• How a bipartisan coalition of US states fought to present a united case against Meta; Judge Rogers established a hybrid structure for the multi-week trial (Diana Novak Jones/Reuters)
• Dutch company Fairphone launches its $650 flagship repairable Fairphone (Gen 6+) in the US and plans to keep launching new phone generations every two years (Julian Chokkattu/Wired)
• Xiaomi reports Q2 revenue down 6.1% YoY to ~$16.2B and net income down 21% to ~$1.4B, above est., amid a persistent memory shortage and weaker smartphone demand (Bloomberg)
• OpenAI launches ChatGPT for Teens, a new mode that limits high-risk chats around self-harm, eating disorders, and other topics, adds studying tools, and more (Cecilia Kang/New York Times)
• Alibaba says its new open-source multimodal model, Qwen3.8-27B, passed 1M+ downloads within a few days of release, making it one of its fastest-growing models (Juro Osawa/The Information)
• Reddit launches an early experiment to convert select text posts and comments into short videos with AI voiceovers, rolling out on the web, iOS, and Android (Jay Peters/The Verge)
• Alibaba's Alipay launches a new "all-in-one" platform for businesses to use AI agents to automate tasks; Alibaba's stock jumps 5%+ and is up 40%+ since June (Jeanny Yu/Bloomberg)
• AI inference chip startup Etched raised $700M led by its new server rack customer Jane Street at a $21B valuation, up from $10.3B after raising $300M in July (Robbie Whelan/Wall Street Journal)
• Sources: China orders some state-linked entities to uninstall a government-tailored version of Windows 10, ahead of its February 2027 retirement timeline (Bloomberg)
• Google unveils Operation Blue Skies, a £5M trial to re-route North Atlantic aircraft to reduce contrail-induced warming using Google's AI atmospheric forecasts (Madeleine Cuff/New Scientist)
• Baidu reports Q2 revenue down 2% YoY to ~$4.62B, below ~$4.69B est. and its fifth straight quarterly decline, and net income of ~$341M, as it lags AI rivals (Bloomberg)
• Apple's macOS Tahoe 26.7 RC has references to unreleased products: a Home Hub, home accessories, new Beats, AirPods Pro 4, Apple Intelligence in China, and more (Juli Clover/MacRumors)
• In filings, Apple acknowledges App Store regulatory changes are weighing on its $100B+ services business; US App Store spend fell 6% YoY in Q2, per Sensor Tower (Michael Acton/Financial Times)
• Rogue Studio, which calls itself a "playground for creative ethical mischief", launches Rogue 1.0, an AI video tool to make adult content of Hollywood quality (Jason Parham/Wired)
• Sources: AI-drafted bills are swamping the US House's Legislative Counsel, which now spends more time fixing them than it would spend to draft them from scratch (Owen Dahlkamp/Politico)
| • I Put the Best Digital Notebooks to the Test. Here Are My Favorites (2026)
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• Puerto Rico Is Rationing Water. It Could’ve Avoided It by Harvesting Rainwater
• Amazon Can Use Your Twitch Content to Train Its AI—Unless You Opt Out
• Google Workspace Promo Codes: 14% Off for August 2026
• New York City Lawmakers Push to ‘Ban the Scan’ at MSG
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| • AI-generated bills are reportedly causing problems in the Capitol
• Apple's macOS Tahoe preview may have leaked a ton of unreleased products
• ChatGPT's stricter teen mode starts rolling out today
• Fairphone is finally releasing its first official handset in the US
• Google is reportedly planning to move all Pixel production out of China
• Apple appears to have leaked its camera-equipped AirPods
• Why flash drive capacity keeps increasing (and why small drives are rarely sold today)
• What are your retro game consoles worth?
• YouTube public view counts will likely get higher starting next week
• Reddit is experimenting with video and audio versions of posts
• Sonos put speaker controls on your iPhone's lock screen (again)
• Why curved TVs failed but curved gaming monitors thrived
• Apple is forced to stop favoring its own apps in personal data collection prompts
• Why 4K Blu-ray always beats 4K streaming for picture quality
• Apple is reportedly expanding Apple Wallet IDs to four more states
• Samsung might be making a new foldable that's even wider than the Galaxy Z Fold 8
• ByteDance agrees to reel in its AI models to protect Hollywood IPs
• If you're ignoring iPhone focus modes, you're missing out on Apple's best productivity tool
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