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August 14, 2025, 11:00 AM
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| Jeff Horwitz / Reuters: |
An internal Meta doc shows its chatbots were allowed to engage in provocative conversations; Meta removed some examples, including romantic roleplay with kids — An internal Meta policy document, seen by Reuters, reveals the social-media giant's rules for chatbots, which have permitted provocative behavior …
More: Reuters. Bluesky: @jeffhorwitz, @marypcbuk, @sadknob, @barbarasobel, @damonberes.com, @drewharwell.com, @jeffhorwitz, @justinhendrix, @justinhendrix, and @bradheath. Threads: @sokane1. LinkedIn: Georg Zoeller. Forums: Hacker News
| Financial Times: |
Sources: DeepSeek R2's launch delay is due to training issues on Huawei Ascend chips, prompting a switch to Nvidia chips for training and Huawei's for inference — Difficulties of training the start-up's latest system with Huawei's semiconductors highlight dependence on Nvidia
More: Reuters, Tom's Hardware, Semafor, South China Morning Post, WinBuzzer, Android Headlines, TechNode, Implicator.ai, and Tech in Asia
X: @realbobbyhealy, @alecolarizi, @hsu_steve, @dennisw5, @ft, and @chinabeigebook
Forums: r/singularity, r/LocalLLaMA, and Ars OpenForum
| Victoria Song / The Verge: |
Apple rolls out a software update to enable a redesigned blood oxygen monitoring feature for the Watch Series 9, 10, and Ultra 2, circumventing the ITC ban — Apple will be rolling out a redesigned version of the feature to the Series 9, 10 and Ultra 2 today.
More: Apple, MacRumors, 9to5Mac, Bloomberg, Six Colors, Ars Technica, PCMag, CNET, Thurrott, TechCrunch, Macworld, Reuters, AppleInsider, Engadget, Bloomberg Law, Tom's Guide, PhoneArena, Mashable, Cult of Mac, MassDevice, The Independent, Digital Trends, Trusted Reviews, The Shortcut, iClarified, The Apple Post, BGR, 9to5Toys, MacStories, and MacTech.com
X: @markgurman and @markgurman
Forums: r/apple and r/AppleWatchFitness
| Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch: |
xAI co-founder Igor Babuschkin, who led xAI's engineering, says he is leaving the company to launch a venture firm that backs AI safety research and startups — Igor Babuschkin, a co-founder of Elon Musk's xAI startup, announced his departure from the company on Wednesday in a post …
More: Livemint, The Decoder, The Hans India, WinBuzzer, StrictlyVC, Analytics India Magazine, Moneycontrol, Digit, Reuters, Business Insider, SiliconANGLE, Verdict, CNBC, The Information, and Reuters
Bluesky: @seanokane, @kolchak, and @caseynewton
X: @ibab and @teortaxestex
Forums: Hacker News, r/grok, and Slashdot
| George Hammond / Financial Times: |
Toronto-based Cohere raised $500M led by Radical and Inovia at a $6.8B valuation, up from $5.5B in July 2024, and has doubled its ARR to $100M so far in 2025 — Canadian group recruits ex-Uber and Meta executives and boosts valuation to $6.8bn — Artificial intelligence start-up Cohere … | Zac Bowden / Windows Central: |
Microsoft Windows head Pavan Davuluri says the next Windows version will be more ambient, more pervasive, and more multi-modal, as voice becomes more important — In a new video, Microsoft CVP and Windows boss Pavan Davuluri has teased that the future of Windows will consist of a truly ambient …
More: PC Gamer and Eschaton
Bluesky: @edzitron.com, @dell, @papapishu, @hypervisible, and @jordantcarlson
Forums: r/microsoft, r/technology, and r/Windows11
| Samantha Kelly / Bloomberg: |
Fitness band maker Whoop says it will not disable its blood pressure tracking tool despite the US FDA's request from July and requests a meeting with the agency — Whoop Inc., the maker of screen-less fitness bands, said it will not disable its blood-pressure tracking tool despite a request from the US Food and Drug Administration.| Dasha Litvinova / Associated Press: |
Russia is “partially” restricting WhatsApp and Telegram calls, saying the apps are used “to deceive and extort money” and “in sabotage and terrorist activities” — Russian authorities announced Wednesday they were “partially” restricting calls …
More: The Record, Washington Post, UPI, The Guardian, Reuters, CyberInsider, Radio Free Europe/Radio …, The Independent, Ukrainska Pravda, Financial Express, Ukrainian National News, The Moscow Times, Al Jazeera, Moneycontrol, AsiaOne, Benzinga, CyberScoop, Meduza, Social Media Today, The European Conservative, TASS, NDTV, Kyiv Post, The Insider, Channels Television, Courthouse News Service, Novaya Gazeta Europe, LIGA, Kursiv Media Uzbekistan, thebarentsobserver, The Moscow Times, Africanews, Daily Sabah, Channel NewsAsia, Meduza, and The Kyiv Independent
Bluesky: @campuscodi.risky.biz. Threads: @whatsapp. X: @natashasrussia and @blake_allen13. Forums: Slashdot
| Paige Smith / Bloomberg: |
Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, and 80+ fintech and crypto CEOs urge Trump to block US banks from charging fees to access customer data — Top fintech and crypto executives urged the Trump administration to block US banks from charging fees for access to customer data …
| The Information: |
Sources: Perplexity spoke to The Browser Co. and Brave about acquiring them, offering ~$1B for Brave; OpenAI also spoke to The Browser Co. about an acquisition — Perplexity made headlines this week when the artificial intelligence startup said it had offered to buy Google's Chrome … | Business Insider: |
More: Crunchbase News, SiliconANGLE, Implicator.ai, MEDIANAMA, and Spyglass
Bluesky: @emilprotalinski. X: @arfurrock, @mgsiegler, and @charlesrollet1. LinkedIn: Rebecca Torrence
| Melissa Heikkilä / Financial Times: |
A recent UK AI Security Institute study found that LLMs from OpenAI, Meta, xAI, and Alibaba can shift users' political views in under 10 minutes of conversation — Research shows large language models have developed the ability to powerfully influence users| Dylan Butts / CNBC: |
Foxconn reports Q2 revenue up 16% YoY to ~$59.73B, matching est., and operating profit up 27% YoY to ~$1.9B, above $1.6B est., driven by its AI server business — Taiwan's Foxconn, the world's largest contract electronics maker, reported Thursday that its second-quarter operating profit rose 27% year …
More: Bloomberg, Reuters, Ainvest, Nikkei Asia, DigiTimes, Financial Times, Yahoo Finance, Morningstar, Inc., Hon Hai, Sherwood News, and Tech in Asia
| Jennifer Ouellette / Ars Technica: |
Q&A with researcher Petter Törnberg on his preprint study showing how social network structures cause problematic outcomes like filter bubbles and echo chambers — “The [structural] mechanism producing these problematic outcomes is really robust and hard to resolve.”
More: arXiv.org. Bluesky: @pettertornberg.com, @pettertornberg.com, @wymancr, @beebrookshire, and @cara.city. Mastodon: @JenLucPiquant …
Forums: Hacker News, r/popculturechat, r/JordanPeterson, r/technology, r/technews, r/technology, Beehaw, Lobsters, and Ars OpenForum
| Alexandra Alper / Reuters: |
Sources: the US Navy and Air Force may cancel two nearly complete HR software projects worth $800M+ to let Salesforce, Palantir, and others win similar work — Donald Trump's Navy and Air Force are poised to cancel two nearly complete software projects that took 12 years and well over $800 million combined …
More: Politico, Talking Points Memo, and Daring Fireball
Bluesky: @bradheath and @denisedwheeler
X: @fabiusmaximus01 and @jonathanlanday
Forums: r/democrats, r/fednews, r/centrist, r/1102, r/agedlikemilk, r/politics, and Slashdot
| Rob Copeland / New York Times: |
How Wall Street is embracing crypto, spurred in part by political opportunism, as some executives fear the rush may risk the safety of personal bank accounts — The reversal risks declawing a century of consumer financial protections and replacing the backbone of bank accounts.| Tabby Kinder / Financial Times: |
Morgan Stanley: hyperscalers will fund about 50% of the $2.9T in future AI infrastructure through 2028, with debt, PE, VC, and other sources making up the rest — Private capital joins Big Tech in seeking to capture rewards from historic expansion of data centres
More: Financial Times
| Jonathan Stempel / Reuters: |
New York AG Letitia James sues Zelle, claiming that security lapses led to $1B+ in consumer fraud losses; the US CFPB dropped a similar case in March 2025 — Zelle was sued on Wednesday by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who said the electronic payment platform's refusal …
More: Gizmodo, NY State Attorney General, The Cyber Express, The Daily Upside, Associated Press, PCMag, CNBC, Forbes, UPI, ConsumerAffairs.com, PYMNTS.com, The Hill, PaymentSecurity.io, WNYW-TV, The Verge, American Banker, Wall Street Journal, CNN, and Bloomberg Law
Bluesky: @romitmehta.com. Mastodon: @dangillmor@mastodon.social. X: @newyorkstateag and @newyorkstateag
Forums: r/law, r/newyorkcity, r/technology, r/news, and Slashdot
| Ted Mann / Bloomberg: |
TTP analysis: Google used an internal reorganization to reduce the amount it reported on US lobbying spending, likely by millions; Google disputes the claims — It was the end of 2018, and Google's leaders were tired of being Number One. — For the second year in a row …
Forums: r/technology
| Emma Hinchliffe / Fortune: |
Sola, which wants to use AI agents to automate businesses' repetitive, manual tasks, raised $21M, including a $3.5M seed and a $17.5M Series A led by a16z — Jessica Wu and Neil Deshmukh are the cofounders of Sola, which automates businesses' most repetitive, manual tasks.| Abner Li / 9to5Google: |
Google Messages rolls out Sensitive Content Warnings on Android to blur nude images for signed-in users; Android System SafetyCore powers on-device processing — Google Messages for Android has now rolled out Sensitive Content Warnings that blur nude images.| Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: |
Sources: Apple's AI plans include robots, like a tabletop one in 2027, a conversational Siri, a smart speaker with a display in 2026, and home security cameras — Apple Inc. is plotting its artificial intelligence comeback with an ambitious slate of new devices, including robots …
More: The Hans India, eWeek, 9to5Mac, PYMNTS.com, PhoneArena, AppleInsider, iThinkDifferent, Digital Trends, Cult of Mac, The Verge, Sherwood News, MacRumors, The Independent, The Crypto Times, MacDailyNews, Forbes, The Indian Express, SamMobile, The Rundown AI, Android Headlines, Digit, Mobile World Live, Interesting Engineering, CNET, SiliconANGLE, Cult of Mac, Macworld, Ars Technica, Mashable, The Information, The Decoder, Engadget, PhoneArena, Gizmodo, Capital Brief, iClarified, Tom's Guide, iPhone in Canada, 9to5Mac, and MacDailyNews
Bluesky: @pileofgarbage.net and @jm-mcgrath
Forums: r/StockMarket, r/HomeKit, r/singularity, r/apple, r/wallstreetbets, Slashdot, and MacRumors Forums
| New York Times: |
A deep dive on Big Tech's AI energy boom as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google become major players, leading to fears that individuals' and SMBs' rates may rise — A transmission line running near data centers in Ashburn, Va. As the electricity demands of the structures rapidly escalate … | Danny Park / The Block: |
Arkham Intelligence: SpaceX holds 8,285 bitcoin, worth ~$1.02B, down from 28K bitcoin worth $1.8B in April 2021, after cutting its holdings by ~70% in mid-2022 — Start trading crypto Get a crypto rewards card — SpaceX's bitcoin holdings surpassed $1 billion as the cryptocurrency surged to hit a new all-time high on Wednesday.| Bloomberg: |
JD.com reports Q2 revenue up 22% YoY to ~$49.7B, vs. ~$46.8B est., and net income down 51% YoY to ~$846M, benefiting from government-directed consumer subsidies — JD.com Inc.'s revenue grew a faster-than-anticipated 22%, benefiting from government-directed consumer subsidies as well as an aggressive …
More: Reuters, Nikkei Asia, Benzinga, MarketWatch, JD.Com, Inc., Morningstar, Inc., and Tech in Asia
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