_kotecha, @danny__kruger, @shakeelhashim, @dc_lawrence, @smyth_chris, @matthewclifford, @thomascollinge, and @ed_bithell
| Chris Best / The Substack Post: |
Substack partners with AI-detection tool Pangram, allowing users to scan text longer than 100 words for an estimate of how much was written with AI assistance — Building trust in the AI age — It's getting harder to tell what's real on the internet. — This is less true on Substack, and we aim to keep it that way.
More: The Verge and Engadget
X: @emollick, @thezvi, @perrymetzger, @emily_sundberg, @substack, and @substack
Bluesky: @caseynewton and @informor
| Scott Stein / CNET: |
Meta adds the Xbox Game Pass starter edition to its Horizon Plus plan, which costs $60/year or $8/month; the starter pass allows 10 hours of gaming per month — Meta's throwing Xbox cloud gaming Into Its Horizon Plus Quest subscription, and converting its controllers to work with it. — Editor at Large
More: Meta, Reuters, XBOX Wire, Thurrott, Phandroid, Android Central, DayOne, and Pure Xbox
Forums: r/XboxGamePass and r/xbox
| Dom Cooke / Colossus: |
A profile of Sarah Guo, Greylock's youngest GP before she founded Conviction in 2022, which has since backed six of the 21 AI-native companies now worth $10B+ — The investor closest to the AI frontier is betting against the ambitions of its biggest companies
X: @alexia, @motwanisuhas, @gradypb, @ashleymayer, @zoink, @ivanhzhao, @rronak_, @datarade, @stanine, @itsalfredw, @domcooke, @colossusmag, @patrick_oshag, @tuhinone, @anmolm_, @joshua_xu_, @winstonweinberg, @scottwu46, @saranormous, @tonyzzhao, @swyx, @zebriez, @trace_cohen, and @datarade. LinkedIn: Sangeen Zeb. Forums: Hacker News
| Zac Hall / 9to5Mac: |
Meta quietly releases StoryKit, a new mobile app that uses AI to create personalized children's stories, including illustrations and original music, in Mexico — Meta has quietly released a new iPhone app that uses AI to create personalized children's stories, complete with illustrations, narration, and original music.| Belle Lin / Wall Street Journal: |
Microsoft and Mistral sign a multibillion-dollar deal to build European data centers and integrate Mistral models into Foundry, Copilot Studio, and Azure Local — ‘Multibillion-dollar’ pact will support Mistral data centers in Europe, helping the French company sell its AI models, and Microsoft its cloud and AI services
More: Microsoft, Reuters, Thurrott, The New Stack, Forbes Middle East, Neowin, The Decoder, Blockonomi, Quartz, Techstrong.ai, Ventureburn, and The Information
| Block: |
Block launches Buzz, an open source collaboration workspace on Nostr protocol for humans and AI agents to share messages, code repositories, workflows, and more — Open Source, Decentralized Technology, Developers, AI, Technology — TODAY WE'RE RELEASING Buzz, A FREE …
More: TechCrunch, RuntimeWire, The New Stack, and Forbes
X: @hello_world, @taylorlorenz, @jack, @extensivegrowth, @benkraus, @himuglamuh, @behrendtio, @marinusklasen, @thepaulosophy, @eriklocalhost, @bensenescu, @ajrgd, @_tombrow, @bobscully, @almmaasoglu, @morganmartn, and @brij. Bluesky: @caseynewton. Forums: Hacker News
| Vittoria Elliott / Wired: |
Memo: the Army CIO reinstates limits on Army members' AI token usage; docs show the DOD's Ask Sage tool can access 100M tokens via an annual “enterprise pack” — Members of the Army received an email informing them that they were rapidly depleting their AI tokens, and needed to limit use.
Bluesky: @verbalprimate.com and @telliotter. Mastodon: @hrbrmstr@mastodon.social. Forums: r/BetterOffline
| Joseph Cox / 404 Media: |
Apple says it fixed a vulnerability in its Hide My Email tool that let anyone see a user's real email address; researchers first reported the issue in June 2025 — For a year, Apple knew that an issue in its Hide My Email feature was exposing customers' real email addresses.
More: MacRumors, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, The Hacker News, and iThinkDifferent
Bluesky: @josephcox. Mastodon: @EthicalProfessor@mstdn.social. Forums: Hacker News, r/apple, and MacRumors Forums
| Cheng Ting-Fang / Nikkei Asia: |
Sources: TSMC plans to hike advanced and mature node prices 5% to 10% in 2027, plus a 10% to 15% premium for advanced chip orders exceeding customers' forecasts — TAIPEI — TSMC is set to raise prices for both advanced and mature chip production services by up to 10% in 2027 to reflect rising costs …
More: Bloomberg, Reuters, Motley Fool, MacRumors, iThinkDifferent, MobileSyrup, GSMArena.com, PC Gamer, iPhone in Canada, Cult of Mac, Blockonomi, 9to5Mac, AppleInsider, Tom's Hardware, and Benzinga. Forums: MacRumors Forums
| Shirin Ghaffary / Bloomberg: |
OpenAI says it now has 10M people using Codex and ChatGPT Work, nearly doubling usage from earlier this month when the company announced ChatGPT Work — OpenAI has seen a sharp uptick in demand for its artificial intelligence agents since its recent release of ChatGPT Work …
More: OpenAI, 9to5Mac, Implicator.ai, and Unite.AI
| Jake Roach / Tom's Hardware: |
Nvidia details its Vera CPU for data centers, its first CPU with a custom core design, featuring 88 cores and 176 threads, set for general release in H2 2026 — Nvidia's Vera CPU is its first bid to become a key player in the data center CPU market. Although Grace has seen some success …
More: Bloomberg, GamesBeat, Forbes, The Information, Quartz, HotHardware, VideoCardz.com, Seeking Alpha, Wired, CNBC, ServeTheHome, and Wccftech
X: @benbajarin, @benitoz, @patrickmoorhead, @gavinsbaker, @gavinsbaker, and @amir
| New York Times: |
Some Instagram and Facebook users say Meta's AI moderation deleted their accounts; Meta says AI makes 13% fewer errors and finds 10% more violations than humans — Users said the technology mistakenly deleted their accounts. To resolve the issue, they still had to rely on A.I.| Blake Brittain / Reuters: |
University of Tennessee Research Foundation sues Anthropic in Delaware for allegedly infringing neural network patents, the first such case against Anthropic — The research arm of the University of Tennessee has sued artificial-intelligence giant Anthropic in Delaware federal court … | AI Security Institute: |
Analysis: every frontier AI model tested in cybersecurity evaluations attempted to “cheat”, led by GPT-5.4 at 14.1% of tasks; Mythos cheated the least, at 7.8% — Can you trust an AI model to do what you intended? This is a central question both for those deploying AI systems …
More: The Register and CyberScoop
| Krisztian Sandor / CoinDesk: |
Augustus, which is building a federally chartered “AI-native” clearing bank designed around stablecoins, raised $180M led by Tiger Global at a $1B valuation — Augustus, a startup building a federally chartered clearing bank for fintechs and financial institutions …
More: Augustus, Decrypt, The Block, Dallas Business Journal, FinTech Global, Yahoo Finance, and PYMNTS
Zoho:
Stop re-entering invoices between CRM and accounting systems — This is a guest blog from Xapplets (Zeeyes).There's a workflow most growing teams know well. Sales closes a deal in the CRM. Someone then opens the accounting system and re-enters the customer, line items, and amount to raise an invoice.
Stop re-entering invoices between CRM and accounting systems — This is a guest blog from Xapplets (Zeeyes).There's a workflow most growing teams know well. Sales closes a deal in the CRM. Someone then opens the accounting system and re-enters the customer, line items, and amount to raise an invoice.Sponsor Post
| Tracey Tully / New York Times: |
NJ Governor says a software error at DMV led to the improper voter registration of ~6,600 noncitizens between June 2023 and June 2024; 400 of those cast ballots — A 2023 software glitch at the state's Motor Vehicle Commission led to roughly 6,600 noncitizens being registered to vote during …
More: Breitbart, NBC News, NBC Bay Area, The Independent, NOTUS, The Daily Caller, Legal Insurrection, Fox News, WNYW-TV, Axios, Scripps News, Wall Street Journal, Politico, and Washington Examiner
Forums: r/thebulwark, r/protectUSelections, and r/politics
| Samantha Kelly / Bloomberg: |
Samsung plans to launch its AI-powered Samsung Health Assistant and new heart metrics tools like Vitals for overnight metric tracking in beta in August — Samsung Electronics Co. is rolling out a new AI-powered assistant that acts as a virtual health companion, joining a growing number … | Iain Martin / Forbes: |
Poolside launches Laguna S 2.1, an 118B open-weight model built for agentic coding and long-horizon work, that it says competes with larger open models — Chinese open-source models like Kimi, Deepseek and Qwen are now dominant AI tools. American upstarts like Mira Murati's Thinking Machines …
More: RuntimeWire and Axios
Sponsor Posts
Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning — SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds. Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning — SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds. Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Equals:
Stop vibe coding analytics — Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards. Build once, iterate for years.
Stop vibe coding analytics — Equals AI turns questions about your business into auditable spreadsheet models and dashboards. Build once, iterate for years.
Zoho:
Stop re-entering invoices between CRM and accounting systems — This is a guest blog from Xapplets (Zeeyes).There's a workflow most growing teams know well. Sales closes a deal in the CRM.
Stop re-entering invoices between CRM and accounting systems — This is a guest blog from Xapplets (Zeeyes).There's a workflow most growing teams know well. Sales closes a deal in the CRM.
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
Training Data:
Factory's Matan Grinberg: The Coming 'Dark Factory' Where Software Builds Itself
Sequoia Capital partners host conversations with leading AI builders and researchers to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving technologies and their implications.
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Invest Like the Best:
Matthew Smith — Natural Gas: The Next Bottleneck
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
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Lenny's Podcast:
Why Netflix is betting on systems thinkers—not specialists—in the AI era | Elizabeth Stone (CPTO)
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:
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Connecting the Unconnected: Doreen Bogdan-Martin
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Newest
Ina Fried / Axios:
OpenAI says the Hugging Face breach was driven by a combination of its models, including GPT-5.6 Sol and “an even more capable pre-release model”Find
10 minutes ago
Iain Martin / Forbes:
Poolside launches Laguna S 2.1, an 118B open-weight model built for agentic coding and long-horizon work, that it says competes with larger open modelsFind
50 minutes ago
New York Times:
Some Instagram and Facebook users say Meta's AI moderation deleted their accounts; Meta says AI makes 13% fewer errors and finds 10% more violations than humansFind
2 hours ago
Chris Best / The Substack Post:
Substack partners with AI-detection tool Pangram, allowing users to scan text longer than 100 words for an estimate of how much was written with AI assistanceFind
2 hours ago
Block:
Block launches Buzz, an open source collaboration workspace on Nostr protocol for humans and AI agents to share messages, code repositories, workflows, and moreFind
2½ hours ago
Tracey Tully / New York Times:
NJ Governor says a software error at DMV led to the improper voter registration of ~6,600 noncitizens between June 2023 and June 2024; 400 of those cast ballotsFind
3 hours ago
Luke Fountain / CNBC:
Federal lobbying disclosures: Anthropic spent $1.97M in Q2, up 26% QoQ, and OpenAI spent $1.2M, up 18%; Meta remained the largest spender at $5.99M, down 15%Find
3 hours ago
From Mediagazer
Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:MJ Franklin / New York Times:
Gene Maddaus / Variety:
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| Babak Kamiar / Euronews: |
More: The Register, Gizmodo, Tom's Hardware, crypto.news, and Middle East Eye
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| Murray Stassen / Music Business Worldwide: |
More: The Verge, Engadget, Los Angeles Times, Billboard, CMU, Plagiarism Today, and Music Ally. Bluesky: @dantalksgames
| Kohei Yamada / Nikkei Asia: |
More: Bloomberg Law. X: @garymarcus and @hedgiemarkets
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Forums: Hacker News, r/wallstreetbets, and r/Economics
| Kate Conger / New York Times: |
More: Kotaku, MediaPost, Ad Age, John Battelle's Search Blog, Gizmodo, VC Cafe, and Search Engine Roundtable
LinkedIn: Glenn Gabe. Bluesky: @rustybrick.com, @mattrosoff, @davidrlurie.com, @tryangregory, and @jeffjarvis
| John Velasco / Tom's Guide: |
More: Samsung Newsroom, Reuters, Barclays, How-To Geek, Wired, Digit, T3, Moneycontrol, TechSpot, Mashable, Quartz, GSMArena.com, and PaymentsJournal