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August 17, 2025, 1:35 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.
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
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
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 …
Maxine Bernstein / Oregonian:
Ex-Intel engineer Varun Gupta was sentenced to two years' probation and a $34K+ fine 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 …
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: Ehteshamul Haque and Alexandra Marvar.  Forums: r/technology
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  —  This computer science professor became a billionaire launching four startups out of his privately-funded research lab, including unicorns Databricks and Anyscale.
Forbes:
Sources say Meta's chaotic culture and lack of vision have led to AI brain drain; Meta strongly denies it has had issues with talent and retention  —  At Meta, a chaotic culture and lack of vision have led to brain drain, with rivals saying its AI talent is lackluster.

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About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 1:35 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

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Memo: Skydance offers certain employees a voluntary buyout in a “one-time offer” and moves to a mandatory five-days-per-week in-office policy

Etan Vlessing / The Hollywood Reporter:
Lionsgate and Steven Paul's SP Media form a JV to invest in new businesses and indie film production; a source says Paul is leading an investment of ~$100M

Kate Knibbs / Wired:
Multiple editors report an influx of unsolicited story pitches and fact-checking inquiries from autonomous AI agents, mostly from a startup called iLands

More News

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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