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August 21, 2026, 12:25 PM
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| Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: |
Walmart, which has long resisted contactless Tap to Pay payments, says it will soon start rolling out the tech, which supports Apple Pay, Google Pay, and more — Apparently, hell has frozen over. Walmart on Friday said it will finally accept payments via both Apple Pay and Google Pay at its stores, including Walmart and Sam's Club.| Diana Olick / CNBC: |
CBRE: NYC becomes the top tech talent market for the first time with 394,300 jobs, beating the Bay Area's 375,730, amid SF job cuts and NYC finance sector hires — It should come as no surprise that the number of artificial intelligence-specific tech workers is growing rapidly …
More: cbre.com, Quartz, San Francisco Business Times, Portland Oregon startups …, GeekWire, Global News, Commercial Observer, Los Angeles Times, and Gizmodo
LinkedIn: Lukas Ault, Matt Walters, Brian Biege, and Nate Glubish. Threads: @anildash. Mastodon: @carnage4life@mas.to. Forums: r/nyc
| Bloomberg: |
DeepSeek unveils an experimental multimodal version of its V4 Flash model, saying it nears the performance of Anthropic's Opus 4.8 on multimodal agentic tests — DeepSeek unveiled an experimental AI model that can understand visual prompts, saying the tool nears the performance of an advanced model by US rival Anthropic PBC.
More: CoinGape, Proactive, Blockchain.News, and TechNode
| Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch: |
Nevada approves permits letting Tesla deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis in the Las Vegas area over the next year, while Waymo and Uber are each allowed up to 1,000 — Nevada, get ready for the robotaxis. — The Nevada Transportation Authority unanimously approved three permits Thursday that will allow Tesla …
More: Engadget, Ars Technica, The Register, PCMag, Investor's Business Daily, The Verge, Robotics & Automation News, Silicon Republic, CBT News, TESLARATI, InsideEVs, The Decoder, CleanTechnica, and Gulf News
X: @sawyermerritt and @kirstenkorosec
Forums: r/SelfDrivingCars and r/teslamotors
| Financial Times: |
A look at London cab drivers' concerns and pushback against robotaxis, as Waymo and Wayve race to make London their European launch pad for driverless services — Some drivers are considering skulduggery in an attempt to show the limits of autonomous vehicles.| CNBC: |
How the memory boom is reshaping Micron's hometown of Boise, Idaho: new millionaires, job growth, traffic, soaring housing costs, and uneven wealth distribution — Dave Petso has been a wealth manager in Boise, Idaho since the 1980s. His business has survived multiple recessions …
More: Micron, HotHardware, Tom's Hardware, Quartz, Manufacturing Dive, eeNews Europe, Reuters, Verdict, Bitcoin Insider, blocksandfiles, Engineering News-Record, The Crypto Basic, Blockonomi, and Finimize
LinkedIn: Scott DeBoer, Sanjay Mehrotra, Mark Murphy, Angie Wood, Ari Levy, Cristen, and Jeff Janukowicz
| Jenny Lee / CNBC: |
Samsung unveils a $65.1B-$79.5B shareholder return package for 2026, combining dividends and share buybacks, calling it “the largest ever by a Korean company” — Samsung Electronics has announced a shareholder return package, marking a blockbuster week for shareholder returns …
More: Samsung Newsroom, Forbes Middle East, Bloomberg, MarketWatch, Barron's Online, Oman Observer, SamMobile, The Korea Herald, The Asia Business Daily, Bitcoin Insider, Seoul Economic Daily, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, ZeroHedge News, Financial Times, Dow Jones Newswires, International Business Times, Nikkei Asia, and Korea JoongAng Daily
| Financial Times: |
Uber is set to be fined €825M by the Dutch data watchdog over its use of automated systems to deactivate driver accounts, in the second largest fine under GDPR — Regulator says ride-hailing group deactivated driver accounts through automated systems without adequately informing them| Tim Fernholz / TechCrunch: |
Space data center startup Starcloud raised a $250M extension, at a $2.3B valuation, to its March $170M Series A; source: Nvidia invested $25M — Starcloud, a startup developing satellites that can perform AI inference in orbit, told TechCrunch that it has added a $250 million extension to its March $170 million Series A funding round.
More: GeekWire, Finimize, Reuters, Business Wire, Unite.AI, RuntimeWire, and Dow Jones Newswires
| Zac Hall / 9to5Mac: |
OpenAI debuts an Apple Messages plugin for ChatGPT on macOS, letting ChatGPT Work and Codex read, search, and analyze chats, draft and send messages, and more — Well, this seems interesting. ChatGPT's latest update adds a new Mac integration: the ability to work with conversations from Apple's Messages app.
More: Bloomberg, PCWorld, AppleInsider, Engadget, TechCrunch, Implicator.ai, Forbes, The Shortcut, MacRumors, Bitcoin Insider, Ventureburn, Nairametrics, Tech Times, The Mac Observer, Business Standard, Thurrott, Digit, Neowin, Shelly Palmer, Gizmodo, The Asia Business Daily, RuntimeWire, WeRSM, The Deep View, Business Today, Unite.AI, Digital Trends, MacDailyNews, iPhone in Canada, and iClarified
X: @chatgpt, @bigimpacthumans, @patrickmoorhead, @twid, @ericmigi, @argofowl, @jxnlco, @marvinvonhagen, @thsottiaux, @somewheresy, @nickadobos, @gregorymcfadden, @dimillian, @mweinbach, @gpt_alex, @arix, and @dkundel
LinkedIn: Emil Protalinski, Mel Sellick, Rider Harris, Karina Taveras, and Taylor Lorenz
Forums: r/technology and r/apple
| Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg: |
Sources: Nvidia is in early talks with South Korean AI chip startup Rebellions for a potential deal, including a partnership, an investment, or an acquisition — Nvidia Corp. is in early discussions with the Korean AI chip designer Rebellions about possible collaborations … | Kristin Robinson / Billboard: |
Email: Apple tells music industry partners that songs tagged as “materially generated using AI” by content providers will now be visibly labeled on Apple Music — The news builds on Apple's recent announcement of AI Transparency Tags for songs. Now, the service will soon make those disclosures visible to users.
More: The Hollywood Reporter, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, MacRumors, CMU, MacDailyNews, Music Ally, The Mac Observer, PCMag, Digital Trends, iThinkDifferent, Thurrott, Stereogum, Digital Music News, RuntimeWire, MobileSyrup, Variety, and MacStories
LinkedIn: Satyaki Karmakar and Daimen Carter
| Reuters: |
Kakao plans to spin off its chat app-based platform business into a new company tentatively named KakaoAI, which it expects to relist in Korea in 2027 — South Korea's dominant chat app operator Kakao Corp (035720.KS) said on Friday it plans to spin off its chat app-based platform business …
| Jamie John / Financial Times: |
Filings: Apple paid Ireland $17B in taxes last year, after an EU court ordered it to pay €13B in back taxes; Apple paid $43B in corporate income taxes globally — New filings highlight iPhone maker's global tax liabilities — Apple paid Ireland $17bn in taxes last year …
More: AppleInsider, MacRumors, Reuters, Irish Independent, The Irish Times, and Irish Examiner
Forums: r/apple and MacRumors Forums
| Dawn Kopecki / Reuters: |
How crypto, AI, and online betting companies emerged as the biggest industries shaping the 2026 US midterm races, as corporate spending reaches a record $517M — A handful of billionaires and companies are driving corporate spending in U.S. midterm elections this year …
More: Gizmodo, Daily Kos, Bitcoin Insider, and The Crypto Times
| Reuters: |
Filings: China-based chipmaker YMTC's application to list its shares on Shanghai's STAR Market has been accepted, setting the stage for a $4.9B share sale — China's leading flash memory chipmaker YMTC plans to raise 33 billion yuan ($4.91 billion) in its Shanghai IPO …
More: Finimize, Reuters, Bloomberg, and Caixin Global
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