News

A little over a week after OpenAI said that its rogue AI agent accidentally hacked Hugging Face, Anthropic is disclosing three “incidents” where a Claude model, during cybersecurity evaluations, was inadvertently able to access the internet due to a misconfiguration and “gained unauthorized access to the production infrastructure of three different organizations.”

Big Hops, an indie 3D platformer that launched earlier this year, was a blast solo, but now you can play the entire game co-op on Steam as part of a beta. As many as eight people can play at once, and it looks chaotic and wonderful.

In an SEC filing, EA said that as of today, it had obtained “all regulatory approvals required to complete the Merger.” The deal, announced in September, is expected to close “on or about the close of trading” on August 4th.

Gemini Spark in Chrome can do things like “scheduling viewings for apartments you’ve saved or researching flight options and starting the booking process,” according to Google. However, a human will have to push the button on tasks like making payments.

After announcing it’s shutting down Roblox Connect, Roblox said in its latest earnings report that it’s working on adding “integrated voice calls” and video chat, as alternatives to tools like Discord.

The company’s Q2 2026 shareholder letter mentions that “we’re reimagining how users and communities connect, share, and consume content through a modernized video experience on Reddit.” Wonder if it will make Reddit yet another app with a vertical video feed. The platform turned on video replies in May.

Apple has reportedly been seeking permission to buy memory from CXMT, a blacklisted Chinese supplier.

As spotted by 9to5Google, you can change the background to different colors and images, including uploading your own, and set the background to refresh everyday, like on the desktop version of Chrome. The new backgrounds are under “Customize new tab page” in Chrome’s three dots menu.

A show almost canceled as a tax write-off before it ever aired is now canceled, according to Variety, despite Variety’s report that it was renewed in March.

Christopher Nolan’s three-hour movie has had additional 70mm IMAX showtimes added, which are now scheduled to run through September 16th.

Apple recently started allowing alternative app marketplaces in Brazil following a long legal dispute, during which Epic originally announced that the store would be launching in the country.

Microsoft said Thursday that it’s been rolling the app out “over the past month” to supported TVs running Hisense’s VIDAA OS. The company announced earlier this year that the app was on the way.

The HoverAir Versa is the next entry from the flying selfie cam company. No date or price yet, but it should hit Indiegogo in August. I’d wait for retail: We liked X1, but X1 Pro had lots of early issues, and the company can’t legally ship its Aqua (or likely this Versa) to the US at all.

The event, taking place on September 16th at 7PM ET, will be livestreamed.

Francis deSouza will begin as CEO on August 10, taking over from the interim CEO who has been leading the company since Alexandr Wang, its founder and former CEO, joined Meta in June 2025. Joe Osborne, a spokesperson for Scale AI, said the company’s new focus on building AI applications for enterprises and governments, rather than solely data labeling, has it projecting more than $1 billion in 2026 revenue.

Brandon Klayme was wrongly convicted for possession of child pornography after the investigation botched his Kik username, “fus_ro_dah,” in reference to Bethesda’s Skyrim videogame. The real suspect’s username — “fus__ro_dah” — included one additional underscore, a “subtle mistake that changed the course of my life,” Klayme said.

Weng had left OpenAI along with a handful of other employees to co-found the competing AI startup, which was helmed by Mira Murati, OpenAI’s former CTO. Weng recently shared a note that after being “absent for a month” to focus on her health leading up to Thinking Machines Lab’s first model release, Inkling, she was making the decision to leave behind “consistent stress and workload” to pursue “a scoped role in a more predictable place.” She is reportedly already back at OpenAI.

The Senate Commerce Committee will vote on five kids safety bills including KOSA, which passed the chamber last Congress but didn’t get a vote in the House. This year, the House has pushed its own version of the bill that stripped the key duty of care, setting up a fight.

Google is bringing its Nano Banana 2 image generation model to Google Earth, allowing you to generate AI images using the satellite, aerial, and 3D imagery in the web app. Some examples shared by Google show how you can give a building a makeover, visualize projects, or create an infographic about what you’re seeing.

Maingear’s new Zero series of desktop PCs use 4mm-thick curved tempered glass for an airy, panoramic aesthetic. They come in Intel and AMD versions, starting at $2,699, with GPUs ranging from the RTX 5070 to RTX 5090.

The iconic media player of the Napster generation has partnered with Deezer to power Winamp’s own “premium music subscription service,” which is set to launch in the first half of 2027. The new Winamp Player will combine Deezer’s music catalogue with users’ local music libraries, internet radio stations, podcasts, and more. And yes — the interface will be “highly customizable.”

In Meta’s latest earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg said that time spent on Instagram globally this quarter has increased by “double digits year-over-year,” largely driven by improvements to its AI-powered recommendations algorithm that keeps people hooked. The proclamation comes amid concerns (and legal battles) around Instagram’s “addictive” design.

Having surpassed the threshold of 45 million monthly users in the bloc, both services will be required to clamp down on illegal and harmful content per the EU’s strict DSA rules. Roblox and ChatGPT search will have to comply as soon as August, per Bloomberg’s sources.

Building the data centers needed to support the AI boom requires lots of skilled human tradespeople working 10-hour days, seven days a week, and earning healthy overtime wages. Bidding wars have broken out in markets with heavy data center construction, allowing workers to jump ship for bonuses and even higher pay in a modern-day gold rush, with companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft paying to help train new recruits.

The orders will cover 18 Falcon 9 missions that are expected to be finished by the end of next year. SpaceX has already gotten more than $7 billion in Pentagon contracts in 2026, according to Reuters.

Scott Carney and Taylor Lorenz posted on Substack about downward subscriber trends they’re seeing. Carney pins it on subscription fatigue and feeling like “The only way to grow is to pillage the paid subscribers from other creators.” Lorenz questions Substack’s direction, saying “more and more like this app is becoming another social media feed.”

After suspending freeway routes in May because of safety concerns in construction zones, Waymo announced that freeway routes coming back in Phoenix and “soon” in Los Angeles, Miami, and San Francisco.

I’ve heard Steam Remote Play is finally reaching parity with Moonlight when streaming games to your Steam Deck. Now, Steam Remote Play is getting AV1 for theoretically even better compression, and HDR for the Steam Deck OLED’s screen. I like streaming, but I’d also like more devs to embrace Dynamic Cloud Sync…