Google’s Gemini has a branding problem, and so does the rest of AI
Consumer AI apps need to stop making users learn their product architecture.
kamal
How do we explain OpenAI’s executive exodus?
Was Greg Brockman the right executive all along?
US Banks Join Forces to Build a Blockchain of Their Own
The BankChain Alliance aims to give smaller financial institutions access to tokenized deposits and blockchain payments through a shared network targeted for 2027.
Amazon knocks $150 off Pixel 11 phones, with up to $200 in gift cards
The Pixel 11 in hibiscus. | Image: The Verge If you’ve been on the fence about Google’s latest Pixel phones, this might be your best chance to save some cash. Amazon is offering an extra $150 off the Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro, and Pixel 11 Pro XL when you use the coupon code PIXEL11 … Read more
Evaluate any agent framework with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore Evaluations
AI teams building production agents face a frustrating asymmetry: the diversity of agent frameworks keeps growing, but evaluation tooling has not kept pace. Most evaluation systems assume you built your agent in a specific way: a specific SDK, a specific large language model (LLM) client, a specific tracing pattern. The moment you step outside that … Read more
OpenAI releases its official report on the Hugging Face breach
The report, which spans several discrete cybersecurity compromises, is the most complete accounting of the incident to date.
Bitcoin Wallets Dormant for Over a Decade Move $40M in One Week
Six wallets that slept through Bitcoin’s entire boom woke up between Aug. 16 and Aug. 26, moving tens of millions in BTC.
Flipboard acquires Graze, the feed builder working to monetize the open social web
Flipboard is acquiring Bluesky feed-building startup Graze, bringing its privacy-friendly ad technology and creator monetization tools into Flipboard’s growing open social web ecosystem.
Medical device maker Boston Scientific says a cyberattack is causing a ‘global disruption’ to its operations
The company won’t say if medical devices are affected or if any customer data was exfiltrated.
Being a mom is hard — the heat is making it harder
It’s 8:52 AM and 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 Celsius) where I live in Southern California. My husband just came back from a morning outing with our four-month-old. “How was the botanic garden?” I ask him. “It was okay. It was just too hot,” he tells me. I didn’t expect us to spend so much of … Read more
The Switch 2’s $50 price increase is happening next week
This is a friendly reminder that the Nintendo Switch 2 will jump in price by $50 starting on September 1st. That’s next Tuesday! The company gave plenty of notice, but the time has finally come. The base 256GB model that ships without a game will go from $449.99 to $499.99. Nintendo recently announced two bundles … Read more
Carbon Frames Don’t Win Races: Why AI Doesn’t Replace Infrastructure
Every pitch deck in fintech now contains one identical slide. Around page 6, an AI assistant appears, smiling in a chat bubble, eager to “transform the customer experience.” I have sat through many of these decks, even built a few myself, and I have come to a simple conclusion: the assistant is never the reason … Read more
Solana Treasury Firm Invites Investors to Look ‘Beyond the Price of SOL’
Nasdaq-listed SOL treasury company DeFi Development Corp launched a free network dashboard on Wednesday. Its pitch: judge Solana on more than just price.
Chainalysis estimates $457B in taxable crypto activity, says CARF misses most
The blockchain analytics firm said just 14% of the onchain activity it identified is covered by the OECD’s international crypto tax-reporting framework.
An ongoing 3D-printer AGPL violation
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Apple Maps has ads now
Ads have started popping up in Apple Maps, following Apple’s announcement in March that it would let businesses pay for top spots. They’re appearing on my iPhone as the first entry in the “suggested places” section in search, but Apple says they’ll also show up at the top of search results. According to 9to5Mac, the … Read more
‘The Government Doesn’t Own Our Data’: Prosecuted GrapheneOS User
Samuel Tunick, facing five years over a wiped phone, said he was secretly placed on a watch list as a suspected terrorist.
Crypto CEO Faces US Extradition Over Alleged $20 Million Token Scheme
Manpreet Kohli, accused of making $20 million from an alleged scheme to manipulate the Saitama token, is a step closer to facing trial in Boston.
US seizes domains of Chinese botnet used to hack NASA, Justice Department, and the Senate
The FBI has seized domains associated with a botnet that allowed Chinese-backed hackers to breach several U.S. government departments.
Google’s new AI transcription edits out your ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’
Google has updated Gemini Audio with some new Gemini 3.5 models, introducing new transcription capabilities that automatically detect specialized jargon and more than 85 languages. Gemini 3.5 Live, 3.5 Live Experimental, and 3.5 Transcribe are designed to provide better precision for Google’s voice-controlled AI features, without struggling with background noise or when your speech is … Read more
Capital F closes $17M debut fund with goal to back the future of the ‘female economy’
Capital F, one of the few all-female-led VC firms, announced Wednesday the $17 million close of its debut fund. The firm backs companies building in the “female economy” — or the markets where women drive demand. That mainly falls into three buckets for the firm, Margaret Coblentz, the firm’s co-founder, told TechCrunch — women’s health, … Read more
Apple is holding its iPhone launch event on September 9
The event is expected to be a notable one, as Apple is rumored to unveil its long-awaited foldable iPhone. It’ll also be the first Apple event with John Ternus as CEO, who is scheduled to take the reins of the tech giant from Tim Cook on September 1.
How GoDaddy transformed its analytics with Amazon Quick
GoDaddy is one of the world’s largest domain registrar and web hosting companies, serving more than 20 million customers and managing approximately 82 million domain names. At that scale, access to timely business data directly affects how quickly the company can act. When GoDaddy’s analytics infrastructure faced challenges under the weight of thousands of dashboards, … Read more
Mara Raises $7M Led by Khosla Ventures and a16z Speedrun to Build Spike, a Counter-Swarm Platform
A THAAD interceptor costs somewhere between twelve and fifteen million dollars. A Patriot PAC-3 MSE round is listed at roughly $5.3 million in the US Army’s most recent budget request. The FPV drone that a great deal of modern air defense is now being asked to shoot down costs a few hundred dollars and is … Read more
Natera’s intelligent appointment scheduling with Amazon Bedrock AgentCore
Booking a phlebotomy appointment shouldn’t be a hassle for oncology patients already managing treatment. Natera’s service, powered by Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, allows a phlebotomist to come to the patient, helping Natera deliver a more convenient experience. Natera, a global diagnostics company specializing in cell-free DNA testing, wanted to transform their patient experience by replacing manual … Read more
Bring your own model with Amazon SageMaker AI: Script mode in SDK v3
In 2021, we published Bring your own model with Amazon SageMaker script mode. That post showed how to use script mode on managed framework containers from AWS to write custom training and inference code. Script mode was a leap forward: you didn’t need to build or maintain Docker images to run your own algorithm on … Read more