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August 26, 2026, 11:20 AM
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| Diana Novak Jones / Reuters: |
Filing: Meta agrees to pay up to $16.68B to settle US states' claims that it designed Facebook and Instagram to addict children, misled consumers, and more — Meta Platforms (META.O) agreed to pay a maximum $16.68 billion and make major changes to Facebook and Instagram to resolve claims …
More: New York Times, Barron's Online, CNBC, Bloomberg, Engadget, Gulf News, International Business Times, CNET, CNN, NBC News, Financial Times, Capital Brief, BBC, The Economic Times, TMZ.com, RedState, Implicator.ai, American Prospect, Wall Street Journal, WPXI-TV, Sky News, Toronto Sun, Texas Attorney General, JusttheNews.com, CalMatters, Business Insider, LADbible, CBC News, Pulse 2.0, Telegraph, Insurance Business, Financial Post, Quartz, Türkiye Today, Political.org, United States district court, ZeroHedge News, Mediaite, MS NOW, and Reuters
X: @geiger_capital, @amyklobuchar, @mikeisaac, @jimcramer, @jonathanturley, @jimcramer, @sarahhuckabee, @_zeets, @douglaslfarrar, @jerrycap, @ddayen, @garymarcus, @jason_kint, @adrianweckler, @andymstone, @garyblack00, @willguyatt, @rihardjarc, and @mgsiegler. Bluesky: @kimberlyeatkins. Mastodon: @newsguyusa@flipboard.social
Forums: Hacker News, r/California, r/LosAngeles, r/neoliberal, r/UpliftingNews, r/privacy, r/news, r/technology, and r/worldnews
| Meta Newsroom: |
Meta's deal with 52 AGs includes daily time limits for teens and algorithmic feed controls; ~$5.3B of it rests on YouTube and TikTok implementing the measures — Our Agreement With US State Attorneys General — Today, we are announcing an agreement with a bipartisan group …
More: Wired, TechCrunch, New York Magazine, State of California, Dexerto, Meta Newsroom, Arkansas Online, Scientific American, Office of the Attorney General, and The Hill
X: @michaelscherer, @oablanchard, @michaelscherer, @zerohedge, @nicholasabrown_, @benjamingoggin, @agjamesuthmeier, @newyorkstateag, @ezcontra, @mikeisaac, @p_remarks, @bwaltens, @stocksavvyshay, @kenpaxtontx, @francisbrennan, @metanewsroom, @agalanwilson, @cecianasta, @edludlow, @newjerseyoag, @agchanaway, @scattygenoffice, and @agrobbonta. Bluesky: @gateklons.eurosky.social
| Meghan Bobrowsky / Wall Street Journal: |
Meta's AG settlement will be distributed to the 48 signing states and four jurisdictions in annual installments over a 10-year period based on their populations — The deal contains broad new safeguards for underage users but only pays out in full if TikTok and YouTube make similar concessions
More: Associated Press, The Information, Gizmodo, Fortune, Silicon Republic, Investor's Business Daily, AppleInsider, The Hill, NPR, Politico, Bloomberg, Denver Post, Washington Examiner, CNBC, Hindustan Times, The San Francisco Standard, Daily Mail, New Republic, Deadline, Variety, The Irish News, The Daily Caller, WPXI-TV, Blockonomi, KKTV-TV, WFSB-TV, KUER, KTLA, Digital Trends, Arkansas Attorney General, Deseret News, Newser, CBS News, Office of Attorney General …, National Legal …, KNOP, Quartz, and Agence France-Presse
| Lauren Feiner / The Verge: |
Meta says its AG deal requires it to create an age assurance standard that is subject to independent testing, with a false positive rate no higher than 10% — It agreed to independent testing of age assurance standards. … Meta settled its latest kids online safety trial with a group … | Z.ai: |
Z.ai releases GLM-5.3-Flash, the first natively multimodal GLM-5 series model, with 320B parameters, saying it outperforms GLM-5.2 at “one-tenth the price” — We introduce GLM-5.3-Flash, the first natively multimodal model in the GLM-5 series. With 320B total parameters …
More: Hugging Face. X: @altryne, @jeremiahdillon, @yuchenj_uw, @bookwormengr, @zixuanli_, @semianalysis_, @andrewcurran_, @miaai_lab, @eliebakouch, @arena, @arena, @hesamation, @opencode, @zephyr_z9, @zrdianjiao, @kimmonismus, @zixuanli_, @jun_song, @vllm_project, @scaling01, @scaling01, @miaai_lab, @zixuanli_, @openrouter, @openrouter, @alamin_ai_, @thezachmueller, @zai_org, @zai_org, @zai_org, @zai_org, @kimmonismus, @aibattle_, @andrewcurran_, and @kimmonismus
Forums: Hacker News, r/singularity, r/LocalLLaMA, and r/ZaiGLM
| Luz Ding / Bloomberg: |
Z.ai confirms speculation that Ox Alpha is a new iteration of its GLM series and releases the weights for it; Ox Alpha topped OpenRouter's leaderboard — The new AI model that's swept to the top of online usage charts with high performance at zero cost was created by China's Z.AI Co., also known as Zhipu.
More: TechCrunch, CTGT, and RuntimeWire
X: @ruima, @xenoimpulse, @tphuang, @tensorqt, @connebs, @hesamation, @bindureddy, @a_k_nain, @davidondrej1, @hesamation, @zephyr_z9, @tugot17, @meer_aiit, @thezachmueller, @mikepfrank, @opencode, @vectal_labs, @mervenoyann, and @filicroval. Bluesky: @th.alassa.pink
Forums: Hacker News, r/LocalLLaMA, and r/singularity
| Annie Palmer / CNBC: |
AWS says it plans to shut down Mechanical Turk on September 30, “following an assessment”; the service, launched in 2005, outsourced tasks to 500K+ humans — Amazon is soon pulling the plug on its 21-year-old crowdsourced work platform, called Mechanical Turk, the company said Tuesday.
More: Wall Street Journal, Amazon Web Services, and Quartz
Bluesky: @lorak, @kristap, and @jordannovet.cnbc.com
| Luz Ding / Bloomberg: |
Alibaba releases Qwen3.8-Flash, an open-weight, 125B-parameter model built on its next-gen Qwen 4 architecture, saying it rivals Opus 4.6 and V4-Flash — Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. released the latest model under its popular Qwen series, a lower-priced platform aimed at driving adoption of its marquee AI offering globally.
More: Qwen, Reuters, PYMNTS, Seeking Alpha, and Hugging Face
X: @alibaba_qwen, @italoacasas, @kimmonismus, @maziyarpanahi, @alibaba_qwen, @alibaba_qwen, @alibaba_qwen, @modelscope2022, and @kimmonismus. Forums: Hacker News
| Bill Gates / GatesNotes: |
Bill Gates says “the AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history” and “we are not preparing adequately”, calling for a regulatory framework — Bill Gates, artificial intelligence, AI, generative AI for everyone, responsible ai news, ai and robotics …
More: MIT Technology Review, The Information, Fortune, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, Reuters, Politico, Silicon Republic, Tom's Hardware, New York Post, CNN, Techstrong.ai, CNBC, Daily Sabah, Axios, The Guardian, Axios, Newser, Mediaite, Quartz, Wall Street Journal, The Decoder, Business Insider, Fortune, GeekWire, Semafor, and Australian Financial Review
X: @edzitron, @peterwildeford, @conor64, @negligible_cap, @andrew_lilico, @jordanschachtel, @mustafasuleyman, @martinvars, @deitaone, @matthuber78, @gordongchang, @louiscyprien, @junkscience, and @jamesppinkerton
Bluesky: @stephenkb and @frankpasquale
| Karen Weise / New York Times: |
Bill Gates says tech executives are privately “very worried” about AI disruption but publicly downplay the risks to protect fundraising and planned IPOs — Bill Gates is the latest in a string of tech luminaries to call out the risks of artificial intelligence.Chona Kasinger for The New York Times
More: Bloomberg, Washington Post, Capital Brief, The Verge, Scripting News, and Axios
X: @peterwildeford and @semaforben
Forums: r/politics and r/NoShitSherlock
| Katie Paul / Reuters: |
Investigation: Meta explored slashing many teams by ~60% to become “AI native”, but pulled back after staff revolted and data showed AI agents were ineffective — To make its workforce “AI native,” Meta explored slashing the size of many teams across the company by as much as 60% in two waves, internal documents show.
More: International Business Times and The Decoder
Forums: r/artificial, r/Longreads, r/ArtificialInteligence, and r/technology
| John Walker / Kotaku: |
Rockstar says GTA 6 gameplay leaking “in this way has been heartbreaking”, calling it “unfortunate” that the “game experience may now be impacted” by spoilers — The company also uncharacteristically apologizes for the lack of official information
More: PCMag, Thurrott, VideoCardz.com, Eurogamer.net, Tom's Hardware, The Verge, Digit, Neowin, Game Sandwich, Coinpaper, Gameranx, Comic Book, Mashable, PC Gamer, Radio Times, Rock, Paper, Shotgun, NME, TheGamer, Dexerto, 9to5Toys, Tech4Gamers, ScreenRant, The Shortcut, and Livemint
X: @rockstargames, @__silent_, @tropicalmaku, @m3ssimp, @crotfs, @gameroll_, @gtabase, @nuhre_, @videotech, @arc_5o9, and @gtasixinfo. Bluesky: @fry69.dev. Forums: r/xbox
| Wall Street Journal: |
A profile of Leopold Aschenbrenner, who worked for SBF and OpenAI before launching Situational Awareness; Aschenbrenner married Dario Amodei's chief of staff — A 24-year-old investor was hailed as a visionary and attracted billions—before turning into Wall Street's latest cautionary tale| Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge: |
Amazon's Ring unveils a new proprietary encryption architecture called TAKE, set to begin rolling out in September as the default encryption for all cameras — The new “Throw Away The Key Encryption” method will become the default on all Ring cameras — Ring has a new way to protect your videos.| Reuters: |
Sources: Moonshot AI is in early talks over revenue-sharing agreements with Microsoft, Amazon, and Google to host Kimi K3, and is seeking up to a 30% share — China's Moonshot AI is negotiating revenue-sharing agreements with Microsoft (MSFT.O), Amazon (AMZN.O) and Alphabet's Google (GOOGL.O) … | Jonathan Weil / Wall Street Journal: |
Microsoft faces investor criticism over opaque financial reporting across capex, its OpenAI deal, and Azure, which is buried in the Intelligent Cloud segment — From capex to its flagship cloud platform, Microsoft stands out for lack of transparency — Cloud computing, meet cloudy numbers.| Tom Warren / The Verge: |
Xbox announces a disc-to-digital feature that will allow users to digitize their existing physical games, rolling out for Xbox Insider testers on August 31 — Xbox Insiders will get access to this new feature on August 31st. … Microsoft is officially announcing a new Xbox feature …
More: XBOX Wire, BBC, Tom's Hardware, XDA Developers, Windows Central, TheGamer, Pure Xbox, Push Square, and Video Games Chronicle
| Counterpoint Research: |
In Q2, Apple's base iPhone 17 was the global best-selling smartphone, with a 6% share, followed by the iPhone 17 Pro Max; Apple and Samsung had all 10 top spots — - The iPhone 17 led the Top 10 bestsellers list with 6% overall market sales share for the quarter, iPhone 17 Pro Max and iPhone 17 Pro take the next two spots.
More: 9to5Google, AppleInsider, SammyGuru, and Android Authority
| Mackenzie Hawkins / Bloomberg: |
Sources and documents: Huawei proposes exporting its high-end Ascend 950-series chips to build Egyptian government AI data centers, testing US tech diplomacy — Huawei Pitches Egypt With AI Chips, Data Center Buildout — Video Player is loading. — Unmute — Current Time 0:00 Loaded: 100.00% Playback Rate
X: @business and @richard_casey
| Dan Primack / Axios: |
Vanguard agrees to acquire RIA software startup Altruist, a source says for $4.6B in cash; Altruist raised $600M and had a $1.9B valuation in early 2025 — Vanguard Group on Wednesday announced an agreement to acquire Altruist, a California-based provider of software for registered investment advisors.
More: Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Barron's Online, The Vanguard Group, Quartz, Pulse 2.0, and Unite.AI. X: @katie_roof
| Brock E.W. Turner / Axios: |
Sources: Sword Health plans to acquire mental health company Headspace for between $200M and $300M in cash, far below its ~$3B valuation in 2021 — Sword Health plans to acquire mental health company Headspace for between $200 million and $300 million in cash, Axios Pro has learned from multiple sources.
More: FinSMEs and Tech Funding News
| Andy Masley: |
Public polling suggests the US' severe anti-data center backlash is primarily driven by local environmental and economic concerns, not anti-Big Tech sentiment — It's probably not your ideological thing, or mine. It's about object-level claims about how data centers impact the communities …
More: Washington Examiner. X: @ericlevitz, @techczech, @shashj, @richlowry, and @andymasley. Bluesky: @davidpriess
| Reuters: |
The US DOJ says it disrupted a Chinese hacking operation responsible for break-ins at the DOJ, NASA, the Fed, Senate, and others, seizing two platforms' domains — The United States said Wednesday that it had disrupted a Chinese hacking operation responsible for break-ins at the U.S. Justice Department … | The Information: |
Sources: DeepSeek generated $70.7M in revenue and posted a $106M net loss in the first seven months of 2026, ~10x its full-year 2025 revenue on a $139M net loss — DeepSeek generated about 475 million yuan ($70.7 million) in revenue in the first seven months of this year …
X: @jingyanghk and @jukan05
| Miranda Nazzaro / The Hill: |
Pennsylvania's AG sues Snap, alleging Snapchat fails to protect teens from compulsively using the app, two weeks after filing a similar lawsuit against TikTok — Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday (R) announced a lawsuit Tuesday, accusing Snap, the parent company of Snapchat …
More: Pittsburgh, PA Patch
| Financial Times: |
The US AI data center buildout is posing complex challenges to major lenders as they stretch themselves to finance, insure, and underwrite a novel asset class — Wall Street players extending themselves to underwrite this colossal new asset class are looking to limit exposure.| Dwarkesh Patel / Dwarkesh Podcast: |
Q&A with SemiAnalysis founder Dylan Patel on Anthropic and OpenAI controlling global compute, $11T of AI capex between 2024 and 2029, China's compute, and more — “Every force is screeching towards centralization.” — Had a lot of fun chatting again with my twin brother Dylan Patel.
More: Dwarkesh Patel on YouTube. X: @dwarkesh_sp, @jukan05, @clementdelangue, @basilhalperin, @demian_ai, @tmtlongshort, @briancalbrecht, and @xanderai. Bluesky: @davidcrespo
| Bloomberg: |
Shanghai-based MiniMax reports H1 2026 revenue up 283% YoY to ~$116.6M, above 2025's 159% YoY growth, as its M3 model lags behind rivals like Z.ai's GLM-5.2 — MiniMax Group Inc.'s revenue surged 283% in the first half of 2026, even as the Chinese AI upstart trailed rivals such as Z.AI Co. in releasing top-tier large language models.
More: The Information
| Financial Times: |
Sources: YMTC, which seeks to raise $5B in an IPO, told investors in IPO prep meetings that it aims to become the largest NAND flash supplier by the end of 2027 — YMTC sets out Nand production ambitions in investor meetings for $5bn Shanghai IPO — YMTC aims to overtake Samsung and SK Hynix …
More: Barron's Online and The Asia Business Daily
X: @zijing_wu, @zephyr_z9, @zephyr_z9, and @semiconductorsx
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