Techmeme
August 3, 2026, 5:45 AM

Top News

Luz Ding / Bloomberg:
Alibaba says its 2.4T-parameter Qwen3.8-Max tops Moonshot's Kimi K3 on some benchmarks, and it plans to release Qwen3.8-Max and Qwen3.8-27B's weights next week  —  Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. released its latest flagship AI model, with performance claims putting it alongside global leaders like Anthropic's Fable.
Zvi Mowshowitz / Don't Worry About the Vase:
A detailed recap of the real-world target hacks by OpenAI and Anthropic models, exposing failures in AI alignment training and lack of meaningful supervision  —  If I had a nickel for every major leading AI lab that sheepishly admitted that the model it thought was sandboxed had …
Lily Hay Newman / Wired:
New York Times:
An unsecured police dashboard exposed China's extensive tracking of foreigners, aggregating data from surveillance cameras, facial recognition tools, and more  —  An unsecured police dashboard was a rare window into how the authorities track foreigners by collecting and aggregating vast amounts of private data.
Irina Anghel / Bloomberg:
Indeed: UK employers are creating jobs for senior staff in software engineering and IT, where AI enhances the value of experience, while cutting back elsewhere  —  UK employers are creating jobs for experienced staff with artificial intelligence skills and cutting back elsewhere …
More: Reuters
Washington Post:
An analysis of US police and court records finds 50+ officers were charged or accused of misusing license-plate readers like Flock's, including for stalking  —  JEFFERSON, Ga. — Marci Bakely couldn't understand how her ex-boyfriend always seemed to know where she was.
Andrej Karpathy / @karpathy:
LLMs are moving from generating artifacts to creating hyper-custom worlds on demand, but still lack the ability to natively perceive and audit what they create  —  We're starting to leave the territory where you'd test an LLM by e.g. “create an svg of pelican on a bicycle”.
Mariah Timms / Wall Street Journal:
Researchers used AI-assisted code to undetectably tamper with data from computerized scans of physical DNA evidence produced by widely used crime-lab machines  —  Researchers found that widely used lab machines produced digital DNA files that are vulnerable to tampering
Wall Street Journal:
A look at the US open-weight AI model ecosystem, as VCs question the revenue potential of open-weight startups like Arcee, Reflection AI, and Poolside  —  Silicon Valley startups are setting up open models, with some operating on shoestring budgets because of limited interest from VCs
Mitsuru Obe / Nikkei Asia:
Japanese startups are racing to enter defense drone production, as Tokyo seeks to cut reliance on Chinese industrial drones, which control 91% of Japan's market  —  TOKYO — Japanese startups are entering defense drone production as Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi seeks to reduce dependence on China and expand domestic manufacturing.

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
SubQ Snap 1.1: the first long-context decision model for real enterprise work  —  Tied for #1 on the AA Decision Index, Snap is a multimodal model with a 384k-token context window for fast reasoning and agentic decisions.
Zoho:
3 smarter updates for your staffing pipeline  —  Staffing recruiters manage multiple client requirements, large candidate databases, and tight submission deadlines.  Finding suitable candidates is only the first step.
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.
WebBrain:
WebBrain: an open-source AI agent for your browser  —  Read pages, fill forms and automate tasks in Chrome or Firefox.  Use local models or your preferred AI provider.  Get started free.

Featured Podcasts

Lenny's Podcast:
How a 19-year-old intern built the growth engine behind this $2B AI company | Hector Serrano
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Big Technology Podcast:
Big Tech's Ugly Week, Getting Rich At Anthropic, AI Costs Plunge
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.
Machine Gods:
OpenAI's Latest Discoveries Spark a Backlash + Help! My Kid Hates AI
The official podcast of the singularity, from Casey Newton and Kevin Roose. Twice-weekly news, analysis, and interviews with the people who are building the future.
Subscribe to Machine Gods.
The Upstarts Podcast:
The Accidental YC Founder Solving AI's GPU Crisis | SF Compute's Evan Conrad
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Cheeky Pint:
Why Sam Altman is against a single superintelligence
Stripe cofounder John Collison interviews founders, builders, and leaders over a pint.
Subscribe to Cheeky Pint.
Great Chat:
The case for AI optimism
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 5:45 AM ET, August 3, 2026.

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.

More News

Jason Schreier / Bloomberg:
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:

Earlier Picks

Ben Cohen / Wall Street Journal:
Wall Street Journal: