• The Chinese city of Hangzhou deploys traffic-control robots that operate autonomously, using cameras and radar to signal traffic and flag violations (Reuters)
• Filing: in 2025, TikTok generated $702.5M in net profit in Europe, Africa, and Latin America, its first annual profit, on $9.1B in revenue, up 45.7% YoY (Iain Martin/Forbes)
• A bankruptcy court delays Google's $10M purchase of Spirit Airlines' data after former flight attendants objected, seeking assurance their info would be removed (Alexander Gladstone/Wall Street Journal)
• Waymo says it has built an ASIC chip that will improve its robotaxis' reflexes and navigational skills and help it diversify away from third parties like Nvidia (Edward Ludlow/Bloomberg)
• Circana: US video game hardware spending fell 29% YoY in July to $282M, the lowest since COVID, shipments fell 39% YoY, and console prices grew 16% YoY to $542 (Vlad Savov/Bloomberg)
• Anthropic-backed enterprise AI venture Ode acquires four-year-old AI consultancy Casper Studios for an unknown amount; Ode employs 100+ after buying Fractional (Julia Hornstein/The Information)
• Study: 150+ Polymarket wallets may have traded on internal US military information, making $8M overall with a 97.2% average win rate and attracting copycat bets (Douglas Gillison/Reuters)
• GTA 6 leaker CyberLeek releases more footage, including a video of a character spelling "leek" with bullet holes in a wall, suggesting direct access to the game (Robert Purchese/Eurogamer.net)
• Slack launches Slack Code, adding dedicated, project-specific code channels that let teams collaborate with AI coding agents "like teammates" across all plans (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)
• Source: Meta is spending hundreds of millions per year to use trillions of AI tokens weekly via Azure, quietly becoming one of Microsoft's largest AI customers (Brody Ford/Bloomberg)
• Sources: Trump officials expect Elon Musk to spend $100M to $200M in the November midterm elections, with a focus on voter turnout in key races, including Texas (Hugo Lowell/Wired)
• Australia passes the News Bargaining Incentive, which will tax tech giants 2.5% on their Australian ad revenue if they don't strike deals with local news media (Christine Chen/Reuters)
• PitchBook: California-based startups have raised ~$366B in 2026 so far across 4,000+ companies, more than triple the total of all other 49 states combined (Paul Kiernan/Wall Street Journal)
• Muon Space, which is building a spacecraft platform for orbital data centers and AI computing, raised a $250M Series C, with participation from Google (Yash Roy/Bloomberg)
• Stripe's OpenRouter acquisition, its largest yet, is a bet on a future where users turn to a mix of AI models and tokens are the central currency for businesses (Kate Clark/Wall Street Journal)
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• T-Mobile Promo Codes: 25% Off | August 2026
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• Elon Musk Is Expected to Point His Money Machine at Texas Politics
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• Uber Eats Promo Codes: $15 Off│August 2026
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| • Google now allows you to add your favorite new sources to Search
• Tesla's Robotaxi fleet might finally be driving around Austin unsupervised
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• Australia passes law to charge tech companies levies unless they reach deals with news publishers
• Roblox vows to make changes after Australian regulator found yet more child safety lapses
• LG's new OLED manufacturing tech can make panels bigger and brighter
• NASA calls off mission to rescue the falling Swift observatory
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• Samsung is holding another Galaxy Event on August 27
• The Binding of Isaac: Repentance+ Online release goes head-to-head with GTA 6 on November 19
• Valve Steam Frame videos show how to wear the headset, perfect the fit and sign in
• Waymo Ojai vans are now available for all riders in three cities
• Pokémon and Polaroid are collaborating on three new adorable cameras
• A robot could eventually conduct your blood draw at the doctor's office
• Google is offering college students a year of its AI Pro plan for free
• Study finds a 15 percent increase in traffic deaths after major music streaming releases
• Mattel is releasing a full-scale building brick set of the original Xbox
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